Munich-based Krautrock band Amon Düül (along with Amon Düül II, which was soon formed by the band’s more serious musicians) was a classic product of Germany’s freewheeling counterculture of the late 1960s. Drugs and long hair were in, as was political radicalism—the German student movement (the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund, or SDS) took to the streets to protest a repressive German government packed with ex-Nazis that was providing active support of America’s war in Vietnam.
The government responded with brutal police action, which included the cold-blooded killing of a student, Benno Ohnesorg, during a Berlin protest against the murderous Shah of Iran. Such vicious tactics—combined with the violence-provoking jingoism of the right-wing Springer press—led to further youth radicalization in the form of such urban terrorist groups as the Marxist-oriented Baader-Meinhof Gang and the anarchist 2 June Movement. Germany’s counterculture was America’s counterculture on steroids—you can always count on the German collective psyche to take it to the limit.
Numerous Kommunes also sprang up, often in squats in the cities of Germany. Their agendas differed—West Berlin’s Kommune 1, for example, was formed as a reaction against both the SDS, which it viewed as too tame, and the nuclear family, which it saw as the root cause of fascism.
And the members of the various Kommunes inevitably brushed shoulders with bomb-happy revolutionaries, non-violent student activists such as SDS leader Rudi Dutschke (who almost died in an assassination attempt by neo-Nazi Josef Bachmann), and members of Heidelberg’s Socialist Patients’ Collective, whose patient/members considered mental illness an inevitable by-product of capitalism and coined the motto “Turn illness into a weapon.” Why, you were even likely to run into supermodel Uschi Obermaier, who was for a time a member of Kommune 1.
Rock music constituted the soundtrack of the chaos, and it figured hugely in radical art Kommune Amon Düül. The Kommune wasn’t inclined to violent revolution, although much has been made of the Amon Düül-Baader Meinhof connection. But despite the legends, the only interaction between the two seems to have occurred the night Kommune members returned home to find Andreas Baader and fellow revolutionary Gudrun Ensslin sleeping in their beds. This unwanted sleepover by two of Germany’s most wanted fugitives did not make them happy, nor did the fact that they refused to cede their beds. The fact that the duo made off with some of the Kommune’s clothes the next morning couldn’t have pleased them much either.
Amon Düül was a Kommune first and a band second—its members took to playing music as a means of supporting themselves financially. Anyone was invited to pick up an instrument and join in—no music experience or acumen necessary. Amon Düül issued a declaration stating, “We are eleven adults and two children which are gathered to make all kinds of expressions, also musical.” They played at happenings, protests and a festival or two, and ultimately decided to record.
Seven members—two of whom would go on to help form Amon Düül II—participated (along with Uschi Obermaier, who plays maracas and percussion) in a mammoth recording session in either 1968 or 1969 that was meant to produce one album, but would ultimately lead to three more. The intended album,1969’s Psychedelic Underground, is amateurish, raw, free-form, and lo-fi, as you’d expect given every Tom, Dieter, and Heinrich was invited to join in. But what Psychedelic Underground has in spades is primal Krautrock power, with lots of primitive tribal drumming and guitars that are as much victims of abuse as instruments.
Opener “Ein Wunderhübsches Mädchen Träumt von Sandosa” (“A Wonderfully Pretty Girl Dreams of Sandosa”) is the LP’s centerpiece, a seventeen-minute percussion-heavy psychedelic-fueled drone that makes up for its amateurism with enthusiastic drum pound propulsion. The song picks you up and carries you along with its (almost) nonstop drum clamor and repetitive guitar riff, and its barbaric din has more in common with “Sister Ray” and “The Gift” by the Velvet Underground or NYC’s the Godz than it does with the hippie psychedelia coming out of San Francisco at the time.
Meanwhile the vocalists chant and make random noise, and on it goes until around the 9:30 mark, when things quiet down and a piano comes in acting nice, after which the all-too-human anti-machine kicks into high gear all over again. This is an essential Krautrock recording, “Hallogallo” sans the motorik beat but every bit as inexorably driving.
“Kaskados Minnelied” (“The Cockatoo’s Love Song)” is a droning guitar meditation for transcendentalists and terrorists, with one guitarist doing some percussive strumming while another sounds more like John Cale sawing away on his viola. It slowly grows in intensity as the percussion kicks in and it’s the perfect song for both seeking your bliss and setting department stores on fire.
“Mama Düül und ihre Sauerkrautband spielt auf” (“Mama Duul and Her Sauerkraut Band Play On”) combines brutal drum pound with lots of droning nonsense vocals, and kinda sounds like the music I heard at a Hare Krishna temple once, only less dance friendly. You won’t find music more spontaneous or amateurish than this-it makes the remorselessly driving freak guitar and full-on drum assault of follow-up “Im Garten Sandosa” (“In the Garden at Sandosa”) sound downright slick–which it isn’t. Say what you will about these non-pros—they push this one along with sheer bulldozer power. And the screaming that’s going on isn’t a gratuitous add-on—you’d be screaming too if you were caught up in the anarchic spirit of this wonderful caterwaul.
“Der Garten Sandosa im Morgentau” (“The Garden at Sandosa in the Morning Dew”) features a repetitive guitar figure, another guitar that just sort of strums away at its leisure and some meowing cat-on-LSD vocals, and meanders about in the garden for a while taking in the butterflies and hummingbirds until everything drops out but the singers accompanied by some stray guitar notes. Then the guitar drops back in and then out again until a lovely melody comes out of nowhere as the singers ululate and growl and do whatever it is that turns them on.
“Bitterlings Verwandlung” (“Bitterling’s Transformation”) is another full-tilt guitar-driven Krautboogie, bookended by some official-sounding Teutonic choir music from a record they probably taped from East German radio. Or discovered in a parent’s attic along with a dusty portrait of Hitler and a Luger they would later give to a friendly terrorist as a birthday present.
Amon Düül were more than a band, they were an inspiration—listening to them give it their untutored all is enough to make anyone say, “To hell with five years of music lessons, let’s just pick up some instruments and wail away!” They may not get the props given their fellow Kommune dwellers in Amon Düül II, but Amon Düül’s spontaneous clash and clamor is a refreshing antidote to the industrial talent complex (as personified by Jim Hendrix, who spent some time at Kommune 1) that has always relegated record-making to the virtuosos.
Amon Düül were one of those rarest of all things, a hippie punk band, and I’d be surprised if the primally inclined likes of John Lydon and The Fall’s Mark E. Smith weren’t fans. The latter in particular—his musical philosophy (“If you’re going to play it out of tune, then play it out of tune properly”) fits Amon Düül to a T. It’s a pity he never got the chance to record with them—the results would have been… epic.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
