German Machinations
Germany works like a well-oiled machine. It’s evident to anyone the moment one arrives at a German airport from overseas. The luggage carts (things of beauty themselves) glide across perfectly level granite or marble floors and there’s stainless steel everywhere. Things are built to last in these places, from the efficient lifts and escalators to the lowliest litter bin or even to the sugar shaker at the coffee kiosk, where a WMF pressure brewer dispenses a perfect cappuccino, into a perfect white porcelain (not paper) cup. Starbucks eat your heart out.
It’s January, it’s Wishbone Ash in Germany, I’m zu Hause. I’ve been coming here for over 40 years and know this country very well - the infrastructure, where the roads, cars and buildings all fit together as an integrated whole, as if designed by some higher intelligence. Autobahns where, as long as you stick to the rules, you can drive safely at 200 kms an hour in the fast lane because trucks will stay in the slower lane and not take to the roads at all on sundays.
My father was an engineer and taught me to appreciate when things worked well. He helped me make my first guitars, showing me how to work on the brass parts and not to over tighten screws and so on. I liked working with wood but his thing was metal and the greater precision of it. Knurling, chrome plating, threading, micrometers - I learned all these strange new words and skills from him. When I made my first bit of serious money, traveling the world and recording with Wishbone Ash, I bought a BMW car. He looked down his nose at that. Why not a British car - a Jaguar or something?
I’d leave it with him when I’d go on tour, because I knew he’d keep it running and would not be able to resist getting his hands on the thing. Sure enough, I’d come to collect it at the end of one of those endlessly long American tours and he’d be in his little workshop in the garage, glasses on the end of his nose, marveling over a wheel nut or the oil filler cap from the Beemer, as though they were gems or something. For him, it was a glimpse into an alien culture of metal forgers. He could really appreciate the attention to detail, which at that time, was fast slipping from the British car industry, one in which he’d worked for 25 years of his life, holding down the night shift, building and inspecting rear axles for Bedford trucks a division of General Motors.
So it was last night in Ludwigsburg, the city named after the family of the mad king himself, that we played at Scala, a converted cinema. A fantastic gig and very appreciative audience. The band was on fire. I knew it would be good, when the promoter and his staff greeted us at the door with a hand shake and curt nods of the head. We were escorted to a beautifully laid out, clean, dressing room, hot food, towels, leather couches, internet. This was going to be a good night, I thought - and so it was. Everyone was very pleased with the outcome, so much so that post-show, we were treated to a little tour of the old projection room from the former cinema in which we’d just played. Two giant German projection machines were still in situ. They’d been bought to this location, their final resting place by horse and cart, all the way from Berlin in 1954. This fact was unbelievable to us - a journey of 600 kilometres. Part of the building itself dated back some 300 years, starting life as a brewery (no surprise) and the newer part was built as an early cinema in 1910. Premieres were held in this place, featuring stars of the day like Marlene Dietrich. Our guides were very proud of it all and it was fascinating to see. They explained how the highly inflammable celluloid film had to be stored in bunkers outside the building and how the old projectionists would sound a little mechanical gong, still there and functioning, to let the patrons know that the film was about to start. Apparently in winter there would be no heating in the projection room and they’d have to wait for these huge machines to start their work, producing heat. After half an hour or so they could begin taking off their coats and getting comfortable up there in that little room.
I explained to them how we’d also once been taken round Bletchley Park in the UK where we saw one of the original Enigma code machines from the second world war, which the Brits captured and subsequently used to break all the German codes used for orders in the field and for the submarines etc. Times change. Now we are bringing British rock music with all its coded signals to grateful audiences here.
Of course all the early recordings made by Wishbone Ash were produced on serious German machines (well, Swiss actually - but you get the idea); Studer 8 track units - behemoths that each took 4 large men to move. We’d use Neumann or Sennheiser microphones, just the same as we use today in the studio. All these things were built to last and any of this kit would still work perfectly in today’s digital age - in many cases providing, to some folks’ ears, better results than today’s gear.
What is apparent to me, as I travel around Germany is that the culture here still invests in making machines with pride. Other countries do so as well but when the general culture at large, starts to devalue the basic need for these things and loses respect for the men and women who make them, things start to crumble. German technical colleges still turn out engineers and wood workers and the rest of die Volk here, appreciate it, that’s for sure. It’s not considered a ‘tradesman’ thing as if in a derogatory sense. Everyone is grateful and proud of these machines, produced by the country’s engineers because they enhance lives and hence are treated with respect. Cars are parked carefully. No German would thoughtlessly open a car door in a parking lot and smash it into his neighbors car - something I’ve seen and been a victim of, countless times in the States or the UK. There’s a reverence for these machines and the work of the artisan.
I see that Obama is trying to once again engender the idea in the States, that technical colleges and the pursuit of such a career might once again be worthy. Not a bad idea - I mean after all, do we really need so many lawyers, health professionals and politicians in our society? A liberal arts degree is fine and dandy but what about using education to innovate and make some good stuff - you know - cool bridges, correctly cambered roads with low energy lighting systems so that you can see while driving at night. Doors that work, locks that lock, windows built to last, drains that drain, efficient 21st century energy systems that don’t rely on outmoded fossil fuel technology, oh yes, and a decent pressure brewing unit for that perfect cup of latte macchiato.
Getting back to my father; after he retired he actually bought himself a German car, which floored me. That thing was his pride and joy. When he died, it came to me, and we used it for a further 10 years with the band, driving the band around Europe, where it saw out it’s final days back in the Fatherland. It was a BMW 5 series with a pretty small engine for the size of the car - a two litre, but we’d hammer along the autobahns in the early 1990s until the seats were worn out, as Bob Skeat can attest to. It got us out of many a scrape, as in the former East, spinning off roads in snow storms and suchlike. They never gritted the roads out there in those days. Now we charge around at impossible speeds in Mercedes Sprinter vans, converted with passenger seats and all the luxuries.
Occasionally, as a treat, we’ve rented Mercedes S class or E class cars and the great game is to see how fast you can actually drive one of these things. Once, while the band were all asleep, cocooned in the warmth of an S Class’s luxurious cabin, I took one of these beasts to 165mph - briefly. The car’s engine just loved it. Not even red lining the rev counter. Later - after a test drive in a Bentley Continental, at the factory in Crewe (courtesy of British super-fan Ben Reinhart - note the German name), the driver confided to me that the test guys at the company bought an S Class just to see what it was made of. This was while they were designing one of the new VW - owned ‘baby Bentleys’. The car was taken to the Scandinavian north, way up in Norway, and relentlessly flogged on the quiet roads up there, at top speeds for 2 weeks by the test crew. They were trying to break it. No joy. At the end of this exercise they bought the car back and booked it into a regular Mercedes service station in the UK. All the mechanic said was, “you boys look like you put this car through some pretty rough conditions”. It received a standard factory service and was returned as good as ever. The man at Bentley, was quietly appreciative of this fact.
Today, we have a day off. There’s a museum nearby dedicated to the work of Ferdinand Porshe. I might troll along there after I’ve taken care of scrubbing some shirt collars and partaken of one of those perfect cups of Cappuccino. Auf, auf, auf der Autobahn.
Bis Dann ~ A.P.
