"Krone" interview

Andreas Dorau: “I like to work my way through Vienna”

Dadaist and ingenious: Neue Deutsche Welle hero Andreas Dorau releases the concept album "Wien".

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Tapete Records)

When Andreas Dorau conquered the charts with "Fred vom Jupiter", he was 16. 45 years later, the Hamburg native has long since established himself in the world of Dadaist new German wave music. He calls his new album "Vienna", but prefers to talk about himself rather than the city. In the big "Krone" talk, he doesn't skimp on North German humor and self-reflection.

"Krone": Andreas, as a Hamburg native, you call your new album "Vienna". Is it an ode to the city?
Andreas Dorau: I wouldn't say it's an ode, but it is an examination of the city.

How did you come up with this idea? You could just as easily make an album called "Hamburg", "Bremen" or "Kiel".
Several things come together here. For one thing, I worked on a Lübeck city map in the past - there were a lot of Hamburg artists involved and Lübeck has more money for funding than Hamburg. There were three of us working on the project and when we started looking at Lübeck, we realized that there was a lot that wasn't included in the conventional city guides about what makes a city like this special. That's why I wanted to do something similar about a larger city. Then the following happened: I was sitting with two good friends one afternoon at around 2 p.m., so it wasn't a crazy idea, and they were complaining that they would never get interviews as artists. I told them that nowadays you need a selling point for your product and it occurred to me that you could use a city for it. It just burst out of me and because I thought my idea was so good, I sort of stole it from them again. I find Vienna fascinating in a strange way. I like to work my way through it.

Where and how does this fascination come from?
The city is actually just a starting point for my thoughts. So I use it to tell stories about myself. When I stand in the central cemetery, I don't think about the cemetery, but about my own death. Do I want to be cremated or buried?

Have you found answers to that?
To be honest, no. I don't have any children, so there's no one around afterwards. I think cremation is kind of stupid, but maybe a burial in the woods would be good. That might be what it comes down to.

You already emphasized finiteness many years ago. In an interview on your 30th birthday, you said that you had a serious life crisis and didn't know what to do next?
That was the worst birthday of my life - it was never like that again. This year I went bowling with friends and kept myself busy to do something on the day. There's always something going on, so I don't have to think about my age and no more gloomy thoughts can arise. When I was 30, I thought everything was over forever. Today I'm much better equipped mentally.

You're 61 and still incredibly busy creatively.
Yes, but after this record I want to take a long break. I don't know how long, but a long time. But before that I want to tour a bit and play in Vienna, for example, but that's not so easy for someone from Hamburg. Playing concerts and making music are my driving forces. I was never the type to stand in front of the mirror with a hairdryer and admire myself.

Are there any striking similarities between your home city of Hamburg and Vienna? The people of Hamburg are also known for their dry sense of humor, at least in a different way ...
I like Viennese humor, which always has a certain arrogance to it. I spent a lot of time in Vienna as a child and have a good friend here. I've been there twice as an adult for about 14 days, otherwise whenever there were concerts.

Did you try to get to know Vienna beyond the touristy side?
I once spent three days researching here with Gunther Buskies and Carsten Friedrichs from Tapete Records, but I never saw the Prater in action. It was winter and it was closed. Bad luck.

A visit to the Prater without riding the Tagada isn't complete either.
That thing that goes round in circles and you're pressed up against the wall? Makes you want to puke, doesn't it? We have the Hamburg Cathedral and there are various rides there too. I can still remember when a friend of mine threw up badly on something like that. I wouldn't do that. I would also stay away from the Ferris wheel. But back to the album: I have to start with something and that was the term "Vienna". Then I thought of so much on the subject that there's now even a bonus album about it.

Did you go on this research trip for your new album?
I read a lot and got a lot of inspiration from three different sources.

How do you approach songs that have "Vienna" as an overarching theme but are about your own worries and problems?
Similar to the Lübeck city map. First of all, I made lists of what I find really interesting and where I want to go, and there are a lot of songs on the bonus album where the word Vienna appears - because I find it phonetically very beautiful. Label boss Gunther suggested the bonus album because we didn't want to put all the ideas on the main album. My first addition was either a place or an event in Vienna. Just like the city map.

Did you let yourself go and drift during these three days of research?
If you want to know for sure, I got brutally drunk on the first day. In one or two pubs and suddenly it was 7 o'clock in the morning when I got home.

The promo pictures for the album are also well done. Postcards with urban Vienna clichés with you in them.
In Hamburg we have these shitty harbors, there's also a lot of tourist traffic. The interesting thing about such cities is what lies outside this world. On the other hand, I needed an aspect of the Prater, the Ferris wheel. I've had a fear of heights for six years, which brings us back to the personal. Then you let someone persuade you to go on a ride, you get to the top and then you think to yourself "Oh shit, why did I let them persuade me?"

You've had a fear of heights for six years - did you never notice it before?
It happened with my girlfriend on a skiing vacation when I suddenly couldn't go up in the gondola anymore. It seems to be a common problem for men over 50. I also know two Bavarians who experienced it at this age. The body changes so much over the years that it can actually occur - and really severely. With panic attacks. That was a wonderful starting point for the song.

You generally reveal a lot about yourself on your records.
I think that too. In the process of making records, I realized that first and foremost you talk about yourself and only then do you include the Viennese places. That in itself is a discourtesy. You pretend to be interested in a city, but you're only interested in yourself.

Of course, the metaphor of the location makes it easier to reveal something about yourself.
Very well recognized! It really is a psychological trick and also had something therapeutic about it. It has something of Sigmund Freud about it, but I wasn't interested in him for the record, that would have been too obvious. I'm also not entirely sure whether I would subscribe to all of Freud's theories.

On the album you have immortalized the Viennese Wolfgang von Kempelen, the inventor of the language machine. A somewhat more unusual choice than Sigmund Freud.
I'm very interested in voice synthesis because I don't like my own voice at all. I've always been interested in vocoders and similar technical aids. Then I did some research online and came across this man. Do you know this wooden machine whose lungs are balloons? This machine can say a few words, that's crazy. What an interesting invention.

But you didn't write the lyrics to the song?
It's actually the description of the machine that I found somewhere on the net. Ingenious.

In principle, as the inventor of the talking machine, von Kempelen is also the forefather of smartphones, which many people now see as part of the current social evil.
We are now experiencing the beginning of the true communication disorder, aren't we? He tried to recreate the human anatomy using haptic means. You are my sixth interview partner today and the first to know who von Kempelen is - he was certainly never the most famous Viennese.

Your first single release is "45 Lux". What is it about?
The song was inspired by my previous visits to Vienna. There are a few cities where I find the night lighting particularly interesting. Düsseldorf or Vienna. That's not the case in Hamburg. I asked myself when the lights actually go on in Vienna and found out during my research that there is no fixed time. There is a computer that permanently varies the time. Depending on the natural light or how overcast the sky is.

And apparently your lights went out during your last research when you were lost in the pubs. Many cities have to be worked hard for as a tourist or visitor. Is Vienna such a city for you? Does Vienna have a completely different atmosphere at night?
Las Vegas is incredibly ugly during the day, but that doesn't apply to Vienna, of course. I made many of my first recordings in Düsseldorf back then and the Kraftwerk song "Neonlicht" was very popular there. It had a very special industrial romanticism that was completely new at the time - that made a lasting impression on me.

Was it difficult to get started with the basic concept of Vienna?
It always takes me quite a while to really get started with something. But it started with "Vienna Sur Mer", which was written by Carsten Friedrichs. I thought I'd heard of "Wien am Meer" and Google confirmed it - it's a song by Fred Schreiber. Holy shit. But well, then I found out his number and got in touch with him to ask if he could imagine singing a verse, because we're kind of bowing down to him. He did it and it turned out well. I used to sample a lot, so I wasn't quite as correct.

One number is called "I can't sleep" - does that require a big city?
I don't generally have insomnia, but if I have something to do in a foreign city the next day and sleep in a hotel bed that's foreign to me, then I can't fall asleep for ages.

Isn't insomnia sometimes a blessing for creative people?
Yes, because your brain is constantly rattling. But the nasty thing is that you have a task the next day that you may not have done before or that makes you nervous. This means you can't really use this rattling because you're constantly thinking about something else. You're literally fretting.

When you've already made as many albums as you have, do you sometimes have to trick yourself into not repeating yourself all the time?
You've already told so many stories and you constantly have to find new aspects of yourself. That's why you like to use new instruments. I usually only realize six months later that I was interested in something. But I don't realize for a long time whether it's a sound, a text or the content. This time it all happened very fluidly. But if you set out to reinvent yourself, I can promise you that it will go down the drain.

I can imagine that it can be a struggle to sing about yourself for others?
I've been singing since my very first lyric. I was 15 and a guitar student of Holger Hiller and we recorded a piece on a four-track recorder. He said that this piece needed lyrics and I had no idea what to do. Then just sing about something, he said, and I just wrote on photocopies that were in front of me. What I was actually getting at: When I write autobiographically, I do so unconsciously. Something that describes me creeps in. But I don't make music to talk about myself.

Do you only realize what exactly you're writing when you're writing the lyrics?
The good thing about making music is that you do it first - with common sense. Paint the blank canvas, then take ten steps back, look at it and understand what's too much, what you've forgotten, what doesn't quite fit. What do I hear? What do I see? And then I put it in the right order. Your ambitions or desires don't matter at first. This approach is fun, but sometimes you feel ashamed that you're so vain.

Do you have any correctors or people around you to whom you make your music accessible in advance?
I do, but at the end of the day, it's nonsense. Everyone has their own taste in music and I know in advance who will respond to something and how. People are predictable and I also know them well in that case. Some people praise things that might not be so good because they mean well for you. You always lie to yourself a little when you make corrections like that. So I have to decide for myself, nobody can help me with that.

Let's go back to your earlier days. When you took off with "Fred from Jupiter", you were just 16 years old. Did being in the public eye at such an early age and having to learn how to deal with it help you in the rest of your life?
The biggest difference was that we were on an indie label back then and everything was very direct. We didn't have any press releases or press photos, we just decided everything ourselves. I was confident enough to make my own decisions and nobody forced me into anything. I can remember when "Bravo" came to my house and wanted to recreate some of our photos. I always said no. Politely, but firmly, because I didn't think I looked good in them. When they come to me, they want something from me. Then I set the pace and how things proceed. That hasn't changed since then.

To be so creatively free, you also need a self-determined life. Have you always kept that very relaxed?
One crucial point is that I never intended to make a living from music. Of course it's nice to get money for it, but it was never my approach to want to be a star and bend myself over backwards for it.

In your opinion, have you always stayed true to yourself? Or did vanity ever get in the way?
I don't know. I think I'm a pretty self-reflective person. That will have to suffice as an answer. (laughs)

To what extent do you reflect on yourself?
I constantly check myself. You're very often at crossroads in life and when you choose one, you have to be aware of the consequences. You can't moan afterwards if you have chosen a path.

In the press release for "Vienna", there was also something about feverish spells that fueled your creativity ...
After my 60th a good year ago, I had completely overloaded myself mentally. I then fell ill for a long time. Not because of physical exhaustion, but I was simply mentally empty. There was far too much hype surrounding me, and perhaps I had let too many people get too close to me. I then lay in bed for five weeks with a fever and during that time I wrote the song "Tourist", for example. That was the first time I asked myself what I was actually daring to do. As a Piefke, I'm explaining my city to the Viennese. I'm aware that I'm only scratching the surface, but the content is very important to me.

Do you need a certain distance to people?
I'm from northern Germany, distance is essential. That may be a cliché, but there's something to all clichés. It's always an advantage if you know about your own clichés and can perhaps deal with them in a humorous way. Maybe then you're not a stupid tourist, but discover certain subtleties.

Do you always find yourself anew with every new album? Does working on a project like this change you permanently?
If I were to allow this thought, I would already be over. There have been records where I've realized afterwards that I must have been subconsciously preoccupied with something. Or that something apparently fascinated me so much in terms of sound or lyrics that it found its way in. But that only ever happens in retrospect.

Are you always happy with the songs you've made afterwards?
I can openly say that I find a lot of things in my life unsuccessful. I am very clear about that. I'm the son of a pastor and my mother was a teacher. I come from an educated middle class background. We never went to the seaside on vacation, but I know churches and museums.

Is there anything about Vienna that Hamburg can learn from and vice versa?
I would love to have Viennese food in Hamburg. Hamburg cuisine is crap, really bad. What do we have? Eel soup and Labskaus. I have friends from the Ruhr area who say it looks like vomit. Hamburg is clearly a culinary wasteland. For me, Austrian cuisine is on a par with Italian and Japanese cuisine - and that's not a slur! But what I really appreciate about Hamburg is that it's bearable even in summer. What I like most about Hamburg is the wind - the heat is unbearable.