Blixa Bargeld

[hag]

Blixa Bargeld, musician, lead vocalist of Einstürzende Neubauten and member of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds from 1983–2003.

Being at an Einstürzende Neubauten concert always felt like being on a construction site. You watched the band literally at work. Machine parts and tools like chainsaws and jackhammers were their instruments, the drum set substituted by metal tubes and scrap iron.

In the center the front singer of this busting sound event – one of the most dazzling personalities in the history of German music: Blixa Bargeld. Nobody else embodied the 1980s West Berlin punk attitude more than him. Nobody was so over the edge, so demonic and at the same time so inventive. Blixa Bargeld is mainly known for being the mind and front singer of Einstürzende Neubauten, although he is a multi-talent and has never restricted himself to being only musician.

Since the beginning of the 1980s Bargeld has worked in all kinds of performing arts. He did radio plays and movies, theatre productions, concerts, performances and installations. No matter which field he works in, it is always experimental.

He characterizes himself as: "I am everything possible and anything in between." Blixa Bargeld is a fictional character. Even though he has changed his style from his torn black rubber and leather outfits and wild hairstyles with shaven parts from the '80s into dark, tailor-made suits and a symmetric hairstyle, he hasn't lost his unwillingness to compromise.

As a true artist, Blixa is, of course, also exhausting: He is despotic, impatient, explosive and dogmatic. On the question of his arrogant image, he bursts out: "Arrogant - with justification!" On the other hand, he is friendly, hospitable and surprisingly sophisticated for a school dropout.

https://seelebrenntarchive.wordpress...in-leben-2008/

 

Bargeld's purposeful bodily decay was particularly notable. He developed a habit of wearing black rubber; this included a rubber coat, trousers, and boots even in summer, earning him the description of "Death in Rubber" because of his thinness and paleness. Fritz Brinkmann commented that his vitality contrasted with his appearance which seeming to imply his imminent demise, yet when one met him there was a sense of having only just caught him alive.

For Rainald Goetz, according to a text published in Spex magazine in May 1984, Bargeld was "a tall, impressive, muscular-angular person with a beautifully exaggerated drug-addict face, eyes made for eternity and a demonic voice he could only have obtained by sealing a pact with the devil."

There are many descriptions of Bargeld's yellow taut flesh, his lanky frame clad in black, eyes popping above high cheekbones with one lined in black (Clockwork Orange style), bad teeth, sections of scalp razored, hair pulled into complete disarray, and partly torn out, with clumps of it stapled to his waistcoat like a hairshirt.

 

I didn't think that he could [speak English]. And one day he just spoke English. And he speaks unbelievably beautiful, expressive English. That was Blixa. Blixa was always sort of playing the long game.

He was incredible. He is like the most one-eyed creature that you could imagine. You ask Blixa what he thought: "I THINK IT IS THIS WAY." And that's the end of it. I was kind of in awe of Blixa. And he was this incredible guitarist. Played the guitar like... no-one. He would come on tour without a guitar. I said "Where's your guitar?", he says "I did not bring my guitar." And he would borrow the support group's guitar, much to their horror. Just plug it into an amp and create stuff you'd never heard before. He's a... creation, of some sort, where you can't even imagine that he could have parents. You can't even imagine what coupling of normal people could create that thing.

Creativity is only possible in extreme life situations. I don't think anything valuable can emerge otherwise.

Fellow Berlin composer Frieder Butzmann claims that Bargeld "simply used a cellar as an apartment... Blixa and Andrew [Unruh, also of Neubauten] lived out this death-and-concrete aesthetic in earnest," while Bargeld himself confesses to squatting in a home without utilities and leaving his frozen foods outside to cool in lieu of a freezer (long-time followers of Neubauten probably know the happy end to this story, in which Blixa eventually survives his period of severe emaciation and becomes an enthusiastic gourmand.)

My parents cut out every article about me from the newspapers and magazines, they do not understand what I do, but they are happy for me. They don't really think about my music. At home, music is turned only so loud that nobody is disturbed while talking which makes my toenails curl. My mother for example asked me last Christmas: Why are you saying in Stuhl der Hölle "I wish my mother a chair in hell"? I told her that the text was not written by me.

One of the reasons I got kicked out of school was because I had started a fire. My expulsion had already been decided upon anyway, so I didn't have anything to lose. But I was still the student body president, and tried to enforce my pseudo-democratic rights by decorating a "Schülermitverwaltungsversammlung", a kind of student council assembly, with a fire bombing - in which no one was hurt - because I was no longer allowed to take part in the assembly.

Bargeld talked of being willing to sacrifice "our whole person as a test object". The main thing Bargeld had derived from forbears like Throbbing Gristle was the twin notions of "un-entertainment" and of total commitment to art, physically putting yourself on the line (like the Atkionists before them all). "I don't need a listener, I need a witness," is how Bargeld describes his feelings about performance at that time.

Did Cave change my aesthetic perspective? No. I do not have an aesthetic perspective, and if I should ever see an aesthetic perspective, I would hit it with a hammer over its head.

And either he [Blixa] had no socks or some really smelly socks. So I gave him a bunch of socks. And that was the start of our friendship.

"Geniale Dilletanten" meant getting rid of conventions and restrictions - and achieving creativity through this new freedom of thinking. The festival "Geniale Dilletanten" had been organized by Blixa together with Wolfgang Muller. I remember the wonderful lists and timetables Blixa provided the artist with, handwritten and photo-copied, telling everybody how the fees were distributed, what had to be done in general and how long everyone was supposed to peform. Blixa is a neat freak in that sense. He always goes down to the bottom of things to search for its origins. That always fascinated me about Blixa. There was no superficial fiddling, he always went deeper. I liked that.

interview: https://seelebrenntarchive.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/morphogenetic-resonance-you-know/

 

 

STUDENT: So, how was it then, were you discovered, or did you strive for something like that, or...

BLIXA: No, actually... I'd say that the climate at the time around 1980 was better suited to start anything than it is now. Now, you'd probably have to be discovered, I don't know. Back then, it wasn't really relevant for me. It sort of went by itself.

STUDENT: Well, how did it go...

BLIXA: How do you make something go by itself?

STUDENT: When I try to picture that today, if I'd tried to form a band, and then play some type of music, I don't know...

BLIXA: You'd probably suffer from an enormous oversupply of other people doing exactly the same. Even if you'd try to do something different, I mean, there are always a lot of people forming a band at any given time, playing music and... In terms of climate, I'd say that, at least around 1979 to 1980, there was a lot of crap around that nobody gave a shit about anymore, and anything else was welcome, so in that sense the climate was different. If I started today, I might not stand a chance to establish myself, doing what I'm doing now.

STUDENT: I know that you're making your music with air hammers and buzz saws, I don't know how you got the idea, but I also know that you...

BLIXA: I think that it certainly didn't have anything to do with music education here.

STUDENT: I mean, I've heard that you had a bit of trouble at school...

BLIXA: Also true.

STUDENT: And that you'd been asked to leave, so to speak...

BLIXA: This my revenge, so to speak, that I'm here now. I had to obtain permission from Mr. Volkhard Rohde, who is still the headmaster, to even set foot in this school again. Because it had been noted on my school certificate that I be banned from entering here. So, it was a sort of challenge, returning here, at the official invitation of the very person who banned me in the first place.

STUDENT: Weren't you a little bit sorry about it, I don't know, graduation is a good goal somehow after all...

BLIXA: Is it?

STUDENT: ...or have you just had enough?

BLIXA: I don't know, the ability to look ahead, to say that I needed to graduate or didn't need to, just wasn't at my disposal at the time. I was only trying to establish myself and my individualism as anarchically and as radically as possible, and that of course was a reason that I was expelled from school, but as I said, I was really aiming for it at the time.

STUDENT: And did you know that you wanted to be a musician, or was it like the last chance...

BLIXA: I never wanted to be a musician. I still don't.

STUDENT: Can you play an instrument?

BLIXA: No.

STUDENT: Never thought about it either, that you'd learn something or...

BLIXA: Well, I've learned to be a film projectionist, but that was by accident.

STUDENT: No, I mean a musical instrument or...

BLIXA: No, for that... Well... There are families where you are encouraged to learn to play a musical instrument, my family wasn't one of them.

STUDENT: Well, I mean, I'm a musician myself, that is, I play musical instruments and so on, for me personally it wouldn't be enough to make music, I'd have to master it.

BLIXA: Yes, that's surely... But you are... You certainly were a bit younger when you started to play a musical instrument.

STUDENT: That's true.

BLIXA: See? I had only been given the choice whether I wanted to be a track-and-field athlete or a swimmer, not whether I wanted to play the clarinet or the guitar. So to say at the age of 18 or 20, or whatever age, to say now I'm going to learn how to play a musical instrument, was superfluous in principle. Or wasn't it?

STUDENT: It's always a question of attitude, I mean there are...

BLIXA: Well no, it isn't, it's also a question of whether after being expelled from school and attending job-creation programs, living off social welfare, you should put aside the money needed to learn to play an instrument. I think I skipped that, so to speak.

STUDENT: Do you regret it? Not having learned to play a musical instrument.

BLIXA: That I didn't learn to play an instrument? Yes. You could say that, yes. I certainly would have preferred it over track and field athletics or swimming, honestly.

STUDENT: And is this why you use such curious instruments like saws, because you don't know how to play others...

BLIXA: I personally don't use instruments usually, I only ever sing really.

STUDENT: You're just using your voice.

BLIXA: Exactly.

STUDENT: People probably say that it isn't really music...

BLIXA: Sure. Personally, I take what I do very seriously. Which doesn't mean that I don't have a sense of humor, but in principle, I take it very seriously. And it just took a couple of years, and in those years there certainly have been a lot of people who said that it isn't music, but the consistency with which you do something tends to convince even the last skeptic eventually.

STUDENT: So how did you come by your... these... Well, I don't want to say instruments. Well, it doesn't matter, actually you could say that...

BLIXA: If you take the original meaning, the term instruments is perfectly correct.

STUDENT: Okay. So how did you come by that, following the motto "sei schlau, klau beim Bau" ["be clever, steal from the construction site"] or...

BLIXA: That slogan actually was written on the first drum set. "Sei schlau klau beim Bau", yes. We did have a normal drum set, but it had to be sold due to financial difficulties, and out of those financial difficulties, we had to get something else, so there definitely was "sei schlau klau beim Bau."

STUDENT: What kind of money do you actually make now?

BLIXA: Rather a lot.

STUDENT: Well, approximately.

BLIXA: Do you want to know whether it is worthwhile to enter the profession of being a rock musician, or what?

STUDENT: Whether it is... Well, I mean, your career so to speak... To get rich without an education...

BLIXA: No, I didn't exactly get rich.

STUDENT: Do you have enough money for when you're old, or do you have to...

BLIXA: When I'm old? I don't think so. It's foreseeable of course that being a rock musician isn't an occupation that can sustain you over decades. At some point, it is bound to get pathetic.

BLIXA: Do you have enough money now, so you can live comfortably in the future...

BLIXA: No. No, not at all. I just have enough money to live a reasonably comfortable life at this moment. I just procured an old age insurance policy. Each month, I'll be paying a certain amount of money into it for the next 25 years, and then I might be able to live off of that sometime. Provided I manage to pay into it each month for the next 25 years.

STUDENT: Well, that is something, isn't it.

BLIXA: I'm content that I've been able to dissolve your worries for my future. That's about the same thing I hear from my mother whenever I call her.

STUDENT: How did your parents react when you suddenly started to make noise in public...

BLIXA: Well, it didn't happen all that suddenly. I don't know. They certainly didn't like what I haven't been doing before. And being a musician or a rock musician wasn't a part of any job description, established by the unemployment agency, so there wasn't much for anyone to say about it.

STUDENT: And what do they say now? I mean, are they still...

BLIXA: Now, they're collecting in big folders whatever's in the newspapers.

[Delilah]

did you consider ILI? I thought there is a slight chance he might be ILI.

[Adam Strange]

He looks to me to be too extroverted to be ILI. I’d say that LIE fits him better. Living in a basement for a while is Si-PoLR, leaving frozen food outside in winter just makes sense from an efficiency (Te) standpoint.
Also, his approach to musical instruments is similar to my own approach to tools. In HS, I was in track and field sports. When I left school, I wanted to learn how to machine and weld metal, so I answered an ad for experienced machinists (and another one for welders), even though I had never touched either of these things before. I was naturally good at these things and could walk up to any machine or welder and just start using it. I’m pretty good at both without any training, but I never thought of myself as a machinist or a welder. I’m just a guy who can do those things.
Also, his comment about making quite a bit of money now but not having enough to retire on sounds exactly like my own situation. As does wondering whether he’ll be able to make regular insurance payments for 25 years, because who knows how much he’ll make in the future? He might like to take a year off and do things that don’t bring in money. This is exactly my attitude. Jobs are something you do when you either run low on cash or want to learn something new and get paid while learning it.

So, he’s probably LIE.

[FDG]

seems EIE to me.

[vesstheastralsilky]

seems EIE to me.

I concur.

But you seem Alpha NT to me, FDG.

[FDG]

I concur.

But you seem Alpha NT to me, FDG.

That´s unlikely, I could be ENTP in MBTI but in socionics i fit quite well the LIE description and I don´t really fit the ILE ones.

[vesstheastralsilky]

That´s unlikely, I could be ENTP in MBTI but in socionics i fit quite well the LIE description and I don´t really fit the ILE ones.

What about the Filatova one?

I think the intertype relations have been spoiled by too much conflicting research by the experts which then makes it hard to know.

For example I normally test as INTP all my life and have learned many Alpha NT skills to compensate for my dual seldom being in my life, but supervisors constantly appearing with new demands or threats to my basic wellbeing.

[FDG]

What about the Filatova one?

I think the intertype relations have been spoiled by too much conflicting research by the experts which then makes it hard to know.

For example I normally test as INTP all my life and have learned many Alpha NT skills to compensate for my dual seldom being in my life, but supervisors constantly appearing with new demands or threats to my basic wellbeing.

Uh, it just doesn´t fit with my whole life outlook, I know some Alpha NTs and they are just different in their approach to socialization, work, life, etc.
If you want to type me as Ne dominant I´d more likely be an IEE.
If you normally test as INTP I would personally say you´re likely to be INTP.

[silke]

SEI-Si so/sx 3w4

this guy is not gamma

[vesstheastralsilky]

SEI-Si so/sx 3w4

this guy is not gamma

Nah, trust me, this type struggles with So. He is like one of my ex's. I was in the Supervisor intertype relational role. He was very EIE but we found peace in sharing Fe values much of the time.