Lindenberg! Mach dein Ding! (3½ Stars)

After the recent biopics about the musicians Freddie Mercury and Elton John, why shouldn't Germany get in on the act? It's money in the bank. This film is about Germany's greatest rock star, Udo Lindenberg. Whether that label really applies to him is questionable, but it's what he's called.

My personal knowledge of Udo Lindenberg is limited. In the 1970's I listened to the music of several German groups, including Amon Düül II, Can and Faust. I discovered Udo Lindenberg when I visited my German pen friend Ulrich Goltsche in 1973. He owned two albums by Udo Lindenberg, one in English and one in German. As I remember, the album sung in English didn't impress me much, but the German album was better. He also appeared as drummer on an album made by the group Passport. I wanted to buy this album when I returned to England, but I was unable to find it.

I forgot about Udo Lindenberg for a few years, until I moved to Germany in 1978. By this time he was very popular, but his music had become softer. It wasn't what I would call rock music. It was German pop music, although I would shy away from using the word Schlager. Literally translated, a Schlager is a hit, but you need to be German to understand the word. It refers to a musical genre characterised by triviality and banality, which definitely doesn't apply to Udo's songs.

I was looking forward to the film to learn more about Udo Lindenberg the person. The film only goes as far as his first big concert in 1973, but that's the most interesting part of his career.

He was born in Gronau, on the border with the Netherlands, in 1946. His father was a plumber, and young Udo was expected to follow in his footsteps. The film's opening scenes in 1951 show his father as a man who drank heavily, but his family still loved him.

The film isn't shown in chronological order. It jumps forward to 1971, showing Udo as the drummer in a jazz band in a sex club in Hamburg. He doesn't enjoy this life. He wants to be a star. He always dreamed of fame.

In the following scenes we see his first love when he was 13. Maybe it should be called his first crush. She was 16, much too old for him, but she let him push her bike home from the swimming baths. He had courage. When I was 13 I would never have dared to approach an older girl. She didn't reject him, but based on the evidence of the film she didn't accept him as a lover either. He was her puppy dog who was allowed to follow her home, but never cross the threshold.

When he was 15 his father bought him a drum kit for his birthday. This was unexpected, because his father had always made fun of his musical ambitions. Two years later (1963) he was working as a musician. He was playing in a band that entertained the American armed forces in Libya.

My biggest complaint about the film is that it doesn't tell us anything about his life from 1963 to 1971. If anything, his career seems to have slid backwards in this time, according to the film. There's no mention of his time playing with Passport, whose first album was released in 1970. Maybe it wasn't significant.

What's significant is that his talent is finally recognised by music managers. He's told to get out from behind the drums and become the front man. He's promised that he can become the new Chicago (the group) if he sings in English. That was the reason his first disastrous album was recorded in English. Not only the studios, even his friends said that he had to sing English to be successful. "The Nazis stole our language", they told him, to which he replied "Then we have to steal it back".

From then on Udo insisted on writing German songs. "I talk in German, and I dream in German". His first single was "Sommerliebe" ("summer love"), but the radio stations weren't interested in it. They played the B side, "Hoch im Norden" ("Up in the north"). This made Udo Lindenberg popular, and from then on his career skyrocketed.

Udo Lindenberg is part of German culture. Maybe you like his music, maybe you don't, but you have to acknowledge him as someone who has established the German language in modern German rock music. Without Udo Lindenberg there would be no Rammstein.