visions
| Visions on Alphaville´s music
by Alphaville, from various sources: Forever Young (album 1984) Interview with Marian To Germany with love (12/1996 German fc Faithful & True site) The lyrics of the album "Prostitute" are very earnest, also about Germany . Why do you think so hatefull about Germany? "I hate this country, I mean I love this country. If I wouldn`t love the country I couldn`t hate it. If you don`t love something you cannot hate it. So I love it, because I was born here. And I hate it, if I must see, how they burn down houses or asylums. That`s not so sick in other countries like in England. During my time in England I also had problems with natives. Surely not everybody is harmony,happieness, omelette, but it`s never so sick. If you get problems than because of being german. Althought that`s imbecile, it`s not our generation`s fault. Allright, it`s german history and everybody should know about it. But it`s stupid to say you`re an imbecile, `cos it is not your and mine fault. On the whole I like Germany." So the song ´To Germany with love´ has nothing to do with that or has it to do with the of that time wall between East and West? I think about ´From the ruins risen slowly, to the future till we stand´ "Yes, the lyrics has to do with the seperation between East and West. It was my wish that both are together and what do you think is "from the ruins..." It`s the german national anthem. "Yes, exactly...so I put parts of the eastgerman and the westgerman national anthems together and used it for the song." In the Mood (French fc ´Romeos´fanzine #1 12/2000) "In The Mood" is probably about growing up, losing friends, being afraid of the future etc. Jacky is a kind of sentimental fool, a mixture of Hitchcock´s Norman Bates whose mother´s still living somewhere in the upper store of his pretty sick brain and somebody, who´s standing on the roof of a very tall building, unsure if he should jump or enjoy the view. We had just signed our first record deal at that time, so I guess the song had something to do with it". In the Mood (Dreamscapes booklet) "I´ve always found the lyrics quite daft and it took me ages to figure out what they actaully meant. but then it hit me: Jacky, that was me. I was scared shitless of growing up and was petrified of signing the record deal." Sounds Like a Melody (Alphaville´s mailing list, 2000) Marian, is it true that you hate ´Universal Daddy´ ?!? Why ?!?!? I heard this from a fan who talked to you about the song but I find it hard to believe that you hate something that you created yourself... Marian: Universal Daddy is not the only of my hate-songs. Another popular one was, for a long time, ´Sounds Like a Melody´. After the huge and unexpected success of ´Big´ in 1984, we planned to release ´Forever Young´ as the next single. But at that time suddenly our record company changed its mind. They sent two emissaires from Hamburg to Münster to convince us to write an additional song which would be published in between BiJ and FY. A song in a hitsingle-format. I think, I speak for the rest of the band (bernhard and frank) when I say that we weren't very much excited about this plan. On the other hand, we had claimed in many interviews before (except frank, who never talked) that we saw the pop-media mainly from a 'singles-perspective'. singles are pure commercial objects. They only make sense when they sell. And pop-musicians we were! However, my deepest belief was (and still is) that writing music only for the sake of commercial success is the worst deal you can do, a dead end street (14 years later we wrote a song about that subject called 'Dangerous Places'). But here we were, young and unexperienced, with a million-seller at our back. - we decided to take the whole enterprise as a kind of game that we had started and were now about to fulfill. We had invented the rules and the record company only took us at the word. that was the creation of slam. It took us one afternoon to write and another day (or two) to arrange it. I never forget the moment when we played the nearly finished 'product' to the record representatives. They danced in bizarre steps through our studio, giggling words like 'great' or 'yeah' and I could see those dollar-signs printed out in the look of their eyes. I felt kind of ...abused. From that very moment on I started to hate the song. - Ten years later, I was putting the live-set together and had a long discussion with Martin (Lister) whether we should play ´SLaM´ yes or no (...to play or not to play). After I told him the whole story he said: listen, I understand your point but the song is really good (and you're an idiot not to play it). Well, we rehearsed ´SLaM´ a couple of times with the band and that changed my mind completely. it felt great to play and sing the song together with the boys. Still I have to say that there is a deep truth hidden in the chorus line: when we wrote ´SLaM´, we entered 'forbidden territory' ...for a while. - a couple of months later, we rehearsed ´Universal Daddy´ and I still hated it. But that's another story. Lies (´the Golden Path´ #3, spring 1989) Are you hampered in real life by the whirl of money and glory which you sing about in the song ´Lies´ ? "Lies was just a fantasy about this fame and business thing. Later we found out that this kind of life is far less interesting than we´d expected." |