Whether he invited me as well is a moot point, but we were pretty much a unit back then and I did much of the Neurotics’ organising, especially when speaking German was involved (at that time just adequately, but it soon got a lot better). After five minutes on the phone to Uschi at the Artists’ Agency of the German Democratic Republic, I was definitely on the bill too, if I hadn’t been already, and preparations began in earnest.
A van and driver presented no problem whatsoever. Steve’s great friend and sometime recording engineer John Mortimer (later to be nicknamed ‘Overspeed’ by our companion and translator George because of the way he incurred repeated fines by driving faster than the officially sanctioned 100kmh on GDR motorways: this wasn’t something that was going to bother us, as you’ll hear) was recruited along with his trusty Transit van. He’d already driven us all round England and through France and we knew that both he and his vehicle were very reliable: we didn’t want to break down over there.
So what the hell were we letting ourselves in for? The Neurotics would be the first Western punk band ever to play there, I’d be the second punk poet (after Bragg) and although we knew that we would be disciplined and responsible when necessary, there would nevertheless be strident opinions in evidence, lots of beer would be drunk in and out of the van, we wouldn’t always be exactly sober - and though we were all committed socialists, none of us had ever toed a party line in our lives…
I gathered together all the received Western propaganda wisdoms. We were going to EAST GERMANY, on THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL, BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN, a place where there was NO DEMOCRACY and lots of SECRET POLICE called STASI. It was DULL, everybody wore GREY, ate nothing but POTATOES and SAUERKRAUT and was permanently MISERABLE because they were OPPRESSED, DENIED FREEDOM OF SPEECH and COULDN’T ESCAPE. According to regular garish headlines in every single UK visual, aural and print media outlet apart from the Morning Star.
I was really looking forward to seeing the place for myself, trying out my rusty ‘A’ Level German and making up my own mind, that’s for sure: we’d been invited, we were coming, bring it on!
First we needed visas. Uschi at the GDR Artists’ Agency assured me that there would be no problem with them, but I was nevertheless uncharacteristically reserved as I queued briefly with our passports at the East German Embassy in a basement flat just off London’s Belgrave Square. I thought I wouldn’t bother with my German, because we were after all in London.
‘Good morning. Myself and my friends The Neurotics have been invited by the Free German Youth to perform at the Summer Song Festival in Berlin, Capital of the GDR’. (NB: You didn’t call it ‘East Berlin’. Only Western reactionaries called it that.) ‘And our friend Womble – sorry, David Trent - wants to come too, although I haven’t got his passport. Here is the letter from the Artists’ Agency and our passports.’
‘Ah’ said the clerk with a smile. We were obviously expected! Everything was processed in a very short space of time, and I was told that Womble was welcome as well but he’d have to bring his passport to the office to get it stamped. I phoned him to give him the good news, went home, got on with my life and more gigs for a few weeks… and then, after organising an expensive ‘carnet’ for our musical equipment from Harlow Customs & Excise (ironically to satisfy the demands of the Western European borders we crossed in those pre ‘single market’ days: the East Germans weren’t bothered in the slightest) we set off to catch the night ferry to Zeebrugge on a Monday night, 11 August 1986. Destination: Dresden, for the first of seven gigs in a different world.
It’s incredible to think now, after about 500 appearances in Germany solo and with my band, but I played nearly 40 gigs in East Germany before doing any in the West and got my initial ones in the West from organisers who saw me first in the East. One thing is for sure though: the memory of that first tour, and the first border crossing, will stay with me as long as I live.
Dramatis personae: Steve Drewett, Neurotics’ singer/guitarist, Colin ‘Dredd’ Masters, bass (Mac ‘Cut’ McDonald would replace him on later tours), Simon Lomond, drums: John Mortimer, driver: Dave Trent, aka Womble, punk dentist and editor of the seminal ‘Wake Up’ fanzine, and myself. We’d done loads of gigs together, were great friends and were used to the usual tour stuff, but we’d never been this far, in any sense of the word. Not knowing how long the border crossing would take, and to make sure we had plenty of time to get to our destination - way across in the East near what was then Czechoslovakia - I’d decided to give us two days to get to Dresden. Beer on ferry, early Tuesday morning arrival in Zeebrugge, several hours’ drive, breakfast/beer, more driving, beer in van, stop for lunch, beer, more driving, arrive at evening destination of Hannover, cheap hotel, beer, bit of minor toothpaste and water pistol related horseplay, lots of beer, bed. Next morning, up bright(ish) and early for the 60 mile journey to the border - and our date with destiny.
I don’t normally do nervous, but I was on that day.
Helmstedt border crossing: in 1986, three years before the Wall came down, one of the major intersection points between East and West. Start of the ‘corridor’ which took West Berliners to and from their island of capitalism deep in the East, and their cars constituted most of the traffic. Scruffy English Transit van approached bearing cargo of punk rockers, equipment and beer bottles both full and empty. First the West German side: police casually brandishing machine-guns at every vehicle passing through as passports were inspected. ‘Westberlin?’ we were asked, in a bored tone of voice which assumed an affirmative answer. Beer-sodden English punks in Transit van, gig in West Berlin, obviously!
‘Nein. Festival-Tour in Ostdeutschland.’ No point in lying. The stamps were in the passports: we were sleeping with the enemy tonight. As organiser and translator, I was beckoned from the van and shown into an office, where our passports were handed to a serious looking official. He kept me standing there for a few minutes, then spoke in English. ‘You are playing in East Germany?’ he said, looking sternly at me.
I’d half imagined this scenario, but on the Eastern side of the border – not here.
‘Yes, we are the very first punk musicians to be invited – shows things are changing’ I said in reasonable German. He glowered at the passports for a couple of minutes, showed them to someone else, shrugged his shoulders, showed them to someone else, came back and handed them to me: I got back in the van, we were waved through. And that was supposed to be the easy bit…
A few hundred yards up the road stood the huge, formidable East German checkpoint (actually a long series of different checkpoints) guarded by more stern, machine-gun toting police, and in front of it was a long line of expensive-looking West German cars obviously on the way to West Berlin. Those in the front of each row were being thoroughly searched: dogs, mirrors, some having panels dismantled, you name it. We got closer and closer. I was somehow distracted and didn’t see, but the next thing I knew, our driver John Mortimer had taken a photo of the border installation!
Oh, John, you IDIOT…
Angry Grenztruppen (GDR border police) appeared brandishing guns. ‘You have taken a photo of the border. This is forbidden. Give me the camera and park over there!’ John parted with the camera and it was returned with film exposed: we parked as directed and stern faces approached. Time to play my ace card.
I’d been practising my German in readiness for this precise moment. It had better bloody work, I thought to myself.
‘I apologise for my friend’s photo. It is our first time at the GDR border and we didn’t know it was illegal.’ (LIE. I did, John obviously didn’t.) ‘We have been invited by the Free German Youth to play at the Summer Song Festival in Berlin and take part in the Summer Song Festival Tour in seven GDR cities. Here is the letter from the Artists’ Agency of the GDR and here are the multiple-entry stamps in our passports.’
The stony face cracked a hint of a smile. A bit of a puzzled smile, as if to say ‘I’m surprised the comrades from the Party youth section have dec
ided to let scruffy drunken punk rabble like you lot in’, but a smile nevertheless. A brief consultation. The nasty Grenztruppen then went away: a friendly one inspected and stamped our passports: then, without so much as a ‘Please open the back doors of the van, sir’ we were directed past a long line of harassed-looking West Berliners in big cars and, with a celebratory drum-rolling of empty beer bottles around the floor of the vehicle, we were in the German Democratic Republic. The border crossing had taken an hour and a half, but we’d done it. A cheer went up, I got a round of applause for my efforts and celebratory beers were opened!
And then, almost immediately, we got lost.
Somehow we came off the motorway. I’ve no idea how, except that motorways in the GDR weren’t like Western ones: they were often made of cobblestones, sometimes made mainly of potholes, and occasionally had small streams running across them because they hadn’t been repaired for so long. Nevertheless, we should have managed to follow the signs to Dresden, but we didn’t: we took a wrong turning, ended up in the small town of Quedlinburg, saw a hostelry and stopped for something to eat. (I bet the owners were pleased – we had no GDR money and paid in Westmarks, gold dust to them…) As we emerged we were greeted by a local family, the Topperweins, who had seen the British numberplates and the unfamiliar vehicle – basically anything which wasn’t a Trabant, a tiny little local made car which looked as though it was made of papier mache, or a Wartburg, a bigger version of same, was totally unfamiliar at that time – and who were intrigued as to how we had ended up at their local pub. They invited us home for coffee and schnapps.
Things were starting very well indeed, given the received media wisdoms about the GDR I’d detailed above. We’d actually had slightly less hassle from the GDR border guards than from their Western counterparts - and the first people we’d met on the other side of the Iron Curtain had invited us into their home. In 1980s East Germany everyone learned Russian as their second language rather than English, for obvious geopolitical reasons, so my German got another good outing: then, armed with the necessary directions, some bottles of the Topperweins’ home made wine and a promise that they’d see us in Halle later in the tour, it was off to Dresden. And, at a prearranged point on the motorway before we got there, we met George.
George was our designated translator: he became travelling companion, friend, problem-solver and, for me, the essential helper I needed in my determined quest to find out for myself what everyday life was really like for an ordinary citizen of the German Democratic Republic (or ‘German Problematic Republic’ as he so brilliantly dubbed his homeland!) While the tour was in the planning stage I had asked the East German cultural authorities if someone could help me translate my anti-Falklands War song ‘Sawdust and Empire’ and anti-Cruise Missile song ‘Airstrip One’ into German, and they’d suggested George, whose superb command of English was complemented by the fact that his then partner Ilona was a singer/songwriter herself, able to aid in the process by fitting his translation round the chords and melody of the songs. They had done an absolutely magnificent job, and I had learned the two songs off by heart. That bit of attention to detail was going to stand me in very good stead during the gigs to come.
George spoke English with a strange Irish-German sounding hybrid accent. He’d been in the East German Navy and had travelled to all kinds of places: both his English and his reputation had reached a level where he’d received the award of Activist of Socialist Labour, one of the GDR’s highest honours, and been offered the job of personal translator to GDR leader Erich Honecker. He’d turned it down: like many people I was to meet over there, although a convinced socialist, he refused to join the Party, essential for such a high profile position. He’d preferred to stay independent and work for people like the Artists’ Agency, giving him the chance to meet and translate for musicians from all over the world. He was a real character: friendly, open, honest, a lovely bloke with a great sense of humour, a Castro beard and a dreadful nicotine habit.
It took ages to get to Dresden on those bumpy GDR roads, and we finally arrived at the Hotel Dresden about 4am on the Thursday of our first gig: a very swish hotel it was too, with Springsteen’s ‘Born In The USA’ playing in the foyer as we got there. (The Boss was massively popular in East Germany, as you’ll discover later.) Exhausted, we crawled into bed, surfacing for breakfast around noon. Once we were all gathered together, George gave us a shock. A nice shock, and one that takes some explaining…
When I had talked to the Artists’ Agency about the tour, I had obviously asked about the money side of things: as was the case with all Warsaw Pact countries, East German marks were not exchangeable or worth anything in the West at all, and I was concerned to at least recoup our expenses. Uschi at the agency had explained that West German marks were very difficult to come by for a tour such as ours. ‘Hard currency’ was something the GDR state was desperate to obtain, for all kinds of political and economic reasons: all visitors from Western countries (apart from us with our special performers’ visas) were obliged to change a certain amount of money at the border, and there were hard currency ‘tourist shops’ in every major city and airport. By the same token, it was loath to dish it out to visiting musicians. Uschi said that we would have to fund much of the travel expenses to the GDR ourselves, but once there we would have plenty of spending money: it was such a wonderful opportunity that I readily agreed on all our behalves. Little did any of us know what the GDR cultural comrades’ idea of ‘plenty of spending money’ would be…
‘Now folks’ said George, ‘I’m not hanging on to this lot any longer, I’m giving it to you.’ He handed me a thin envelope containing, if I remember rightly, about 300 DM – maybe a third of what it would be costing us to get there and back. My initial disappointment was blown away by what happened next.
He produced a small suitcase-like object and opened it: inside were bundles of brand new 50 GDR mark notes, fresh from the bank. Lots of bundles. It was like something out of a gangster film. The Neurotics and I gaped in amazement. Soon we would gape more. ‘Here you are’ he said. You’ll be given the other half at the artists’ agency tomorrow.’
He then went off to pick Billy Bragg up from the airport, leaving us to pick our jaws up off the floor. When we’d done so, we divvied out the money: we’d each got the equivalent of well over a grand. And that was just half of it! It was a surreal feeling. Here we were in a self-proclaimed socialist country for the first time, and, for one week only, we were richer than any of us had ever been, and far, far richer than most East Germans. Rich in a currency we couldn’t spend anywhere else – and, as we were soon to find out, one we were going to find very difficult to spend where we were. But it was a lovely summer afternoon on our first full day in the German Democratic Republic, and it was time to have a look round.
Dresden had of course been destroyed during the Second World War and rebuilt in a very modern style, but it certainly wasn’t ‘grey’ or ‘soulless’: it was a lively, bustling place, with a shopping precinct as appealing, or horrible, as any you could find in the West, depending on whether you liked shopping or not. There was a big difference, though. Most items were GDR ‘own brand’ which meant that there was hardly any choice, just one or two kinds of everything – but then that’s all you need. Everyday stuff (bread, vegetables, beer, potatoes, fruit, sausages, schnaps, cigarettes, toys, clothes, toothpaste and so on, along with other basic needs like heating, lighting and rent) were unbelievably cheap, an infinitesimal percentage of the weekly wage. It’s difficult to make a modern day prices-to-wages UK comparison but I’d say a bottle of beer, for instance, would have worked out at about 10p at 2014 prices, a loaf of bread about 5p. On the other hand, consumer goods were incredibly expensive: a very 1970s looking colour TV sold for the equivalent of several weeks’ wages. (There again, because everything else was so cheap, it was easier to save than it would be in the West.) Needless to say, the people weren’t dressed in grey and miserable-looking: they looked, sounded an
d behaved just like, well, people everywhere. Amusing aside: the GDR ‘own brand’ cola was called Prick Cola. ‘Prick’ means ‘fizzy’ in German. A bottle was brought home with us and adorned the bar at the Square in Harlow for years…
Then to the gig, in an outdoor ampitheatre not far from the hotel. First there was a cheery meeting with Billy Bragg, who had flown in separately with his roadie/guitarist Wiggy and manager Peter Jenner, then the sound checks, and then I was on, to be followed by the Neurotics, then Billy. I remember a lovely, sunny summer evening and a friendly, attentive audience maybe a couple of thousand strong: I’d got the set worked out well in advance, together with my introductions in my soon-to-improve German. No poems of course, because of the language barrier, but a selection of my best songs including the very topical ‘Libyan Students from Hell’ and ‘World War Three’ and finishing with the two songs George and Ilona had translated for me – the first time I had ever sung in German in public.
At all the gigs in the GDR the introductions were very important. The Neurotics and I had been welcomed there because of the political nature of much of our material, and because everyone was singing in English, it was George’s job to summarise the themes being sung about before each song, except in my case, where George helped me a couple of times at first, and from then on I was fine on my own. My gig went well: everyone appreciated my efforts with the language in my introductions, and my songs in German, ‘Startbahn One’ (Airstrip One) and ‘Glanzendes Empire’ (literally, ‘Shining Empire’) went down an absolute storm.
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