This song from a German band (Toten Hosen) reminds me of U2 at their anthemic best

[highplainsdem]

21. Found a bit more background, written in English for a change, on Die Toten Hosen

and particularly their lead singer, Campino (Andreas Frege). Lots of articles on them in German, but I wouldn't try to translate them myself for anyone else, and Google Translate can be awkward and sometimes simply wrong.

This is from British-Canadian historian and travel writer Rory MacLean's blog. There's no date on the blog that I see, but it's apparently sometime in 2011, since there are references to Toten Hosen's 30th anniversary "next year," and that anniversary was in 2012.

https://rorymaclean.com/blog/on-campino/

The music for the new album they planned to put out before their anniversary tour hadn't been written yet, and it's interesting to see Campino expressing doubts about how well it will turn out. The album they released in 2012, Ballast Der Republik, was their most successful, and I've posted two songs from it here, in the OP and reply 17.

Campino's very modest about his songwriting, calls himself "a beginner" -- though DTH had sold 15 million albums by then and won awards.

MacLean writes about Campino's work as an actor:

Campino’s creativity has reached beyond the world of music. In 2006 he played Mack the Knife in Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, directed by Klaus Maria Brandauer. ‘Brandauer was so patient with me as an amateur,’ he recalled. ‘I have only praise for this great man.’ The show became the year’s most successful German theatre production. Then in 2007 Wim Wenders wrote the script for the feature Palermo Shooting specifically with Campino in mind for the leading role.

But for me the most interesting bit was what Campino had to say about a song MacLean asked him about, a song written for his mother, who was English (Campino's father was German, and a judge; his grandfather was a supreme court judge there).

But as I grew up I became a bit of a troublemaker, dressing as a punk, singing the Sex Pistols’ “God save the Queen… the fascist regime… she ain’t no human being”. My mother took it to heart, and we became estranged for a time. She’d make me my breakfast yet leave the room when I came in.’

‘Then in 2000 Die Toten Hosen were at the start of a big tour. I tore a knee ligament and the tour had to be cancelled. The next day my mother fell ill. I took it as a sign to spend time with her in Düsseldorf. Over the next six months I saw her almost every day, and we had the best conversations of our life. We had the chance to make everything straight between us. That Christmas my sister and I were with her when she died.’

I wrote Nur zu Besuch in 15 minutes, and didn’t once revise the lyrics which is rare for me. The song was my way to say thank you to her. Since its release thousands of people have written to me, saying that they’d played it at a funeral or that it had helped them through their own loss, telling me that they recognised a little of themselves in Nur zu Besuch.’ Campino sat quietly for a moment, turning the coffee cup in his fingers. ‘I like the idea that everything isn’t purely accidental, that some things are meant to happen, even if we don’t understand why. I like to think that my mother would enjoy the song.’

I'd run across video of the song last week, didn't know any of the background other than that it was about his mother, but I'd found it tremendously moving, like the song about his father that I posted above.

This is the link to the lyrics with the English translation, which I hope you'll read first before listening to the video. It's about a visit to her grave, and the video doesn't make that clear. Some explanation of the video here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nur_zu_Besuch

Lyrics/translation: https://lyricstranslate.com/en/nur-zu-besuch-only-visit.html

Btw, all the links I've posted for translations are translations done by fans on different websites. Campino is bilingual, but as far as I know he's never done English translations of his own lyrics.

I'm going to post the official music video, the one described by Wikipedia, below a live performance of the song in 2005, in his home town of Dusseldorf. Look at the audience reaction to the song.