The Mythos of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser (1943-??)

There is one person from the "Golden Era of Euro-rock� that over the years I keep getting enquiries about - the legendary Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, who along with his partner Gille (Gisela) Lettmann the Sternenmadchen (�StarMaiden�) were known as �The Cosmic Couriers� during the era of German space rock. Off and on over the years I�ve been contacted by people - German media people and fans asking � �do you know what happened to�?�

At some point the two simply vanished from the scene. For almost 25 years now the only word about them (only a rumor?) was that Rolf was living in a psychiatric hospital somewhere in Germany. He had lost his mind due to excessive use of LSD. Also that Gille Lettmann was staying in that same hospital. Last year I got an email from a German television producer saying that he was working on a program about the history of �Krautrock� and did I know how to contact Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser.

This past year on WDR TV there was in fact 2 programs that dealt with the history of �Krautrock� (a derogatory slang label German musicians hated). That term was coined by the late English journalist Ian MacDonald (not the King Crimson member). MacDonald wrote a couple articles in the UK pop press, circa 1970/ �71. In them he used it as a moniker for the music coming out of the new rock scene in Germany. Not coincidentally, it was those very articles that I read that led to the creation of EUROCK. It was firstly as a radio show in 1971, then a magazine in 1973 which initially dealt with the newly emerging experimental European rock scene. Germany was the main initial focus. That name has been carried on by me now in one incarnation or another to this day.

But I digress; one of the 2006 TV programs was titled KRAUT & RUBEN, a 6 week series of one hour documentaries on German rock of the �Golden Era�. It contained historical video and current interviews with some of the pioneers. The video was fascinating, but unfortunately the interviews were in German. So whether they shed any light on the �Cosmic Ones� or not I don�t know. My guess is not however as Kaiser seems no where to be found, and almost universally those who were given their first break by his OHR label have little to say about him now, and nothing good. Drug experimentation and eccentric behavior led to his downfall. So he has become persona non grata, virtually forgotten, and as it turns out seems to have suffered a far worse fate than that.

The other program was entitled, DIE DEUTSCHROCK�NACHT 1 & 2, produced by Rockpalast. It aired on 2 consecutive Sundays, 6 hours of music each night featuring video of German rock legends then and now. A kaleidoscope of sights and sounds, the early footage was at times amazing; others laughable. The more modern footage on both shows served as a vivid reminder that even the gods of rock get old.

Just the other day I got yet another query from a German Internet newsgroup about Kaiser and his whereabouts. So I contacted my long time �deutscher freund� Klaus D. Mueller, who is a long time supporter of Eurock. He passed along to me, and kindly allows me to re-print here, the following information he learned in a phone call in 2001 about Kaiser which he had printed in his fanzine THE KS CIRCLE in September 2001.

 What Happened to Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser?

For many years journalists ask me the whereabouts of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, once the founder and head of the "OHR" label, and its sub labels ("Cosmic Music�, etc...) In mid August 2001 I had a very long talk with an insider who had contact with Kaiser until the early nineties. He told me that from the mid seventies on Kaiser was crazy because of too much LSD.

Also & because of (t)his behavior, he had plenty of liabilities, and therefore had disappeared from the officials and the rest of the world. He lived the life of a drop-out, in or near Cologne. Had no identification papers or health insurance, etc. (and didn't want any). He asked people to call him only by an adopted fantasy name. He did a lot of meditation, with girl-friend Gille ...who only wanted to be called and addressed as "StarMaiden". If you dared to write to her real name "Gille Lettmann", the post will be returned with a warning (!)

He had no income, nothing. In the early mornings he walked to Cologne's main market and begged for waste-products just not to die of hunger. The police had to throw him out of his house as he had sent the owner silly letters declaring that he will not pay rent anymore. After that, he lived for some years - at least until the early nineties - in Gille's mother's house. Meanwhile, a physician had officially declared Kaiser schizophrenic. He had taken too much LSD. Kaiser and Gille continued to send regularly silly letters to "important" people: the Pope, the German Chancellor, the president, etc...

[Sidebar: Long ago, when I was working at the German post behind the public counter, we also had our handful of friendly, but crazy customers, who used to send once a month their registered letters to many VIP�s such as the Pope, Presidents, etc.]

(PS) Kaiser is dead now; R.I.P.

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In reality, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser beginnings were as a Dutch pop journalist who first made a name for himself by interviewing Frank Zappa during the Mothers of Invention�s heyday. He then went on to found Germany�s first independent rock label OHR (�Ear�), with the help of Berlin music publisher Peter Meisel. OHR dared to release German music that defied that countries conservative �schlager� tradition. The bands he recorded were not simply Anglo-cover bands; some sang in German, others were experimental sonic explorers, agit-rock politicos, and folky cultural �freaks�. He released music those in the business thought had no commercial potential, in a time when being different was not simply a fashion statement, before the reality of �the underground� was turned into a market commodity.

In the beginning, Rolf and Gille were in fact somewhat conservative and na�ve until they took LSD. That experience caused some sort of consciousness shift that ultimately led them down the �cosmic� path. It also created a paradox between their business ideals which were relatively �wild-eyed� conceptually, and their business practices (contracts, etc.) which were much more old school conservative and restrictive. The result was a clash between them and their artists who were into the hippie �do-your-own-thing trip� and determined to break free from the Nazi influenced social order of their parent�s generation. They also did not like their music being promoted as �cosmic� and linked to drugs. Now in retrospect you can see the seeds were being sown for most all of what happened later on, in the case of �The Cosmic Couriers� in Germany, or the so called �youth cultural revolution� around the world. At that time and from a vantage point thousands of miles across the pond, in the midst of it all here at home, this crack in the golden cosmic egg was not clear at all. My main exposure and interest was the music they produced, some of which was in fact incredibly adventurous, amazingly unique, and certainly fuelled by artists who were familiar with �chemical substances�.

 Basically EUROCK�s involvement with Rolf & Gille centered on the 1975 �Kosmische Musik� issue that featured their label. I had a friend who was spending the summer before in Germany doing studies at the Goethe Institute. So I arranged for him to go visit the couple at their home in Stommmeln near Cologne. He did an interview, spent the afternoon with them, and told me when he returned they were nice, rather reserved, and not at all the spacy cosmic type of their public image. In fact, he said they very business like.

In addition to that EUROCK issue, I also arranged for distribution of their releases in the USA via JEM IMPORTS. At that time JEM was the largest import distributor stateside and had their own record label as well. So in his heyday Kaiser achieved some small measure of success in making a name for his best early artists in Europe, the UK, and the USA. A consequence of that was that his labels releases gained some amounts of exposure, sold a bit better as exports than in Germany perhaps, and generated interest among commercial labels outside of Germany. They were light years from being �hits� that sold big numbers, but were a cultural phenomenon of sorts coming out of Germany, which hardly had a liberal history. OHR ultimately transformed into the PILZ, and then KOSMISCHE MUSIK labels. It paved the way for other larger companies to establish their own label imprints for �Krautrock�, such as Brain and Bacillus Records, a/o.

Thus the boom was on, the floodgates opened for all kinds of new bands � good and bad. Several of the labels artists left Rolf & Gille, moving on to sign bigger contracts, make good money, and become prolific artists who have had long careers. This was in no small part due to Kaiser�s giving them a start when they were free spirited youth. His knack for promoting his artists was innovative and effective for those times. No publicity is bad publicity, and bad publicity is better than none at all is a truism. In reality, artists may make great art, but most often know little about effective promotion. Art and commerce are two very different animals. As the artists left, lawsuits resulted, and Kaiser�s cosmic vision increasingly grew faint and bleak. It all ended in a big legalistic �bummer�. Some artists got the rights back to their music, others had simply disappeared. OHR itself became consigned to the dustbin of German rock history for the most part. The albums became collectors items, notable not only for their music and sonic qualities as producer Dieter Dierks mixed them in Stereo, some being done as well in Quadraphonic, but their creativity in art design and packaging in many cases done by Peter Geitner (now in an asylum). They have been haphazardly reissued at times, however most often not from original master tapes.

In many ways Kaiser�s work foreshadowed the much less imaginative and mindlessly crass form of �hype� that permeates all media today. Every sort of product has been trumpeted as �revolutionary�, or �pick your own BS adjective�. Off hand I can�t think of one that�s been labeled �cosmic�? Not only is that term laced with humor, but it definitely has a unique connotation that is hard to tack onto selling some form of crap to a mass market audience in a mall or supermarket. On some level coining that term was a small act of genius by Kaiser (mad though he may have been).

As it turns out, Eurock�s role in this �cosmic melodrama� was very modest, seemingly coming before their fall final from grace into the excesses of that time - too many drugs, and the acid-lifestyle of rock & roll. It was also observed from afar as a spectator, not up close and personal. That adds a different perspective, one with less real knowledge, but perhaps a more objective viewpoint. The basic fact is his labels releases sold modestly, but did start his best artists on their way to having long and successful careers. The others without the talent or business skills perhaps deservedly fell by the wayside. History and hindsight often absolves most of their misdeeds, and forgiveness is granted to those who misstep. Sadly that does not seem to be the case with Kaiser.

Finding out about Kaiser�s fate just recently, all these years later, has led me to some sort of reflection on �my generation� and what it has wrought. For better and worse life today is what we have made it � the nature of business, society, personally, politically, economically. The �Industrial Revolution�, WW 2, �the 60�s� and �tech boom � have all led to what we now have inherited and become fully integrated into � life as we know it is some form of social Darwinism. It is no longer them, but us and our generation who are in the driver�s seat of our own destiny. Our lives are now what we are making of them. In this regard, it does seem that whatever idealism we might have had beating in our hearts when we were young is now but a faint pulse. In this material culture the prevailing attitude is that the party could, should and will go on forever. Wither the more humanistic social ethos, replaced by a purely utilitarian and egocentric view of life.

 I can�t pin down the exact malaise the sort of ending Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser had represents on a human scale. Or what it says about life, and the nature of relationships between those who pass each other as we travel through it. I do know however that on any street, in �Any City USA� today, lost and nameless people wander. You see them everywhere. It seems that is also the case in the glorious old cities of mother Europe as well. My basic instinct tells me that no one should come to the end a refugee in their own land. We all deserve a better fate than that!

Ultimately Kaiser became a lost soul, a victim of his times, the drugs, and broken relationships. All this serving as a trigger for some form of congenital schizophrenia that led to his ultimate downfall and becoming a virtually forgotten man. He is not the only one to be counted among the missing in our generation. His story and others from that time should serve as a cautionary tale for the future about what happens when excess and doing your own thing becomes a preoccupation of the day. It seems dreams and dreamers sometimes die hard, and it�s not so pretty a death. It should also give us pause to ponder our own fates and perhaps think twice about judging too harshly, lest we be judged as well ourselves in the future.

Without some official confirmation of the date and place of his demise we have no final ending for the story of what truly became of Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, or Gille Lettmann. The best of their releases on all 3 labels now serve as artifacts documenting their work, and creative spirit of the groundbreaking music made during that original German rock era. It may well be that one or both of them still reside, or simply expired, in an asylum somewhere. Another rumor has them alive and well in Australia, yet another in Bavaria. Wherever �The Cosmic Courier� and �Starry Eyed Girl� are now I send them my best hoping they found peace at last. I do think someone somewhere could at least make the small effort necessary to check the public records for a notation of the if, when, and where of their passing. Or, perhaps they both have taken their headphones and finally left this planet on one final cosmic musical trip, to another time, in another place�disappearing into the mythosphere leaving the music they produced as a legacy.

 MIR!

 A.

 [Copyright �2006, Eurock]