Rio Reiser (Ton Steine Scherben)

We continue our journey around the world: today we visit Germany. Rio Reiser died young. He is often singled out for being a great artist, as well as being a politically and socially active citizen. What is mentioned less often is that he was openly gay.

Rio Reiser (9 January 1950 – 20 August 1996), was born Ralph Christian Möbius in Berlin and died at the age of 46 in Fresenhagen, Germany. His father was an engineer for Siemens AG, and the family moved several times because of his father's work; they lived in Berlin, Upper Bavaria, Nuremberg, Mannheim, and Stuttgart. Reiser was never really able to feel at home in any of these places. Many of his friends said in an interview in 1998, that he started playing music to create a place where he felt at home.

Reiser was known by his friends as someone who had a very special mind of his own. For example, he managed to persuade his mother Erika Möbius to allow him to stop attending school and start an apprenticeship in a studio for photography, which he then quit in order to join a music conservatory and later to follow his two older brothers to Berlin at the early age of 17 in order to put the world's first "Beat Opera" onto stage. which turned out to be, in the words of Rio, an "absolute flop". His mother supported his musical and artistic ambitions since she had soon realized that he was an autodidact; he never learned things when he was taught by someone else. Thus he taught himself how to play cello, guitar, the piano and other instruments, wrote lyrics and poetry and later also assumed jobs as actor in movies, TV shows, and the theatre.

He was awarded his nickname Rio as teenager from an eccentric artist friend of the family who invented the name "Rio de Galaxis" for him in an "intergalactic youth ordination". He kept the nickname and later decided to completely change his name from Ralph Möbius to Rio Reiser because he played a leading role in the movie "Johnny West" and needed a catchy artist name. He took the idea for the name Reiser from his older brother Gert who had occasionally used it as artist name before. The name is a reference to the main character of the novel Anton Reiser by Karl Philipp Moritz.

As an adult, Rio soon discovered his musical talents which opened a way for him to express himself, thus enabling him to overcome restraints he otherwise felt due to a certain, intrinsic insecurity or shyness towards other people. The ability to reach out to others - even to the unknown masses in a concert audience - through his musical performance was later often referred to as being the core of his special talent to touch his listeners, or even to "build a relationship" with each of them for the duration of a concert.

During his teenage years, Rio Reiser first discovered - and immediately became a big fan of - The Beatles at age 13 who represented the sound and way of life of the future for him and also inspired him to learn to play guitar, to compose his own songs and to form his first band. Later he preferred the rough, direct sound of The Rolling Stones. In reference to John Lennon and Paul McCartney, who were credited as "Lennon/McCartney" on the songs they wrote, Rio and his band colleague and best friend R.P.S. Lanrue (real name Ralph Peter Steitz) as composers of most of the Ton Steine Scherben-songs were often credited as "Möbius/Steitz". Besides contemporary Rock bands which became the soundtrack of the social changes beginning in the Sixties, Rio Reiser was also influenced by other music styles including orchestral film soundtracks, German Folk songs and Traditional music and German singers such as Marlene Dietrich.

Reiser was unique among German Rock Stars of his time in being openly gay, coming out publicly in 1977. At the beginning of his career, Reiser sometimes felt a misfit among the political groups and various movements which, in the early 70s, did not really approve of homosexuality, but later gained more confidence while working with artists who were engaged in the newly forming gay movement of Berlin, including the gay radical performance group Brühwarm which recorded two LPs with music composed by Ton Steine Scherben. Here are two songs from this collaboration (1977).

First, here's Ich Freu Mich Schon Auf Dienstag (I'm Looking Forward To Tuesday) ... because Tuesday is gay sauna day:

... And here's Mittendrinn Im Jugendrausch (In The Midst Of Youth Frenzy):

While he still went to school, Reiser became singer in his first Rock band, The Beat Kings. The band had been founded by R.P.S. Lanrue, a boy living in the neighbourhood, who had heard of Reiser's singing talents and had asked him to join the band after letting Reiser perform a few songs as an audition (as R.P.S. Lanrue later claimed in an interview, the Rolling Stones song Play With Fire tipped the balance). Lanrue, who was of the same age as Reiser, soon became Reiser's closest friend and musical counterpart who went on to support Reiser as musician and lived with him most of the time until his death.

After occasionally having toured the countryside with the theatre group "Hoffmans Comic Theater" (consisting in Reiser, his brothers and a group of friends), Reiser went on to continue theatrical projects in Berlin where he joined an improvisation theatre group which played scenes from the everyday life of pupils and trainees, thus adopting and reflecting the social problems among young people in West Berlin in the Sixties, as well as the sense of imminent social change. The theatre was very successful with young people and toured through Germany until 1969. The involvement in the context of the student and youth movement—not only as musician and actor, but often in the political debates which were to follow the theatre performance as well, played an important role for Rio Reiser's development of political awareness and for his lifelong commitment - both privately and as musician - to liberation movements of various kinds, including, in particular, the left-wing political movement characteristic for the 60s and 70s (while he liked to put an emphasis on supporting the workers' and "simple people's" interests rather than the students' intellectual approach), the Gay liberation movement and later, the German ecological movement.

In 1970, Reiser recorded his first single with the band Ton Steine Scherben. The band name was chosen in a lengthy democratic decision procedure among the members, friends and supporters of the band. The original name idea was actually "VEB Ton Steine Scherben", but the "VEB" was soon dropped. The band name can be translated both as "clay stones shards" and as "sound stones shards", thus offering different approaches to interpretation (sometimes also understood as a political program) and, last not least, making reference to Reiser's favorites The Rolling Stones. In that same year the group performed their first public concert and recorded their first full-length record, released in 1971 and called Warum Geht Es Mir So Dreckig? (Why Does It Feel So Dirty To Me?). I'm sure that it was a favorite record of the Clash, as well as other Punk Rock bands. This is evident in the first single, Macht Kaputt Was Euch Kaputt Macht (Destroy What Destroys You):

Their second album Keine Macht Für Niemand (No Power For Nobody / 1972) was even better. Without losing the edge characteristic of their previous album, it expanded its musical influences and gave us a very interesting sounding album indeed. You can hear that on first single Allein Machen Sie Dich Ein (But They Make You One):

It's also evident in the B-side, Feierabend (Closing Time):

Next single Mensch Meier (Oh Man!) follows the same pattern: a musically interesting verse, followed by a simpler, sing-along chorus.

The band soon became very popular with the squatter scene, left-wing student and workers' movement and was invited to numerous political events to provide the soundtrack to demonstrations, parties and rallies across Germany which often inspired the audience to translate the message into action afterwards. Thus, many buildings were seized after the end of a concert, and the band often ended up sitting in some commune discussing the political agenda with their hosts. Reiser later revealed in his autobiography that he sometimes would have preferred to just get away with some nice looking guy.

Fifteen years of touring, four more LPs and various film projects and collaborations with other musicians followed, including the recording of two children's records. Reiser lived together with the band and a large group of friends and supporters most of that time, first sharing a commune in Berlin. In 1975, after the band was tiring of the numerous demands and expectations by all kinds of political groups, the group settled down on a farm in Fresenhagen in North Germany which continued to be Reiser's refuge and place of inspiration even after moving back to Berlin a couple of years later. One of the band's most important and ambitious albums, the Black Album, was recorded there.

Opening track Jenseits Von Eden (East Of Eden) is a powerful Rock song dealing with the past:

Alles Ist Richtig (Everything Is Right) is another powerful Rock song:

Heimweh (Homesickness) feels like a mystical confession by Reiser (he wrote the lyrics). Here's a live version:

Kleine Freuden (Small Pleasures) is another one of Reiser's opaque personal stories. Here's the band, live in Hamburg, 1982.

Ton Steine Scherben were musically very successful and, being one of the first Rock bands in Germany which actually wrote and performed German Rock songs, opened the door for countless successful German Rock and Pop bands to follow. Due to their refusal to adapt to the demands of the mainstream music business, as well as to financial mismanagement, a certain "outlawish" image in the eyes of the large radio and TV stations and a fan community which often forgot that the band had to make a living out of the music and would have despised any commercial ambitions, they were not able to translate their musical success and widespread popularity into financial stability.

We've already gone on for too long, so we'll get to speak of Reiser's solo career tomorrow. See you then.