1964-1969 first activities

And here we go!

Dieter from the beginning until 1986

Some people say that my map of the world is not made up of cities or sights, but rather of places where you can buy guitars and eat well.  But beyond these inclinations, my most important traits are that I don't believe anything and that I'm impatient, intolerant and easily annoyed. However, I believe that if you don’t get angry, you won't be inclined to change anything or create anything new!

1964

The very first Kick:

And back to those early years: Suddenly, The Last Time by the Rolling Stones blared out of my transistor radio. My parents always sent me to bed early. So I hid my radio in the closet and moved a thin cable between the floorboards to my bed so that I could listen to music for a long time with headphones without being noticed. It was the best way to spend the time before falling asleep. Soon came The Doors with Light My Fire and the Stones again with Satisfaction, innovative, rocking music that was far superior to the pop hits of the time, such as Schuld war simply der Bossanova by Manuela, a pretty young singer—a fundamental change in my life. Soon I was able to call a Telefunken tape recorder my own and used it to record all these sounds with a microphone.

And I played guitar on the Triumphator, short scale, red burst. OK for learning at first. Barré was the new magic word, every chord in any position, if you placed your index finger wide across the entire fretboard. But it was much more important to listen to the chords of my favorite songs. I soon internalized the “secret” system of “tonic, dominant, and subdominant,” which was the basis of practically all simple compositions, e.g., A, D, E C, F, G! And there were many more variations, such as A minor in “House of the Rising Sun” or going down from A to G or from E to D. And little by little, I was able to hear all these chords in various songs myself, an extremely important step!

I didn't have a pickup yet. I just remember inserting the microphone of my Telefunken tape recorder into the body above the sound hole and then using the Telefunken's playback and recording functions to create really cool delay effects. Sounds like Velvet Underground. And soon the Framus pickup arrived. With it, you could generate previously unimagined distortion effects via the tape recorder. My friend Norbert Requard then built me my first tube amplifier (18 watts – EL84) and wired the pickup, potentiometer, and jack for me. Of course, I had no idea about such things back then. However, this amplifier often broke down, which earned my friend the nickname “Norbert Reclame.”

Anyway, that was the time when the Stones, the Beatles or, a little later, the Spencer Davis Group or the Doors kicked my ass at night while I blasted their sounds into my ear canals with my transistor radio via small headphones. And I, uptight like most boys of my generation, had at least realized that as a musician you had far more chances with the girls. In any case, it was clear that music and everything connected with it seemed to open doors to other worlds (and not just to girls)!

The girls

And I finally had my first crush. But the girl didn't want me because I had no experience. They knew something, but not in detail, and my mother had only explained to me that the woman had a hollow between her legs. Then I acted like a stalker. Of course, it didn't help much, great misfortune with this girl!

My mother wasn't necessarily a prude. She had a relationship with a Professor Gesenius for years. He was the hospital doctor who delivered me by Caesarean section in Berlin in 1952. As she told me at some point, she always used to talk to him in third person (German polite form) - even during sexual intercourse!

This story must not have been easy for my father (a lawyer with the German Federal Railways). You always find out when things like that happen. But he wasn't a child of sadness either. After he left us, we found a notebook in which, among other things, it was noted “Negress - 25 pounds”. That certainly wasn't the lady's weight and at the time it wasn't politically correct to write “black” for a person's skin color. But back then, nobody had any objections to Negro kisses ... It was quite clear that the currency was the English pound sterling. And that must have been when I spent a short vacation in London with him. A father on the wrong track, while I was hanging around Carnaby Street taking photos of miniskirts.

Petards Fan-Club

One of our classmates came from Marburg, where the band “The Petards” (The Firecrackers) were at least local heroes. They were a really good band with a brilliant drummer who always played impressive drum solos on his double bass drum set, which was celebrated at the time, but which soon annoyed me—drum solos = wasted time! Anyway, we founded the Petards fan club with a few other enthusiasts. What times those were!

1967

So! I had learned to play the guitar a little, I was also reasonably good at singing, I was a huge fan of Steve Winwood (Spencer Davis Group), so now it was time to start a band!

My first band, "The Message", was soon together and I switched to an Egmond guitar built in Holland. A kind of Jazzmaster with three pickups, a rotary switch for pickup selection and a leatherette cover.  Right at that time psychedelic music started with Pink Floyd, the Electric Prunes, etc.  In addition, the Beatles brought the sitar onto the musical scene. And I - like the majority of my generation - was not averse to all kinds of drugs and developed a strong affinity for psychedelic music, as it came over us at that time via Pink Floyd, Doors, Electric Prunes, etc.. So my first commercial activity at the age of 17 was to sell hashish in front of the school and in Hannover's old town. But that didn't last too long, and I switched mentally and musically over to the Spencer Davis Group. Stevie Winwood - also barely 18 years old - , what an incredible singer, guitarist, pianist and Hammond organ player! This man was absolutely brilliant, but then changed - certainly also under heavy drug influence - a little later into the psychedelic with his band Traffic, where in my opinion his musical qualities came somewhat less to the fore.

Speaking of "other worlds," in my life not only were the guitars very important, but cooking and eating was also. My mother (although from Berlin) was not a good cook. Dry fish cooked to death, inedible beef liver fried to the consistency of shoe leather.  Anyway, out of displeasure I often hung around in the kitchen. My first activities were experiments with pancakes, more flour, less flour, beating and mixing in the eggs, adding baking powder, etc.  Naturally the easiest way to move these things from one side of the kitchen to the other was quickly with some butter splashes on the floor.  What did my mother think? "There's something wrong with that boy! Why is he always in the kitchen? He's not gay, is he? I think I began seeing girls soon after that.  "Oh, so the boy is ok after all."

Oh yes, the girls. What were we young, 15, 16 or so? Around 1968, still far too young and far too uptight. We masturbated in bed at night with feelings of guilt or at least with the certainty that we were doing something forbidden. Then it started with fetes at someone's house, a storm-free night, or dance parties every other Saturday in the clubhouse of our rowing club on Hanover's Maschsee. Suddenly this new beat music came along and got us all excited - or could you call it already rock music? Nights In White Satin or A Whiter Shade of Pale were always the coveted triggers to press our bodies against the respective girls while dancing close together. We had our first snogging sessions, which could lead to ejaculation if we rubbed against each other vigorously. What initial excitement in the erotic realm!

I still remember one situation today: we, i.e. me and my friend Herb, had been invited somewhere to a storm-free place, somehow we ended up in an adjoining room with a girl, the three of us alone. I simply remember that her surname was Fittkau, and that was because this surname evoked associations of fucking and chewing. Herb, me and her flattened out on a sofa, and this girl, while we took turns making out, started unzipping our jeans and tampering with what was hidden underneath. It was actually an awesome situation. This girl was really looking for adventure. But neither Herb nor I were capable or able to develop anything more erotic out of it. We idiots should have just both done it properly with her. You only come to such things at an advanced age. But we were both paralyzed by our damned uptightness due to the damned upbringing of our damned parents, incapable of anything else. Damn! But those were the beginnings.

Around the same time I had secretly started smoking (which I still sometimes do.) At night I would hang out between the curtain and the open window of my bedroom and had a feeling of freedom for the first time as I looked out into the night.  Not that "feeling of freedom" that the cigarette advertisements tried to suggest but something different: a vague certainty that at least for a moment I could do what I wanted. And that was the point, my goal: no more dependence on parents, school, church, authorities, whatever ... I needed like-minded people!

And I – like the majority of my generation – was not averse to all kinds of drugs and developed a strong affinity for psychedelic music, as it came to us at the time via Pink Floyd, The Doors, Electric Prunes, etc. So my first commercial activity at the age of 17 was selling hashish before school and in Hanover's old town. But that didn't last too long, and I switched mentally and musically to the Spencer Davis Group. Stevie Winwood—also just shy of 18 years old—what an incredible singer, guitarist, pianist, and Hammond organ player! This man was absolutely brilliant, but then—surely under the heavy influence of drugs—he switched to psychedelic music a little later with his band Traffic, where, in my opinion, his musical qualities came into play a little less.

This reminds me that one day my mother discovered a tin box with about 20 grams of hashish in my room and immediately made an appointment for me to see a neurologist to look for ‘counseling.’ He told me all sorts of nonsense about ‘dangerous drug use,’ which went in one ear and out the other.

1969

I think it's fair to say that I've managed to influence my closest friends and family throughout my life. And in the same way, I introduced what I was into in this band, initially against the resistance of our drummer: psychedelic spheres. And the drummer then complied, although he now plays in an AC/DC cover band. Psychedelic not only because we were simply cool and trendy, but also in keeping with the use of various drugs at the time.

And to take the psychedelic vibe a step further, I took apart my Egmond, which unfortunately was good for nothing else, peeled off the faux leather cover, painted the plywood body with neon paint, and instead of the bridge, I put a curved, oval metal lid from a medicine bottle on top, and voilà, the guitar-sitar was complete. These were the very beginnings of my guitar tinkering, coupled with my first frustrations with the quality of cheap instruments.

I'll tell you more about my hashish dealing later, but anyway, we all smoked a lot of joints and, with our heads full of weed, came up with all kinds of hippie-esque compositions and arrangements. Yes!

Military passport

It's worth mentioning that I had more time for all these things back then than others did. That's because I creatively cheated my way out of military service. Yes, at 19, I received my draft notice for a military fitness examination. I was already relatively nearsighted at the time, about minus 4.5 diopters.

I hopefully learned that you wouldn't be drafted if you had minus 6 diopters or more. The father of a neighbor friend was an optician, and he happened to have a pair of thick glasses with over minus 6 diopters in for repair. He kindly lent them to me for a short time. So I quickly took the required passport photo, ‘Dieter with thick glasses,’ and off I went to the examination. My moped license already officially stated: ‘The holder may only drive with glasses’ and something else about ‘astigmatism.’ Anyway, I was nearsighted, and I still am today. I showed my license to the medical examiner, who measured my glasses, and boom: “Replacement reserve II. Thank you!” I was out, no military service, two precious years saved! Simple as that!

I built the cabinets for our PA system on my parents' balcony with a jigsaw, drill and circular saw, etc.  Watts were expensive, just like memory in computers a few years ago.  At the time we tried to achieve more efficiency just by the construction of the loudspeaker cabinets. Today, a power amplifier with an output of 800 watts RMS costs only a fraction of what it used to. Power amplifiers with 800 watts were practically non-existent, just as there were no high efficiency loudspeakers, neodymium magnets or any other kind of newer technology.  Just like today with computers: hard disks are disappearing from the market and these RAM memories with 500 gigabits of storage space on chips are taking their place! Our first "apcom" branded computer had 16kb of memory with 64kb of expansion. You couldn't even send a photo with it back then!