Words by Pati Hertling
Portrait by Simone Gilges
Pati: You only came back to Berlin recently, no?
Bettina: Mmm, kind of. I actually came back in 2001 after the World Trade Center attack – I took the first plane out.
Because you couldn’t bear it anymore?
Indeed.
What did you do in New York?
For the last few years I was there, I co-produced a documentary about the political situation in Burma, now known as Mayanmar. For three years, I would crawl through the jungles with my then girlfriend, film director Isabel Hegner, then return to New York – where we would organize stuff, edit the footage, and prepare our next trip back there. I got into it because I was on a really long vacation with Isabel. We would be like, “Where shall we go now? Vietnam or Burma? Oh, I’ve always wanted to go to Burma, let’s go there!” At first we were really ignorant about the situation because hardly anyone knew about the country. I knew that there was an embargo and friends had said, “Don’t go there.” But then we met some people and they told us that we had to go. They said: “Please tell the world what is going on here.”
Is that documentary finished now?
Yeah. But we need to do a second version. The first version is finished but it’s very repetitive because there are lot of testimonials in it. For example, you just hear one person after another telling how the soldiers raped them; how they are used as porters and made to carry the army’s equipment; how people are blown up by land mines; and how the regime uses AIDS as a weapon in warfare. They round-up people who are infected with AIDS and, when they get really sick, move them by buses to the border areas where they are let out to infect the ethnic minorities.
That is horrible. So, how did you end up getting involved filming what was happening?
Well, it was actually quite by coincidence. We were in Rangoon and we wanted to go to Inle Lake with its “swimming gardens”, which are cultivated vegetable fields. Very famous. Very, very beautiful. So we hired a car but it broke down. And then another – which also broke down. So we ended up stranded in the middle of nowhere with cases of Evian,Pringles and toilet paper, haha. Then someone with a pick-up truck came along and drove us to a nearby town. Once there, they handed us over to a taxi driver. But it turned out that this guy was more than just a regular taxi driver. At night, he would use his car as an underground ambulance to bring the rebels to the hospital where doctors would secretly operate on them.
The government knows about that?
No, because it was all done very secretly. For that reason, it was very difficult to get people within Burma on film because they were so afraid: there are spies everywhere. So we then decided to go to the refugee camps in Thailand, on the Thai-Burma border, where we met some freedom fighters and people who were in charge of education in the camps. As we started working with these guys, we got more and more embroiled in the situation – ncluding with one of the freedom fighters, Ler Wah Lo Bo. He used to be a teacher but joined the rebels after his cousin was beheaded, with a handsaw, by the Burmese army in 1980. He himself was wanted by the Burmese army. Ler Wah took a rough version of our film and showed it to the Canadian Embassy and he actually got political asylum in Canada. So that was great.
So it was thanks to your footage.
Yeah, that was really nice. But, on the other hand, it’s still not really ready for a general audience because it’s too long and too repetitive. So that’s why we’re now working on a new version that shows more of Isabel and myself. I mean, it still shows the important things, but it also shows how we arrive there like total idiots and how we get more and more involved. In the footage, I am always wearing this orange knitted cap because journalists were not admitted to Burma – or filmmakers – so we pretended to be these really batty tourists. However, in the end, it got a little bit tricky because military intelligence was following us.
Did they find out what you had been doing?
Yes. Because we had been there so often and also because we were hanging out with this lesbian nun who was already being followed by military intelligence. Her name was Olive Yang, her nickname was “Miss Hairy-Legs”, and she was a Shan princess. I’m writing a book about her.
Wait, what is a Shan princess?
The Shan peoples are an ethnic group which has been engaged in an intermittent civil war with Burma since 1948. Olive already had her own army by the time she was 20! And to finance her struggle against the Burmese regime, she came up with the idea of trading opium for arms. So the C.I.A. got in there and it was like their first testing ground for what they later did in South America and Central America. Anyway, although Olive fought the regime she had never been thrown in jail for that. However, she lived very openly as a lesbian and when she demanded special permission from the dictator to be allowed to marry her girlfriend, it then got too much for her family. They had her incarcerated for a few years. Her girlfriend was Wa Wa Win Shwe, one of the most famous Burmese actresses; the Burmese are totally crazy about her movies. She’s very old now. I would have loved to have interviewed her but I can’t go into Burma anymore – because of the film. I am on their list of “undesirable persons”, hahaha. Luckily, my friend Martin is over there.
Do you have to communicate with him secretly?
Well no, he is in Thailand right now. When you are in Burma, no meaningful communication to the outside world is possible. Once we were on the phone over there, talking with someone in Switzerland, when we heard somebody coughing really loudly on the line. He asked: “Please don’t speak so fast.”
But the footage for the film is finished now?
Yeah, the first version was released in 2003. It’s called Burma: Anatomy of Terror and it’s about an hour-and-a-half long. Susan Sarandon narrated it which was really nice of her. She did it in return for some flowers.
Yes, she’s quite an activist isn’t she?
Yes. But what was really kind of shocking was that when we were thinking of starting on the second version, the political climatesuddenly changed. It was after September 11th. The American diplomacy had previously been very open about taking up the case for Burma. There was even the possibility that Bill and Hillary Clinton would do a little blurb for our trailer. But then there was one big problem: Susan Sarandon was the narrator and neither Bill nor Hillary could be associated with her in any way because of her opposition to the war in Iraq. The Clintons are very vulnerable to attack. Apparently, Bill wasn’t even allowed to look at the footage we had.
Have you worked on any music projects recently?
Yeah, I did a bit of film music, actually. For a lesbian short called Peppermills. I wrote the music and co-wrote the script and it won the TEDDY Award for Best Short at the Berlin Film Festival. But that was already eight years ago. I’ve made music since but haven’t released any of it because I’m not so into the industry side of things. And also because I don’t fit the stereotype.
Yeah, I always wondered, actually, about the stuff you did with Malaria! For example, Geh Duschen seems quite political to me.
Yeah, well it was about the gas chambers.
Did people talk about it back then?
Yeah, they did. We did a lot of interviews and we were always asked what it was about; so we always explained it. It wasn’t ever too much in your face, but that’s what it was about.
With Malaria!, did you ever consider yourself a political band, like a pre-riot grrrl band or something?
Well, first of all, in a way: yes. Although we didn’t think in these terms, because we just wanted to do what we wanted to do. But we found it very difficult. In the beginning we would go on stage after the soundcheck and these roadies or whatever – these guys in checked shirts – would say, “Oh, you know girls, we tuned your guitars!” And we would be like: “No, we had our own tuning!”
How did all that come about? You started in Berlin, right?
Yes, we started in Berlin. We did a few shows but nobody really wanted to see us in Germany. So we left and played a lot in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Then we went to New York and played in London. And when news came back that we had been playing in those places, then they were interested in us here too. We were actually pretty unique: right from the start they really liked us in New York – and in Paris and London.
What kind of clubs did you play in?
In New York we played at the Mud Club,Studio 54, Danceteria. You know, like all the, well, cool clubs. We played Les Bains Douches in Paris and all over London. There was this one concert at this club called the Bat Cave in London: we had the coolest time there because there were maybe just 300 people – but they were all pop stars, you know. So it was fun. We never had mass appeal but we always had our audience. It was never about hype: it was all real and we were just so super cool. We performed with Nina Hagen in Studio 54 and afterwards the Village Voice wrote: “Nina Hagen and Malaria! dared to play on Yom Kippur and they had no idea!” We had played in black
riding boots, riding pants, black shirts and wore red carnations. They had no idea that a red carnation was the symbol of socialism. And then there was the stage light from the Broadway musical Frankenstein and it just looked bombastic! It was a big scandal – we looked like Nazis on Yum Kippur! But we hadn’t been aware of that...
Of course I am too young to really know, but I always had the impression that you were actually really influential. Also, whenever you read books about that era, there is always a reference to Malaria!.
I think it was because we were all friends. I mean, we played with Siouxsie & The Banshees a lot, and with New Order. We were just a bunch of kids having fun. They also stuck us once with a band that wasn’t really that successful in the States because they would always get their electricity switched off: it was Birthday Party. So we hung out with cool bands. But that only worked ‘cause what we did was very truthful. It wasn’t manufactured. We were all younger than 20 – so we were very young. And we weren’t impressed by anything – because we didn’t know anything. We didn’t think it was that special; it just felt normal. And the people we dealt with were also very nice people. I think, in a way, the most successful people are the nicest. Catherine Deneuve once came to one of our London concerts – at the prestigious ICA. She was just standing there with a red dress on, way over at the other end of the room under the Exit light, haha. That was really nice. But then she wouldn’t leave me alone – she followed me around. And she got pretty mad when I went home without her! However, since then, I always say yes whenever a famous actress propositions me. But, I have to say, she was really very cool and also very down to earth. She had been in London shooting The Hunger with Susan Sarandon and David Bowie.
When was that?
That was around 1983, pretty much towards the end of Malaria!
Why did you stop?
Because we had done so many concerts and had no personal lives. And by then, I was 24. Plus, sometimes five girls in one band can be gruesome – really, really gruesome. And I really wanted to have a personal life away from the touring. At the most, I was only home for four days a month.
Did you have a girlfriend at the time?
I had a girlfriend – and then I had a boyfriend – and then I moved to New York because I had met somebody at the Berlin Film Festival. She was promoting her film, Liquid Sky. Her name was Anne Carlisle. She was an actress and had co-written the film. I followed her to New York, and then Malaria! did a tour there and I never went back home, hee hee. We went out for five years and then I escaped to New
Orleans where I divided my time between renovating my house in New Orleans and my hut in the Mississippi swamps. On the bayou. The hut was in Pass Christian which, since
Katrina, has disappeared. It took me three years to recover from the horror of going out with an actress. Then my friend, Isabel Hegner, came down there to see what was up with the girl with the beautiful tits. I should explain that a few years earlier, I had done a concert at the Pyramid Lounge with my new band, In The Service Of, and was wearing only a black lace curtain and a belt. After that I was known as “the girl with the tits” – which pissed me off because no one said anything about my music! Anyway, Isabel took one look at me and decided that it was time for me to rejoin the real world. So, I moved back to New York.
How long did you live in New York?
From 1983 till 2001.
So are you more of a New Yorker than a Berliner?
Yes, I would say so. I mean I’ve always loved Berlin. Not so much in the beginning, but since the early 90s. I have always had an apartment here. But really, New York is closer to my heart. It’s just more fun. In a way, it doesn’t have this heaviness. And they are cooler, the New Yorkers.
Well, especially the old New Yorkers.
Yeah well, with the younger ones, I don’t know – because it has been more than four years since I left. I go over there every few months, but only for a week or so. And most of the people I know have now moved away from the city.
I think it’s very interesting when I look at Gudrun Gut – Malaria!’s other founding member – and you today. You are both very interested in young musicians and support them – but the people that you support seem very different. Gudrun seems to have changed a lot in her tastes while you, on the other hand, seem to be very faithful to your old ideals still.
Well, Malaria! was really about a big part of me. I don’t wanna praise myself here, but I was the singer. True, we did write the songs together but it was much more my identity than her’s. And also, I think our taste in music is a bit different now.
Has it always been?
Yes. I think that was also the really interesting thing about Malaria!: we were so different. But there was a lot of friction. At one point, there was just too much friction. But a bit is, I think, very interesting. We never went into each other’s territories.
Did you have a problem with the interpretations that Gudrun Gut asked other people to make of Kaltes Klares Wasser?
Well, yeah, I have to say – sorry Chicks on Speed – I didn’t like what they did. I mean the Chicks thing was okay, but then there was another remix CD which I really didn’t like because I thought it had nothing to do with us. Then Gudrun asked me if she could do another song – this time with Peachessinging – and I said, “Let’s all like the song, but let Malaria! rest in peace.” After that we had a tough time for a long time. But last year – I think it was in April – I wrote Gudrun an email. I said: “The attorneys are getting too expensive. Come on, let’s sit down and make up.” And she wrote back to me saying, “Is this an April Fool’s joke? Or your Gemini personality?” But she also said that she had thought we should meet. Now we have contracts. We went through I don’t know how many lawyers – yet they never managed to get a contract between the two of us. Now, because we have exactly the same rights, if one person says no then nothing will happen.
Do you now get along again?
Yeah. But we still aren’t hanging out together really. There is one thing, however, I would like to do in regards to Malaria! I’m not interested in remixes but a lot of our records are very rare and I would like to re-release the back-catalogue, as it was. And then maybe a few things that were never released, which we still have. And also, you know, we looked really good! Gudrun and I took a look at the old video footage and it’s really interesting how it doesn’t seem at all dated – except for the fact that we were all much younger. It could be interesting, also to young women. Plus, I find it particularly important because Malaria! was really naturally grown. It was the real thing. Nothing was manufactured by a record company, like that stuff that came up in the late 80s. That was really disgusting sometimes, you know, what they did to the women.
There is this myth about the music scene in Berlin in the 80s, and all the international people who came and collaborated with people here. It seems like something was really happening back then – more than now.
Well, yeah. But you know, it was a very special situation. Because there was the SO36 Club, and Martin Kippenberger – who ran the SO36 – had money. Being a painter, he had this strong Berlin-New York connection. He would see bands in New York, for example, at the No Wave Festival – people like Adele Bertei and Lydia Lunch – and he would fly them over. He would tell them, “Hey, I have this little club in Berlin. Why don’t you come and play?”
Did you live in Kreuzberg back then?
Yes. I lived in Dresdner Straße. I remember we had no money but we had to make a music video and then, I think it was Christine, who came by and said, “Oh girls, come outside there are some cars burning!” And so we went out and ran around the cars and filmed with our little Super8. And that was the video. It was much rougher then.
Where are you from orginally?
Herford, Westphalia.
Is that where you got into music?
Yeah, my parents encouraged me to learn the classical guitar which I hated – becauseeverybody else played chords and I had this stupid little step that I had to rest my foot on and could only play pieces from the 16th century. Then, when my guitar got destroyed after a classmate fell on it, my parents hired a piano teacher for me. He cut my fingernails and sent the clippings to my mother. That was the end of him. When I started to play saxophone,I decided that I didn’t want any lessons – I just wanted to discover the instrument for myself and not be subjected again to bad teachers. Anyway, I was in a punk band and our concept was that everyone had to play an instrument that they hadn’t learned to play.
But you moved to Berlin when you were really young?
Ten. With my parents. And then we moved back. But, when I was old enough, I returned to Berlin as soon as I could. So, I came back when I was 18. I went to the HDK – now UDK – in Berlin and studied Visual Communication. In New York, I went to the School of Visual Arts and got an education in Film Acting. My teacher was Bob Brady, who was also in
Liquid Sky. That cured me of ever wanting to be an actress: Bob once gave a professional class where he brought bums in off the street up to his loft and we had to do love scenes.
I realized then that I was not the kind of person that could do everything a director wanted.
And then you started the band?
Yes. I fell into it. I had a clothing store with Gudrun, called Eisengrau. Then Beate Bartel came by. And then, well, we said, “Hey, let’s put together a band.”
Was that Mania D, before Malaria! ?
Yes, it was actually Beate’s band; she formed Liasons Dangereuses afterwards. So yes, it was her band. And a lot of girls joined. I don’t know how many of us there were in the beginning, but in the end it was just us three.
So Mania D became Malaria! ?
No. I got fired from Mania D and Gudrun quit, so we started Malaria!. Then we recorded our first record and needed a live band so that’s how we found the other girls.
How did you meet Jessie Evans, who you’re working with now?
Jessie walked into an interview I was giving in Berlin. She was a refugee from California andI offered her a room in my apartment. After that she was always going on that I should play the saxophone with her. At first, I flatly refused. But she persevered and, after six months,I was.
And now you are working together?
Yes.
So how is that?
I like it very much because, even though we are so different, our understanding of music is very similar. And, we both play saxophone and are both singers. Well, I don’t really sing in tune – I always sing flat – but I like it andI wanna keep it like that. However, although it’s always been very difficult for me to sing with others, it works now. Sometimes it’s funny with us though: there are times when I say, “Hey Jessie, do you remember this or that?” And she goes: “I wasn’t born then.” But, I like it. I am coming from the old school, and she is coming from the really new school. I like this dynamic. So we’re making this album: we’ve done three-quarters of it now, but it’s taking much longer than we thought.
Jessie comes into the kitchen and joins us.
Jessie, what do you think about your new project?
It’s worked out really well with the two of us.I discovered Bettina’s old music a couple years ago and was immediately blown away by the similarity to what I do: the whole dark wave mixed with free jazz... dissonant yet soulful. It’s like there was no difference in time or space between 80s Berlin and San Francisco in 2004. Then, about a week before I got on the plane to come to Berlin, I dreamt that I came here and was hanging out with the girls from Malaria! And that they were the same age as me. Then, when I came here – in August 2004 – that was pretty much what happened. Right after I got off the plane, I was taken to an interview – and Bettina was there! She was checking me out, like, “Who’s this girl with the weird pilot hat?” And, about a week or two later, she said that if my drummer and I needed a place to stay we could move into her apartment. So we did.I was trying to get her to play saxophone again. For the longest time, I would tell her she could take my saxophone and play it. Then I said, “Hey, come on tour with us.” But then, for the first show I booked in Istanbul, she flipped out a little and didn’t go, haha. She kind of pulled this diva thing. But then she ended up coming on tour with us for six weeks and it was totally awesome. I used to be in an all-girl band in the US and had gone on tour with them for two months – but it was so dramatic. This was really different. We got along so well! We would listen to Kylie and Madonna in the car, do our fake eyelashes, and drink whiskey with onions to help our voices. We were just on the same wavelength. Also, to find a singer who plays saxophone, I mean, we have the same style! We’ll be recording stuff in the studio and then have no idea who did what. Both of us come from a jazz-influenced background yet aren’t uptight musicians: it’s more intuitive. I think it was fated that we met. I feel like our different generations were destined to come together in music – to show something, to show how this is all connected. And I’ve learned a lot from working with another singer. It makes you lose your ego too. Plus, it’s nice to have someone to put words to the things that you can’t find the words for.
Your band ‘The Vanishing’, did it already exist back in San Francisco?
Yeah, for about three or four years.
Why did you come here?
I just wanted to. I don’t know, I just knew I needed to come. I was so social there – and there is this really interesting underground music and art scene. But, I needed to get away from it all to get back to myself. To just figure out what I wanted to do with my music – and myself, basically. Coming here has been totally different for me. I mean, I have been really introverted and just kind of in my own space. But Berlin has allowed me the space to get to know myself better. I am totally grateful for that.
When and where are you going to play your next show?
We’re planning a record release party in Puerto Rico.
Why Puerto Rico?
Jessie: Because we got offered to play there. ’Cause it’s hot there. There’s a beach.
Bettina: I like Puerto Rico.
Jessie: I have never been. But I can’t wait.
Bettina: It’s really cool there. There are a lot of really cute girls there. They actually have kind of a nice scene there...
Jessie: Have you noticed that we totally match with these turtlenecks we wear?
Bettina: Oh no. God!
Jessie: Great, ha.
Bettina: Shit, ha.