Speaking of Germany, how did the title of the song "Holiday In Berlin" originate?
"Holiday in Berlin" refers to a riot we had at the Sport Palast in Berlin in 1968.
A riot caused by your concert?
No, it was caused by the SDS. What happened was during the sound check in the afternoon a bunch of student rebels came and said they wanted to talk to me. I listened to them, and they said, [in fraudulent German accent] "You know there will be 8000 people here tonight and they have never demonstrated before, and we want you to tell them to come with us." I said, "Really, where are you going?" And they said, [in mysterious voice] "It's a cold night." And I said, "Oh, you're going to make it warm eh?" Like, "We are going to start a fire." I said, "Well, where?" "Around the corner," was the answer. You know what was around the corner? NATO Command Headquarters! They wanted me to tell the audience to go with them to start a fire. So I told the guy, "You have bad mental health." And he didn't like it.
So that night they came back, 200 of them, and they had jars of paint, cherry bombs, banners, they made a mess out of the fucking show. And there were 20 to 30 German policemen who refused to even show themselves during this thing, and we had to play for two hours: two one-hour segments with an intermission. So during the show these guys were doing their best to make a mess out of things. So we take our intermission, we go backstage, and they figure they've run us off. They went onto the stage. They had wire cutters, they cut the wires to a bunch of the equipment. It was really pretty obnoxious, so we surprised them. We came back and played the second half of the show. They were so stunned that they shut up. Our roadies glued things back together and we kept playing. Toward the end of the show they figured this is their last chance to get the audience to go with them, so the student leader leaps onto the stage and grabs the microphone and starts babbling away in German. So in order to keep him from doing what he was going to do, I gave Don Preston instructions to put our electronic organ through a fuzz tone and put both arms on the keyboard. You know what that sounds like—that's an ugly fucking sound.
And meanwhile our road crew, such as it was, was carrying instruments off of the stage one at a time. I made my guitar feed back, and it's just me and Preston making ugly noises and this guy going like that [pantomimes screaming]. And at the end we both unplugged our stuff and walked off and just left him there babbling. That was "Holiday in Berlin."
FZ: We were in Germany recently. We played five dates in Germany last fall. And the German youth today has not come very far from the ones in the short pants singing the same song. Today the German youth— you know they have sort of their own brand of Flower Power over there. They have hairy boys and girls with beads and funny close, and they're Nazis. Just like their mothers and fathers.
The problem is they believe they are the new left. The believe they are the new "what's happening"—forefront of the youth revolution. You know that student riot that happened last Easter in Berlin.... I's just a crazed fantasy that these kids have that they are actually doing something new. I talked with them and they're just
Female audience member: For the Germans that's new.
FZ: That's new??
Female: Wearing the beads ...
FZ: Yeah, well it's just a question of packaging
Female: Are they organized?
FZ: Yes they are to a certain extent. But like the purpose of their organization is still a little bit cloudy, you know. They talk about a revolution in sort of carnival terms. They're still thinking about banners, gathering together in the street and yelling things at policemen. That's their idea of a revolution, and it's so old-fashioned and corny even.
Female: Do they actually think along Nazi lines or ...?
FZ: No that ACT along Nazi lines.
[elision on tape]
Interviewer: I hear that they wanted you to lead something.
FZ: We had an incident at a concert in Berlin where I was approached by some "student leaders." They told me they 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."
And they said, "No take it back you're the Mothers of Reaction." And I told them they were {beep}, and they understand English. I told them whether they liked it or not we were going to continued to play the second half of the program. So gradually they shut up, and they sat down. The only thing that happened during the second hour was one cherry bomb on stage.
And we had played about 45-50 minutes, and we were into a long instrumental piece, which was going to be our closing number, and I'd reduced the volume of the tune so that I could say good night to the nice German people. At which point the student leader with the red rag around his neck comes running up on stage and grabs the microphone and starts raving in German. I just knew he was telling these people, "I've got the matches come with me."
So we played real loud so nobody could hear what he was saying. Two people were taking the instruments off the stage, you know piece by piece pulling things away until it was just me and the organist left on stage playing one full-volume fuzztone loud ugly note that was just going BLAAAAAH. And it was the only thing that kept people back off the stage, 'cause they kept trying to get up onto the stage and this noise would hit them and they'd go ...
Finally when they got all the drums and all the rest of the stuff out of the way, we just unplugged and split off the stage, and they all came milling back up there. And they looked around and they didn't know why they were on stage again.
That's Germany today.
