HOW MUTTER CHANGED THE GAME
The headline screamed, ‘Nazis? Heil no!’ This wasn’t one of the usual outrageous tabloid rags, though – this was a mainstream UK music publication. Why? The year was 1998 and a band had used footage of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film, Olympia, in their latest music video – a cover of Depeche Mode’s Stripped. While originally created as propaganda for the infamous ‘Nazi Olympics’, the movie is now routinely name-checked as a vital moment in cinematic history. But the band in question were German, sparking fears of fascism.
It was Rammstein: the Berlin six-piece who’d lived under hardline socialist rule in the German Democratic Republic. The staunchly liberal band. The band with the fire. The band with the dildos. But Britain didn’t know all that yet…
“We are not Nazis, Neo-Nazis, or any other kind of Nazi”, said the band emphatically in a statement quoted in the piece, stating that the footage was used as an example of good art. “We are against racism, bigotry or any other type of discrimination.”
It was a strange start for a band who were about to embark on an effort to win over Britain. “They were convinced it would never happen in the UK,” says Anna Maslowicz, the PR guru who took Rammstein under her wing a year or so after that headline. “The first time I met them, I said, ‘You’re gonna be playing stadiums in the future.’ And they said, ‘Never. We’ll never be accepted here. We sing in German.’”
That admission seems surprising in light of how things were going for the band. While their debut album, 1995’s , flopped onto CD players and was met with a somewhat flaccid reception, it caught the ear of Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and filmmaking legend David Lynch – they loved it so much, two songs ended up on Lynch’s 1997 neo-noir.
