Birgit Fuß is surrounded by rock. In her office in the Rolling Stone-Editorial in Berlin-Kreuzberg, the idols Bruce Springsteen and Michael Stipe on the walls do not allow any questions about the personal preferences of Birgit Fuß, who looks carefully at the visitor. The way people look who are used to getting an idea of other people: Bruce Springsteen and Michael Stipe, for example, who she both met once. Hundreds of CDs are piled up on her desk. The reason for the visit? Curiosity about someone who has been reading for years. So it’s high time for an appreciation.
Her core business has been mainstream rock for 20 years. Which is really funny when you consider that the catchiest and most robust rock, which can sometimes be a bit harder, is at AC / DC and Guns’n’Roses for example, is looked after by the only woman in the editorial office, who appears very reserved on top of that and makes a very unrocking, gentle impression. When she joined the Rolling Stone came as a freelance writer and soon became the first editor (by the way, the only one to this day), what many people hear when they tune in to a radio station did not take place: “Mainstream rock”, as Birgt Fuß calls it. In fact, no one had signed up for genre-defining bands like U2 Interested. If something like the good mood punk pop the Dead pants is regularly recognized, Birgit Fuß is responsible for it. It was the case that the editors had to Bon Jovi-Concerts went – no one just ever wrote about it. She was then responsible for that.
With her one understands why many find this beautiful noise so terrible and so great
Birgit Fuß, who will be 49 years old on Tuesday, has found her own tone for this, which always stood out – among all the men’s texts once, and which is still noticeable now, where texts by women are now more common in the paper. What Brigit Fuß writes is not only factual and knowledgeable, there is a great, sincere thirst for research in the texts with which she looks at the mostly deadly serious man’s worlds, maybe also at men in general, who mainly play this music and actually often do it for yourself. About the comeback of AC / DC after the death of her singer Bon Scott, she wrote: “Nobody would be able to sing, bark, or grumble like Scott, package even the most indecent in a sensual way and never seem stupid despite all his wide-legged proletarianism.”
No, Birgit Fuß manages to celebrate this fun music, but not to get drunk from it, but to tap it off for its strengths and weaknesses. In her lyrics you can understand how many ambivalent signals there are in this beautiful noise and why so many find it terrible and great at the same time. Regarding the new album by “shock rock pioneer” Alice Cooper, which is exactly the meanwhile older gentleman with the eternally young scary-eye make-up, she spoke with all due seriousness about rock’n’roll, of course, but above all about politically oriented rock in the Hard rock capital of the USA, Detroit, and – in keeping with the profession – the new range of chili sauces under his name.
“The skirt is just in here,” she says, pointing to her heart. Dylan, Young, Springsteen, SEM. They were always there, she says, as matter-of-factly and without ringing a word, that was also the case when she grew up in a small village near Dachau and knew at 13 that she wanted to be a music journalist.
She is now the woman for the rough and tumble in an editorial office, even if not very young men, who like to indulge their preferences for sophisticated popular music by blues-rock, alternative country, independent and singer-songwriters like Bill Callahan. The German variant of the American Rolling Stone has been one of the best-selling music magazines in Germany since it started in 1994, alongside the one now also published by Springer Music Express. For ten years, the circulation has been a little more than 50,000 copies, with mostly self-researched stories, the adoption of portrait and interview highlights from the mother sheet is the exception. The Rolling Stone Thanks to its focus on the classical genres of popular music, it has a loyal audience, about which editor-in-chief Zabel writes in the editorial: “We know that our readers particularly value us for our musical and music-historical competence.”
Against what resistance did she have to enforce her preference? she smiles
This year, hold on tight, dares Rolling Stone something completely new, for example with a photo showing Kate Bush – as an alternative icon with an authoritative album from the mid-80s. The July issue shows Amy Winehouse, who died ten years ago. Fuß defends the magazine: “We are much more emancipated than people who think they are Rolling Stone is old just because we have Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. But we cover the whole spectrum in the magazine. “
She has to smile when the question arises of the resistance against which she had to enforce her preference. “Oh, everyone here was always very happy that I covered this mainstream rock spectrum. I’m just one of those guys.”
What defines this and other good rock music? Not primarily the music, she explains, but the good lyrics. “If someone can’t write lyrics, that’s the worst music for me.” As deliberately as Birgit Fuß searches for answers, she digs for literary lines in the songs in her lyrics as conscientiously and calmly. The REM line “Living well is the best revenge” is tattooed on her wrist.