Punk rockers
“Die Ärzte” guitarist Farin Urlaub is celebrating his 60th birthday
Even at 60, Farin Urlaub is still on stage with his band “Die Ärzte”. And they still haven’t lost any of their joy of playing and their infantile humor (archive photo)
© Funke Photo Services / Imago Images
Punk rockers are actually getting older, but you hardly notice it with Farin Urlaub. The hair is still bleached, the grin is as wide as it was decades ago. The “Die Ärzte” guitarist celebrates his 60th birthday on Friday.
The first guitar comes from bulky waste. The instrument fits well with nine-year-old Jan Vetter’s passion for music. The lesson from a neighbor still focuses on folk songs. But Jan is drawn to other music, he likes “The Beatles” and Frank Zappa, and when he was still a teenager he ended up with punk. As Farin Urlaub he becomes a creative part of one of the most successful German bands. But the years don’t go by when it comes to punk rock. Farin Urlaub, guitarist of the Berlin band “Die Ärzte”, turns 60 this Friday (October 27th).
From a disco in Spandau to the biggest stages in the country
“Of course we play a little better now than before and there are more people there,” Urlaub told the German Press Agency, a good 40 years after the first doctors’ concert. But there is still some way to go until then.
One stop for the young punk rocker is a disco in Spandau, where music from the Sex Pistols or The Clash is sometimes played. Jan Vetter and Dirk Felsenheimer meet for the first time at the Pogo on the edge of the still divided city – they still appear on stage together as Farin Urlaub and Bela B to this day.
At the beginning of the 80s they played in the punk band Soilent Grün. The two young people also live together in a small apartment in Charlottenburg. If one stays in the bathroom too long, the other puts “worst torture music” by Bettina Wegner, Hans Hartz, Ina Deter or the medieval band Ougenweide on the turntable, as Stefan Üblacker writes in the authorized biography “Das Buch Ä”.
With “Die Ärzte” they bring their form of humor into punk. In the songs, but especially on stage, the two engage in cascades of rhymes and dialogue duels, which are mostly brimming with wit, and platitudes and embarrassments are not excluded.
For Farin Urlaub, his passion for traveling becomes his stage name
Artist names can be specified when registering with Gema. Bela B stands for Felsenheimer’s love for horror actor Bela Lugosi plus the B of the cartoon character Barney Geröllheimer, Vetter deletes a letter from his passion (going on vacation) and combines two words to form the first name.
Four illustrated books bear witness to his countless travels, which can sometimes last as long as a year as “deliberate, aimless activities”. Then he travels by motorbike or by car, roof tent and “water and food on board to be able to survive for at least 10-14 days”. His first solo album was called “Finally Vacation!” in 2001.
Even otherwise, vacation hardly fulfills any punk clichés. He reads a lot, partly in order to “know at least a few of the most important books from every major culture.” There are no known excesses, he closes off his private life and doesn’t drink alcohol. On stage in a dark shirt there is “peppermint tea with a tiny dash of fennel honey. Good for the voice.”
If musical ideas or text ideas arise somewhere, they usually end up on the digital dictation machine. Vacation is something like the hit machine from “Die Ärzte”. “Too late”, “Westerland”, “Sky Blue”, “Boy”, “Close your eyes”, “How it works”, “Your fault” – the series could be extended almost endlessly.
With “Geschwisterliebe,” Urlaub also writes one of the most momentous “Ärzte” songs. The song has been on the index since 1987. To this day, Urlaub finds it funny that he “was able to write this text, which was harmful to young people, as a 15-year-old who was, by the way, completely sexually inexperienced.”
30 years of cry for love: Song against right-wing extremism has not lost its relevance
“Ärzte” songs are mostly individual work by Farin Urlaub, Bela B (60) and bassist Rodrigo “Rod” González (55). “Each of us writes songs that the other two would never write,” is how Urlaub describes it. One of the extremely rare exceptions is one of the band’s best-known songs. Farin Urlaub and Bela B wrote the song “Scream for Love” together, which was published 30 years ago. The song against right-wing extremists is “definitely” part of the band’s big shows on vacation. “This is not only a great song, but also an important statement; a song in which we clearly position ourselves.”
Photo book
Right in the middle of the madness: The doctors on a club tour through Berlin
The song also marks a new beginning in 1993 after five years of “Ärzte” separation, now with González in the band. Even later there were long years of distance until the most recent albums. “At some point we were tired of each other,” said Urlaub. Nobody throws in the towel forever. “But much worse, actually a slow death.”
What follows is “not a man’s thing: people don’t talk about it anymore,” but rather a discussion with new appreciation. “There are three of us, simply more than the sum of our parts,” is Urlaub’s assessment. “It’s not like that with my solo project Racing Team. The band does exactly what I ask them to do. And it does it even better. But for me, it’s only possible to take it a step further. This is only possible in this constellation. “