For Till Lindemann’s 60th birthday: The magician with the knife | free press

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The poet and singer is probably the most mystical German star of post-war history and internationally undisputedly the best-known German rock poet. The Rammstein frontman turns 60 on Wednesday.

Rammstein.

Maybe Till Lindemann was just lucky: When he published his third volume of poetry “100 Poems” with Kiepenheuer & Witsch in March 2020, well after the first wave of the “#Metoo” debate, he was anything but subtle formulated fantasy of sexually assaulting a person drugged with KO drops, although for a (further) scandal. But the Rammstein singer stuck: nothing. His reaction at the time: Lindemann published a picture that showed him in the style of an icon as a holy artist.

Was it because the Rammstein singer burst into the middle of the first Corona phase with the poem “If you sleep” and you had other worries in Germany? Or is Lindemann simply a recognized art figure more than all other stars in the country, and nobody wants to fall into their provocation traps? In the early phase of Rammstein, that happened quite often – because both most of the media and most of the representatives of high culture simply overlooked the great theatrical potential of the band as well as the high lyrical quality of their singer: They threw themselves at the music and lyrics without thinking – and Rammstein allowed the attacks to roll off and let the art speak for itself. With the well-known result: If you meet a person under 50 somewhere in the USA or France, Australia or Russia, Mexico or Sweden today, there is a high probability that the only German lines that he can quote come from Till Lindemann.

The singer made no secret of his belief that man is an instinct-driven animal that can only be contained with difficulty by his intellect, nor of his conviction that the experiment ultimately only makes sense occasionally. The struggle between the sensual spirit man and the eternally sexually hungry hunter is one of the main themes of his poetry. In doing so, however, he always managed the trick of wresting many of his own facets from this breaking point, which runs quite far through the entire art of this world – and to summarize them in concise, often awkward-looking words. Till Lindemann, there is no other way of putting it, succeeded over many years like no other; it can be read in the booklets of the Rammstein albums. There one often finds pure language magic in many rhymes, often cut into the sheet with a bloody knife. “I like interpretations because they can be so different. The listeners have their own perception and imagination,” he said of his lyrics: “If I were to talk about the real background of everything I sing, I would only create drawers. I think it’s better not to do that and just encourage people to interpret the lyrics on their own.”

Till Lindemann was born on January 4, 1963 in Leipzig, but grew up in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania before the reunification. He and his sister first lived with their mother, the journalist Brigitte Lindemann, and later for a while with their father, the children’s book author Werner Lindemann, who was well-known in the GDR. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye was his first novel; He read Charles Bukowski because he was considered taboo in the GDR. Lindemann’s verses are therefore also a journey through literary history. In his texts there are references to Benn, Goethe, Schiller, the German Romantics or the Brothers Grimm. He picks up Piaf (“Spring in Paris”), Brecht (“Links 2 3 4”), Süskind (“You smell so good”).

Lindemann worked as a basket maker until the fall of the Wall. That left room for art and music: he drummed in the punk band First Ass, briefly played bass for the first autonomous rioters in Schwerin. In this scene he met the later Rammstein musicians at the end of the 80s. Fire came into his life with this band: At first it was a friend’s individual rockets, then experiments with petrol followed. Lindemann is training to be a pyrotechnician – also because there are always injuries and incidents. A Rammstein show is a gigantic spectacle of explosions, fire, light, effects and hard-hitting music. The former competitive swimmer still maintains the condition for this in the swimming pool.
Rammstein is not always easy for Lindemann artistically either. “I work with five people, so opinions sometimes differ. There are always a lot of discussions and fights about which direction to go, about the topics, about just about everything.”

With his side projects, Lindemann crosses genre boundaries with a pleasure and as a matter of course: he has already written a song for Roland Kaiser, brought Heino zu Rammstein on stage, worked with Nina Hagen, Zaz, David Garrett or the rapper Haftbefehl and sang at the military music festival on Red Square in Moscow the heroic song “Lubimiy Gorod” (“Beloved City”) in Russian. Together with the Swedish multi-instrumentalist Peter Tägtgren, whom he admires, he recorded two solo albums and wrote songs for “Hänsel & Gretel” at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg.
A visible part of Lindemann’s otherwise secluded life with an early marriage and three children, an apartment in Berlin and village life in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania revolves around women – the age gap increasing over the years. It’s hard to say whether his “I want to see your tits!” screams at the audience or the often scantily clad women dancing right on the edge of the stage in the cordoned off area of ​​the shows are only intended to promote clichés or are lived simplicity. What speaks for theater: Lindemann sees his performances as staged operas. He’s afraid of sinking himself. what occurs. Everything is going according to a meticulous plan, it has to be in view of the dangerous fire magic. Lindemann doesn’t talk to the audience between songs. At the end maybe a short thank you in recognition of the celebrating fans. Lindemann: “I want to remain curious. When you reveal the secret or comment on the background, people are sometimes really disappointed.”

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