Link to original article in swedish from Slavestate Magazine: http://www.slavestate.se/?e=2384
Knorkator are probably one of the world’s
most original bands. The music the Germans create is a mix of Death Metal,
Heavy Rock, medieval choral music, Bach, Monty Python and a lot more. On the
17th of January they released their 9th studio album “We want Mohr”.
The promotional posters showed the band in a big pot with a black cannibal and
the band was accused of racism. Alf Ator, the creative force behind the band
and also their singing keyboard player, invited me for a coffee and an
interview. It ended up being almost a two hour long explanation and description
of his life. Let’s start with political correctness and if Alf thinks it has
gone too far.
-
Yes, I already thought that
before and I hate that word. What does it actually mean? Politics is what governments
do and we have always wanted to break all rules. They want to ban certain words
but it won’t change the way people think. We have always tried to stay away
from politics but when it comes to the far right and fascists we have a very
clear opinion since I don’t think fascism is about politics. All parties have
different opinions about taxes, social rights and so on, but the far right only
wants to be arseholes. We made a little video sketch, “Nazis Raus” (Nazis out),
where we were running around with swastikas as the last Nazi villains and the
drummer was Adolf Hitler. It was fun to make and we got an enthusiastic
positive response from everyone. So it was unexpected that the new album with
“Struwwelpeter” (Shockheaded Peter) as a theme became so controversial.
“Struwwelpeter” was written in 1845 by
Heinrich Hoffmann. It is a collection of moral tales about what could happen if
children don’t behave. “Konrad” the first single is about the boy that won’t
stop sucking his thumbs and then gets them cut off. The title “We Want Mohr”
comes from the story of the three boys and the Mohr from the same book. In the
story the three boys tease the black kid because he is so dark. As punishment
they get dipped in black ink so they know what it feels like to be dark.
Originally the promotion material showed the band in a big pot with a girl that
had been made up darker to look like a cannibal laughing at them. That has now
been changed after complaints from anti-racist organisations.
-
I thought it was worth bringing
this story up. For me this is the first anti racism story published. 150 years
ago it was already good manners not to laugh at other ethnic minorities. The
ones who are protesting don’t seem to care about the meaning, just about the
surface.
-
They should actually be happy
that a rough band like us draws attention to this. I am not completely without
self-criticism and I can also see how we insulted people. The poster for
instance was a bit too much. If you don’t know us or the book, you only see a
cannibal and I can understand that it is offensive. The discussion was also about
a white person made up to be black. It all goes back to the old days in the
theatre when white actors painted themselves black and made fun of themselves.
-
Because of these associations it
is considered racism. I think the risk is that the word racism can lose its
impact. There weren’t actually that many
who protested, but the ones that did have a big presence on the internet. We
have changed our posters now. No cannibal but a magician instead. I don’t like
all this since I am also against racism. All publicity is not good and I hope
that I can clarify my opinions in this and other interviews though I really
want to talk more about my music.
Alf Ator, the keyboard player and co-singer
with the main vocalist Stumpen, is the creative force in the band. He writes
almost all their material and it’s his special humour that makes the band so
unique. The three main band members have very pronounced OTT characters on
stage. Stumpen is a manic, tattooed little bald man that has a habit of performing
in thongs and nothing else. You will be surprised by his beautiful tenor. Alf
is bald and long-haired at the same time. When he performs in his robes he
reminds me of a demented Hare Krishna. Buzz Dee has more jewellery and
sunglasses than any other rock guitarist. The others call him the old lady. He
reminds me more of a 70s pimp. Rajko Gohlke (bass) and Sebhead Emm (drums) accompany
them but Knorkator really are the three main guys. Alf grew up in old East
Germany in Schwerin, which is the same town that Till in Rammstein comes from.
They have known each other since childhood. When Flake, Rammstein’s keyboard player
was ill, Alf replaced him on stage. Till can also be seen in Knorkator’s “Du
Nich” video. Check it out on youtube if you want to laugh. I asked Alf what it
was like to grow up in a communist state.
-
When you are growing up you
don’t think about being in a dictatorship. We could watch TV from the west so
we were aware of it being completely different. So we weren’t depressed over
it. The state chief always told us what to do and no one protested. We were
used to it so it didn’t matter. Of course the west was always more tempting. It
shined more and was more colourful. I didn’t actually have any really bad
experiences in the east, apart from when I was arrested. We came too close to
the border zone. They questioned us and checked our papers before they released
us. It was not pleasant. We laughed over the whole thing afterwards but somewhere
at the back of my mind there was a voice that said: I won’t stay here forever.
I want to be a musician and famous. That is only possible if I can travel
around.
-
Then everything changed when
the wall fell and it was of course, party!
Alf was in hospital on the 9th
of November 1989 when the wall fell because he needed surgery on his hip. He
heard the news on the radio and from his friends.
-
I was lying in bed and thought:
Nice!
Alf started with music at an early age.
-
My parents played music so I
grew up in a house with piano, guitar, accordion, flute and all kinds of
instruments lying around. When I was a kid I used to play guitar by the camp
fire. It wasn’t until I was 15 that I started to take real piano lessons and
learned how to read notes. I studied for maybe one or two years but after that
I didn’t have any time. Every one always like to tell you how much they
studied, but not me.
Stumpen has a classical background. When he
was a child he took singing lessons and because his voice was so high pitched,
they put him in a girls choir.
-
They forced him to wear a
skirt, so no one could see he was a boy. He was also in a staging of Tosca at
the Berlin state opera where he played an angel. Then his voice broke and his
opera career was over. He never really studied either. The only one of us that
has studied is Buzz Dee. He went to the state music school in Berlin, but he
also quit his studies after awhile.
In Knorkator’s music you can hear a lot of
classical influences.
-
It is because it just interests
me. I started to study it and who knows what could have happened if I
continued. Maybe I would have started to play jazz instead.
Knorkator’s humour is very special. It is
not necessary to understand what they sing about. It’s enough just to see them.
Was Alf always so funny?
-
Yes, ever since I started to
think. It’s not always a good thing. Can be a bit of a strain to be the one
that always has to be funny.
Was
there really a comedy scene in DDR?
-
Yes, in the east we had
political cabaret. Which of course was a bit difficult during the DDR time. If
you played music you had to be politically correct because the big public
listened to you. In theatre you had a bit more freedom. The government assumed
that not so many people went to see cabaret but just other artists and intellectuals
who were in a minority. There were also politically correct comedians but they
were not funny. You can’t be funny if you are politically correct.
Alf does not agree with the typical
stereotype of Germans not having a sense of humour and compares it with a room
full of different people. Most of them are in a good mood but a few will
complain loudly. It will leave you with the impression that every one is in a
bad mood.
When Alf was a kid he really wanted to be a
stuntman. He was practicing by throwing himself from heights and landing in
haystacks. Before that he wanted to become a monkey. When it comes to music it
all started with AC/DC, even though he also liked Dixieland and Louis
Armstrong. Then puberty started and he fell head over heels for disco diva
Amanda Lear. Nothing to do with her music, just her looks.
It was Heavy Metal that really made him
want to play music professionally. Bands like Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas
Priest and the Scorpions. In the middle of the 80s he started to listen more to
Peter Gabriel.
It was 1986 that he met Stumpen and they
formed a band called “Funkreich”.
-
It was terrible! Really
embarrassing! It was only for a couple of years but we stayed friends. Later on
we formed another band “Beulshausen”.
-
It was the 90s and cross over
bands like Living Colour started to mix funk and metal. Anthrax and Public
Enemy added a bit of rap and then we had the ultimate heavy and hard with Pantera.
We were inspired and wanted to do our own kind of cross over. I started with
writing lyrics for the band. I thought it was funny to write silly lyrics in
German to the heavy music. The band was dissolved but me and Stumpen still had
all the songs. This was the beginning of Knorkator. Buzz Dee was already a big
star in the old DDR. He was in a punk band called Keks that dared to criticise
the government. It was Stumpen that suggested Buzz.
The name Knorkator comes from the old fashioned
German word Knorke, which can be translated to great, amazing or swell and the
ending ator like in dictator, terminator, vibrator etc. Alf describes the band
as larger than life superheroes. They got their first proper record deal with
Rodrigo Gonzales from the German punk band “Die Ärtzte” on his label Rod Rec. Knorkator
used to arrange events at the Frannz Klub in Berlin where they invited other
artists and between the performances they held silly competitions like meat
darts. One person sticks his head through a dart board and the others throw
meat at him. They also used to play klo tombola where they had a toilet bowl
full of fake poo, which consisted of coffee grains, cocoa powder, pea soup and
some carrots for extra texture. It was all mixed together with honey to give it
the right shine. A member of the audience had to dig around in the gooey mess until
they found a little egg with a prize inside.
-
That’s what we were like, just
silly all the time. Rodrigo was there and he liked us.
Their first album came out in 1997, “The
schlechtst of Knorkator” (The worst of Knorkator). It would be awhile before they
could support themselves with the music. Before the wall came down, Alf worked
in a cinema shovelling coal in to the boiler. After the fall of the wall he was
unemployed and then he started working in a cinema again. This time he got to
tear the tickets, run the projector and shovel coal in to the boiler.
In 2000 the band participated in the German
pre-competitions for Eurovision with “Ick wer zum Schwein”. They performed in
fluffy afghan outfits with gigantic platform shoes and ended it by trashing their
instruments. The press and the TV audience wondered who the hell let those
nutters appear on TV? They didn’t win,
-
For us the Eurovision
competition was always like a freak show. You only watch it to have a laugh and
you have to watch it between your fingers while you are biting the pillow
because it is so embarrassing. Germany had only won once before with “Ein
bisschen Frieden” in the 80s. One singer, Guildo Horn, who really wasn’t a
typical representation, had made a parody that was so bad it was good, “Guildo hat
euch lieb” (Guildo Loves You). He won the German competition and managed to get
to 7th place in the international. After that I knew that you could
be funny in Eurovision as well. We had
just signed our first contract with a major label and they asked us if we would
do it. No one remembers our song but everyone remembers our performance.
Their fourth CD “High Mud Leader” (with
German pronunciation, Heimatlieder, Homeland Songs) was a crazy experiment with
German folk music. It was the first album on their own label and was a flop.
Alf admits that the production was bad, that the whole album was terrible and
that no one in the band likes it. They had contracts with several big record
labels like Universal, Nuclear Blast and Sanctuary before they started their
own.
-
The big companies never really
pushed to sell us internationally. We are big enough in Germany to be able to
sell ourselves. A big international breakthrough now when we are almost 50 seems
a bit strange and unlikely.
Of course they still want to play abroad
and they played in Russia last year where they have a big fan base. They have
just funded their last video “Konrad” with pledge money from their fans.
Everyone got something special as a thank you for the money they donated, like
personalized T-shirts, albums and even bed and breakfast without the bed with
singer Stumpen. This is something they could imagine to do to raise money for a
tour in the UK or USA, for example.
After years of touring and albums it all came
as a bit of a shock when the band announced they were about to quit in 2008.
-
Our fans thought we were
millionaires with Ferraris and big villas in Spain. The reality was completely
different. The last but one tour was a big disappointment. We could hardly make
it break even. In the music business, everyone said that Knorkator had had it.
Stumpen was exhausted after all the work to try and sell the band. Then you
just lose your strength and drive. We thought that this was probably our last
chance to try something new. We decided to quit and arranged a big farewell
tour. Then everything turned! It became a big success and we had loads of
requests from journalists who said that Knorkator leaves a big hole behind
themselves that no one else can fill.
All that praise was not just from a handful of devoted fans so we took
the decision to try again. Since then things are going much better. Nowadays
you don’t make the money off the record sales but on the concerts.
Alf is also an author and a cartoonist.
There are several books published by Knorkator and himself with his funny
drawings and puns. It is also him that writes almost all the music and lyrics.
-
Stumpen contributes a bit
sometimes. Usually they just let me do everything. I am really not a dictator
but I enjoy the status of them trusting me to get the job done.
He admits that it is starting to become
harder to write new material than it was in the past. Especially after he
started a family. Alf has two kids.
-
I used to get inspiration
everywhere before, like at the breakfast table. Some think you get the ideas
while you are on the toilet. Not me! Trains work well and my studio, although I
have such a nice view there that it’s hard to write dark music. You have to
organize and take the time. Sometimes the music will suffer and sometimes the
family. It’s not just about me anymore.
On the new album there are three songs in
English. A cover of Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law” and two original songs,
the beautiful duet “Time to Rise” and “Victorious”.
- When you write German music you
realise how ugly the language is. English is
softer and flows better with more vowels and not so many… (guttural
noises).
German is good when you just sing one note. I had some beautiful
melodies
and tried to write some lyrics in English which is difficult when you
are not a
native English speaker. One of my neighbours is Jana Groß from the band
Bell, Book and Candle. She wanted to do something different so she wrote
a
lyric and then I asked her if she also wanted to sing. These kinds of
songs are
not typical Knorkator. But why should you limit yourself?
The
other English song “Victorious” is written together with English Katie White.
He noticed on his Facebook page that she always commented with funny little
rhymes. So he asked her if she wanted to collaborate with the lyrics. She also
replaced Buzz Dee in a hilarious video interview that you can see on their
page.
The lyrics of Knorkator are irrelevant,
sick and very silly. On the other hand they can also be very thoughtful and
philosophical like “Warum”. “Absolution” is a beautiful song in Latin but when
you listen, you realise it is a song about sexual perversions. Listing things
is something that amuses Alf and on the new album there is a song called “Fortschritt”
(Progress) where he lists all the innovations of the modern world, like washing
machines and toasters. Personally he thinks the most important innovation is
insulating foam.
I was wondering how difficult it was to
write the lyrics to an older song like “A” that just contains a long drawn out
AAAAAAA…..
-
That one was very difficult, he
says laughing. It was actually Stumpen that wrote that lyric, which he
regretted when he had to sing it and it gave him a sore throat.
Tim Tom, Alf’s son, sometimes sings on
their albums. Is this something he will continue with?
-
No, he is 12 now and his voice
is breaking. He was interesting for Knorkator when he was a little puppy with a
cute baby voice. It was funny when he sang complicated lyrics with difficult
words. He doesn’t want to be the little cute kid anymore and has his own band.
They are inspired by Slipknot, Stonesour and Linkin Park.
Alf has also invented his own concept for a
comedy show that he calls: Alf Ator’s hyper-interactive multimedia show of the
world. It is a one-man show where almost everything is playback. Alf mimes to
it and drags people up from the audience to participate. They don’t have a clue
of what they are supposed to say when they have to mime along. It might sound a
bit weird but the result is hilarious. Next year he is planning to concentrate
more on his solo show. This year is all about Knorkator. To finish I ask him
about his future plans.
- I
want to rule the world! He answers with a laugh.
Text: Maria Bergman
Pictures: Maria Bergman
