Immortal (album)
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| Studio album by Die Toten Hosen | ||||
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Publication |
December 6, 1999 |
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| Label (s) | JKP , Eastwest Records | |||
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Format (s) |
CD, LP |
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Title (number) |
18th |
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running time |
54:28 |
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Studio (s) |
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Immortal is a studio album by Die Toten Hosen . It was produced by Jon Caffery and was released on December 6, 1999 on the band's own label, JKP .
The band continues the content of the previous studio album Opium fürs Volk and deals with values , the transience of being and the question of meaning in life .
The album contains two cover versions entitled Sunday at the Zoo by Frank Ziegert, originally published by the band Abwärts , and Lesbian, Black Disabled by Funny van Dannen . The satirical pieces Schön sein , Bayern and Der Mond, der Refrigerator and I are a collaboration with van Dannen. The text for the only English-language song Call of the Wild on the sound carrier was created with the support of TV Smith .
The album also represents a turning point in the band's biography. Due to health problems with the spine, drummer Wolfgang Rohde gave up his place during the recording to Vom Ritchie . Rohde, who has been the band's drummer since 1986, can be heard in just four pieces.
Emergence
The band performed at Immortal the line of the previous studio albums Buy me! and popular opium , mainly focusing on songs with serious content. Campino found it increasingly difficult to write playful pieces. A development that he does not want to attach to certain strokes of fate or people he has met. Campino known to the Musikexpress : “It will have something to do with my life. But the only mirror in which you can see me publicly is in my texts. I don't want to sell anything else. ”Campino feared that his mood could be carried over to the production and that the album could become too dreary overall. So he sat down with the satirist Funny van Dannen , who supported him in writing the songs Schön Sein und Bayern .
The album Immortal was created from August to November 1999 in Dieter Dierks' studio in Stommeln under the direction of Jon Caffery. The mixing and the final mastering took place in the Skyline Tonfabrik in Düsseldorf.
Design of cover and booklet
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The cover by Johann Zambryski shows a shot with a view over a mountain landscape; in the foreground a simple wooden fence and a sign with the inscription: “Auf Wiedersehen!” An excerpt from the cover photo, with a focus on the parting words, is listed again in the middle of the booklet; it is juxtaposed with a picture from the Capuchin Crypt in Palermo . In addition to all the lyrics, the booklet only contains portraits of the band members in black and white, recorded by Olaf Heine .
Subjects and title list
As in all previous albums, most of the lyrics are from Campino and are written from a first-person perspective . A large number of emotional, often melancholy lyrics give the album additional authenticity .
In the first song Sorry, we are sorry , which is introduced with a short radio play , spoken by Jacques Palminger and Rocko Schamoni , the band meets their opponents with rhetorical irony : “We angered you, screwed up your children, and then laughed at you . But now we are sorry, we are standing in front of you and have brought flowers, ”says the last chorus.
The lyrics to Helden und Diebe , the longest track on the album Immortal with a playing time of over six minutes , deal with the representation of the band in the media since the debut album Opel-Gang . There it says: “We are prophets, we are liars, sometimes we are wrong and sometimes we are real.” In the final chorus, the band warns their fans not to put too many expectations in them and to idolize them: “We are heroes, we are Thieves, we'll take it as it comes. And if you want to believe in something, believe in yourself and not in us. ”An attitude that, according to Campino, comes from the punk generation, with the“ We don't want no heroes! - Stop worshiping others, prefer to do whatever “has always been a common discussion.
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For the first-person narrator in Why am I not full? the “meaning of life” consists exclusively of the achievement of status symbols , material values and the satisfaction of the desire for luxury needs . On the other hand, the narrator in the song What you live for continues the question of meaning, which he long suppressed: “Yesterday, when I was barefoot, I slipped on a question that I lost at some point and that must have been lying there for a long time. “The absurd text in The Moon, the Fridge and I , created in collaboration with Funny van Dannen, takes up this theme again in the penultimate song on the album.
The song Containerlied is a fairy tale and is about a homeless person who freezes to death in a dumpster on a cold night with a crown of newspaper on his head. He comes back later as a cloud and is happy that a little boy is carrying his crown with him. Everything as always is a song about resignation .
The title track Immortal is a ballad and deals with the topic of love. Campino and T.V. Smith wrote the lyrics to Call of the Wild together in Smith's London apartment before attending Joe Strummer's concert on October 21, 1999 at the Astoria , London .
In Our House , Campino reveals a lot of personal information about himself, his parents' home and the relationship with his late father. He apologizes to his mother and five siblings in the booklet accompanying the album.
Regen's lyrics describe a depressed mood. The narrator wishes that a downpour could not only wash away the dirt in the big city, but everything that depresses him.
King of the Blind is about a ruler who imposes blind obedience on the people . The booklet also includes a drawing of three women who, like the proverbial three monkeys , cover their ears, eyes and mouth.
The text from Sonntag im Zoo examines the concept of freedom from the point of view of Sunday excursionists in a zoological garden . The text says “You are excited and you take photos, you laugh with yourself and the world and the animals. And the children scream happily, and a queue in front of the toilet. And everyone is happy on Sundays in the zoo. ”The refrain reads:“ Here we are happy - me and you. Here we are free - on a Sunday in the zoo. ”
The song Lesbian, Black Disabled People comes from the repertoire of the satirist Funny van Dannen. The text on Schön Sein takes a satirical look at youth and beauty madness, while Bayern is a mocking criticism of FC Bayern Munich . Van Dannen was also instrumental in both songs.
In the final song, The Infinity , the term "infinity" is personified . The end of the song reads: “I would have thought that she was much older and she was lacking any seriousness. It's also a long way from being as big as you might imagine. "
music
As in all previous productions of the band Die Toten Hosen, Campino is responsible for the lead vocals. The electric guitars are occupied by Andreas von Holst and Michael Breitkopf and the electric bass by Andreas Meurer . Wolfgang Rohde plays drums in the pieces What You Live For , Inter-Sex , Regen and Bayern . Vom Ritchie, who has been part of the band since September 1998, plays the percussion instruments in the remaining pieces.
As in the album Opium fürs Volk , the band also increasingly uses the sound of string and wind instruments on Immortal , some of which Hans Steingen and his Big Noise Orchestra produce electronically. Our house is only instrumented with violins and cellos . Birte Schuler plays the cello in What One Lives for , Steingen accompanies in this calm title on the piano . Another guest musician is Frank Ziegert, who plays the lead guitar in his song Sonntag im Zoo .
The Swing rhythm in Why I will not be satisfied to give brass instruments , which can be heard in different variations of the reef from the intro again and again in the piece. There is also a walking bass and the sound of the electric guitars played as a “hard board”. The model for the swing title was the music of the Royal Crown Revue , with which the band Die Toten Hosen was on the road in 1998 during the Vans Warped Tour in Australia.
In the title song Immortal , eight bars, which Michael Breitkopf repeatedly repeats on the electric guitar, form the harmonic and rhythmic basis of the entire song. The keyboard , which can already be heard in the intro, is played by Hans Steingen.
As a transition from the ballad Immortal to the punk rock piece Call of the Wild , the 40-second instrumental piece Inter-Sex serves , a title in the blues scheme that is played by saxophones and takes up the swing elements from Why I'm not fed up.
The dominant, tinny sounding guitar in the container song is reminiscent of the musician Billy Bragg , who toured London with an electric guitar as a street musician in the early 1980s.
The hammered eighth notes, the power chords and the hymn-like refrain belonging to the style of the band can be found in the titles Schön sein and Bayern .
The intro von Bayern (Die-Toten-Hosen-Lied) plays an acoustic guitar that accompanies the singing with broken chords until the middle of the first verse . Then an electric bass and a slightly distorted electric guitar kick in. From the second verse a clearly played electric guitar takes up the motif of the acoustic guitar again, plus the drums and another guitar, which give the song the full rock sound .
Publications
Singles
The single to be beautiful was released in 1999 before the album. The front of the cover consisted of a mirror. In later editions it was replaced by the photo of a white poodle, the symbol of Rocko Schamoni's Golden Poodle Club . As a further collaboration with T.V. Smith, the CD contains the song You're Dead , which was composed for the film of the same name , and the band's two German-language compositions, Football and Im West, Nothing New .
The single Immortal from 2000 also contains the music video by director Peter Lindbergh and a short film about the shooting, a dub version of What You Live For and a cover version of the rock 'n' roll song Psycho , originally by The Sonics from 1965.
The band released the song Bayern as a Tipp-Kick version as the next single . The title was re-recorded for this. The text of the recording differs slightly from the original and is four seconds longer. A Tipp-Kick figure is shown on the front of the cover against a red background . As an additional title, the band Die Toten Hosen covered the hit song Let off steam by Christian Bruhn and Fred Weyrich , originally sung by Gert Fröbe . Also includes a version of the song You'll Never Walk Alone , which is considered the club anthem of Liverpool FC , and an interpretation of Hang On Sloopy by The McCoys .
Why do I stay hungry? became the last single from the album. On the B-side are covers of the songs Babylon's Burning by The Ruts and Should I Stay or Should I Go? by The Clash . The leaflet only contains black and white glossy photos of the band, portrayed as Mexican musicians, during the recording of the music video.
Music videos
In the music video for Schön sein by director Stefan Telegdy , which was published in 1999, Ben Becker plays a transsexual who leads a double life. Three more videos appeared in 2000, each for the single releases.
For the recordings of the music clip Immortal , the band traveled together to England to have the coastal landscape of Cornwall as a backdrop. While working on the set, however , director Peter Lindbergh had the idea to focus the camera on Campino's face for the entire length of the song. In the studio, shortly before the end of the song, the face of the star model Marie-Sophie Wilson was placed over it by computer animation , so that the impression arises that the two would become one person. The other band members can only be seen for ten seconds in the intro and for two seconds in the final shot of the film, which is completely black and white, walking across the beach in long dark coats.
Director Peter Thorwarth deliberately shot the video clip about Bavaria in the style of an amateur film in order to point out the difference between the fun of recreational football and purely profit-oriented professional football. The band can be seen playing football with friends and fans on the Ascheplatz of Alemannia 08 in Düsseldorf-Flingern .
The music video Why I'm Not Full is the band's first collaboration with director Wim Wenders . Campino plays a man who surrounds himself with luxury, Michaela Schaffrath is seen in the role of his playmate . The Düsseldorf Rhine Tower was transformed into an extravagant villa with a golf course on the roof platform through digital image processing .
New edition 2007
For the 25th anniversary of the band Die Toten Hosen, the album Immortal was reworked , among other things . The new edition received a second booklet in which an interview by Jan Weiler with the band is printed, which deals with the creation of the album. The CD has also been expanded to include nine tracks. These are B-sides, demos and songs that were previously only released on samplers together with other artists:
- I see the ships going down the river - 2:41 (Cover from Abwärts )
- Soccer - 2:09 (from Holst / Campino)
- Nothing new in the west - 1:59 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Face 2000 - 2:20 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Let off steam - 2:24
- My City - 2:47 (Breitkopf / Campino)
- Neanderthals - 3:22 (van Dannen, Campino)
- The Night of the Living Corpses - 2:33 (Meurer / Campino)
- You're Dead - 4:41
tour
The band opened the concert tour of the same name for the album Immortal on May 6th in Wels and on May 7th, 2000 in the Bregenz Festival Hall . Until the end of May the band gave concerts in the Bundesleistungszentrum in Füssen , in the Europahalle Karlsruhe , in the Hanns-Martin-Schleyer-Halle in Stuttgart , in the Hallenstadion in Zurich , in the Bremer Stadthalle , in the Eissporthalle Kassel , in the Erfurt exhibition hall and in the Sachsenarena in Riesa . A large format photograph , taken by Andreas Gursky at one of the two concerts on May 27 and 28, 2000 in Dortmund's Westfalenhalle 1 , was exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York . This was followed by club concerts in Warsaw and Krakow , a performance in the Wiener Stadthalle and another concert as a guest at Rock im Park in Nuremberg on June 10, 2000.
On June 11, frontman Campino tore his cruciate ligament at Rock am Ring when he slipped on stage. Although he finished the concert and performed at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands the next day, he then had to undergo an operation. The remainder of the planned tour until the end of the year was eventually canceled.
resonance
Chart successes and awards
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The album reached number one in the charts in Germany, number six in Austria and number ninth in Switzerland, although it only received part of the planned public relations work due to the canceled tour . It was awarded two platinum records in Germany and gold once in Austria.
Press reviews
Joachim Gauger from laut.de is of the opinion that there hadn't been "so much explicit contemplation" with the band Die Toten Hosen before, and he notes that the Hosen are getting older too. “Ballads with piano accompaniment” and a “melancholic campino” didn't quite fit into the punk rock category, he continues and considers it unlikely that “young pogo dancers” would ever know the lyrics to Why I won't get enough by heart. Other songs like Sonntag im Zoo or Schön Sein , on the other hand, have “no less drive than in the days of the Opel gang ”. Gauger comes to the conclusion that Immortal , "thanks in part to the lyrical support of Funny van Dannen, has become a versatile record with some strong melodies and plenty of subtle irony", but it is from the "provocative gesture that used to characterize the pants", not much left. The old enemy images would have had their day and the new ones were no good. Now, according to Gauger, the footballers from FC Bayern Munich have to serve as bogeymen, and that is "at best the lowest common denominator and not particularly original".
"Our flagship items have become more mature," notes Martin Scholz in the December 1999 issue of Rolling Stone, and continues that the new album is "a tightrope walk, the delightful attempt to pair the carefreeness of earlier years with more in-depth lyrics, which up to now nobody would have expected from the Toten Hosen. ”It was“ a patchwork of extremely extreme moods ”.
The song Bavaria received particular attention from the media. Uli Hoeneß reacted to the derogatory rhymes against FC Bayern Munich with the words: “This is the dirt that our society will eventually suffocate on.” The band Die Toten Hosen promptly included this sentence in the trailer of the music video for Bayern . The Süddeutsche Zeitung, on the other hand, saw the humoresque in the song and on December 18, 1999 awarded it the “muse kiss of the week”. The Yeti Girls felt called to cover the song and to change the original text line: “I would never go to FC Bayern Munich!” To “We would never go to the Toten Hosen!”. They made the “Anti-Hosen title” available for download on their homepage. In a congratulatory letter on the 60th birthday of Uli Hoeneß, Campino informed him in January 2012 that after the publication of Bavaria "in the south of the country the sales of all Tote Hosen CDs have plummeted and have not yet recovered"
A slating heard the album by Ox-Fanzine in March 2000. The music was "degenerate bored inconsequential German Rock" to and the lyrics were made of "weltverbesserischen Klugscheißereien that every young punk actually should drive the blush".
Influences
Wim Wenders refers to the title Why am I not fed up in his film Palermo Shooting , published in 2008 , in the lead role of which he cast with Campino ? . He later commented that his film was also about someone who has everything but still doesn't have enough and realizes that his life is empty.
The Düsseldorf rapper Koljah took over the melody in the intro of Helden und Diebe for his hip-hop ode to Die Toten Hosen in 2010. The song appeared on Koljah's debut album Public Insult .
literature
- Hollow Skai : The Dead Pants . Hannibal, A-Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-281-2 .
- Die Toten Hosen: Immortal (song book) . Voggenreiter Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-802404-12-2 .
- Jan Weiler : Children, how time flies ... Die Toten Hosen tell - Jan Weiler listens to 1982–2007 . Booklet for the new edition 2007, episode 16: Immortal .
- Die Toten Hosen, adaptation by Hans Steingen : Reich & sexy II - The fat years. (Songbook) Bosworth Berlin, ISBN 3-937041-45-1 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Peter von Stahl: The ME / sounds interview - Campino . In: Musikexpress . No. 12 , 1999, p. 26-28 .
- ↑ Jan Weiler : Children, how time flies… Die Toten Hosen tell - Jan Weiler listens to 1982–2007 . Booklet for the new edition 2007, episode 16: Immortal .
- ↑ a b c Loose from the stomach out of the mirror issue No. 51, 1999.
- ↑ a b c Booklet for the album Immortal , 5245-037-2 JKP 35, 1999.
- ↑ a b Interview with Campino in SWR 3 Club Magazin , February 2000 edition, pages 10–15.
- ↑ Interview with Rocko Schamoni, entertainer. Die Toten Hosen, May 2000, archived from the original on June 25, 2013 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Interview with Campino ( Memento from January 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) in the online magazine Mucke und mehr , December 1999.
- ↑ a b Hollow Skai : Die Toten Hosen . Hannibal, A-Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-281-2 , pp. 102-103.
- ↑ Popcorn, January 2000 edition.
- ↑ a b Rolling Stone , Issue 12, December 1999.
- ^ Die Toten Hosen, adaptation by Hans Steingen : Reich & sexy II - The fat years. (Songbook) Bosworth Berlin, ISBN 3-937041-45-1 , pp. 50-53.
- ↑ The Dead Pants . In: Guitar . January, 2000.
- ^ Die Toten Hosen, adaptation by Hans Steingen: Reich & sexy II - The fat years. (Songbook) Bosworth Berlin, ISBN 3-937041-45-1 , pp. 34-37.
- ↑ Heroes and Thieves . In: Düsseldorfer Stadtmagezin overview . December, 1999.
- ↑ a b Die Toten Hosen, adaptation by Hans Steingen: Reich & sexy II - The fat years. (Songbook) Bosworth Berlin, ISBN 3-937041-45-1 , pp. 80-83.
- ↑ DVD Die Toten Hosen: Reich & sexy II - Your most successful videos , comments from the band on the individual music videos.
- ↑ Video shoot for 'Bavaria'. Die Toten Hosen, March 11, 2000, archived from the original on July 1, 2012 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Interview with Wim Wenders on the occasion of the filming 'Why am I not full'. Die Toten Hosen, August 2000, archived from the original on June 25, 2013 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Questions to DTH - Part 21 with Andi. (No longer available online.) June 17, 2005, archived from the original on September 13, 2013 ; accessed on March 26, 2018 .
- ↑ Andreas Gursky, Tote Hosen. Museum of Modern Art , accessed September 24, 2013 .
- ↑ Tour data archive. Retrieved March 26, 2018 .
- ↑ musicline.de: Chart tracking / Toten Hosen, Die / Longplay ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. accessed on December 31, 2010.
- ↑ austriancharts.at: Discography Die Toten Hosen, accessed on December 31, 2010.
- ↑ hitparade.ch: Discography Die Toten Hosen accessed on December 31, 2010.
- ↑ Music industry database - search query required
- ↑ Die Toten Hosen "Immortal" in the IFPI database DE AT CH
- ↑ CD review at laut.de .
- ↑ Fok: Kiss of the Muses of the Week, quoted by Die Toten Hosen, in: 'All the whole years - press archive'. Süddeutsche Zeitung , December 18, 1999, archived from the original on November 25, 2010 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ YETI GIRLS: Internet parody of the Toten Hosen at laut.de , August 8, 2000.
- ↑ Bundesliga - Bad congratulations to Hoeneß in Yahoo! Sports, January 5, 2012.
- ^ Review in Ox-Fanzine , Issue No. 38, March 2000.
- ↑ Double DVD Palermo Shooting with accompanying information about the shooting, a PDF file and the documentary Shooting Palermo by Hella Wenders . 88697 38267 9.
- ↑ Koljah's hip-hop ode to 'Die Toten Hosen'. Die Toten Hosen, archived from the original on March 4, 2011 ; Retrieved October 26, 2013 .
- ↑ Koljah (2) - abuse of the public. Discogs , accessed March 26, 2018 .
Web links
- Lyrics to the album
- Immortal at Allmusic (English)
