Nina Hagen Shrine

Interview by Michael Hesseman
Date Unknown
Translated from German by Michael Epstein

What kind of things do we expect to hear from a flamboyant rock-n-roll personality? We expect them to say the first thing that comes to their mind that will shock us. Nina Hagen, German rock-superstar, is no exception, except that when she talks, there is no denying her deep sincerity – the passionate manner in which she speaks of her inward journeys and personal spiritual revelations. Nina Hagen has found God, or God has found her (it's impossible to tell). Her seemingly outrageous approach to her spirituality is really just the language of her idiom, Rock-n-roll.

Hagen's music is compelling because of it's youthful intensity, but it is her lyrics and her remarkable voice that have the power to convert.

True, many of her fans like her for other reasons, her overt sexuality for one. But it is her vision a new age where humanity is reunited with God on this earth, that is the heart of her music. Change is the central theme of her songs, her life. Hagen's influence on her admirers is undeniable, and many young fans have turned to esoteric studies because of her music. I mean, really, what other Rock-n-Roll star is a follower of Babaji?

Her first book, a sensual and transcendental autobiography, I am a Berliner, describes her intense search for God. But it is also a passionate affirmation for life on this planet and for a new spiritual age.

Nina Hagen is a spiritual revolutionary, a worker of light. Moreover, she is a person who lives her inner ecstasy.

Nina Hagen: My First UFO in Malibu

Night. Awoke, went to the window, it was just hanging in the air. I can't describe the energy of this "light machine", for there is nothing comparable on is earth. The lights from this flying floating machine – round underneath- were focused on me with an indescribable strength. This wonderful object shined with an intensity that is difficult to translate into words. All the colors of the rainbow were shining on me, one after another. The dimensions of the strength of the colors I could only describe as fluorescent. I couldn't even move, and all my thoughts were turned off. What happened next, I would say it was my second initiation. It was like a movie; information was given to me that, together with my first initiation, united into a great whole.

I know now that there are intelligent good natured people from other worlds and other dimensions, who dive into our physical reality. All these positive powers are the possessors of the "One Light" that keeps the entire cosmic creation alive. Their spaceships reduce their speed and enter the physical spheres. They and their occupants come partly from other planets, galaxies and solar systems. They vary in forms and appearance, as they all go through different stages of evolution and come to us from different worlds. The planet EARTH is stuck in it's evolutionary development, and "evil" forces have turned it into a dark, threatened planet. Self-destructive, material-minded negative forces are blocking our progress through international isolationist ways of thinking, working and living.

Last night I had a really great dream: Suddenly I saw beautiful UFOs whirring about in the heavens. They looked so great, like a swimming pool penthouse with windows on the roof. Naturally, I looked to see if they beamed the right colors, those that distinguish genuine good, namely pink, green, lilac and blue.

And suddenly sitting there was this guy named Markus Herold. It's been more than a year, and he still hasn't returned my videotapes from May 1987 at Tempodrom (a Berlin discotheque) – and from my spiritual wedding on Ibiza. I said to this guy (in my dream): "Hey, look! There are UFOs!" And he replied: "No, I don't want to be picked up!"

"Don't you need to be picked up?"

"No, I don't want to see anything; I don't trust myself."

And then I didn't worry about him any more because these UFOs did such wonderful things – leaving behind patterns and signs in the air, always new ships appearing, flying here and there. Finally, there remained in the sky a very artistic colorful "Eight". The colors were pink, green, lilac and blue: a confirmation. Those are the colors of the UFOs participating in the great project of evacuating the world, the greatest rescue operation of all times. On this Day, the electricity will be so great that the vibration of all human beings will be turned into it. Then, when the vibrations of the people are too deep, they will – with a great electric shock – lose their physical bodies. Also, their fear will literally kill them. All those who show a total trust in God will survive this painful moment. A body of light will arise.

Nina, how did you arrive on the spiritual path? What were the decisive events and experiences?

Nina Hagen: I was visiting Rhea Powers and she brought me back to my place of origin, before I ever arrived on the earth. Thus started my spiritual journey – from the beginning. Actually, we are all spiritual beings, (clears her throat) "heavenly spheres", as we often, in our nice earthly manner, express it – and then we come down here to earth. The descent was rather painful. I remember everything from this session. I was in the blue realm – with God everything was blue. On saying goodbye, I was bawling terribly, I didn't want to leave, I knew I must, I knew I must, I knew I must…

It hurt so much. It's so terrible to take on physical reality. And God then said, "Keep in contact, keep in contact, pray, pray, keep in contact, don't forget me." Then, when we come here to earth, we forget where we came from. But it doesn't have to be like that; we can remain in contact. And then the Heavenly Queen came with a giant bouquet of pink roses – my farewell bouquet – and said I should always bathe with pink roses – that I should visualize that and tell everyone to bathe with pink roses, because pink roses are the roses of love, and whosoever bathes in them can change the world, can start a creative revolution and inspire people to find Ecstasy.

Chris Griscom has written "Ecstasy is the New Frequency". You write in your book that you have reached this frequency. How can others find ecstasy?

NH: I would say they should seek God. Jesus said, "He who seeks shall find." I totally agree. He who seeks from the heart – the words and religious group one is involved with doesn't matter – will find God and experience Ecstasy. But what I say is not all so important, because my singing is much more revealing.

He who seeks God – God and his wife, Ecstasy – should study the Babaji books. Then we can talk further. I wish that people would want to know more about Babaji. He was on this earth from 1971 to 1984.

Like Mother Mary, he speaks of a "great revolution" of the days when we shall all be tested – when this Age has come to an end. All we can do is prepare ourselves for that day. Well, I want to return to God. I don't want to lose my soul – either through an atomic disintegration, or an inner evil, or whatever. That's why I want to tell as many people as possible that these days are coming soon. All those who have ever taken LSD will receive it as communion on this day. It will rain down from heaven – a heavenly drug. Jesus spoke of these days, that many people would rather be dead than go through this trial, because it will be so painful for so many that hopefully they will be purified thought the pain. Then will come the selection – as crazy as that may sound. I don't know what God does with people's souls, but probably they will have to incarnate as worms – as atomic worms. They will have to be worms living in their nuclear reactors. I know that nowadays most people hav
e no interest in the study of the beyond and laugh when they are told about it. They are only interested in the here and now, in materialism and money, earning and consuming. Street bums tell of what Franz Josef (Franz Josef Strauss – recently deceased governor of Bavaria) meant to us and all the things he did for us. But none of his old friends thinks about what he is now, where he is now, and what is happening to him right now.

Now your people from above are often flying around in the form of UFOs.

NH: Unfortunately not often enough, but it's still OK. Often in my dreams I have seen the evil (negative UFOs), and I know that in such cases we often close the window and are not interested any further. The good beings have already come to me – in 1981 – and they were really too good. The experience left me incredibly ecstatic – a total feeling of happiness. When I read reports of others who afterwards experienced problems – equilibrium disturbances, headaches and so forth… I can sympathize, but for me it was totally different. I was pregnant with Cosma (Nina's daughter), and I was completely beneath the rays, with an open mouth and no thoughts. It was great!

That was in Malibu, California?

NH: Yes. Wonderfully strong colors, very much like bubblegum. Do you know that advertisement for bubblegum? Such colors!

Then is Cosma a star child?

NH: Yes, I was in my fourth month, and that is the time when the embryo starts moving around. I don't know if that's where Cosma comes from – if it's some other place. The important thing is that God knows, and nothing else matters. Therefore it's not so bad that I don't remember exactly who I was, when and in what epochs.

To spread your message you've started a new party – the Harmonic Radical Party.

NH: Yes, the name that's in my book, HRP. It's changed a little. It exists also in English, because it's a world party. It's now called RHF – Radical Harmonic Feminists. Shit, in English it should really be called RFH – Radical Female Harmonists. That's my party. Put me on the list. If you want a new guy on the top vote me, East German mother of punk, funk, hipp-hopp
no more mistakes , no more fakes.
My politics are sweeter than a million cakes
countdown, ten to zero
Nina for President, vote your hero
What I think you should now register
Miss Chris Griscom is the love minister
I feel tough, now you know enough
enough to vote the chinese goat
the american puma
I am a Pisces, it's no rumour
Rhea Powers and Sun Bear
will be the ambassadors the universal love affair
yes and yap yap yap
Countdown, ten to zero
Nina for President, vote your hero!
That's my new party. Now the female element returns. There is again a balance in the feminine-masculine chaos.

Creem, 3/81
Interview by Toby Goldstein

Nina Hagen sat in her brightly lit dressing room at the Ritz, wrapped in a floor-length black cloak, unsmiling as her silver green hair was coaxed into Medusa-like coils of dreadlocks.  Various bright bits of tatty clothes and toys were scattered around the room, and Nina held a raygun in her hand, pointing it at the intruders and dispassionately firing.  Tomorrow would be a much better time to engage in conversation with the frenzied fraulein, suggested management, and we withdrew to the sound of the toygun’s rat-a tat.

That night, the show was what counted.  The Ritz ballroom was crammed to its 1500 + capacity, no big deal on any weekend or for a big name band, but for Hagen, and on a Wednesday night?  Except for a little-known date at the Mudd Club in summer, Nina Hagen had never performed in New York, and was not on a national tour.  Except for two import-only albums, her recordings available to U.S.  buyers amounted to one four-track EP, The Nina Hagen Band.  And the radio hadn’t exactly flipped over her Germanic interpretations of “Lucky Number” or “White Punks On Dope,” alternately trilled, aria-fashion, and then foghorn-blown in basso, punctuated by enough vocal twitching to make Lene Lovich seem like a crooner.  Whether out of admiration or curiosity for a freak show, there was a sellout in this joint, completely through word of mouth.

Hagen entered the stage to a rock-reggae beat, wrapped in her black cape, arms aloft and hair pulled into a crown like the Statue ol Liberty, intoning, “1968 is over, 1981 is here, FUTURE lS NOW!” She hop-stepped across the proscenium, wriggled her body, sent her hair flying.  The outer covering was removed to reveal Hagen in a turquoise leotard and black leggings, a nurse’s apron cutely placed over her tum, and in the rear, she sported some kind of tall.  No, not exactly a tail, wu observed, craned over the balcony rail: it was a foot-long black dildo, attached by an intricate looping of belts and hooks.  Short motorcycle boots completed the portrait of delicacy.

Her hour-long performance was equally filled with the unexpected.  Those who had come to gape got their fill of sideshow antics, staring at Hagen’s riotous makeup and outrageous costume.  They roared a her unique interpretation of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust” and, appropriately, her version of that new declaration of independence, “My Way.” But for anyone who was wondering if Nina Hagen had any true talent to equal her attention grabbing inclinations, the set was a gratifying, if unsettling experience.

Hagen may vamp and flutter around conventional vocalizing strictly for effect, but her range extended over several octaves.  She has built a reputation throughout Europe as a punk superstar, yet as evidenced by her performance of a dramatic aria called “Naturtraene,” can sing opera with might and dignity.  Waves of both young men, dressed in that day’s lower East Side thrift-shop acquisitions, and gay women, many wearing T-shirts advertising their preference, swarmed around the stage, in obvious awe of Hagen, a powerful, unrelenting woman.

On the following afternoon, as she made ready to depart for one last Los Angeles gig before taking a badly needed vacation, Nina Hagen slumped in an armchair, pooped.  She’d been on the road across Europe for three months without a break, and would holiday in the Caribbean, where she will then record her first album for the US.  She spoke in little-girl whispers, the exact opposite of her booming stage delivery.  When asked her thoughts about various topics, she moaned, “l don’t think.” I rephrased the questions.

Lene Lovich, no slouch in costumery herself, was the first person to tell me about Nina Hagen.  Lovich had just completed filming Cha Cha with Hagen and Dutch junk-rocker Herman Brood, at that time Nina’s presumed spouse.  Lene liked Nina, she said, but wondered why Hagen felt the need to distort her appearance so greatly.  She was actually a beautiful girl.  Lovich’s judgment was correct.  Minus makeup, her hair relatively settled, wearing a furry pink pullover and her black leggings, Hagen looked rosy enough to pass as a freaky farmgirl.  Her smile was Madonna-like, her body, a robust change from the whippet-thin women who define the “chick singer” stereotype .

However, there was more creating Nina’s Mona Lisa expression than mere relief at completing the tour.  Nina, whose boyfriend, Ferdinand Karmelk, is the lead guitarist in her band, was pregnant.  ”We wondered why she kept throwing up in the morning,” confided her management rep.  She didn’t mention Ferdie at all in our conversation, but frequently referred to “little Nina,” who she plans to raise communally and take on the road.  I was expecting anything except an afternoon of girl talk.

“I think my child will be much better than me because it don’t have to learn the sick situations I had when I was young, in school and stuff.  I gonna tell my child everything,” said Nina in almost fluent English, taking occasional pauses to ponder a tricky translation.  “Tell her what’s wrong and what’s right, so he or she will know already.  My mother didn’t know.  She was very confused, too.”

Katherina Hagen was born 25 years ago in East Berlin, to an actress and a writer.  When she was two, her parents were divorced, and her mother became involved with radical leader Wolf Biermann.  Her adaptation to school and its attendant youth organizations was traumatic, and by age 17, she already had begun performing, first with blues groups, then as a rock ‘n’ roller.  At 21, when Biermann was expatriated to the West, Hagen secured her own exit by stating she was the politico’s daughter and threatening to continue his crusades if she wasn’t let go.

Having no great love for West Germany either, “they are so hard-hearted,” she says, Hagen preferred to live in transition frequently visiting London to spend time with her friends Arianna (Ari Up) and the Slits, with whom she sometimes performed.  But Nina’s German releases, Unbehagen (“Ill at Ease”) and The Nina Hagen Band, combined with her unbound nature, made her a hero among German youth.  “When I was in Austria I felt this fascistic thing in everybody,” she says, as explanation for her following, omitting mention of a television appearance on a young people’s program in which she answered the question, “What’s wrong with the young generation” by mock-masturbating on camera.

Hagen’s name was dropped on America’s doorstep by Herman Brood, during his unsuccessful US fame-seeking expedition.  Nina and Herman were touted as central-Europe’s dream couple, only slightly less destructive than Sid and Nancy.  Nina carefully reads CREEM’s Rock A Rama reviews of her EP and Brood’s second oeuvre, gleefully noting the writer’s comments that her recording was the ballsier of the two.

That was the shortest relationship in my life,” she sniffed.  “No, I learned a lot about heavy drugs when I met Herman Brood; I learned that you don&#39
;t have to touch it.  I thought, what is he sniffing all the time, this brown stuff.  And people who take it, they are so stupid and in bad moods all the time and sick all the time, have headaches all the time.” Hagen is said to have helped get Karmelk off junk, and has written a song, which she uses to end her set, called “Smart Jack,” “about a junkie who’s running against the devil’s clock.” It didn’t seem to bother her that just plain folks, in shock over her appearance and behavior, might assume her euphoria was artificially induced.

“When they see our films, they gonna know what we believe,” she said, referring to a work-in-progress documenting the Hagen tribal approach to living.  It will be continued on the island of her dreams, where she will go to find peace.  “Where we can cut our film in peace and in pieces, ” she giggles.

“I think there are not many like me.  There are just a few.  People who want to go home again.”

Is she political?

“No, l’m a religious person.”

In what way?

“In a wonderful way,” she answered, resembling an icon.  “I think about finding home to God every day, nearly every minute.  I come back to it thinking and meditating about it, again and again, that this is what makes me strong and happy, really.

“Happiness-you can’t reach it in this life because humans, they have an illness, and this is the materialistic illness.  They don’t accept that the antimaterialistic universe is bigger and forever.  They’ve lost their beliefs.  Because many people believe in God, but they don’t try to find it, really.  And this is what I try.  I try to find a way out forever.  This is much fun.  You feel God in every little animal, and you can see how poor the beings are who don’t believe and who don’t know God.  That is so important, you know.

“We must learn to see money as paper.  Because what can you buy with money- materialistic things?  I don’t care about money.  It’s shit.  I don’t need money to take care of my kid.  I did it without, and I’m rich somewhere else.”

Every day brings added proof that the 60’s are over, and the name of the game is survival.  But with her haphazard life and choice of action over agita, Nina Hagen seems to be one painted reminder of the chrome-coated beauty that we thought we’d buried with the peace and love philosophy.  She acts like that old Kristofferson refrain, “freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose,” and somehow it doesn’t seem corny or dated when I’m told she had spent another interview casting the l-Ching for the writer.  “I stop performing now, too,” said Nina Hagen, throwing the hotel windows open to breathe deeply of New York’s brisk autumn air.  In a good little girl voice she plans, “I go to the island and start looking for mussels and cooking nice food and writing nice film scripts and doing many, many nice things.” I thought of her, big bellied by late winter, sunning herself away from smoke-filled rooms and artificial ingredients.  Nice work if you can get it.

Beef Magazine – 198(?)
By Hubertus Ceder in West Berlin
Submitted
to the Shrine by Hagenpaws

Nina:  I was born in East Berlin and just moved two years ago into West Berlin.  I remember Nina singing when she was still in the East, she would give flames of hope to many young people.  Nina is an exceptional contemporary figure.  Her music, her performances, her life are a synthesis of humor, love and faith.

Beef:  What is your relationship to the arts?

Nina:  Art is the juice of life.  Without Art we would be poor and bored.  True Art knows no competition among the artists, as we are all very different and unique personalities.  Everybody possesses super power within, it does not matter how you name it, God, life energy or cosmic awareness.  Art has to be positive.

Beef:  How do you get in touch with your inner power?

Nina:  I switch off my brain, I become just a vehicle.  I have faith, and with faith nothing is impossible.  I am applying that completely to my life.  It is great fun.  I am in ecstasy because I love life.

Beef:  You are shocking some people, because you are talking so much about God?

Nina:  Yes, but those are people who do not know what art is.  They think that art is to be shocking, but I believe that art is to be happy.  In my shows people might be shocked but they also have fun.

Beef:  Do you have any insights for the future of humanity?

Nina:  I talk about it in the song 'Russian Reggae.'  It is a prophecy given by the holy spirit.  There will be a big shift, maybe some military government will press a button and so we will be evacuated with UFO's into a new world.  It will be Heaven on Earth until the souls who never had faith finally understand that you have to aim for the positive.

Beef:  Will everyone be evacuated?

Nina:  No, not the bad ones.

Beef:  Who is bad and who is not?

Nina:  I have no opinion, I am merely the megaphone of the Holy Spirit, and I am art, and art has not opinion, art is art.

Beef:  Can one say that God and love are the same?

Nina:  You can ask him that yourself.  He will answer every question.  All you have to do is believe in it.  The answer is in your own tik tak, in your own intergalactic memory bank, and when the answer comes, you will melt down on the ground with happiness.  I also find it fantastic that one can get news and information in one's dreams that one can really apply afterwards.  About 2 years ago, I dreamt about numbers, but they did not have anything to do with gambling but with different experiences in different years of my life.  The dream situation is very good, it has something to do with the situation you are in the moment.  If you are in need of a plane, because you need to go somewhere, you'll surely try to find a passport and tickets in your dream.  But if you believe that you can always make contact without a telephone, then it can happen, that you can fly yourself in your dream.

Beef:  Is there such a thing as an earthly Nina, one that goes shopping in the supermarket?

Nina:  Oh, yes, I have a lot of fun, life is so much fun, because one can play so many jokes in the streets, because most people who go out don't think much, but when I go out I am always prepared to meet interesting people.

Beef:  Is there such a thing as conventionality for you?

Nina:  Boredom, yes, isn't that something dreadfully conventional?  Luckily there is the telephone, and I can bother my best girlfriend.  And, of course my library.  I have accumulated a superb collection of books over the years.  In L.A.  I have met people who are known as mediums, and who for some reason or other are capable of receiving spirits.  Either through trance or automatic writing.  And those spirits also make themselves known through the voice of those people, like that:  'Good evening, Seth is talking.  I am a spirit from a higher dimension.  I have lived seventeen lives, but I want to give you courage tonight, courage to keep on going.  Have courage, and when you go out on the streets, just say, hello, I love you, instead of passing each other in such a lethargic way.'That can happen.

Beef:  Maybe you should get into politics and do something to change the governments?

Nina:  How could you do that?  How do you want to push down any government?  If you rebel the army shoots you, you have to be positive if you want to be convincing.  When you close yourself down, certain frequencies have no chance of reaching you.  You can also push this too far, it is why some people don't believe in angels.  I can go out of my body and fly to the astral plane at any time.

Beef:  What do you do when you are not meditating or playing music?

Nina:  I telepathize.  .  .I create visions.  I visualize what I want, every day.

Beef:  Why do you think there is so much untruth and corruption even among those that call themselves spiritual?

Nina:  Well like with the Catholic Church, they have thrown away their God into a zoo! So now people feel confused.  But the ones who have ears can hear.  Most people have put Heaven and God up above into the sky.  But Heaven is here, if you wish to.  Love.  Give love!

Beef:  What is freedom for you?

Nina:  I don't know anything about freedom.  I only know about art and music.

Beef:  Who is Nina Hagen?

Nina:  Do not attempt to give any definition.  It would be easier to catch a fish with soapy hands.

POP/Rocky
Exact issue date unknown
Interview by Desiree
Submitted to the Shrine by Tracy Sirotti

Bevor Nina hagen Ende August in Deutschland eintraf, um bei uns Fernsehauftritte, Konzerte und Interviews zu geben, traf POP/Rocky-Amerika-Korrespondentin Desiree Nosbuch die verrueckte Saengerin in Los Angeles, wo Nina seit laengerem lebt. Weshalb sie immer mit UFOs auf Tournee ist, wie sie es mit dem Sex haelt und warum Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl bei ihr der “Sauerkohl” ist, erzaehlt Euch Nina in diesem beknackten Interview!

Meine Freundin NINA HAGEN!
Ich darf das so sagen, weil ich NINA seit einigen Jahren kenne. Ich bin ihr Fan und bewundere sie sehr.

“Die erde ist hohl!” Mit dieser neusten Erkenntnis begruesst sie mich hier in Los Angeles. “Ehrlich, ich lese gerade ein Buch darueber. Die Erde ist am Nord- und Suedpol eingedellt, da geht es rein. Innen leben unerforscht Voelker.” Ich weiss, warum ich NINA liebe. Immer, wenn wir zusammen sind, erzaehlen wir uns oft und lange von Gott und der Welt. Dabei kommt es gar nicht darauf an, ob alles so stimmt. Wichtig ist eigentlich immer, wie sehr die Phantasie angeregt wird.

Nein, der Erfolg war nicht nahtlos auf ihrer Seite. Sie hat Tiefs durchgemacht. Die Fans wandten sich von ihr ab. NINA machte vieles anders, als die Fans es wollten. Aber sie ist eisern gebleiben. Sie ist bis heute keinen Millimeter von ihrer Linie abgewichen. Sie ist sich und ihrer Sache treu geblieben. Wenn ich sie heute treffe, strahlt sie mit ihrer Tochter Cosma und ihrem Freund Froehlichkeit und Ausgeglichenheit aus. Und ich bin sicher: NINA kommt wieder!

Ich sah hier in Los Angeles ihre neueu Show mit den Songs aus ihrer neusten LP “ANGSTLOS”. Heiss. Sehr heiss! Ich muesste mich arg Taeuschen, wenn das nicht auch bei Euch in Europa wieder richtig erfolgreich sein sollte. Ihre guten Texte, die Musik, ihre Frisuren, die neue band – NINA ist in Hoechstform! Sie hat im letzten Jahr nach der Geburt von Cosma einige Kilos abgenommen. “Ich mache das mit dem Kopf. Wo ein Wille, da ein Weg!” sagt sie stolz und selbstbewusst. Sie sieht super aus. Sie freut sich auch und brennt darauf, es Euch in Europa zu zeigen!

Die amerikanische Supergruppe TOTO bekam hier in Los Angeles vor kurzem in einer besonderen Feierstunde unzaehlige Platin-Auszeichnungen ueberreicht. Auf dieser Party sprach alle Welt von NINA HAGEN, dass sie rausgefahren sei in ein winziges, unscheinbares Dorf namens Viktorville, um viele Meilen und Stunden weit weg von Los Angeles hautnah dabeizusein, wenn dort einige UFOs landed suerden. Als ich sie nach diesem Erlebnis frage, sagt sie mir mit Bestimmtheit: “Viele sagen, das ist Quatsch, es gibt keine UFOs. Aber ich weiss es besser. Und eines Tages werde ich imstande sein, es aus Film zu beweisen.”

“Kann man UFOs ueberhaupt filmen?”

“Klar!”

“Womit erklaerst du, dass so viele Menschen gerne ein UFO sehen wuerden und nie eins vor Augen bekommen, die wenigen Leute aber, die daran galuben, andauerend welche sehen?”

“Man kann das eben nicht erklaeren. Auf einmal sind die fuer einen da. Als ich Ende 1980 mein erstes UFO gesehen habe, war es ploetzlich da. Diejenigen, die noch keins gesehen haben, muessen eben abwarten und daran arbeiten und versuchen, spirituell mit ihnen Kontakt aufzunehmen.”

“Und wie moegen die Wesen der UFOs deine LP ‘ANGSTLOS’?”

“Sie finden sie ganz toll. Sie haben meine LP auch sehr beeinflusst.’

“Wie redest du mit den Menschen aus dem Weltall?”

“Ganz einfach, mit dem was du hier auf meinem Hals siehst: mit meinem dicken Kopf. Ich mache 24 Stunden lang am Tag Kunst. Ich habe keine Wuensche, denn ich habe alles. Ich bin gluecklich. Mein Zuhause ist da, wo mein Herz ist, und mein Herz is ueberall.”

“Du hast mal gesagt: Mit 17 war ich schon mal tot!”

“Ja, Mit 17 bin ich gestorben. Am anderen Morgen bin ich aufgewacht, und ein neues Leben begann. Ich wusste auf einmal viel mehr.”

“Gehen die UFOs mit dir auf Tournee?”

“Ja. Sie sind immer bei mir. Ich bin einer von ihnen. Ich bin swar hier auf diese Welt gekommen. Doch irgendeiner meiner Urahnen hatte Sex mit einem von der Aussenwelt.”

“Findest du, dass du sexy bist?”

“Natuerlich! Man koennte es auch geil nennen.”

“Was tust du gengen deine Geilheit?”

“Ich bumse. – Oder wolltest du wissen, was ich dagegen tue?”

“Wie stehst du zur Politik?”

“Politiker bewundern mich sehr. Sie verlieben sich sogar teilweise in mich.”

“Wer? Bundeskanzler Helmut Kohl?”

“Ja. In seinem Herzen denkt er: Die ist sehr attraktiv.”

“Hast du ihn schon mal getroffen?”

“Nein. Aber in einem meiner Lieder kommt er als ‘Sauerkohl’ vor.”

“Wieso?”

“Weil er altdeutsches Gut ist. Und altdeutsches Gut ist sauer!”

…Ausschnitte aus underen Gespraechen. Ich freue mich immer auf NINA, weil wir viel lachen und uns unendlich viel zu erzaehlen haben. Schade, dass sie erst mal hier verschwindet und nach Deutschland fliegt. Aber seht sie Euch nur an und hoert ihr aufmerksam zu: NEW YORK – NEW YORK, WAS ES IST, FRUEHLING IN PARIS, LORELEI, ZARAH, ES WIRD EINMAL EIN WUNDER GESCHEHN… Ich kenne ihre Lieder inzwischen auswendig.

Bay Area Reporter, 1984
By Jerry De Gracia
Submitted to the Shrine by Hagenpaws

Judging from the fashion parade at Nina Hagen’s sold out Kabuki performance last Saturday night, her fans enjoy emulating the singer’s bizarre style of dress as much as they enjoy listening to her music. The punked out crowd ran the gamut from blue and white face paint to a bearded South of Market number clad in full black leather with a green plastic chainsaw tied to his waist. This absurd imagery is just what Nina Hagen herself projects in performance.

But at a press conference before the show, the outspoken East German revealed another side of herself. She left most of the press wondering if she was using the intimate gathering as a platform for a little Theater of the Absurd or if she really was the subdued and straight-laced woman she claimed to be.

It is no surprise that she has gained her strong cult. Her band plays hard and tight rock and her dynamic voice offers the most unique female vocalizing on the scene.

The quality that has garnered her such a following, though, may be the exact reason she has yet to hit the Top Forty airwaves. She twists and turns her scatalogical lyrics almost to a point beyond recognition by making sounds that border on “inhuman.” Her voice is best described in her press release, which calls it “a wavering blast of operatic precision, punctuated by guttural growls, roller-coaster whoops, and multi-lingual profundities.” The mass audience seems unwilling to accept anything so wildly different though.

After her sold-out Old Waldorf shows earlier this year, the Kabuki gig was billed as her triumphant return to San Francisco. A friend asked how she sounded live since her recorded vocals were so obviously electronically treated. Although she uses a voice machine for echoes much of her operatic warbling and child-like outburst are produced without gimmickry, and simply demonstrate her amazing vocal control.

This explains how she broke into pop music to begin with. She realized she was destined to sing when at nine years old she was able to amuse her friends in East Berlin by imitating opera singers and pop singers alike including the crystal clear sounds of Joan Baez. She described herself, at the age of 12, as a hippie who listened to the Beatles and Spooky Tooth and dreamed of traveling around the world. She attained this ambition at the age of 21 when she renounced her East German citizenship and moved to West Berlin in 1976.

Before leaving the Eastern bloc she recorded with a group called Automobile which achieved notoriety in their home country with a four-song EP. Her first two solo albums, recorded in 1978 and 1979, were best sellers in Europe and Japan and led to her American recording deal with Columbia Records.

A subsequent performing tour was cut short when she found she was pregnant, so Nina moved on to Los Angeles, where she prepared for the birth by doing yoga exercises and watching for UFO’s from a Malibu Beach house. Cosma Shiva Hagen was born on May 17, 1981.

While that press release scenario does not contradict her music or her image, it was at this point in the conversation (discussions about her daughter) that the German milkmaid began to show through the “outre” facade. Although I cannot speak from experience, maternity must inspire a woman to reevaluate many aspects of her life and it has obviously had a dramatic impact on the real Nina Hagen. She not only spoke lovingly of her daughter but also of her “fellowman.” When asked if she had any brothers and sisters she replied “everyone in the world is my brother and sister.” She even had kind words for President Reagan of whom she said “it is his karma that he is a politician.” As she discussed astrology, including an American Indian version which her mother had told her about, it slowly dawned on me that I was talking to a child of the sixties in punk drag.

While the evolution of contemporary music and philosophy can be easily traced by anyone old enough to remember the last three decades, it was interesting to learn that one of the current icons of post-punk music did not necessarily adhere to the punk and post-punk ideology of nihilism. But I never had a baby.

She said she is close to her mother, an actress who lives in Hamburg, and noted that when the German press criticizes rock singer Nina Hagen, her mother writes letters to the paper in her defense.

Nina Hagen no longer sports brightly colored hair. She credits this change of style to a spiritual cleansing she felt a need for after the birth of daughter Cosma.

Interviewing the striking blonde was not unlike talking to Chris Williamson. They are both down-to-Earth and strongly opinionated. The difference is that Williamson explains her beliefs in accurate detail whereas Nina Hagen gives short, nondescript and vague answers and leaves the press guessing.

Although Ms. Hagen speaks excellent English her command of the language is not flawless and she misunderstood some of the questions asked by the press. But neither she nor the press pursued the miscommunications. She has a tendency to use “like” and “love” abusively so to reverse the trend of conversation I asked her if there was anything she hated. She said “no” with a deadpan glance.

Her exile from East Germany has been romanticized by the press, but her departure from East Berlin, which she described as a “party” city just like San Francisco, was a mutual agreement between her and the bureaucracy.

“East Germany is no better or worse than any other country, including the U.S. they are all bureaucratic.” she said, adding that it was her desire to be a “free bird in this life” which prompted her to leave and continues to motivate her as she travels all over the world.

Unfortunately, many questions were simply answered “yes” or “no” without explanation which led to long, difficult moments of silence for the press. Nina Hagen used these periods of silence to pose for flashing cameras.

It became obvious she was very adept at dealing with the press which led me back to my original thought “is she in drag or just incognito?” Will the real Nina Hagen please stand up?

Note: This article contained a picture of Nina in black leather ‘Gestapo’ drag with the caption, “she’s been through this butch phase and several freak-out phases too. Now Nina Hagen is playing Hausfrau”

If someone can explain to me how to post pics on this site I will scan the article photos and post them too.

Peace,
– David

Circa 1985
Typed by Geoffrey Faustman @ Planet Bearth

 

*DL: ……This is her latest album right here [Holds up copy of "Ekstasy"] Nina Hagen in Ekstasy, Nina Hagen…

[Nina enters from stage left]

NH: Hi!

DL: Have a seat. Good Lord! [referring to audience's frenzy over Nina's appearance.] Now, I said you had pink hair and you had pink hair on the album. Obviously you are not wearing pink hair tonight. [Nina's hair is long and black, pulled back in an "I Dream of Jeannie" style ponytail.]

NH: No, I just came from Greece and from Spain and I wanted to uh, wanted to look more Greek and more Spanish because we just shot a video down there for "Spirit in the Sky", the old-hippie Norman Greenbaum hit from the sixties.

DL: Yeah, uh huh, so you changed your hair for that purpose?

NH: Uh huh, I always change…[cut off by DL]

DL: Now is it…do you mind if I touch it, the hair part?

NH: [Shakes head no] Uhn't uh..

DL: [touches hair] This is not yours is it?

NH: It's um, no.

DL: How much that we see is actually your hair?

NH: Well, I have like such a tail myself. [holds hands about a foot apart]

DL: Now, will you be turning it back to pink soon?

NH: Maybe.

DL: Uh, huh. And would that cause that, is it a conscious decision? Do you wake up one day and say, lets go pink or how does…

NH: See, I was traveling on our tour bus through Europe and I was thinking I want to have long blonde hair.  And my stylist and the woman who changes my costumes while I have my show on stage….

DL: What's her name?

NH: Tricia.

DL: Tricia.

NH: She's a Hair Stylist and she can do extensions which is very in, in London.

DL: Now what does that mean, "extensions"?

NH: Extensions is you suddenly have long hair when you have short hair [audience laughs] and you can sleep with it and you have it forever [audience laughs] as long as you want to.

DL: O.K., now back up here a second. Tricia could take my hair just as it is and–

NH: [interrupts brilliantly, then very innocently but matter-of-factly says] Make you look like Boy George…

[audience rolls with laughter which DL ignores]

DL: [stumbles over own words, kinda dumbfounded by Nina's and audience's response] No, no, but she, she can make short hair long?

NH: Yes she can.

DL: And in a short period of time or does it take like a couple of weeks?

NH: No it takes like half an hour.

DL: How do you do that?

NH: You iron them on with some glue and with some hot, ah, fire.  [audience laughs] She puts fire on your hair.

[DL cracks up]

DL: O.K., so then its perfectly safe?

NH: [nods]

DL: Enough about your hair. You look great, you're stunning, you make a real stunning appearance.

NH: I like your look myself, too.

DL: Now you're more than just a musician, you're a…..explain what kind of performer you are.  You're…

NH: Okay, it's beyond words of course.  [audience laughs]   You have to see my show to believe that I'm the only unique Nina Hagen on this planet.

DL: Uh, huh. Major, major star in Europe and as well here in the United states? Are you as….

NH: Oh, I have a following where ever , whenever I am on tour they come.  It is always sold out.

DL: You're touring the United states right now.

NH: Yeah, right now and I play on Saturday in New York.

DL: And tell the people who may not have seen one of your shows what kind of…

NH: I'm Opera Singer. I can sing Brecht/Weil.  I create my own lyrics. I have a great band. I have a drummer from East Berlin. I, me , myself, I'm also from East Berlin. I grew up in the Bertold Brecht/Kurt Weil tradition also in the old hippie tradition, when I was eleven I was a big fan of Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and they're still my heroes. I sing songs about UFOs God, love , sex, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven…. [audience laughs]

DL: But all this information is on the tickets when the folks pick them up, also.

NH: No.

DL: We have a bit of you…is this from a video or is it you in concert?

NH: That's both.

DL: Do you know where this is filmed?

NH: Yes, it was Rock in Rio, the biggest open air festival after Woodstock.

DL: Was is in Brazil?

NH: In Brazil!

DL: This is Nina Hagen performing here folks. Watch closely and we'll come back and chat a little more.

[shows live "Universal Radio" video]

DL: There yah go. Um, we're talking about you this afternoon, getting ready for your appearance, and it came up you have seen a UFO in Malibu.

NH: Yeah, that was fun!

DL: How long ago was this?

NH: That was when I was pregnant with Cosma who's four years old now.  That was in the middle of the night and it was great, I was mesmerized. I couldn't think anymore. It was a great feeling. It was hanging over me. It was the beach where Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan also have their houses. The beach that was overwhelmed by the Ocean last year. It was showing all kind of colors, a real Light show.

DL: How big was it?

NH: Ten Metres, big and round. And uh…..

DL: Glowing?

NH: Glowing and different colors: yellow, green, pink, turquoise. And every color made me feel different.

DL: Was it doing any hair extending?

NH: No.

DL: Ah, I'll tell yah what, we have to do a commercial.
 

Spin Magazine – February 1986
By Bart Bull
Submitted to the Shrine by Hagenpaws

 

In and out of the chakras with that kooky krautzer babe with the new-wave hooker wardrobe:

You only get one guess who Nina Hagen's favorite star is.  This is her loft (if the pot on the stove is any indication, we're all going to be having boiled potatoes a little later), and the walls are covered with souvenirs from the brilliant international career of someone truly special to Nina.  You know: posters and photos and paintings of the really special people, icons of inspirational heroes, pictures of lovers near the bed, photos of friends taped to the refrigerator next to the kid's current finger painting triumphs.  And here at Nina's place – her space – right in the heart of downtown Los Angeles's struggling but brave postindustrial art-loft district, the walls are plastered with posters and paintings and photos of Nina Hagen.  Here's a poster from a concert last summer in Germany – Nina as a pink-haired Jayne Mansfield in bazooming flashbulb ecstasy, from the cover of her latest album, Nina Hagen in Ekstasy.  Up by the stairway is one from another show a few years back – Nina as Batgirl, pointed ears and all.  Over there, an earlier shot, from the cover of her first American record – Nina in a black leather jacket with "Mein Kampf" stenciled over the pocket, a gilded coronet atop her head, and her lips painted into the elaborate, exaggerated cupid's-bow kissyface of a Hamburg whore.  Up there, near where she's sitting, the cover of her 1983 album Fearless is pinned – Nina hieroglyphing her limbs n dance-club semaphores, a gold tinsel Cleopatra wig, a black bra set strikingly against skin white and pasty enough to do the Pillsbury Doughboy proud, with a couple of graphic-arts arrows aimed at her image just so nobody misses the point.  The other side of the album shows her as an ectoplasmic TV vision – Botticelli's Venus with bad reception – being sucked up into a flying saucer.  But the biggest picture of Nina Hagen in the whole joint is a sis-by-six-foot painting modeled after the cover of her Nunsexmonkrock album.  It may be the single most restrained picture on any of her records, or on any of her walls.  It may be the most restrained Nina Hagen picture in existence.  No startled eyebrows akimbo, no Little Egypt eyeliner, no Catwoman cape 'n' cowl ensemble, no Mata Hari harem pants, no stiletto heels – just a humble woman in a Virgin Mary veil, her lips a little less bee-stung than usual, her look calm and placid, her baby Cosma Shiva in her arms.  Madonna (not that one) und child.  except that in the painting's version of the record cover, Cosma Shiva is no longer the sweetly bewildered babe in arms with a built-on halo.  Instead, the artist has transformed the swaddled infant into a maniacal Mad magazine cartoon baby with bulging eyeballs and dangerous, grinning teeth.  Halo's still there, though.  Nina doesn't want anyone shooting photos of Cosma Shiva – it's OK if they take pictures on Nina herself up there on the meditation pad, but she's – Wait! Hold it! We're all going outside, all of us, up to the roof.  All 25 or 30 of us, we're going to file through the kitchen, past the potatoes, up the stairs, and out onto the rooftop.  But she wants us all to be careful going out there, because we're each going to have to scrunch past the building's main electrical panel box to get out the door to the roof, and she'd hate to have any of her flock go heavenward with a crisp crackle and a slender puff of smoke, hapless insects gotchaed by a bug-zapper.  "There is the force, "she explains, queen bee addressing a small troop of dim but willing drones, "EEE-lek-TRRI-I-I-zity! Do not touch it! So don't die and be very concentrating when you are crossing the exit of that roof." She'll join us there once she's checked the potatoes.  In the meantime, some of us Eagles – that's what Nina and Zattar, her buddy with the Rambo Springsteen headband, call our little group: Eagles.  "We're all Eagles, " Zattar says.  "Highly evolved beings, and it's no accident that we're all here today." In the meantime, accident or no accident, quite a few of us Eagles are feeling more like, uh, Sheep..  It's a cold, gray late Sunday afternoon here on the lofty rooftops of downtown L.A., and not everybody brought a jacket.  Feeling sheepish is one thing and feeling cold is another, but feeling both cold and sheepish is – but wait, here's Nina! The potatoes are doing fine! Join hands, everybody! Everybody hold hands! Up here on the tar-bubbled rooftop in God's own gusty, gray, TV-antenna-ed sky! And just to get things rolling, Nina's going to kick this occasion off with a little Om-m-m-m-m-ing-join in! We're going to do it in repetitions of either three or seven, Nina doesn't care which! O-O-O-M-M-M-M-M-M-M-M!

"Now," she announces, "we are all going to tell the others what we pray for.  Zattar, will you begin first?" Beginning first, Zattar establishes the tone for the prayers that follow, and as a result, the new-wave hippies, new-age punks, and post-punk seekers assembled here in one big hand-holding circle all come off like reverent hopefuls in a Miss Universe pageant.  The wishes for world peace, universal brotherhood, and (true!) unity with the animals are more fervent than anybody's heard since the glory days of Bert Parks emceeing eh Miss America broadcast live from Atlantic City.  Oh, one wisenheimer prays that it won't get any colder out here on the roof, and a bearded guy with wild-looking eyes prays that all heaven and hell will open up before us here today, which probably yanks at lest a few hand-holders' memories back to "UFO," the last song on Nunsexmonkrock, the one where Nina summons the spaceships and then bursts suddenly into a gleeful, growling chant: "Earthquake in Los Angeles! Earthquake in Los Angeles!" Aside from that, it's positively inspirational up here on the rooftop with the video cameraman following the prayer chain around, truly uplifting to hear so much reverence and global goodwill and selfless anti materialism gathered together and flung forth in the face of so stiff a wind-chill factor.  And that's why it strikes such an odd and unsettling note when the prayer circle finally winds its way around to little Cosma Shiva Hagen, sweet-faced little 4-year-old Cosma Shiva, really a cute little thing, with a set of springy antennae tipped by glittery stars bouncing and waving merrily over her head.  "Cosma – it's your turn to pray," her mother reminds her when the little girl hesitates too long.  "You know how to pray." Cosma knows how to pray, and she knows what she wants to pray for as well.  "I pray for a house with a yard," she says, and her sweet little 4-year-old voice is surprisingly strong in the chilly rooftop wind, and more than a little pissed off.  "I pray for a house with a big yard," says Cosma Shiva, "so I can have a kitty and a puppy and a horsey."

Nina Hagen's tale is along the lines of a Teutonic Marching Tour of the Western World-she hasn't invaded Russia yet, but that doesn't mean it's not on the itinerary.  Born in East Berlin in 1955 to an actress and author, she left East Germany under some duress.  Enthusiastic literature from her record company-"Over the Wall and into your arms; Nina Hagen, from East Germany to you"-would urge you to believe she was expelled by the godless communist state for treason, rock'n'roll, and general subversive behavior.  The same biographical copy also claims that Nina Hagen records "are
not available where Truth is suppressed." Her East German difficulties began, purportedly, with a dishonorable discharge from her youth organization (like being bounced from you socialist Brownie scout troop, maybe), and under the influence of both the stirring times (the 60s began late behind the Iron Curtain) and her mother's new boyfriend (a noted folk singing dissident), she proceeded to enrage all authority with her wild, verboten music (which included at least two Janis Joplin numbers).  Finally she was booted over the Berlin Wall.  (You've got to figure that the publicists who chronicled Nina's colorful history most likely checked their facts only about as far back as whatever Nina had to say in the bio just before this one.  However much of all this is actually true is certainly a whole lot less interesting than how purely appropriate it is for a docudramatic made-for-TV-movie.  I say let's go with it, if only for the sake of an action-packed story.)

She lands in West Germany sometime n the pungent early days of punk and proceeds to miss the point entirely.  Well, not entirely entirely.  Punk filtered through every Anglo-European country and colony in a different way, after all, with peculiarly different effect.  And ever since occupation by Der Elvis (1945-60, approximately), what the Germanic hordes have gone for in a big way-punk or no punk-in their rockmusik is the sternest and stiffest beats, the loudest and crunchiest Nietzchean noises, the most Wagnerian donner-und-blitzen production, the clobberingest powerchords.  Witness those stage-stomping, stark-minimal Silver Beatles in Hamburg's Kaiserkeller; witness Munich's Eurodisco, most especially Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's proto-Devo "I Feel Love,' the 12-inch single that launched a thousand English haircut bands; witness Abba and Kraftwerk and Boney M and the funk-musik section of '99 Luftballoons'; witness 'Climb Every Mountain' from The Sound of Music by Nuremburg's Rodgers und Hammerstein.  Plainly, the groove that moves the master race's booty is the music you can swing your beer stein to.  In large groups.  In unison.

Thus it's not completely surprising that at a time when punk was still mildly annoying, and concerned consumers everywhere were crying out for stricter laws against guitar solos, Nina should leap the Berlin Wall (tunnel under it) (break the East German women's non-steroid-assisted pole vault record) (Steve McQueen her way over on a soaring '66 Triumph motorcycle, sailing past barbed wire and incredulous goose-stepping guards, land squarely on a CBS record contract, and screech to a stylish halt) and before you know it, she's a West German rock star, mit der punkrock hair und mit guitar solos both.

Weirdly enough, it worked-mainly through the force of Nina's unique combination of soap-operatic charisma and yodel-odel chutzpah.  Her first record was a remake of the dead-tired FM-radio staple 'White Punks on Dope'(hers was called 'TV-Glotzer') that managed to jump-start its heart just one more time.  After that, she knocked off a version of new-wave Phnom Lene Lovich's tick-tocking 'Lucky Number,'a tune that ought to have been impossible to out-gimmick.  Nina's take ('Wir Leben Immer Noch') sounded like she'd unscrewed the back of the song, lost a few of the parts, and then set about using the tock-ticking remains for what certain ads in the back pages of magazines might call a personal pleasure item.

Career creation accomplished, commerciality demonstrated, cover tunes ripped asunder, she delivered her first manifesto.  'African Reggae' was a precision-fitted ga-chunk-ga-chunking German reggae, a thumping, mug-clinking Euroreggae, with Nina ululating across an Alpine meadow-Heidi Goes to Kingston-waxing operatic for a moment before invoking Jah Rastafari over a state-of-the-art '70s-style twin-guitar lead line stolen from some Linda Ronstadt session hacks' out-takes, while a synthesizer farted violently nearby.  Weird was not the word, but it was closer than most.  She wanted, she sang, to go to Africa, to the black Jerusalem, to the black kultur-ooo-yoodel-oodel-ooo.  She wanted a whole lot, and she was apparently inventing German dub (either Nina or her producers; if it was them, it doesn't matter, because she dumped 'em as soon as possible).  She was headed for the Heart of Darkness, naturlich, to the black Jerusalem.  She was looking to meet up in Mombassa with Rimbaud, Gauguin, the Rousseau brothers, and all the other noble Eurosavages.  She wanted to split this nowhere scene.  in other words, Let's blow this pop stand, man!

She ends up in the United States (swims freestyle) (makes first transatlantic solo flight going the other way) with a record contract from the local CBS franchise and an attractive set of well-labeled new-wave novelty luggage.  American radio is already assembling entire conceptual playlists around the excited, squeaking bimbette and the simulated novelty tune, and as two mints in one, Nina's timing couldn't possibly be more perfect.  The novelty appeal is present in spades.  I mean, you got this kooky krautser babe with the new-wave hooker wardrobe making kissyface with the camera, batting the ultra-lashes fast enough to fan u a solid breeze, and who cares what she hollers at the microphone so long as it sounds good with a goofy German accent? Is this a hit act or what?

Now it?s Nina?s turn to pray.  Cosma Shiva?s rather blatant offering threw a minor materialistic wrench into the spiritually uplifted works, but she?s just a kid, after all.  Nina isn?t the least bit fazed by it.  If Cosma?s prayer came with a few barbs attached, none of them seem to have snagged Nina.  In fact, she launches into her prayer with terrific enthusiasm.  The balding blond guy with the hand-held video camera is hovering loyally, and Nina seems nearly transported.  It?s as though she?s the featured guest on today?s rooftop talk show, and the host-God, maybe, or Merv-has just asked her about her new movie.  ?I pray for a TV station,? she tells the studio audience.  So she can make some really good programs and bring down the UFOs.  In fact, she has a whole bunch of other things she wants, a regular Christmas list of goodies she?d like to see delivered, including a radio station and even Cosmas Shiva?s suburban dream house, but it?s the TV station that?s most important.  It?s a relief when Nina says all the Eagles can go back downstairs to her loft.

Once she?s lotused up front on her metallic meditation pad again, she explains the videotape they?re making-?We are making it with my healing meetings and everything that goes on around here, and then we can show it to people, and they would give me much money so I can make a movie or a show out of it.  Because we need good equipment, better than this we have.  ?Now, the question is: Does everybody know what a channel is?? Quite a few Eagles turn to each other-are we still talking television here?-but Nina hasn?t left enough of a pause after her question for anybody to say anything anyway.  ?A human channel? a medium? OK, a medium is a human channel who realizes its ability to channel or to be used by spirits.  I know this woman in Los Angeles, she?s channeling some Scottish spirit, and, uhm, that?s also pretty interesting, but I really like people who are able to channel real high spirits, like Jesus Christ, or Archangel Michael, or like Seth-this person in Glendale is channeling Seth.  She turns to faithful Zattar.  ?Seth is a person from a higher dimension, right?? Zattar is terrifically energetic too, and he seems especially enthused about getting his own shot at sa
ying something.  ?Seth is a personality that has done all the earth cycles, and his job is, like, to tell people what to do and what goes on.  He basically lets you know that you create a place responsible to all life and that-? Nina bursts in, too terrifically energetic to hold back any longer.  ?Yeah, you create your own reality! You create whatever you believe you are.  You create your own belief systems.  You create your won belief is God.  You create your own enlightenment.  And you create?- This time it?s Nina who gets interrupted.  It?s Cosma Shiva, with a ?mommy, I need you outside? sort of 4-year-old request, and Nina makes all the absolutely perfectly unexasperated motions of a suburban dream-home mother being hassled in front of the Wednesday afternoon bridge club.  ?Don?t interrupt us now, Cosma,? she says in an exceptionally even tone.  ?Let?s go to the other kids and show them all your toys.  She has Cosma by the hand and takes her out to the kitchen.  ?you know how it goes when somebody is entranced…?-and here she makes with one of her famous lowdown, otherworldly Nina Hagen grrrrowls-?…  .and doesn?t want to be disturbed.  Right?? ?Right? says Cosma.

In Nina?s motherly absence.  Zattar has taken advantage of the opportunity to talk.  ?It?s not bullshit,? he?s saying.  ?We have the potential if we don?t blow up.  And if, God forbid, things get really out of hand, the Space Brothers will come and take us away.  He?s wildly enthusiastic.  of course, and sets about telling everybody the importance story of his very first UFO experience, about the time when he?d just finished his mediation and was walking his dog in the Hollywood Hills when he saw two silver discs! The tears came to his eyes and he said, right there in the Hollywood Hills, ?Whoa!? He feels he needs to explain, to fill us all in.  All of us here may be highly evolved Eagles and everything, but some Eagles have maybe soared a little higher than others.  ?What it is, is conscious evolution, mysticism, magic, occultism.  conscious awakened kundalini – and that?s what the space brothers are, that?s just another part of out evolution to the New Age.  Even the mere mention of the New Age sets certain drowsy heads into Nodsvills, but the real Zzzz-factor here, the real sleep induction principle, is not just our regrettably unawakened kundalini, or even Zattar himself.  You see, Zattar, what it is, is with you up there on the meditation mat droning away about your chosen favorite's from the spiritual smorgasbord …  well, hate to say it, Zat old buddy, with your well-intended headband and all, but your star-wattage is a wee bit dim.  We could go into any health food co-op juice bar and stand around the paperback rack and toss around some Monday-morning quarterback conscious-evolution kundalini jazz, swap a few past-lives trading cards, exchange a fe tarot readings for a radical spine realignment, and we could have an actual two-way conversation in the process.  A small dose of comic one-upmanship goes a long, long way, Zats, and while we?re only too willing to sit here patiently and take it from Nina Hagen-who is, let?s face it, spirit made manifest: a Star-you yourself are sort of under impressive.  A message is forming in the collective unconscious of a number of us Eagles, growing larger and clearer every second you drone on.  ?it?s bigger and plainer by the second, Zat baby, and it says: Put a lid on it, buster.

Spirit made manifest-for sure.  There comes a point at which any attempt at tracing Nina Hagen?s path chronologically-or aesthetically-or philosophically-or at all-just kind of bogs down in a skirling whirl (oodel-yoo-OOOdel-oo-oo!) of weird.  Arriving in America (first woman to scale the Statue of Liberty in spike heels) seems to have helped her get over some of her inhibitions.  With the green light to go new-wave novelty weird, she raced for the goal line of weird instead, passed right through the end zone, and headed off in the direction of a whole new version of the Wall.  No more cover tunes and fake reggae-not at first, anyway.  Now there was fake funk and fake punk and fake MGM musical orchestrations and fake fake punk and Las Vegas lunge-funk and hardcore cocktail mambo rock and Eurodisco Gregorian chant and the Archangel Jim?s ?Third Stone From the Sun? and Alvin and the Chipmunk?s ?Tribute to Krishna,? all with more whizzissimo effects than a quadraphonic hi-fi test record.  They may be some of the funniest records ever made, but the more you listen, the less she seems to be kidding.  Her Nunsexmonkrock has a distinctive sound-although Yoko and Lene and the B-52 gals would all probably like to strangle her-that somehow never strikes you the same way twice.  It?s probably as whim-driven as any big-label new-wave pop could possibly be-and then some-but it?s also possible to see something like a thematic strand running through it.  It may be unraveling all over the place, but it?s a strand all the same.  Listen to the song titles: Flying Saucers.  My Sensation.  Prima Nina in Ekstasy.  The Change.  Anti-World.  Future is Now.  Gott Im Himmel (God in Heaven).  Spirit in the Sky (a cover of Norman Greenbaum?s loopy Marin County Jesus-freak boogie).  UFO.  Gods of Aquarius.  Universal Radio.  Atomic Flash Deluxe.  The songs feature someone who falls asleep in front of the TV and gets ?News flashes?; whose body is a radio; who lives at 1985 Ekstasy Drive in Los Angeles, California and has a direct line to heaven; who seeks ?the big solution?; who sees revolution, reincarnation, and interstellar transportation everywhere; who welcomes in the Aquarian Age and demands the fall of Babylon; who was born in Xixax; who sings ?I Am the Chosen One?; whose own miraculous baby?s birth is reenacted in a recording studio with a countdown and a rocket blast; who issues prophecies of transubstantiation and nuclear war more lightly than most people sneeze.

Nina?s back from the kitchen with a big, translucent, pink plastic bottle of Evian water, sitting up front with Zattar on the meditation mat while a few of the Eagles tell their own thrilling UFO experiences.  It?s pretty amazing how once you get to telling flying saucer experience stories, everybody in a highly evolved group like the Eagles seems to have at least one real doozy.  Even so, you can tell that deep down inside Nina hates to waste all this time when we could be getting to something meatier, something more meaningful.  Like her first UFO experience.  She fidgets, cracks open the bottled water, takes a good solid slug, puts the cap back on, and fidgets some more.  She can?t stand the suspense any longer.  She asks the woman who?s currently talking if she saw bright colors with her UFO> Because Nina did-which reminds her of the time of her own visitation, when she was pregnant with Cosma.  ?During the fourth month, I stand up in the night.  I was already asleep.  I go to the window and push the curtains away-? And the phone rings, which annoys her-she was just getting to the good part.  Somebody picks it up and she carries on.  ?It was hanging over me.  It was…  it was mesmerizing me.  I couldn?t move anymore, I didn?t think anymore.  I didn?t feel all the old patterns of feeling anymore.  The only thing was I was standing there with an open mouth and I was totally intent and mesmerized, paralyzed.  They showed me all different kinds of colors.  They showed me green to the fullest extent-nearly fluorescent.  It?s like when you are tripping on very good LSD, you can see a sense of colors and how alive the color
s are.  Like the colors were real intense.?

It didn?t end there, either.  Practically everybody here has ahd a really fine UFO sighting or two, but Nina?s very first one makes all the rest seem pathetic.  ?I saw the colors and each color made me feel different.  Green made me real peaceful and all kinds of emotional garage and all kinds of rubbishes are gone and then the yellow light came and by the yellow light I felt really, like, very open.  They showed her more colors than most people would probably want to have to hear about, but Nina knows the Eagles will be fascinated with hearing about blue and purple.   ?…  And orange and white, and so they went up all the scale of the colors.  And at this time I didn?t know exactly which center is what exactly and it all came to me afterwards and so I know what they did with me is they put me under a shower of colors and they cleansed me of all my hang-ups.  I think they did something to my chakras.  ?And by the way, in the end I saw the colors go away and I could look inside and there were people like us but in one-color, as if they had nothing on, but you couldn?t see any nipples or (she gestures at her crotch) black spots.  And they were going around like in an office and working on some things while walking about.  And the next morning I woke up and was the happiest pregnant woman on the planet.  And I knew what I had to do.?

Nina has something pressing on her mind.  A great story, a morally instructive, spiritually illuminating story-the story of her very first acid trip.  It seems she was 17, and- ?And I experienced the situation when you give birth.  When you give birth you start electricizing and shaking-your whole body is shakement and your cervix is opening.  That happened to me.  I had pain forever and I experienced the place which the spiritual hierarchy under Jesus calls the fourteenth ray of the solar spectrum, and the fourteenth ray s the black ray, and that?s the place we call hell or the lowest astral plane.  I said to myself, ?Wait! if I could only die, then I wouldn?t feel pain and I could be as I was before.  Nina didn?t die, though-not yet.  ?I said, ?O God, help me,? because I realized that He invented LSD and that He must be able to help.  As I said, I was 17 and my belief in God was already quite big because when I was 14 I started to believe in God and started to check out how praying work's..  ? The way praying words, of course, is that you fill God in on what you want.  ?He came right away after I called Him.  He came in my head.  He said, ?I am here with you, Nina.  ?The upshot of all this is she died.  ?And I had a vision I was out of my body.?

In any case, while she was projecting around in the astral spheres, she also ran into the Archangel Michael.  She knew it was him, not because he showed her is ID or anything like that, but because he was surrounded by angelic presences who loved him so much they kept singing his name in tiny cherubic little voices just like the ones on Nina's song ?Dr.  Art?-except those tiny cherubic little voices sing ?Nina Hagen, Nina Hagen…  ? Some of the cherubic presences were so thrilled with how adorable Michael was, they kept calling him ?Mischi,? ?because they love him so much and because he is so well known there in his world.  Just thinking back on it has Nina completely stirred up, because-?Like when I go there, they won?t say ?Nina,? they?ll say ?Nini! Because they love so much up there…?

Still, she?s not putting all her spiritual eggs in one basket.  She?s shopping for a new record company, for one thing, just in case the Space Brothers run into some intergalactic holdup.  She?s found herself a new band, a garage band, and she?s recording some demos with them now.  ?We are the Warning Brothers.  I am the Warning Brothers now, and I am going to be on Warner Bros.  Oh, and she?s planning a new nightclub for downtown L.A.  featuring Nina herself.  It well be a new-wave new-age nightclub with Nina and her friends performing.  ?And we are making a soap opera!? But the soap opera is also part of her television show, which is also part of her church- and the healing sessions she?s been doing on Saturdays are also part of it too.  Which reminds her of the times she?s appeared on talk show with Merv Griffin and David Letterman.  ?I got so much inspiration from these guys!? So she?ll most likely be using the talk-show format.  ?This is an intergalactic TV show, and I?m the host.  end

Note: In the next months issue of Spin there were two readers responses to the story:

When you maz came out, an angel told me that when the time was right yours would be the magazine to do an in-depth article on Nina Hagen.  The vision has come true! Cosmic enlightenment radiated from the pages of the article.  she told us of so many solutions for our planet.  Jesus and the UFOs are coming, and now more people will know and believe. 

and

Although I have enjoyed some of Nina Hagen's music artistically in the past, I feel it was irresponsible of her to glorify LSD and SPIN to present her comments in the light it did.  If indeed "God" exists, "God" most certainly did not invent LSD.  LSD was invented and distributed by psychochemists and psychiatrists in an effort to make guinea pigs out of institutionalized humans.  The fact that is was popularized by teenagers looking for a thrill in the 60s (as Hagen undoubtably was) is a tribute to human stupidity.

San Francisco Chronicle Datebook – June 19, 1994
By Michael Snyder
Typed by Hagenpaws

In 1976, when the Berlin Wall was still an international flash point, eccentric 21-year-old Nina Hagen crossed from East Berlin to West Berlin.  Within a year, the woman with the gymnastic, near-operatic voice – a vision in leather and rubber wear and exaggerated makeup – had turned the German pop music scene on its ear.  Hagen's first album was greeted by accolades in the British press.  In America, she built a loyal cult of fans with her spiritualist/hedonist cabaret sensibility and her strange m'lange of styles, from punk and reggae to techno and blues.  She also rang up a few dance-club hits such as 'New York, New York.'Last year, she recorded her eighth album, 'Revolution Ballroom,'produced by Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera.  Hagen, who was recently in town to participate in the Goethe Institute-sponsored tribute to Weimar Republic poet/dancer/prostitute Anita Berber, returns with her band July 12-13 to headline at Bimbo's.  Recently, she spoke by phone from Hamburg, where she was on the tail end of a European concert tour.  She had just played a pop festival outside of the city.

Q: 'Revolution Ballroom'has a couple of songs with a heavy Indian influence.  How did you develop your interest in Indian religion and culture?

A: When I was 19, I got my initiation.  I took LSD and had a death experience.  I met God.  I found a book about a guru known as Babaji, who first appeared in public in the early '70s at the age of 20 and died in 1984 on Valentine's Day.  I made a pilgrimage to the village in the Himalayas where he lived.  His message was that all religions are equal.  All human beings and cultures are equal.  The idea is living in respect and harmony with everything around you.  But his teachings were in my heart before I read his work.

Q: When's your next album coming out?

A: I have a new record-company deal with RCA.  I can produce myself.  I did it on my first two albums.  And I can choose my own co-producer.  I really respect Phil Manzanera, but I think the last album was overproduced.  Things were too much controlled by the record company.  They tried to turn me into a product.  I can do it myself.  I'm like the Grateful Dead: I'll always be there.

Q: Backed by Alphabet Soup at the Anita Berber tribute, you performed a number of new songs co-written by Dee Dee Ramone.  Are you doing them with your own band?

A: Yes, they're much better now.  They'll be on my next album.  (The Anita Berber show) was cool.  It was a nice bunch of people.  But I've been on the road with my band for four weeks and we are hot, hot, hot.  We're gonna burn America with good vibrational information.

Q: What led you to leave East Berlin?

A: I grew up in an artist family.  From the time I was a little tiny person, I saw my mother performing in theater.  My stepfather was the Bob Dylan of East Germany.  There were always artists and musicians in the house, visiting from the West.  The government kicked out my stepfather, so the whole family was allowed to go.  I was lucky.  A lot of my friends weren't so lucky.  They had to stay.

Q: What was your reaction to the reunification of Germany?

A: I was on tour when I heard and I didn't believe it.  I thought, 'What a great joke!'Now I think the whole world has to do this thing: One love.  One love nation.

Q: Where is your home now?

A: I have a house on Ibiza.  It's the most beautiful area.  I also have a little place outside London.  I'm going to rent something in L.A.  soon, to write songs.  I'm going to record my next album in America.  I'm actually going to record two albums, one in English, one in German.  I used to do most of my albums in both languages.  I've become an expert in translating my favorite songs into German.  Most recently, I translated some Ramones songs: 'Blitzkrieg Bop'and 'We're a Happy Family.'They turned into antiwar songs when I translated them.

Q: Who inspires your unique vocal style?

A: I get it from everybody: gospel singers, Elvis, blues singers.  .  .I started listening to rock and roll at 12 and never stopped.  With a voice, you can do so much, especially if you're Nina Hagen.

Q: On your last recording, you did hard rock, electronic house music, traditional blues tunes, some new-wave pop and the Indian tracks.  What accounts for the eclecticism?

A: I always liked to mingle and mix the different styles.  I'm the universal soup maker.  Everything comes together – the music and the religion .  .  .  Buddhism, Christianity, accordion, didgeridoo, hip-hop, rock, reggae.

Q: Your image is always striking, but always changing.  Why are you such a chameleon?

A: It's theater.  I grew up watching my mother do 'My Fair Lady.'I don't think of myself as a pop star.  I think of myself as more of a mirror for the audience.  I'm Janis Joplin and Anita Berber and more.  I'm like a transvestite – you know, how they do impressions of different women.  I own 30 wigs.  It's because I often shave my head like the holy people in India.  But I'm a ska skinhead, not a fascist.

Q: What inspired your songs about animal rights and pollution?

A: I have a son and daughter.  I'm a mother, and a normal human being, so I must do this.  The whole world is upside down.  We're moving toward destruction.  Some people are fighting it, but there aren't enough laws to protect the environment.  The animals need their rights.  Everybody need their rights.  It's all the same story.

Tunnel Nightclub – 1995
Transcribed by Geoffrey Faustman @ Planet Bearth

These interviews were taken from a New York nightclubbing and underground television show, On Patrol.  I'm not sure who conducted the interviews.

? (unknown): This is your book?

NH(Nina Hagen): That's my book, exactly since three years I'm working with the author of this book, who is Dr. Buck Owen's.

NH: Yes, which is Roger's Recovery from Aids.

?: Tell me how did you become involved with this?

NH: For three years I know that people were healed from AIDS. First I learned about this book in the Hospital Station 68 where my friend Andreas died from AIDS. He was hooked on lots of Pharmaceutical devices, one Pharmaceutical product was dripping into his arm, another one dripping into his other arm. He was dying.

?: Oh, that's so sad.

NH: It was the first time actually I saw a human being dying. His mother gave me the book, she said this book came too late for him but read it. I read it and I didn't understand the world anymore because since three years and you know my position in Germany, I'm very well known there, I'm very respected, I'm working in lots of different levels, Television, you name it and I tried to get this book like a review, a critique about this book in the paper, nobody would react. They would say to me, because I do have friends who are Journalists, they say we can't do anything about this because the pharmaceutical industry doesn't want us to, so if you please do me the favor and read the book in spite of the pharmaceutical industry who want you to swallow all their products, please read Dr. Buck Owen's book published by the Health and Hope Publishing House, it's called Roger's recovery from AIDS.

(This is the end of the first interview. Interview tape is cut off at this point and returns with Nina talking about her new album, Revolution Ballroom.)

NH: Out already, but my American, uh, Polygram Record Co. is not so into me because you see the boss over there, his name is Elain Levi, hi Elain, I've known him since 1979, he was the boss of CBS, Sony and friends. Now a couple of years later, actually 3 years ago he became the boss of Polygram Records-America-oh, what a great step for a French guy to take. So, I had a dinner with him and I mentioned that I had some problems with one of his friend's colleagues who told me not to put too much make up on during a TV show…..

?: (sympathetically, with a knowing nod) Oh-

NH: – And I said to the woman listen woman I'm older than you plus I pressed twice – I have two children – and I know exactly how much makeup to put on!

?: Absolutely…

NH: So the guy said, the boss of Polygram said Elain Levi – so your still as difficult as you always were. I said Elain, don't get me wrong and (indecipherable)

?: You're not difficult.

NH: So he simply doesn't put my product out in this country so people are complaining, and my friends are all complaining, "I have to pay 30 dollars for your CD, what is this?" It's because of Elain Levi. Please everybody who hears me now could you please write a little postcard to Elain saying that Nina Hagen increed uh – indeed is credible – increed is dedible and um, that actually thank you Desmond that this album cover made by Pierre et Gilles is beautiful artists from Paris.

?: I don't think there is too much makeup.

NH: It's called, "Revolution Ballroom" and it..

?: We love that!

NH: ..and it was produced by Phil Manzanera from Roxy music.

?: Now is that American Polygram, U.K. or is German?

NH: I'm signed in Germany, I'm well treated in Japan, Canada, Australia, South Africa now, I'm working with Nelson Mandela lately- I did a video where he's in and stuff it's called "So Bad", check it out on MTV Europe, can you get that here? No you can't.

?: No, girl.

NH: Well, please write Elain Levi a postcard saying that Nina Hagen is definitely credible, and not only incredible, but credible, maybe he
understands that one, I hope.

?: Nina we would love to wish you a happy new year.

NH: Please do.

?: Thank you so much for this time

NH: I love you and I thank you for giving me you know your love and your support and I'm into making movies now I'm going to audition for the role of – they're making a movie about the life of Maria Callas.

?: Oh, Casting-Casting Directors, Management, Producers, watch this girl.

(Voice off camera) Sing, Sing, Nina.

NH:Shall I sing?

(Voice) A little bit, a little bit….

NH: Well, OK, I'll sing. [Begins singing , "Right On Time"]

You can't hurry my God — He may not come when you want Him but He's right on time, yes I am.

?: Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear it for Nina Hagen! Yaay!!!

[End of second interview]

?: Tunnel nightclub. The tunnel, where this is your first engagement in New York, one of your first engagements in New York was here, yes?

NH: Yes, yes.

?: What brings you to New York?

NH: Ok, I just formed a new band and we're all girls in the band and we're called the "All New All Female Nina Hagen Polka Band", and, and "Nina Hagen Polka Band", because I just got, got married the night before I came to New York

?: No you didn't!?

NH: Yes, I did.

?: Oh, and who's the lucky man?

NH: It was my 1st and only marriage because you might have heard that I got married to a punk rocker in '89 and to Herman Brood but that was all for fun and it was just a joke, but this time it's for real and its on paper and it's my soul mate and um yeah, I'm married and I'm gonna become an American Citizen and I believe I deserve it because I love this country and I belong here.

?: Is he American?

NH: He is American my husband is a Yankee. Yeah, he's a surf punk, too, his name is Gordon.

[Editors note: Gordon is Otis' Father and the attractive long haired man in some of Nina's videos such as, "In My World". The marriage was never made as they failed to mail in the marriage license. Nina and Gordon are no longer together. If you have ever seen the Pierre et Gilles photograph of Nina and a man dressed as Mary and Joseph, Gordon is Joseph and the child is Otis.]

?: Does he do what you do?

NH: He's a singer, and he has a band, no he doesn't have a band, he's a singer in a band called Fifi

?: Fifi?

NH: Fifi!!

?: And tell me where did you meet him?

NH: I met him at a place called Hell's Gate, I had to go to Hell and back to get him, I found him and I got him and I'm so happy.

?: That's right, now is there children coming?

NH: (Swings her arm and someone laughs so she looks at them) People are so mean, they laugh at you when you hurt yourself. My children are fine, they're great, Cosma's 13, and she has a boyfriend, and my son Otis is 4.

?: And now will there be a child from this marriage?

NH: Well, I think so because in 1980 there was this old man from India and he said she's gonna have 2-3 children and she's going to find the man of her life at the end of her 30's, and that's very close now because on March 11, I'm going to turn four – zero.

?: OH, you're kidding! March 11, you're Pisces.

NH: I'm Pisces like Elizabeth Tay-lor.

?: And my mother, too

NH: Your mother is Pisces, really? What are you?

?: Leo.

NH: Leo, how cool! I love Leo, my Husband is L
eo, my son, too.

?: Really?

NH: Holy Christ, ye-es, ye-es! You know in the American Indian horoscope, I am a Puma Mountain Lion, in the Chinese horoscope I am a Mountain Goat (bleats, bleats, bleats, bleats) and you know we're all things, so there should be no problem.

?: Let me ask you this, you performed some new material…

NH: Yes, I did, I wrote all these songs (mimics a robots voice- like the robots vocals are stuck and are repeating) lately, lately, lately.

?: You did?

NH: And normally I play with my band and it was the first time, the very first time I ever went on stage and played guitar by myself!

?: ..And along with Chris, so this is your first time with Chris Stein?

NH: Uh,yeah, we were jamming already before and writing songs, but this was the first time on stage, ye-ah!

?: how exciting!

NH: Yeah, I know.

?: Now, you did some Nirvana material, as well.

NH: Yes, I love kurty cobain.

?: Did you know him?

NH: No, it was the same with me and Jimi Hendrix and me and Janis Joplin, I never saw them live, but you know I was very connected to his art and to his music and to his spirit and when he died I was very, very hurt, and I prayed for him a lot, a lot a whole day and I would light candles for him, and everything. So he came into my dreams three times in a row and it was very very interesting what happened in the dreams, and we became REALLY good friends in the dreams, so um, I believe he's off cruising around a earthbound kind of spirit. He's not earth he's gone he's up, freedom, he's, he's liberated.

?: And what about his wife, Courtney Love?

NH: Courtney, I had a dream with Courtney, too, I have never met her yet, never saw her play live yet, hopefully I shall meet her one day. I had a very funny dream, too, and in the dream I was suggesting to her that she could be his Mother that like if she was ever planning to get another baby that maybe Kurty Cobain's spirit could you know, enter her utero -In Utero- and y'know be born on planet BEARTH! – B- -E- -A- -R- -T- -H-, planet Bearth, that's where we are right now.

?: That's where we are right now, and is this album in the works?

NH: Yes, I hope so and also I have lots of more material to choose from and it's a very good situation because you know you go into the studio and you don't fiddle around you know exactly what you want to do. Now I'm aiming for my dream Producer and if he wants to do it then I'm gonna be very happy, and my record company, RCA is gonna be very happy, my management is gonna be very happy, now if he would only do it then we all would be very happy.

?: Now you mentioned RCA, RCA Intl., RCA Europe?

NH: O.K., I'm signed with RCA Germany, but the deal is that I make an album in German language and one in English so (Looks up when signaled off camera by Chris Stein) You're going? Bye, Chris.

?: Chris! How are you? This man performed with Nina Hagen..

CS(Chris Stein): Yeah, did she say she never played guitar on the stage before?

?: It's marvelous, you did a man's job..

NH: Yeah, I think so. Chris, I'll call you, OK?

CS: OK, talking, the whole deal.

NH: I have to go too, my plane leaves in the morning at eight a.m…

?: So you're producing some new material?

NH: Yeah, I do a whole album in English and in German, so two different versions of albums, I done that before with (indecipherable what Nina refers to here) in "84 I did English and German versions, so if RCA America wants to pick up the product, they're very welcome because I'm already with RCA, so I'm free if they don't want to do it I can go with another company.

?: So there's no Polygram involved this time, no?

NH: No, I'm over with Polygram, I'm with RCA, BMG now.

?: Wonderful, now with your children, you have 2 children.

NH: Yeah, there's 13 and four.

?: Now you're planning to bring them now to the states?

NH: They are with me!

?: You wanna move to the states?

NH: I am in the states!

?: you're over here!

NH: I came before Christmas and I won't leave!

?: So are you here in New York?

NH: I'm here. I live in LA I live in Studio City in the hills and my children are here and we're a family. We're a happy family, we're a happy family, we're a happy family we have a Mom and Daddy…

?: So we're gonna see a lot more Nina Hagen?

NH: yes,yes,yes! I'm gonna be around for a long, long time to come!

?: You're not going anywhere?

NH: I'm not going anywhere, I stay right here where I belong! I will be so proud to become an American.

?: She's here. Nina Hagen in New York.

Surface #6, 1995
Interview by Riley John-Donnell
Photos by Sean Murphy
Typed by Barry L.

A frail knock.  Then she enters the studio, exhaling a sliver of smoke that trails backward to the door.  Swaddled in citrus orange fun fur and black latex.  Dark overstuffed duffel bags dangle from her fuzzy shoulders.  A limousine driver follows closely, escorting her with the concern of a stage mom.  Nina wiggles her way past camera cables and tripods.  A frayed wig twisted up in a bun with uneven French bangs perches on her head like a crown of dust bunnies.  Small steps urge your eyes down fishnets to her tiny feet, strapped snugly into dusty Westwood stilettos.  “Heellloooow-I am-Neeenaah,” bounces from wall to wall with staccato reverberation.  She enunciates every syllable, speaking in what seems to be three or four different octaves and character voices.  From the squeal of a three-year-old entering a playground to the earthy muffled tone of a junkie coughing after a three day binge.

She approaches us with the eagerness of an old friend.  Her cleavage oddly punctuates her warm smile and angular face.  Nina introduces herself to each member of the styling crew with a royal curtsy.  Then drops her bags.  The crew begins to hover, as she kneels to rummage through her weathered luggage–apparently searching for some item of extreme importance.  Within moments she lights a fresh cigarette and a mound of colorful clothes has begun to form a nest around her: a mangle of frizzy pink, green, platinum and black wigs, crumpled designer dresses, rubber mini skirts, bows and platforms.  Nina abruptly loses interest in her quest for the mysterious item, and heads for the restroom to wash and prep for makeup.

A stylist quickly takes Nina’s place in the mound of wardrobe and begins mending wigs and sorting clothes.  Fresh-faced, she sits for the makeup artist with her back to the rest of us.  Nina raises an arm and gently lifts her wig, exposing scalp and inch-short pale brown hair.  Her hairline darts down her thin neck pointing to the ridges of her spine.  She places the wig next to the ashtray on the cosmetics table.  There she sits, a prepubescent boy awaiting his monthly buzzcut.

SURFACE: What was punk?

NINA HAGEN: For me, punk was in East Berlin in nineteen hundred, oh, and about seventy four, when I got the first album of Roxy Music.  We all put gel-oil in our hair and a black piece of paper on top of a tooth to make it look as if a tooth was missing, and then it was punk–it was punk for us.  Then much later, in 1977, I went to London when I came out of East Germany.  Then I saw what punk really was…because it had developed after Roxy Music [laughing], so I am like a Roxy Music punk, basically.

What is punk now?

You don’t see it on TV, but it’s happening in the clubs and in parties and festivals and it it’s still out there.  It’s the lifestyle and the people with big hearts, you know, who live together, share apartments and squat houses.

Communal?

It’s a tribe.  Even in the punk movement you have the Mohican tribe, the Skin tribe, etc…

And the anarchist following?

Most of those punks are very young people.  They experience the freedom of creating their own lifestyle and I guess that’s what they call anarchic lifestyle, but still we are all part of society.  We have to pay our taxes-even punk bands have to pay taxes.  I know a few punk bands around here who are very organized; they go selling their demo tapes if they don’t have a recording deal yet.  They are selling video tapes of their gigs.  Very interesting.  For example, on my 40th birthday (March 13) we held a big party for Filthy McNasty’s FM Station in North Hollywood, which I call the valley.  And some of those punk bands and h Snap-Her and Fifi, and Weg Peg and the Nep-tunas and six or seven bands all played.  Not only the young punks come to see them but older people from my generation, people who know it’s still that nice party feeling.  I know a couple of them punks in Hamburg.  They do an exhibition in a big building and in the next room there is a stage.  It’s great, and it’s organized–you have to be to stay in the business.  For example, Johnny Rotten…  Johnny Lidden.  I like his videos.  There’s the Ramones, and you have Siouxsie and the Banshees…she’s doing very well.  And meeee.  We are all still here, it is not dead.

Life through older eyes?

I have less illusions about people and circumstances.  I can look the truth in the eye better than before.

“The mother of punk.” Have you heard that before?

NH: [Cough] It makes me cough.  Yeah I’ve heard that before.  Definitely.  They’ve called me that for a long time because I was always older than the youngest ones.  When I came to London in ’77, I was already twenty-twoooo and everybody else was 14, 15, 16, so I was never really accepted as one of them, but as a good friend of the punks, as a mentor.  For example, by The Slits, I was at their rehearsal and I told Ariana how to not stretch out the voice so much.  They all knew that I had an opera voice, that I had been singing for a long time already; back then I was the oldest in the club.

So you were literally nurturing young punks?

Oh yeah, that’s so much fun to do.  In India they would say matati, for mother…such a sweet name, matati.  Yeah, definitely, I’m a mother.

And tattooed sex goddess?

My sexy side is a very funny side.  I’m preparing an underground Nina Hagen TV show.  I’m filming myself on my Sony Hi-8.  When I have my mini-dresses on, I always come across as sexy but funny at the same time.  For me to look sexy and do sexy movements [she flutters her words and whisper-sings as though in a private opera] like crossing the legs, it’s always a fun part to do.  It’s not because I think I’m one of the most sexy looking people, I’d rather think that I’m very funny.

Hardcore tattooed Nina?

Finally I’ve got some good tattoos.  I always went around with this one name on my left arm, Ferdinand, which I had done in Amsterdam.  And Ferdinand did Nina on his arm.  And now I have a big TV set over Ferdinand’s name on my right arm, my hammering guitar-playing arm! It’s a TV set with the Hindu Mantra in inside.  Basically, it’s for me to remind me to get my TV show project worked out.  Because for many years I’ve been running around with this idea that I have to put a Nina Hagen TV show out.  Maybe every Friday night, or something like that, where [she begins to sing] I’m talking to people live on the phone…they can call me, there’s also calls from celebrities.  It sounds pretty normal, but the way I’m doing it will be quite entertaining!

“Do you purposely break certain social taboos?”

I just want to be able to share lots of information.  That makes me happy, when I can show people things in a new context, they can laugh and learn at the same time.  There’s s
o many different people and things nobody knows yet.  It’s like, it’s amazing.

Fame has Its own dress code.  So do most religions.  How do the glamorous spiritual people rationalize fashion?

Fashion is an art form.  I think Jean Paul Gaultier…  his clothes are so beautiful (expressive pieces of art), they are also for Hindu women like me, these beautiful long dresses.

You carry a little notebook full of scraps, drawings, and writings…

And, my camera too.  I like recording everyday situations.  In Hamburg, I hung a show of all my paintings and collages; actually you can call my stuff pop art.  Big collages like Andy Warhol.  Hee-hee…  It’s photocopy collages! Then I paint on them.  I make huge frames with hellistic images and shiny foil.  You know that stuff you can glue on, the sticky stuff? I have an idea for my next album cover, I want to call it Difficult Bearth.  Because I consider this planet Birth but written like Earth.  And so I have a painted image of a mid-wife, and a woman who is in the process of giving birth to a baby and the baby is…it’s a difficult birth, and the feet are hanging out first and the mid-wife has her arm in there and she’s trying to pull.  [She giggles] It looks very funny in a painting, in a sketch.

You do realize that you have a cult following, a cult status?

Oh, I’m so happy about that.  It’s so much fun to have so many friends and even people who you’ve never met before, who know you through your music and your creativity.  It’s just so wonderful.

Why do you have this effect on people?

I don’t know.

What about yourself really attracts other people on that level?

Well, let’s put it that way: if you open up to creativity and freedom, and truth and art, and music, then you are able to represent G-O-D, God.  More than if you would only be concerned about your life, and worry all the time and do a job you don’t like to do, then you probably don’t ..blah, blah…  I could go on.  I mean, I don’t know…[she pauses then interrupts her silence] It’s all about music and art…they vibrate so nicely.  Amen.  I have very many fans throughout my work, throughout the years, in America…in San Francisco.  But I also know that when I toured Brazil, 13 cities in ’85, that I had very many people come see me again, many friends and fans.  But I think everywhere, in every little–or not every little country–but like in Europe, Germany, France, I always have a little following in these cities.  They all seem to know that when they come to see my show that we are going to have a fun time.  Like Aerosmith.  Yes! I am like the female Aerosmith! [She bursts into laughter]

Is the response the same everywhere?

Well, actually it is the same in every city.  Let’s say when I had this fun party, and all these surprise visitors in San Francisco, and I thought my God, this is incredible! So many people seem to be totally going nuts over me, that I have the same thing happening in Hamburg or Berlin.  And the same audience…male, female, gay, straight, you know, everybody.  Even older people.  This very old man in Sweden always comes when I pray there.

How do you feel about your agnostic fans? Or people who view your belief structure as pop-religion?

We are all spiritual people whether we know it or not, because every moment is part of eternity.  So, even the worst sinner will be getting better.  Part of a way to develop quicker is to do a dream journal, which I just started again recently.  I have this little cassette recorder next to my bed, and when I wake up I record my dreams, otherwise I forget so quickly.  Because your dreams, they tell you a lot, a lot, a Iot! A lot about what you can accomplish, and they give you hints and clues and sometimes very profound messages.  And I just love doing this again.  I learned it from reading about it from this American prophet called Edgar Cayce, and he was saying, you know, about past life.  And to do the best out of this life is to keep a dream journal.  Basically, everybody should do it.  The moment you get into an activity–getting up, doing your peee-peee, whatever–the dream is gone.

You mentioned twice, “getting yourself better.”

Making yourself better means making yourself happier, and making yourself more available to happiness in general.  Which means helping others and by helping others, helping yourself, and creating a big network of friends, and then you can just do something creative together, like building an ashram, or a place where like-minded people can live together…a farm.

This Is kind of a naughty question, but have you ever thought of how to turn this kind of cult following into a political power or Into any other kind of power?

I am doing that.  I am trying to drag all of my friends and following, the people who really know me and come to see me.  I would like to give them all a book about the place I’m going to in India, and I would hope that everyone in this lifetime will join me up there.  For example, I’m going back there, for a couple of weeks, and it’s such a nice place up there in the Himalayas, and we all learn a couple of disciplines every day.  We are doing things together, working together, making music together in a temple and taking a bath together in a river in the early mornings.  I met very international people.  They are from all over the place, people from Holland, Italy, and America, A whole group of Americans came.  It’s a great place where I’m also planning to have my little video studio up there In the Himalayas, and become more and more a filmmaker, Fla-Hai It’s a great place and there are so many good people, each time I go there I wonder God, what people you meet here!

Do you all subscribe to one religion? Is there a communal spiritual code up there?

Part of my belief is that all religions are equal, and everybody is equal and everyone should follow the religion of their heart, and if that means [your religion] is just having fun and eating a lot, then that’s fine too.

You believe In holistic healing?

Oh, yes There is the ancient science of natural healing, and what they have done in the past! They didn’t have factories to manufacture penicillin, but the knowledge is there, the nature people still have that knowledge.  There are good medicines out there, and herbs and therapies.  When you are sick you must detoxify; I believe every illness is a toxification of the body and maybe of the mind…doesn’t it sound logical? The orthodox doctor would give you a batch of pills and chemicals to put even more artificial stuff into the body.  That’s not right.  That doesn’t sound right.

Is it healthy for your following to adopt your “religion?”

Definitely.  I’m reading this book called Autobiography of a Yogi.  And it tells you so much about the real stuff, because Christ and Buddha–they were not the only ones, there were more great teachers around, and thank God there are lots more treasures around.  We just have to find them.

You are a teacher?

And a learner.

Your vision Is to live on a commune in the Himalayas?

Wherever I live, I will be with friends and we will plant tomatoes.  And we will create families of like-minded people.  I think that is the future, people in villages.  Not the Mr.  Simpson way of life where everyone has their own little prison homes.  In Germany, in an Ashram everything belongs to everyone.  In the Himalayas there is a village, Chilianolaya, where you build your home, you plant your food and the seeds and the land belong to everyone…it is very beautiful.

What will be the symbol for you and your village?

The Om, a snake in the shape of a three.  Its breasts point to the sky.  And a Vargas-like pinup drawing of me by Terry Perez.

What monuments will you build?

A shrine to Shiva, to God and Goddess, with real diamonds as eyes.  The floors will be soft so you can knock your head on the floor without hurting yourself.

And the first law you would Instate?

DO NOT ENTER THE RECORDING STUDIO WHEN RED LIGHT IS ON.