Werner Herzog recalls his first rock ‘n’ roll concert experiences
While he might be famed for his pioneering visual conjurings, the auteurship of Werner Herzog is propped up by the music of his films. The scores of his works have long been a perfect facilitator for the sensory overload the German filmmaker is adept at producing. In short, his story is inextricable from sonics.
From Aguirre, the Wrath of God, to Fitzcarraldo, to imagine Herzog’s classic outings without their music is impossible. Notably, the two highlights above were brought to life by the new age ambience of pioneering German collective Popol Vuh, as their leader, Florian Fricke, is a long-term friend of the filmmaker. Herzog credits Fricke with showing him a musical world in the 1970s that would inspire his work moving forward.
During the 1970s, German cultural exports were changing the artistic world. On the musical front, krautrock acts such as Can and Neu! were rewriting the handbook of guitar music, with synth pioneers Kraftwerk signalling the coming technological age with their industrial sounds. On the other side of the coin, in film, the New German Cinema movement had been in progress since 1962 and was also shaking things up, with Herzog becoming a prominent figure in it during the early 1970s, thanks to films such as Aguirre.
Despite being such a verdant time for his country’s art and him being symbiotic with music, Herzog has surprisingly admitted that he wasn’t paying attention to krautrock and what was happening around his friend Fricke. When speaking to Red Bull Music Academy 2017, he reflected on this period before revealing his first rock ‘n’ roll concert experiences, which were much more prominent than Germany’s niche experimentalism in the 1970s.
While krautrock seemed to have bypassed him, Elvis Presley was an artist he grew up listening to as an adolescent. The ‘King of Rock and Roll’ was such a force that when he witnessed a concert film by him in Munich, it had such an impact on the young audience that they trashed the theatre. Herzog soon sensed that the genre was about to take over the world, a realisation that was aided by The Rolling Stones.
Herzog explained: “The Rolling Stones, for the first time in Pittsburgh, first time in America… And I was picked up by a wonderful family and two twin daughters, 17 years old, and this family, they said, ‘Ha, you have to see The Rolling Stones. And, there’s this singer, Brian…’ It was Brian whom they loved, but Brian, I think, died fairly soon in a swimming pool after an overdose. ‘Brian, you have to see Brian.'”
He continued: “So I went with them to into the Civic Arena, 12/13,000 people packed. And, after the concert, they had this kind of plastic seats that they couldn’t rip out. And when we walked out, I saw every third, fourth of these plastic seats was steaming from urine. The girls had peed themselves, and it was steaming, and I thought, ‘This is gonna be big.'”
This moment opened Herzog and the rest of his generation up to future stars such as The Rolling Stones, who we would first witness live in America in the early 1960s when Brian Jones was still in the band. Seeing the British band in action and the outlandish behaviour of fans affirmed to him that it was going to blow up. It solidified Herzog’s love of popular music.
Watch The Rolling Stones live with Brian Jones below.
