Death: RPS Lanrue dead – co-founder of Ton Steine ​​Scherben

With “Destroy what destroys you” and “No power for anyone”, the band Ton Steine ​​Scherben provided the soundtrack for the revolutionary part of the 70s. The musician known as RPS Lanrue and co-founder of the political rock band, Ralph Peter Steitz, has died. He died on Sunday in Berlin surrounded by his family at the age of 74, as his wife confirmed to the German Press Agency in Berlin. “Die Tageszeitung” had previously reported.Tumult was part of the band and the musicians’ lives. Freshly founded in Berlin, the rock band around lead singer Rio Reiser appeared together on stage for the first time on the island of Fehmarn in 1970. The 1970 Love and Peace Festival was supposed to be a kind of German Woodstock. To the musicians’ outrage, the box office disappeared. The political rockers play “Destroy what destroys you”. Reiser gets the fans even more worked up. The first single from the record unfolds its primal power: In the general tumult, the stage goes up in flames.

“It was brilliant,” RPS Lanrue recalled in an interview with the dpa a few years ago. He founded Ton Steine ​​Scherben together with Reiser, who died in 1996.

Started with covers

Ralph Peter Steitz (Lanrue) and Ralph Christian Möbius (Reiser) had a lot in common. They met in Nieder-Roden, Hesse, in 1966. Lanrue needed a guitarist and asked Reiser to play a Stones song. He sang it straight away. As Beat Kings and De Galaxis, they played covers and their first own songs, and were influenced by the Stones.

Reiser went to West Berlin, Lanrue followed shortly after. In 1969 they wrote “Destroy what destroys you” for the play “Rita and Paul”. The song was directly related to the play. “Every evening a television with a right-wing extremist smashed to pieces,” remembered Lanrue. “We then played “Destroy” to go with it.”

Shortly afterwards, Reiser and Lanrue founded Ton Steine ​​Scherben with bassist Kai Sichtermann and drummer Wolfgang Seidel. Over the years, there were numerous additions, breaks and changes in the line-up.

Sound of revolt

In the original, “Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht” has an almost two-minute introduction; after slightly spherical first sounds, an increasingly aggressive crescendo follows with an unmistakable guitar riff by Lanrue. “When I just played it, the mood was there immediately,” the musician described the heated situation in the concerts.

The Scherben delivered the sound of revolt on three albums: “I don’t want to become what my age is” symbolized the generational conflict, the “Rauch-Haus-Song” is accompaniment for squatting, “Keine Macht für Niemand” stood for the urge for freedom and anarchy.

Much of the playlist about the fight against the establishment took place in Kreuzberg. In divided Berlin, the district was separated from the life of the rest of the western part of the city, the battleground of Ton Steine ​​Scherben. “The invention of Kreuzberg” is, in the view of the “Tageszeitung”, the “historical feat of Ton Steine ​​Scherben”.

Modest fees

The Scherben were supposed to play at many events. The fees were modest, organizers expected solidarity from the band. Reiser, Lanrue and other musicians lived on the “T-Ufer”, a commune on the Tempelhofer Ufer. Open house. Lots of visitors, unannounced intruders, police raids.

All of this became too much for Reiser and Lanrue in the mid-70s, and they moved with a small Scherben community to Fresenhagen in North Friesland. There, the fourth album “IV” was created, which even many Scherben fans hardly know. “My favorite album,” said Lanrue.

The Red Army Faction was formed in the year the political band was founded. Visits from RAF members to the Berlin Scherben commune were not uncommon. “They came and went from our place,” recalled Lanrue. Nevertheless, from the musician’s point of view, there was “not much” RAF in Ton Steine ​​Scherben. “Although we got to know many protagonists, we always did our own thing,” said Lanrue. Armed combat and outright terror were not part of it.