BAP goes with the 40-year-old successful albums “Für usszeschnigge!” and “Vun dreine noh drusse” on tour. Before that, band leader Wolfgang Niedecken visits the village where he wrote the hit “Verdamp lang her” in 1981.
Wolfgang Niedecken carefully walks across the rain-soaked meadow in rubber boots and looks at the rising terrain. Cow dung lies in the autumn leaves, tire tracks run through the mud. It doesn’t actually look particularly memorable here.
“I can still totally remember this place,” says Niedecken. Here, in Morlitzwinden, the Cologne musician wrote the classic “Verdamp lang her” in 1981 – on Rose Monday. The song became the nationwide anthem of the BAP group and overnight made the Middle Franconian village with 32 inhabitants a place of German music history.
42 years later, Niedecken and his wife Tina are visiting Erika Leitel on the sidelines of a tour. The 68-year-old grew up in the farmhouse next to the meadow and still remembers exactly what it was like back then. “When Wolfgang was sitting in the orchard, I only heard snatches of music and couldn’t understand a word of Kölsch anyway,” says Erika Leitel and laughs. “Then I thought: If he can’t do it, he should just leave it alone.” The trees from back then are still standing, the remaining leaves seem to shine on this day for the last time before winter.
The tour starts in Cologne
Niedecken’s autumn visit is a meeting with friends (“They knew me when I was nothing”) – and a journey through time. This is also the name of the tour, which begins on December 7th in Cologne and leads through Germany, Switzerland and Benelux in 2024. BAP plays all the tracks from the albums “Für usszeschnigge!” (1981) and “Vun dranne noh drusse” (1982) – of course with “Verdamp lang her”. Fundamental things are discussed on the records: religion, war, love. For fans it will be an expedition to a special phase of life.
Other artists are working on their late work at the age of 72 – Niedecken is presenting his early work. Why? “When Vladimir Putin came with his partial mobilization, after a long time we played ‘June Tenth’ with the line ‘Don’t let me join you’ for all the young Russians who fled abroad from this war.
We were shocked at how current the piece is,” he says. “You notice on stage how the audience is amazed: ‘They’re actually playing it again!’.” Time travel, zeitgeist, turning point. BAP wants to do without the songs that were written decades ago Presenting kitsch and nostalgia.
“I remained me”
After many line-up changes, band leader Niedecken is the only one who played on the 1981/82 albums. How has he changed? What happened to the dreams, the fears, the rock’n’roll? “I’m 40 years older, I have a beard, but I look the same way inside of me,” he says. “I don’t even know if I decided to stay the way I was back then. Of course I’m not that naive anymore. I’ve suffered a few injuries, both in the family and in the band. Things like that are painful. “
Niedecken thinks about it and appears serious. “I remained me.” The sentence stands in the cold autumn air. “I can really say that.”
In “Verdamp lang her” Niedecken is completely with himself. The past doesn’t matter, the future doesn’t matter yet. The hit with a sing-along guarantee paved the way for the Rhenish regional band BAP to reach the national top. The song, which is almost six minutes long, has a depressing background. “In 1981, I fled from the Cologne Carnival, which was still terribly stuffy at the time, and knew Morlitzwinden from a vacation the summer before,” says Niedecken.
Fictional conversation with his father
“In 1980 I sat there under the trees and wrote two songs for BAP. During the carnival escape in 1981, I thought about my father, who had just died, while walking in the snow. In the end we didn’t talk to each other much anymore. At some point it was too late. That’s where ‘Verdamp’ came from a long time ago’ – a deeply sad fictitious conversation with him.”
On this day at the end of October, Wolfgang and Tina Niedecken walk past the crooked town sign with Erika Leitel and Niedecken’s dog Numa, passing fields with harvested grain. Leitel calls the walk to the sites in 1980/81 a “crime scene inspection” with a wink.
“I somehow managed to dream dance through my life,” says Niedecken. “I have never let myself down. I have an indestructible desire to create, whether as a painter or as a musician.”
40 years ago the circumstances were different. “If you could pay the price in the pub, had gas in the tank and something to eat in the fridge – that’s all we needed. That stops when you have a family. I’ve always pushed these thoughts away.”
Instead of taking responsibility, they went to Amsterdam. “At the flea market a guy was selling the hectographed texts of Dylan, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. We slept in the car one night and drove home triumphantly with these notebooks the next day. I still have them today.”
After four hours, Wolfgang and Tina drive on. Erika Leitel and her husband Helmut wave until the blue car disappears into the rolling hills. What remains is the guest book with Niedecken’s entry: “Bess soon”. At the latest when BAP plays on the “Time Travel” tour in nearby Nuremberg, they want to see each other again.
Niedecken has of course changed in more than 40 years, says Erika Leitel. “Outwardly, yes. But in his essence he has remained the same as he sat tinkling under the plum tree back then.”
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