• BAND-HISTORY

  • 1968 until 1974
  • 1975 until 1983
  • 1984 until 1992
  • > 1993 until 1999
  • 2000 until 2004
  • 2005 until 2013

• POSTERS + FOTOS

  • Tourposters
  • Flyers
  • Concert-Photos
  • Fan - Fiction

• MORE INFOS

  • Tour-Diary 2008
  • Newspapers
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  • Links

1993 and 1994

In spring 1993 Nossi, Horst, Rocco and Xaver started to work intensely towards a re-union of rock legends Birth Control. They practised, set up a programme and eventually the eagerly awaited moment arrived: the first concert after a nearly ten-year break at the "Balver Höhle" on 21.08. The media took hardly any notice of it – but not so the fans. Merely a short article in the newspaper Westfalenpost announced the resurrection of the German no.1 live band. A week later they played at a festival in Alfeld.

In autumn Birth Control went on a club tour in Germany and Switzerland. For 12 years the band hadn’t had a gig in Switzerland and were eagerly awaited and frenetically celebrated in Diepoldsau. One of the co-organisers of the Christmas Rock Festival, Thomas Berner, provided us with press reports and fotos. However, the spectacle was a thorn in the side of the local council – rock music during the festive season – that’s not possible…! So the inevitable happened: The project of “Seven Musik” and the “Kavallerieverein”, which in the longer term were supposed to bring good rock events to eastern Switzerland, failed due to the Swiss red tape. Isn’t this reminiscent of the 70s (see "Newspapers" 1993).
During their re-union tour, the band experienced an unbelievable response from the audience, so that three concerts (Düsseldorf, Oberpleis and Übach-Palenberg) were recorded and excerpts of these were released as a live CD "Condominium" on Horst Stachelhaus' record label "Affengeil Records".

On the Musicfarm Manfred Zahn was pulling all the strings and in 1994 he organised two tours with 47 gigs, which took the band to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The audience sizes did not match the ones in the 1970s, but in the bigger halls there were up to 1000 fans.

Ecki's memories:
My first BC concert was in the year of the re-union (11.12.1993) in Oberhaus Alzey. I travelled over 500 km for this event, and it was worth every metre. The Oberhaus was overcrowded, I guess about 500 people, and the band were bubbling over with enthusiasm. In 1994 I went to Alzey again and recorded the concert with my old VHS camera. Unfortunately, the quality left much to be desired, but it is a nice memory – also because during Gamma Ray a girl with huge … and without a bra was dancing on the table for about 20 minutes ;-)
On that night I got hold of the telephone number of the Musicfarm to find out about the tour dates and venues of the band.

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1995 until 1997

In 1995 Manni Zahn organised a big tour again. On 07.01.1995 Rocco was on stage for the last time with Birth Control at Hilden town hall. Somehow the chemistry wasn’t right and Xaver introduced Peter Engelhardt to the band. On 10.03.1995 he gave his debut at the Festhalle in Faulbach.

In this line-up they made the CD TWO WORLDS which featured the latest compositions by Nossi. After that, the composing was completely taken over by Xaver (CDs 'Jungle Live' and 'Getting There'). Unfortunately, the management missed their chance for a major deal during this phase. With the support of a big label the future wouldn’t have just looked different, it definitely would have been different.
A tour in America or Eastern Asia would have brought the great breakthrough at that time, but the Musikfarm didn’t have the means for this. Hence, Two Worlds and also the 1996 studio album Jungle Life were released on small niche-labels, and the band continued touring through medium-sized clubs.
One of the highlights was the gig at the Bullentempel in Rendsburg in 1996, with the Hamburg Blues Band, Inga Rumpf and MAN – during which Peter and Xaver had a proper duel on guitar and organ. Look at the short video.

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1998

On 03.01.1998 a few music freaks founded the German Rock e.V. society. I was one of the founding members and was supposed to write the Birth Control story for the second edition of our club magazine.

Ecki's memories:
I didn’t have an internet connection at that time. I surfed the net at my friends' but absolutely nothing could be found about BC. So I phoned Nossi: "Just tell me a bit, I know too little about the band of the 1970s – I still lived in East Germany at that time!" Nossi’s reply: "Well, you'll have to come round then". So I drove to Nossi. We were chatting all day and late at night I returned home the car boot full of material (photos, press reports, record covers). The following month I spent every spare minute scanning the documents and endlessly talking to Nossi on the phone.

Then bad news came:
Horst Stachelhaus had fallen seriously ill and the doctors were clueless. On 28.02.1998 Horst was on stage for the last time (the 'Titanic' in Sendenhorst). On that night he gave me an audio cassette with a recording of a BC gig on 01.05.1977 at Korbach town hall. It contained the only recording of the so far unreleased song 'Meta Ventilator'. His words: "We've always wanted to put this on CD – see what you can do with it"…!
Hannes Vesper was taken on to replace Horst (1st gig on 29.05.1998 at the "Große Freiheit" in Hamburg) but nobody had a notion that Horst would never return.
He died on 20.05.1999 of a very rare strain of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob desease. The band were in the middle of the production of the studio album 'Getting There'. The last bass lines were played by Hannes Vesper. The album was produced and marketed by the band themselves.

In the middle of 1998 the Musikfarm closed its doors – Manfred Zahn went to live in Spain. Hence, Birth Control were left without a manager and a without a booking agency. For this reason, the band only played 20 gigs in 1998. It wasn’t supposed to end up like that, so I convinced Nossi to do the bookings himself and that I would assist him with it.
When finally in autumn I was online, Nossi said in his dry manner: "Well, build us a home page, then!" Oh dear, I didn't have a clue of these things. But I did have a lot of ambition, so I had a go and energetically worked on it. There was enough material.

The last concert in 1998 took place in Celle, on my doorstep so to speak. I had carried out the booking and had also been fully in charge of the advertising. We even had a radio advert (on Hansawelle Bremen) and a live interview with Nossi. This gig was also planned as a fan club meeting – and they came: from all corners of Germany! It was also the beginning of our campaign "Birth Control for Rockpalast": with a huge poster (200 x 90 cm) displayed on the barracks in Celle we collected over 200 signatures. Afterwards we had the After Show Fan-Club Party until 4am – with music from Nossi's (then unreleased) solo album as well as studio sessions of 1976 and 1983. Among others we also played tracks which are not on the CRAZY NIGHT CD – with Bruno on the drums and Nossi on the keyboard!

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1999

In April 1999 the BC homepage went online. Whoever saw the site in its beginnings, knows how terrible it looked. This, of course, was 'appreciated' in a guest book entry: What a shame that the information here is so sparse. It doesn’t even make a difference that the design and the HTML on these page are rather unspeakable. Shame for Birth Control who would have deserved something more professional.

Justified criticism, no question! But the writer of these lines didn't offer any help. This was done by Peter Lorenz (www.plpd.de), who gave me great support in the beginning and without whom I would have probably given up! But the tour dates were now on the net and in November 1999 a fan even travelled from France to see the gig in Fulda! In the meantime, Nossi had learned the ropes of booking, so in 1999 they had over 40 gigs again.

But the band going online was not the highlight of the year 1999 - it was provided by others, i.e. die-hard fans Bärbel and Carsten Blocher from Wilhelmshaven! They had the band logos sprayed on the front façade of their house by graffiti specialist Torben Schiel (PYROT) – the BIG FAT MAMA, which was on the cover of the HOODOO MAN LP, and the stork on chains, synonym of the band after the re-union in 1992. On 20.09.1999 the band and their crew came for a visit, together with people from the press and a regional TV channel, in order to put their signatures on the façade. It was brilliant to see this, and I personally don’t know any other band in the world whose fans set up such a monument for them! More information, photos and press report under the sub-topic "Fan-Fiction" on the left in the menu, as well as here in this video.

Ecki's memories:
In autumn 1999 Venus Records expressed an interest in the album "Getting There" and Nossi's solo album "Come Out At Night". It was a 'recording master agreement' - the band had to supply the completed material. So just before Christmas I made a 16-page booklet for Nossi’s solo CD and then went to Pulheim with Nossi. Venus Records are located in Dieter Dierck’s Studio. We first had a look around in the studio (nothing new for Nossi – but for myself ;-) and there we met the "Toten Hosen" who were recording their new album. Later, when we were signing the contract, I casually asked for old material of Birth Control. What happened then surpassed my expectations: Fred Hook pulled a few cardboard boxes out of a corner, filled with loads of copies of the 'Deutsche Popszene' (informational material of record companies for trade and marketing) from 1970-72! "Take that junk with you, we would have binned it at some stage anyway!" I was more than happy to pack up that 'junk'…! By the way, I've never understood why Venus Records took over the heritage of OHR and PILZ. I'd be grateful if someone could explain this to me…! And there was another gift that I was able to take with me: All of the "Atlantis" records (second pressing by Venus Records), 180 grams of Vinyl – still sealed! It was like Christmas ;-)

Highlight 1999: the gig with Uriah Heep at the Z7 in Pratteln (CH) on the 5th anniversary of the club, in front of an audience of 1000. And there was also a "downlight" in 1999: The overnight stay in Rendsburg. The organiser had forgotten to book a hotel for us and instead accommodated us in a 'Kindergarten'. After taking a closer look, our technical-crew preferred to drive home – and we were messing about ;-)

In 1999 the fan club campaign "BC for Rockpalast" entered a new phase: we continued collecting signatures (far over 5000 altogether) and put the campaign online. The Rockpalast editorial office then received masses of emails and Peter Rüchel responded. He wrote to me (quotation): "such concerted actions are only annoying and end up in the bin unread!" I looked into the dictionary: (CONCERTED = agreement between politics and economics) – and then I didn't understand anything :-(

But that the opinions of the paying listeners were annoying and end up in the bin was something I couldn't leave unchallenged. Let's see what the director of the WDR broadcasting corporation thinks when the BILD newspaper writes about this. Okay, I only threatened with this, of course, which lead Mr Rüchel to write a two page letter of apology. However, the long overdue gig at the Rockpalast still didn't happen – not yet – and certainly not as long as Peter Rüchel kept things under control. It still took a few years, and the way it happened was more or less incidental. More about this in the History 2004.

At the end of the year Xaver Fischer left. He still played in his Trio in addition to from Birth Control, and there were many overlaps with the gig dates. But Xaver himself provided a replacement and trained up the 'new guy' Sascha 'Sosho' Kühn in early 1999! Sosho's first gig with BC was on 13.03.1999 at the Schwarzer Adler in Rheinberg.
At this gig a woman with a large embroidered writing 'Groupie' on her top appeared in front of the stage. That was new! I went up to her straight away: "You are a groupie? I am one of the band!" That's all I had to say. Reply: "You must be Eckhard then." ... "Ermm… and who are you?"… "Andrea Engelhardt!!!"
Jesus – how EMBARRASSING!!! The joke was on me ;-)

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