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Alphaville back in Turkey for two gigs
Alphaville was founded by Marian Gold, Bernhard Lloyd and Frank Mertens and currently comprises Gold, Martin Lister, David Goodes and Pierson Grange. It is now on tour and will perform today in İstanbul at the Meydan shopping mall in Ümraniye and on Monday at Bursa’s Kültürpark Open-air Theater as part of the city’s 49th festival.
“Music is an ever-changing thing,” says Gold, the group’s founding member, of the present-day music scene in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “There has never been such music as today. It is still thrilling to listen to music and there’s plenty of really good stuff around. Concerning the music scene, I think musicians have become cleverer and more business-oriented than in the past, when a lot of us were merely naïve greenhorns. Whether this is a general change for the better, I do not know,” Gold said, adding: “Well, in some respects for sure. Music production has changed a lot. The far easier accessibility of technology set new standards and freed artists from being dependent on the record industry.”
In this sense, is it the musician who is influenced by trends or does the musician steer trends him or herself? “Musicians are always influenced by the trends of their time,” says the group, whose musical path spans over 25 years. “What matters is what they extricate from it and if they are able to transform it into something new, surprising, even by combining it with things from the past.”
Alphaville’s music was always considered several steps further than music of their own time. “When we started in 1984 in Germany we were different from the rest, that’s true. ... We used technology to compensate for our manual shortcomings as musicians. In fact, none of us could play any musical instrument when we started. We were perfect dilettantes, but fanatical lovers of music with an awful lot of imagination, dreams, enthusiasm and huge record collections. We were maniacs.”
For Alphaville, it’s very natural to see trends in music pass by and usually be overused before being replaced by another trend, as was the case during the 1980s for synth-pop. “It is a natural process,” they say. “It happened before with the grand piano, the saxophone and most notably with the electric guitar.”
“Bands should first and foremost protect their identity and their artistic independence,” the group’s members say. “They should never forget their dreams and they should always forgive their illusions.” Of course, this does not mean that “nothing” should change in a group, but it is vital to decide what should be the same and what should change. While the group’s members stress that changes in the band’s lineup throughout the years will certainly influence the creativity of the group for the better, their main principle has remained the same. “It seems to me that in all these years working with Alphaville there was one constant that never changed: The most important thing isn’t what you are able to do but what you want to do.”
‘Multum in parvo’
It is undoubtedly “Big in Japan” that anyone with even a slight knowledge of Alphaville remembers and still listens to today. There have been many controversies surrounding the song -- about what it really meant. “I’m amazed it attracts so many people, even today after so many years. It must be because it’s a kind of evergreen. I have no explanation for this and I hope I will never find out,” Gold says. On the other hand, despite the fact that the group has many other successful songs and albums, it sometimes bothers its members to only be known by one.
The band has not released any albums in the past five years. “We are probably a bit lazy,” says the group, adding that it’s not vital to make tens of albums to make good music. “We have released seven albums since showing up on the scene in 1984. This is really not an impressing figure for such a long time. All I can say is that they’re all pretty good.”
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