Nina Hagen (born
Catharina Hagen
on 11 March 1955) is a singer from East Berlin, Germany.
Early years
's parents are Hans Hagen (also known as Hans Oliva), a
scriptwriter, and
Eva-Maria Hagen,
an actress and singer.
Her paternal Jewish
grandparents died in Sachsenhausen concentration
camp
. Her parents divorced when she was two years
old, and growing up she saw her father infrequently. At age four,
she began to study
ballet, and was considered
an
opera prodigy
by the time she was nine.
When Hagen was 11, her mother married
Wolf
Biermann, an anti-establishment
singer-songwriter.
Biermann's political
views influenced young Hagen: she was "dishonorably discharged"
from the Free German Youth group
at age 12, and became active in political protests against the
East
German
government.
Hagen left school at age 16, and joined the cover band Fritzens
Dampferband (
Fritzen's Steamboat Band, together with Achim
Mentzel and others). She added songs by
Janis Joplin and
Tina
Turner to the "allowable" set lists during shows.
From 1972–3, Hagen enrolled in the crash-course performance program
at The Central Studio for Light Music in East Berlin. Upon
graduation, formed the band Automobil.
Music career
1970s
In East Germany, she performed with the band Automobil, becoming
one of the country's best-known young stars. Her most famous song
from the early part of her career was "
Du hast den Farbfilm
vergessen" ("You forgot the colour film") in 1974. However, her
musical career in East Germany was cut short when she and her
mother left the country in 1976, following the expulsion of her
stepfather.
The circumstances surrounding the family's emigration were
exceptional: Biermann was granted permission to perform a televised
concert in
Cologne, but denied permission to
re-cross the border to his home country.
During a period when
bureaucracy was the norm, and families
divided by the Berlin
Wall
had not seen one another in decades, Hagen
submitted an application to leave the country. In it, she
claimed to be Biermann's biological daughter, and threatened to
become the next Wolf Biermann if not allowed to rejoin her father.
Just four
days later her request was granted , and she settled in Hamburg
, where she
was signed to a CBS-affiliated record
label. Her label advised her to acclimate herself to Western
culture through travel, and she arrived in London during the height
of the
punk rock movement. Hagen was
quickly taken up by a circle that included
The
Slits and the
Sex Pistols;
Johnny Rotten was a particular admirer .
Back in
Germany by mid-1977, Hagen formed the Nina Hagen
Band in West Berlin's Kreuzberg
district. In 1978 they released their self-titled
debut album, which included the single "TV-Glotzer" (a cover of
"White Punks on Dope" by The Tubes, though
with entirely different German lyrics), and Auf'm Bahnhof
Zoo, about West Berlin's
then-notorious Berlin Zoologischer Garten
station. The album also included a version
of "Rangehn" (approximately, "Go On"), a song she had previously
recorded in East Germany, but with different music.
According to reviewer Fritz Rumler,
… she thrusts herself into the music, aggressively,
directly, furiously, roars in the most beautiful opera alto, then, through shrieks and squeals, precipitates
into luminous soprano heights, she parodies,
satirises, and howls on stage like a
dervish.
The album gained significant attention throughout Germany and
abroad, both for its
hard rock sound and
for Hagen's theatrical vocals, far different from the
straightforward singing of her East German recordings. However,
relations between Hagen and the other band members deteriorated
over the course of the subsequent European tour, and Hagen decided
to leave the band in 1979, though she was still under contract to
produce a second album.
This LP,
Unbehagen (which in German also means discomfort
or unease), was eventually produced with the band
recording their tracks in Berlin and Hagen recording the vocals in
Los Angeles, California
. It included the single "African Reggae" and
a cover of
Lene Lovich's "
Lucky Number". The other band members
sans Hagen, soon developed a successful independent musical career
as
Spliff.
Meanwhile, Hagen's public persona was steadily creating media
uproar. She became infamous for an appearance on an Austrian
evening talk show called
Club 2, on 9th August 1979, on
the topic of youth culture, when she demonstrated (while clothed,
but explicitly) various female
masturbation positions and became embroiled in
a heated argument with another panelist. The talk show host had to
step down following this controversy.
She also
acted with Dutch
rocker
Herman Brood and singer Lene Lovich in
the 1979 film Cha Cha.
1980s
A European tour with a new band in 1980 was cancelled, and Hagen
turned to the United States. A limited-edition 10-inch EP was
released on vinyl that summer in the U.S. Two songs from her first
album
Nina Hagen Band were on the A side, and two songs
from her second album
Unbehagen were on the
B-side. All four songs were sung in German.
In late 1980, Hagen discovered she was
pregnant, broke up with the father-to-be Ferdinand
Karmelk, and moved to Los Angeles.
Her daughter, Cosma Shiva Hagen, was born in Santa Monica
on 17 May 1981. In 1982, Hagen released her
first
English-language album:
NunSexMonkRock, a dissonant mix of punk,
funk,
reggae, and opera. She then
went on a world tour with the No Problem Orchestra.
In 1983, she released the album
Angstlos and a minor
European tour. By this time, Hagen's public appearances were
becoming stranger and frequently included discussions of
God,
UFOs, her social and political
beliefs,
animal rights and
vivisection, and claims of alien sightings. The
English version of
Angstlos, Fearless, generated
two major club hits in America, "Zarah" (a cover of the
Zarah Leander (#45 USA) song "Ich weiss, es
wird einmal ein Wunder geschehen") and the
disco/punk/opera song, "New York New York" (#9 USA).
From 1984 to 1985, she dated
Anthony
Kiedis, the lead singer of the
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Her 1985 album
Nina Hagen In Ekstasy fared less well, but
did generate club hits with "Universal Radio" (#39 USA) and a cover
of "
Spirit In The Sky" and also
featured a 1979 recording of her
hardcore
punk take on
Frank Sinatra's
My Way, which had been one of
her signature live tunes in previous years. Her contract with
CBS over, she released the
Punk Wedding
EP independently in 1987, a celebration of her marriage to a
17-year-old-punk nicknamed 'Iroquois'. It followed an independent
1986 one-off single with
Lene Lovich,
the anthemic
Don't Kill The Animals. In 1989, Hagen
released the album
Nina Hagen which was backed up by
another German tour.
In 1989 she had a relationship with Frank Chevallier from France,
with whom she has a son, Otis Chevallier-Hagen.
1990s
In the 1990s, Hagen lived in Paris with her daughter
Cosma Shiva and son Otis. In 1991 she
toured Europe in support of her new album
Street. In 1992 Hagen became
the host of a TV show on
RTLplus.
Also in the same year (1992) she collaborated with
Adamski on the European smash and minor uk hit
single "Get Your Body". The following year, she released
Revolution Ballroom. In 1994, NIna starred in the
acclaimed San Francisco Goethe Institut's "The Seven Addictions and
Five Professions of Anita Berber," playing the singer version of
"Anita" alongside dancer Jennifer Pieren who portrayed the other
"professions" of "Anita." 1995 brought the German-language album
Freud Euch appeared, recorded in English as
Beehappy in 1996. Nina returned to San Francisco to star
in another San Francisco Goethe Institut show, "Hannusen, Hitler's
Jewish Clarvoyant." Also in 1996, Hagen collaborated with
electronic music composer
Christopher Franke, along with Rick Jude
on "Alchemy of Love", the theme song for the film
Tenchi Muyo! in Love. In 1997 she
collaborated with German
hip hop musician
Thomas D.
In 1998, Hagen became the host of a weekly
science fiction show on the British Sci-Fi
Channel, in addition to embarking on another tour of Germany. In
1999, she released the devotional album
Om Namah Shivay,
which was distributed exclusively online and included an
unadulterated musical version of the
Hare
Krishna mantra (in real life she believes that the Hindu
incarnation of God known as
Krishna was 'the
king of Jerusalem'. Krishna is sometimes referred to as "Christ").
She also provided vocals to "Witness" and "Bereit" on
KMFDM's
Adios.
Also in 1998 she recorded the official club anthem (Eisern Union !)
for
FC Union Berlin and four
versions were issued on a CD single by G.I.B Music and Distribution
GmbH.
In 1999, she played the role of Celia Peachum in
The Threepenny Opera by
Kurt Weill and
Berthold Brecht, alongside
Max Raabe.
2000s
In 2000,
her song Schön ist die Welt became the official song of
Expo
2000
. Another cover of a
Zarah Leander song "Der Wind hat mir ein Lied
erzählt" was a minor hit the same year. The album
The Return of
the Mother was released in February 2001, accompanied by
another German tour. In 2001 she collaborated with
Rosenstolz and
Marc
Almond on the single
Total eclipse/Die schwarze Witwe
that reached #22 in Germany.
Hagen
dubbed the voice of Sally
in the German release of
Tim Burton's
The Nightmare Before
Christmas, and she has also done voice work on the movie
Hot Dogs by Michael Schoemann. Hagen has been featured on
songs by other bands, for instance on
Oomph!'s song "Fieber". She did a cover of
Rammstein's "
Seemann" with
Apocalyptica. Later albums include Big
Band Explosion, in which she sang numerous
swing covers with her then husband, Danish
singer and performer, Lucas Alexander. This was followed by
Heiß, a greatest hits album. Her most recent album,
Journey to The Snow Queen, is more of an audio book—she
reads the
Snow Queen fairy tale with
Tchaikovsky's
The
Nutcracker in the background. In 2005 Nina Hagen headlined
the
Drop Dead Festival in New
York City. Hagen has been an active protester against the
war in Iraq. In 2006 she was a part of the
Popstars team. She is a
vegetarian.
In August 2009 she was baptized in the
Protestant Reformed church of
Schüttorf
.
Discography
See:
Nina Hagen
discography
Quotations
- Both of my parents were atheists,
and I found the way to God all alone on my own. You have
to invite him, so that he shows up.
- Asked if she was happy, she replied: Of course, I'm a
family member of Christ and I have a
Lord. He marched ahead of me and showed me the way.
Both quotes from an interview in Zeit
Online, 11 April 2006. She also believes that Lord Krishna
was the king of Jerusalem and chants Hare
Krishna (as stated on her website).
References
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