Evolution und Revolution

Hat Deutschland nur seine Verpackung geändert? Das meinte jedenfalls Frank Zappa. Und er hatte gute Argumente:

FZ: We had an incident at a concert in Berlin where I was approached by some "student leaders." They told me they were student leaders -- you know when someone comes and introduces himself to you and says hello I'm a student leader. [laughter] Little red scarf around his neck, flowing over the shoulder, sort of revolutionary flow down here on the side, down to here, a little hair frizzing out to the side, little beard, little khaki coat. Surrounded by people trying to dress like Che Guevara, you know.

They had a sort of robin hood band of German rockers, okay? And we're going to play a concert at the Sportpalast, which is one of the places where Hitler delivered some spiffy speeches during the war. And we're at the rehearsal in the afternoon and this guy says, "I'd like to talk to you for a minute. We'd like your assistance with a political action this evening at the concert." And I said, "Well what do you have, uh, on your mind." And he said, "Well there'll be about 8,000 kids here tonight and most of them have never demonstrated before. And we would like to have you tell them to come with us while we go around the corner and set fire to the Allied Command Center." [peels of laughter] I told him I didn't think that was good mental health. [i.e., crazy] And he got really pissed off, you know, and so they tried to wreck our show.

The minute we came out on stage, about 35 or 50 of these kids out in the audience--'activists' I believe would be what you'd call them. They whipped out a large red banner, waved it, sang "Ho Ho Ho Chi Min," blew air horns, threw vegetables on stage, marched around in the audience while the rest of the kids in the audience were going like this...they didn't know what was going on.

So we continued to play. We had to play a two hour show in the middle of all this bullshit. And these guys were out there stomping around and rah and throwing stuff and the people on the bandstand are getting hit with hard vegetables, you know, cucumbers [laughter], squash. you know they really hit you like a rock up there. And they were throwing eggs, and cherry bombs. And then they grabbed this big fence, like a restraining device to keep the audience away from the performers at those events. It was made out of pipes this big around with a chain link fence in between and concrete feet. And about thirty of them picked it up and tried to throw it on stage, which would have killed both of our drummers by pinning them against the amplifiers, you see.

So our manager Herbie and this German promoter Fritz Rau caught it in mid air and threw it back on them. And then this other guy charged the stage and Herbie put his foot through his face. And then they kept on throwing things, and then they kept on trying to get up onto the stage. We kept pushing these guys back--and we're up there humming and strumming...[laughter] and it was really a very unusual situation.

So then we had to take an intermission, see. We left the stage after an hour of fun and merriment. And during that time the ordinaries, that the local promoter had hired to keep everything under control at the hop thought that we had run off, so they ran away. And when they ran away, about a hundred of these kids wailed up onto the stage and started stomping all over our equipment.

So we come back from intermission, and here's all these people milling around on stage. They don't even know why they're there. They look like cows. They're standing there like this, But they're standing, you know, on drums, and they're knocking things over, and a few of the guys had stolen small pieces of equipment and disappeared into the audience. They were just making a lot of noise and standing around. Just completely blank. They don't even know what their revolution is about.

So we started pushing them of the stage. We started putting our equipment back together. We got the PA system working. And I gave them a speech for about 15 minutes, wherein I discussed the possibility that they were acting more like Americans than anything I've ever seen. And that pissed them off. And they're out there yelling "Revolution, Revolution"--and I'm saying "You people need evolution, not revolution."

Das komplette Interview und weitere Infos gibt's hier:
http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/songs/Holiday_In_Berlin.html


Und als wäre das nicht genug, schrieb FZ einen Song darüber:

Holiday in Berlin

Went on the road for a month, touring
What a drag ... You gotta go
Even if you'd rather be at home
Flaked out in Hollywood
Drove to Inglewood and then we dumped
All our shit and took a plane at five-o-three
What's it gonna be?

Chicken, beef or turkey?
Yes, La la la la
Crab salad, shrimp salad
Little ham hocks with names

Look at all the Germans
Watch them follow orders
See them think they're doing something groovy in the streets
Rance
See the student leader
He's a rebel prophet
He's fucked up, he's still a Nazi like his mom & dad
Played for a night in Berlin
That afternoon we set up our shit and rehearsed
Half a dozen phony student rebels in the hall
Came to see if I could find a way to help them all
"What is your desire?"
"Help us start a fire
In the Allied Center
Round the corner down the street"

And then we began to play
A bunch of punks arose from the crowd
Student rebels, their flags of red
Began to chant Ho Chi Minh,
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
Threw tomatoes
And the next thing we knew we were under siege

Frank Zappa, 1968