Biography

Die Ärzte (German for “The Doctors”) are a German rock/punk rock band from Berlin, Germany. They call themselves “die beste Band der Welt” (“the best band in the world”) as tribute to the band KISS who call themselves “the hottest band in the world”. Along with Düsseldorf outfit Die Toten Hosen, Die Ärzte are among the best-known German punk rock bands.

The band consists of guitarist Farin Urlaub, drummer Bela B. and bass player Rodrigo Gonzalez. All of them write and sing. However Farin writes most, followed by Bela and Rod. Some songs are collaborations between two or all three.

Die Ärzte were formed in 1982 by Jan Vetter (alias Farin Urlaub, a pun on the expression “Fahr in’ Urlaub”, meaning “Go on vacation”), Dirk Felsenheimer (alias Bela B.) and bassist Hans Runge (alias Sahnie). Bela and Farin had previously played together in a band Soilent Grün; after that band broke up they decided to form a band playing fun songs, in contrast to the mostly political bands of the punk scene at that time. While deriving from that punk scene, their early music was heavily influenced by pop and rock’n’roll, especially The Beatles, whom Farin heard a lot as a child due to his mother playing their records. Another influence might be the Comedian Harmonists; however, the Band denies any known connection to their music. Due to a lack of money for the equipment Farin did not play his guitar distorted at that time.

In the first two years they mostly played in clubs of their hometown of Berlin. Their first release was a contribution to the sampler “20 überschäumende Stimmungshits” (roughly, “20 exuberant mood hits”), which contained a strong alcohol theme (the song features lyrics that translate to “you drink whiskey, he drinks beer, I like milk”, a good example of their sense of humor). In 1983 they won a rock contest in Berlin; with the prize money they recorded their debut EP “Uns gehts prima” (“We’re doing great”). Finally Columbia Records signed them, and they released their first LP “Debil” in 1984 and the second one (“Im Schatten Der Ärzte”) a year later.

After the second record they parted ways with Sahnie due to internal problems. On the third record he was replaced by producer Miccey Meuser; later the Incredible Hagen played bass for them until their breakup, though he was never an official member of the band. The third album was also the first one where Farin used distorted guitar sounds on most of the album, so the sound of the band shifted a bit towards rock.

In 1987 the German Federal Centre for Media Harmful to Young Persons put the songs Geschwisterliebe (“Sibling Love”, a song about incest, from Die Ärzte), Claudia hat ‘nen Schäferhund (“Claudia has a German Shepherd”, about zoophilia, from “Debil”) and Schlaflied (“Lullaby”, about a monster coming and eating you after falling asleep, also from “Debil”) on the German List of Media Harmful to Young People. This prohibited the band from performing the songs live and, more importantly, promoting the two albums, and shops from openly displaying the records in their shelves. After several trials against shops that still openly sold the records a lot of shops removed Die Ärzte completely from their stock. The result was a drop in record sales and big financial problems for the band. In response they released the compilation “Ab 18” (“Adults Only”) with all their songs on the index and some other old and new tasteless songs, and the greatest hits album “Ist das alles?”(“Is this everything?” but also can be translated as “Is this the end?”). The album and the new singles were fairly successful, partly because of growing media interest due to the previous censorship.

The following album “Das ist nicht die ganze Wahrheit” (“That is not the whole truth”) was even more successful, climbing into the top 10 in the German album charts. They decided to go out on a high note in 1988, breaking up after doing one last tour and recording a live double album that became their first number one in the album charts.

Neither Farin´s new band King Køng nor Bela´s Depp Jones were really successful, so in 1993 they decided to do a reunion. As bass player they invited Rodrigo Gonzales, who was guitarist in Depp Jones and a friend of Bela. Their comeback single was Schrei nach Liebe (“Cry for Love”), their first ever political song, that they published as a statement against what was perceived as growing racism and right wing extremist violence in Germany at that time. The refrain translates to “Your violence is just a silent cry for love / Your combat boots are craving for tenderness / You never learnt to express yourself / And your parents never had time for you / Oh oh oh asshole” and can be considered as a response to people who judge too easily about racism. The lyrics make some more or less obvious allusions (as often in songs by Die Ärzte) towards the idea that someone’s bad childhood may have led to his racist attitudes. E.g. the text says at the end: “Du hast nie gelernt, Dich ‘artizukulieren’…” (“You have never learnt ‘ex-to-press’ yourself properly”) but ‘artizukulieren’ as a german word does not exist. In fact, one would have to say “zu artikulieren” (“to articulate”, “to express yourself”). A possible interpretation of this fault (usually lyrics by Die Ärzte show a very high level of language usage!) is that Die Ärzte want to make fun out of people inventing unnecessarily difficult words (like ‘articulate’ and its proper usage) for a situation where you should rather act than speak. Or for a behaviour that has little or no relevance with the actual point you are discussing (here: racism and racism-related violence). So you can see this song as an appeal to act against racism and violence instead of talking about how to do it best and to find excuses why it exists.

The album was more diverse than ever, with ballads, punk, rock and traditional German sounds. Both album and single became big hits in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The follow-Up “Planet Punk” was also very successful.

In 1996 they wanted to make an EP just about hair, but they wrote too many songs for an EP and made the Album “Le Frisur” (“The Hairdo”) instead. It was slightly less successful than its predecessors. Apart from their own tours they also supported Kiss in that year, a dream come true for Bela and Rod.

1998 was perhaps the most successful year of their career, the single “Männer sind Schweine” (“Men are Pigs”) being their first Number 1 single in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and the album 13 also being Number 1 in Germany and Switzerland. After a lot of promotion and touring in that year they decided to take a break, deciding also to never play again “Männer sind Schweine” at a concert due to the too great success this song had. They did not like the upcoming unwanted and rather unoriginal remakes by other bands as e.g. “Frauen sind Schweine” (“Women are pigs”) and also did not like to see their song played at mass tourist beach parties at places like Mallorca/Spain.

In 2000 they came back with another very successful album, “Runter mit den Spendierhosen, Unsichtbarer!”, and two top 10 singles. As the third single from the album they released the 30-second-song “Yoko Ono”, which, according to the Guinness Book of Records, is the shortest single ever released - another example of their sense of humour. On their tour in 2001 they sold the limited Album “5, 6, 7, 8 Bullenstaat” consisting of short punk songs that were written and recorded while recording the full length album published a year before, and some cover songs published in 1994 on a tour only EP.

After that they again took a break: Bela did some acting, Farin recorded his first solo album (Endlich Urlaub!). In late 2002 they did an MTV Unplugged in a school auditorium together with the school band. After that they made a new double album Geräusch that was released in 2003. On the next tour a Live DVD was recorded and published a year later. While the Band was on halt again and Farin released another Solo Album, “Claudia hat nen Schäferhund” and “Schlaflied” were dropped from the Index in 2004, so “Debil” was made available in stores again. In 2005 a new version of the Album was released, containing the old version plus some B-sides and unreleased bonus material, but under the name “Devil”, the letter “b” changed to a “v”.


On their 2003 album Geräusch (Noise), they spell their name with three dots over the a in ärzte, a sort of “triaresis” mark that does not correspond to any real language construct — a play on the heavy metal umlaut. This can be represented in Unicode: die a⃛rzte. Note that “Die Ärzte”, with two dots, is correct German orthography and not related to the heavy metal umlaut.

The band chose the name “Die Ärzte” because, to their knowledge, no other band in Germany or anywhere used the letter “Ä”, and when they went into a store they missed this letter. They did not seek any affiliation with medicinal issues whatsoever - a fact that was all too often forgotten by journalists and bootleg manufacturers, who included wordplays and allusions to hospitals, medicine, surgery etc. in article headers and record titles.

The band has been immensely popular in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, while also enjoying some success in other Northern European countries. Much of the band’s popularity can be attributed to their humorous lyrics, which are lost on non-German speakers. Die Ärzte are virtually unknown outside of Europe.

The Band considered releasing an album in English in the mid-90s, but they felt that they would lose part of their identity and they dropped the idea. In 2002 they did a short tour in Japan and released a compilation of their last albums there, and in 2004 they did a short tour in South America, but without having as much impact as Die Toten Hosen.

2006 The Band released a Best-Of Lp which is called “Bäst Of”. The Lp was rapidly hiking on the German music Charts
It skyrocketed to first place in week one, but also fell rapidly afterwards.

On the 31.12.2006 The Band gave a Open-air Concert (“ärzte statt Böller”, ~ärzte instead of fireworks, a play on words with a yearly New Years campaign in Germany, “Brot statt Böller”, meaning “[buy] bread [for the third world] instead of fireworks”) in Cologne, on The “Rhein-Energie-Stadion” Stadium.

The official homepage for Die Ärzte is www.bademeister.com