Farin Urlaub and Bela B
Die Ärzte on “Sibling Love” from 1986: “We completely underestimated the power of the incest issue”
The doctors Bela B. (l) and Farin Urlaub: “Basically, art has to be able to do almost everything”
© Kirsten Neumann / DPA
Die Ärzte are one of the most successful bands in the country. But her song “Geschwisterliebe” has been on the index for 35 years. Farin Urlaub and Bela B describe what that can mean for young punks.
The song may not even be quoted publicly, that would be harmful to young people. “Geschwisterliebe” by the punk rock band Die Ärzte is about incest, sex between brother and sister, and the undisguised joy of it. 35 years ago, on January 27, 1987, the song was put on the index. The song is still there today. Texter Farin Urlaub, 58, and band colleague Bela B, 59, explained the consequences in an interview with the DPA.
Looking back, how do the doctors feel about the case?
Farin Urlaub: First of all, I think it’s funny that I was able to write this youth-endangering text at all as a 15-year-old – by the way, who was completely sexually inexperienced. We played the song live for years, of course also to provoke, and then finally recorded it for the third album – and CBS, our record company at the time, didn’t mind. We simply completely underestimated the power of this incest theme and didn’t speculate on it according to the motto “Punk can and may do that” and only philistines get upset. We didn’t know anything like indexing, except from some violent horror films. To this day I think it was more about setting an example. Maybe I lack the sociological understanding, but I can’t imagine with the best will in the world that someone would be seduced into incest by this silly song.
The doctors as “dirty boys”
Bela B: Personally, I was happy about the excitement back then, precisely because that was my image of punk rock. Everyone within the record company acted like it wasn’t a big problem. Only one employee I dealt with for an interview took me aside and told me that he wouldn’t play these songs to his daughters and that he had a big problem with that. It was only then that I realized that we were quite off the mark in terms of taste. At that time we were still too young for the perspective of parents. The fact that our debut album was also indexed was absolutely to be understood as an example.
How dramatic were the economic consequences?
Farin Urlaub: After the indexing and above all because of the sensational confiscation of our albums in some record shops that followed, we stopped selling records from one day to the next. Our non-indexed sound carriers were also returned by understandably frightened record dealers. And the radio didn’t want to burn its fingers on the dirty boys anyway. Concerts were also canceled or not booked at all. For about nine months we had almost no income – fortunately Gema continued to pay. The dissolution of the band has already been discussed, but we didn’t want to give up that easily – evil always wins?! But then the whole story turned around and we were suddenly stylized as wicked heroes. That was wind on our young punk flags!
Bela B: But to be honest, this broad front against us was also satisfying for me. A father yelled at me on a talk show, there were demonstrations before our concerts, flyers against us were produced and there were information stands about our concerts, which were organized equally by the CSU and the Greens. To be honest, I liked that.
Did the indexing affect later texts?
Farin Holiday: Minimal. We quickly decided not to dwell on it any further. With the album “Ab 18” the topic was settled for us. How many scandals can one conjure up without becoming arbitrary and blatant? Later we preferred to provoke along the boundaries of taste, but that never really had any criminal relevance – because so much is not forbidden in Germany. Time its art, art its freedom. It was later more important to us to break taboos, for example in “Omaboy”, “Sometimes Women”, “My Friends”, or to pack big themes more subtly into pop music as in “M&F”, “Lasse redn”, “Ein pig named men” or “antizombie”.
Where can indexing still be up-to-date today?
Farin Urlaub: In my opinion, calls for violence or stirring up hatred against certain groups of people – often going hand in hand with dehumanization – should have no place in a liberal society – and even less in art.
Bela B: But that would be the end of it, because basically art has to be able to do almost everything.
About the people: Farin Urlaub was born Jan Vetter in Berlin in 1963. He is the singer and guitarist of the band Die Ärzte (“Scream for Love”, “Men are Pigs”). Bela B, also born in Berlin in 1962, is actually called Dirk Felsenheimer. He is the drummer and singer of the self-proclaimed “best band in the world”. Rodrigo “Rod” Andrés González Espíndola, born in 1968 in Valparaíso, Chile, was not yet part of “Geschwisterliebe”. Since the reunion of the doctors in 1993 after a split in the meantime, he has been part of the band as a bass player.