Amon Düül

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Amon Düül / Amon Düül II
General information
origin Munich , Germany
Genre (s) Krautrock
founding 1967
Website www.amonduul.de
Current occupation
Chris Karrer
Renate Knaup
guitar
 John Weinzierl
Dario Kraijna
Ulli "FLiszt" Linzen
Danny Fichelscher
Drums, percussion
 Dieter Serfas
Jan Kahlert
former members
Guitar, vocals
 Rainer Bauer
bass
 Ulrich Leopold
Percussion, vocals
 Helge Felenda
Drums, piano
 Wolfgang "Krischke" Krischke
Shaker pipe, drums, singing
 Eleonore Romana Bauer
Drums, singing
 Angelica Felenda
percussion
 PP bold
synthesizer
 Falk Rogner
Drums
 Peter Leopold
bass
 Dave Anderson
singing
 Stefan Zauner
Tommi Piper
Drums
 Wolf Wolff
guitar
 Felix Occhionero
bass
 Lothar Meid
bass
 Gerard Carbonell
bass
 Sigi Pop

Amon Düül is a German rock band that was formed in the course of the student movement in the 1960s and has existed in various formations to the present day. The band is considered to be one of the most important representatives of Krautrock .

history

In 1967, an artists' commune was founded in Leopoldstrasse in Munich , named after the ancient Egyptian god Amon, with the addition of "Düül" that was not clearly explained. The Communards soon achieved cult status through their musical sessions at the happenings and demonstrations of politicized youth. However, it was not possible to agree on a common musical concept. A faction of the Communards advocated the libertarian path to artistic freedom and accepted everyone who wanted to make music, whether they could sing or play or not. The other faction was conservative in this regard and valued musical ability. At the Essener Songtagen , initiated by Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and Tangerine Dream , among others , there was an official break when instead of one band, two bands with the same name performed, Amon Düül and Amon Düül II . From then on they went their separate ways, and it shouldn't just stay with these two formations.

Amon Düül

Amon Düül played mostly improvised music without a song structure. The frequent change of members of the formation did not contribute to the development of a concrete musical character. Many of the musicians were close to Kommune 1 in Berlin.

Shocking anti-music was preferred. The titles had names like Mama Düül & her sauerkraut band plays or A wonderfully pretty girl dreams of Sandosa . In a short time , four albums were released under the direction of Peter Meisel , co-owner of Hansa Musik Produktion , mostly at the same time as Amon Düül II's albums. The albums with such curious titles as Collapsing - Singvögel zurück or Disaster - Lüüd Noma were released by the Panned criticism, but dearly loved by the fans. Today they are rarities and are among the psychedelic highlights of the Krautrock genre. In 1970 Amon Düül appeared for the last time.

Amon Düül II

Amon Düül II , consisting of Chris Karrer , Peter Leopold and Ulrich Leopold , Falk Rogner , John Weinzierl and Renate Knaup , on the other hand, attached importance to a minimum of musicality. On the occasion of the Essen Songtage 1968 , the critics confirmed only a “half-hour musical nothing” (FAZ), but their first album Phallus Dei ( Latin for 'God's Phallus ') from 1969 set standards in German rock history. The title song was 21 minutes long. The public opinion was divided. Siegfried Schmidt-Joos described the album in the Rock Lexicon published in 1973 as a mixture of "reports of futuristic disasters with Old Testament disaster reports", the group had difficulties with feedback effects and offered "solitary sound magic and honest copies of Pink Floyd music". The album still sold well. The film industry asked for commissioned work after the group had presented the concert film Amon Düül plays Phallus Dei , made by Rüdiger Nüchtern . In the WDR film Niklashauser Fart by Rainer Werner Fassbinder , shot in May 1970 , the group can be seen with a song title. The band groupie Uschi Obermaier also makes music. The music of the 1970 film San Domingo even brought the musicians the German film award in 1971 .

The first half of the 1970s was the most productive phase of Amon Düül II . The saxophonist Olaf Kübler , who also worked with Klaus Doldinger and Udo Lindenberg in the 1970s, has been responsible for production since 1970 . Kübler gave the group extensive artistic freedom. Ten albums and several official compilations were released within six years, the regular cast at that time consisted of:

The second album Yeti (1970) already meant the breakthrough in Great Britain, although or precisely because the previous lyrics of the group were repeatedly presented in antiquated German or with dubious English. The Melody Maker certified in 1972 that this was the first German group "that had made its own contribution to the international music scene".

Personnel changes and connections to other bands were numerous in the early 1970s: Chris Karrer and Lothar Meid were repeatedly employed at Embryo , in return Christian Burchard could be heard on Phallus Dei, among others , Renate Knaup worked with Florian Fricke , who later became Popol Vuh colleague Daniel Fichelscher stepped in for Amon Düül for Peter Leopold on drums, bassist Lothar Meid worked with Klaus Doldinger , his predecessor Dave Anderson later switched to Hawkwind , there was a tour with Can , Jutta Weinhold was temporarily on vocals for Renate Knaup who previously played in the musicals Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar . The list goes on and on.

In 1975 the band, which had previously been largely independent, was signed by Atlantic Records . The label pursued purely commercial goals and exercised musical control in the production of the album Made in Germany . Influences of the disco music of that time became unmistakable. Producer Jürgen S. Korduletsch was later responsible for the successes of Claudja Barry and George Kranz , among other things . In the second half of the 1970s, Amon Düül II was just a pure studio project, in which Stefan Zauner (the later singer of the pop band Münchener Freiheit ) and Tommi Piper (the German voice of the television alien Alf ) took part.

The last record was released in 1981. Krautrock was getting on in years. Disco , punk and new wave were on the train. Chris, Falk and Renate tried to bring Amon Düül II back to life under their own direction with two new albums in the early 1980s, but they had no commercial success and the project quickly disappeared again. Lothar Meid meanwhile worked with Marius Müller-Westernhagen , produced his albums and composed the film music for Theo against the rest of the world .

Also in the 1980s, John Weinzierl tried to use the myth of Amon Düül for his own band with musicians from Wales in England and released five albums as Amon Düül (UK) between 1982 and 1989, but he too couldn't get creative, let alone because the success of Amon Düül of earlier years come close.

Amon Düül III was advertised on concert posters in the mid-1980s , but this was probably just a PR gag of the band Hawkwind , who announced them as special guests, without a performance by Amon Düül musicians having been confirmed so far. Hawkwind had been doing a lot for Amon Düül's promotion in Great Britain since the early 1970s and guest appearances would have been conceivable. The niche existence of Krautrock in the 80s generally led to increased interaction within the scene, the Amon Düül musicians experimented and merged with musicians from Embryo and Guru Guru and could be seen, even if not together, on many smaller festival stages.

After the death of the former Hawkwind singer Robert Calvert in 1988, Chris Karrer, who had just been working on recordings with him, organized a memorial concert to which Renate Knaup and Peter Leopold also came, contrary to the original plan for a solo show. The one-off event ultimately became Amon Düül's reunion, and Lothar Meid and Falk Rogner joined the band again for concerts in Italy the following year. The recordings with Robert Calvert were published posthumously in 1989 as Amon Düül. Further joint appearances remained sporadic at first, at this time Karrer was also busy with solo projects, among others with Ernst Fuchs and the Kurdish singer Şivan Perwer .

In the early 1990s, Krautrock became socially acceptable again. Amon Düül experienced a comeback with an increased demand for old albums, which have been increasingly reissued since then. In 1995 a new album was released, Nada Moonshine # , and since a tour of Japan in the same year, Amon Düül can be seen regularly on festival stages again. In addition to post-published live recordings and current live material, further new studio recordings have been made since then. In 2005 a DVD recording of the Krautrock Meeting of the Rockpalast was released .

The group has been suing the record company Repertoire Records and its managing director Tomas Neelsen for several years because of the publication of unauthorized reprints of old albums. The authorized new releases on the SPV label, on the other hand, are characterized by bonus material recorded in 2005 and 2006. In 2009 Amon Düül II released a new studio album called Bee as Such .

Discography

Amon Düül

  • 1969: Psychedelic Underground
  • 1969: Collapsing / Songbirds Backwards & Co.
  • 1970: Para Dieswärts Düül
  • 1973: Disaster - Lüüd Noma (double LP)
  • 1983: experiments

Amon Düül II

  • 1969: Phallus Dei
  • 1970: Yeti (double LP)
  • 1971: Tanz der Lemminge / Dance of the Lemmings (double LP)
  • 1972: Carnival in Babylon
  • 1973: Wolf City
  • 1973: Live in London (live)
  • 1973: Live in Concert (live BBC , released 1992)
  • 1973: Utopia (originally as a band Utopia)
  • 1974: Vive La Trance
  • 1975: Hijack
  • 1975: Made in Germany (double LP and as a compilation with 12 instead of 20 pieces in one LP)
  • 1976: Pyragony X
  • 1977: Almost Alive
  • 1978: Only Human
  • 1981: Vortex
  • 1982: Meeting with Men Machines (private printing on Illuminated Records), later released on Demi Monde
  • 1983: Hawk Meets Penguin
  • 1989: Fool Moon
  • 1989: The Solution (with Robert Calvert )
  • 1993: Surrounded by the Bars (Compilation)
  • 1995: Nada Moonshine #
  • 1996: Kobe (Reconstructions)
  • 1996: Eternal Flashback
  • 1996: Live in Tokyo (live)
  • 1997: Flawless (compilation)
  • 2009: Bee as Such
  • 2014: Düülirium

literature

  • Ingeborg Schober : Dance of the Lemmings . Sonnentanz Verlag, 1994. ISBN 3-926794-20-8 . (Autobiographical information from Amon Düül's environment; first published in 1979 by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag)
  • Olaf Kübler: Clear text / completely wrong . Humbach & Nemazal, Pfaffenhofen 1996. ISBN 3-9805521-2-8 . (Autobiography of the longtime producer of Amon Düül)
  • Julian Cope: KrautRockSampler. One Heads's Guide to the Great Cosmic Music . Green Force, 1996. ISBN 3-925817-86-7 . (Well-founded book about Krautrock with many interesting backgrounds about Amon Düül and Amon Düül II)
  • Alexander Simmeth: Krautrock transnational. The reinvention of pop music in Germany, 1968–1978 , Transcript Verlag, Bielefeld 2016, ISBN 978-3-8376-3424-2 .

Web links