Campino explains 40 years of Toten Hosen: "It's not about the Champions League, it's about Haching in the rain"

Die Toten Hosen celebrate their 40th birthday.

Singer Campino came to Munich's Viktualienmarkt to talk about the anniversary of the band from Düsseldorf.

40 years ago, Campino, Andreas von Holst, Andreas Meurer, Michael Breitkopf and Trini Trimpop founded the punk rock band Die Toten Hosen in Düsseldorf.

On Friday, May 27, 2022, the anniversary album

will be released - and on June 18, 2022, the pants will celebrate the rounds in the Olympic Stadium.

We brought lines from Hosen songs to the interview to look back with Campino.

The first line of the song I chose is "Round the block/ Then jack up the truck".

The band now runs much longer than once around the block.

Did you know that then?

Campino:

Shouldn't we have sung about the beetle sooner?

No, we absolutely didn't see that coming, but it didn't bother us either.

We were good in the here and now - this attitude differs little from today.

The songs came right out of our lives, as hopefully they still do.

Of course it has become a completely different everyday life.

“Opel-Gang” corresponded to our feeling at the time: you didn’t have much, dreamed of expensive sports cars, but still made the best of it: So took what was on your doorstep and tried to pimp it up.

In retrospect, we can look at all this with a smile, with a nonchalance.

The keyword "nonchalance" brings us to the next line: "We don't give a shit about victory/ because it's about something else".

Do you need this attitude to be successful?

Campino:

It's more the attitude you should adopt when you come from a city like Düsseldorf, where the sports team you love has proportionately more defeats than wins.

Maybe that's just encouraging yourself.

The credo "victories are not important" should simply be internalized if it is not enough for that so often anyway.

But even applied to the Toten Hosen, a statement like “It can only ever be about winning” would never have fitted.

We would have lived badly with that.

"Because it's about something else." What is the band about?

Campino:

About passion.

Not always technically beautiful, but always tried.

Translated into the image of football, it's not about glamour, not about the Champions League final, but about standing in the rain and watching Unterhaching how they fight their way through against a local rival.

This madness, standing somewhere on Saturdays, forgetting the week because you get obsessed with what's happening on the pitch: that's what fascinates me, which I can find at every football match, by the way.

I enjoy going to any village game at least as much as I enjoy going to the stadium to see a pro team.

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Talked about the first 40 years of the Toten Hosen: Campino and Michael Schleicher, head of culture at "Münchner Merkur" and "tz".

© Oliver Bodmer/Münchner Merkur

Back to the music.

"You're too old for pop music!" Seriously?!

Can you ever be?

Campino:

I don't think it's based on age, but on inner attitude.

Of course there can be a point where you go into new territory, like you change your style of clothing and then start listening to jazz, say, at 40.

Simply because you think: That fits better.

For us, the song "Popmusik" in 2005 was a first confrontation with the accusation that we were getting too old for what we do.

It was fun to approach the whole thing with irony.

From the same song comes the line "All the three-minute wonders/they're never coming back".

Can you tell when a song has what it takes to be a hit?

Campino:

I feel that very often - but I'm also very often wrong.

For example?

Campino:

I still don't quite understand that a song like "Wannsee"

is celebrated in such a way and was never accused of being a bit hit .

Other songs, which we were totally sure would go down well, were judged much more severely.

This is perhaps the secret: everyone interprets a song in their own way.

Does that bother you as a copywriter?

Campino:

Sometimes I can't understand why people don't see my motives.

"You don't notice how the days go by..."

Campino:

"... nothing lasts forever!"

Let's stay with the first part: 40 years of Toten Hosen - do you notice that four decades have passed?

Campino:

Yes!

And that's a good sign.

Because if those 40 years had seemed like an eternity to us, it would have been a tough road and we probably would have stopped long ago.

In retrospect, not everything was great, but it was exciting.

Do you feel old?

Campino:

You don't even notice that you're getting older, that's the nature of time.

I was recently approached on the plane by an older woman: "Aren't you Andreas Frege?" My first thought was that this must be the mother of someone I knew from before.

In fact, she then told me that we went to the same class together in Mettmann.

It was a shock.

The song is called "Nothing lasts forever" - do you sometimes think about what will remain of the pants?

Campino:

I would of course like it if a few melodies stayed popular and some people remembered them.

Just like sometimes songs from the twenties are dug up.

But it cannot be our drive to leave any kind of legacy.

That claim would feel terribly pompous.

We got along very well with these songs as the soundtrack for our lives - and the last laugh might be our date at the Düsseldorf Südfriedhof.

I think the idea that elementary school classes will one day visit the local heroes of the city at the Südfriedhof is completely okay.

Which songs should survive the band?

Campino:

I don't have any preferences.

There are pieces like "Nur zu Visit" or "Outside the Door" where I have the impression of having touched people.

It's always a special gift for me when people tell me they share my feelings from a song or it helped them through a difficult time.

That's nice.

One title I could imagine staying is Here Comes Alex.

You sing "Everyone lives like clockwork, programmed like a computer" - in 1988 that was downright prophetic.

Campino:

Alex is the protagonist of the novel "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess.

I have always been fascinated by this book and by Huxley's Brave New World.

The motif of the citizen controlled by the system and some guys rebelling against it was exciting for us – it's basically a leitmotif of the punk scene, be it in Düsseldorf or London.

That's why we happily threw ourselves into the work of writing this music for the theater.

Is this curiosity about other genres - be it as a band or individually like your work with filmmaker Wim Wenders - a reason why you have developed as an artist?

Campino:

When someone says the word "artist" in relation to me or us as a band, I always get a little dizzy.

With the Toten Hosen, we often still have the feeling that we are more likely to rank among the craftsmen who can certainly put together a decent table.

I don't know if you can count that as art.

But we found a tremendous joy in poking our noses into things that are none of our business - and pushing our limits.

But not according to the motto "Now let's dare something", but simply because we have thieving fun!

"I think the world will change again."

Are you an optimist?

Campino:

We used to mean that ironically.

Actually, "Wünsch dir was" in 1993 was a cynical reckoning with Helmut Kohl's "Blossoming Landscapes".

That's how the song was set up.

Then it was published – and we got an incredible number of letters from people thanking us for finally writing something positive.

I was overtaken by the interpretation here, but I thought to myself: if people see it that way, I don't want to be the spoilsport.

So I decided: The song is a positive contribution and conveys confidence!

“The main thing is that you work together and with your head against the wall!” Is that the line that could stand for Hosen for over 40 years?

Campino:

Occasionally.

Thank god we didn't always try.

Because sometimes the bumps were very painful - and the door was often only two meters to the left or right anyway.

Above all, we had to learn not to always want to prove ourselves to ourselves, but to accept ourselves as we are.