How Anne Frank shaped the career of Neutral Milk Hotel
When established rock outfits are asked to share their inspirations, the lists are fairly predictable. Usually populated by the likes of The Beatles, The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, the answer to the question ‘Who are your influences?’ could be copied and pasted for a vast array of different groups. That’s where Neutral Milk Hotel differs from the norm. Taking inspiration from noise rock, gamelan music, and traditional Eastern European folk, the Athens band were endearingly eclectic.
For their incredible sophomore album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the Jeff Mangum-fronted group furthered their endearing eccentricity by incorporating the sounds of the singing saw and uilleann pipes – something that was unheard of within the indie rock scene of the 1990s. In the Aeroplane is an absolute masterpiece of an indie psych album, changing the course of the genre indefinitely. For the record, Mangum drew on everything from Tropicália to musique concrète, but the overarching inspiration came from a much darker place.
Early on in the band’s history, Mangum had read The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time. The book is a translation of the writings of Anne Frank, a Jewish teenage girl who documented her life while hiding from persecution by the Nazis during the Second World War before dying in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March of 1945. Frank, of course, needs no introduction; her diaries have been translated into over 70 languages since its initial publication, with the girl herself becoming symbolic of the horrors purported by the Nazi party during the Holocaust.
The Diary of Anne Frank proved to be as moving and emotional for Mangum as it had been for virtually everybody who has ever read it. In a 1998 interview with Puncture, he revealed, “I spent two days reading it and completely flipped out…spent about three days crying…It stuck with me for a long, long time”.
Continuing, he added: “While I was reading the book, she was completely alive to me. […] So here I am as deep as you can go in someone’s head, in some ways deeper than you can go with someone you know in the flesh. And then at the end, she gets disposed of like a piece of trash.“
The influence of Anne Frank is prevalent throughout Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 album but is particularly noted on the heartbreaking track ‘Holland, 1945’. As the title implies, the song is a direct reference to the persecution of Anne Frank and the horrific genocide of the Holocaust in general.
Inspiration for the track came from Mangum’s all-encompassing interest in the heartbreaking story of Frank. “I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine,” he explained, “Having the ability to move through time and space freely and save Anne Frank. Do you think that’s embarrassing?”
While it is certainly not embarrassing to wish that the Holocaust could have never happened, it is perhaps an unexpected theme for a 1990s American indie rock band to explore. Regardless, ‘Holland, 1945’ has since become a more relatable track about love and loss, as well as the terrifying nature of war and conflict. Despite its gut-wrenching qualities, it remains one of Mangum’s finest works.
