Being only a young ‘un in the spring of 1970, the release of Amon Düül II’s second album Yeti was way off my radar. I was more Archies than Amon Düül II. They might have been pure bubblegum but were at least preferable to much of what was then on offer in the British charts: Lee Marvin croaking out Wand’rin’ Star? No thanks. Likewise the efforts of England’s World Cup Squad, Sacha Distel, Dana and Des O’Connor. Even worse, there was (spits) Rolf Harris’s Two Little Boys.
Let’s move on. Before Amon Düül II, there was not surprisingly, a plain old Amon Düül. They’d holed up together in a radical Munich commune and music began playing an important part of life there.
Just as German performance artist and sculptor Joseph Beuys liked to air his slogan ‘Everyone is an artist’, the commune believed that everyone is a musician. You wanted to join in, then you could join in. They even attempted to get audiences involved, handing out bongos and tambourines to them, so they could join in the fun and play along. As John Weinzierl told author David Stubbs in his book Future Days: ‘You didn’t go along to the concert and watch the band; you came to the event and were part of it.’
This was an idea later embraced by some British bands like The Mekons and in some ways it’s a commendable idea. But a flawed one. Have you ever attended a live show and thought: ‘This is pretty good but I bet it would be even better if some random punters were given the chance to tap away on a little drum or bash a tamby?’
Two factions emerged within the band. One specialised in sitting around playing extended and aimless improvisatory jams, which might have been just about tolerable to listen to after a few tokes of Red Leb or a handful of magic mushrooms but otherwise would be an headnipping bore. The others, who took on the name Amon Düül II, wanted to progress musically. Not that they were aspiring towards the virtuosity levels of an ELP or Yes.
Even big fan Julian Cope conceded in his Krautrocksampler that ‘they’ve certainly recorded their fair share of shit,’ but Amon Düül II went on to produce far better music than Amon Düül and enjoy a more interesting career.
For starters, they found fans from John Peel (who booked them for a session) to some leaders of the Baader-Meinhof Gang (who were sent packing from the commune by singer Renate Knaup while attempting to hide from the cops); they managed to fit in a date at the Cavern in Liverpool shortly before it was closed and appeared in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1970 film The Niklashausen Journey. Or to give it its German title Die Niklashauser Fart.
Archangel Thunderbird from Yeti might be their finest moment, a lysergic Louie Louie that sounds like a life or death struggle. It’s gloriously off-kilter, the result of a curious clash of time signatures and Renate Knaup’s soaring Yoko meets Nico vocals, which also look forward to Metal Box era John Lydon.
You could even argue this is where 1970s music truly kicked off.
‘Where,’ you might be asking after that sonic maelstrom, ‘does Kate Bush fit into all this?’
Okay, by the time of Amon Düül II’s seventh album, 1973’s Vive La Trance, precocious young Kate was already composing songs and had even penned an embryonic version of The Man With The Child In His Eyes. She was listening to Bowie and Roxy, American singer-songwriters like Laura Nyro and Judee Sill, as well as a range of folkies from Anne Briggs to The Incredible String Band but she’s such a unique artist that any concrete influences on her work are difficult to detect.
I’ve never read of Kate being a Kosmiche fan but if you listen now to Vive La Trance, you’ll almost inevitably wonder if the teenage singer had been aware of the track Jalousie. It’s certainly a whole lot closer to the kind of material on her early demos and albums than it is to Archangel Thunderbird and if there’s one song that sounds like Kate Bush before she’d ever made a record, this must surely be it.
For more on the band, click here.
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