40 years of Golden Lemons – Golden Lemons: “Suddenly the ‘Bravo’ came…”

Interview

Schorsch Cameroonborn Thomas Sehl in 1963, grew up in the community of Timmendorfer Strand and has lived primarily in Hamburg since the 1980s. He is a co-founder of the band Goldene Lemons, theater maker and co-operator of the Golden Pudel Club.

The Golden Lemons are turning 40. The band was founded in 1984 as a fun punk band. How much fun is there in the band today?

That hasn’t changed all that much. Although, fun just sounds content-free at first. In terms of columns, I would say that our focus is on the fun of ridicule while simultaneously questioning ourselves. For us it is important not to be over-dogmatic and not to criticize in too slogan-like terms. And when self-confidence creeps in, it seems important to us to undermine it. This has developed over the years – especially on stage – into the psychedelic, and we can’t do anything else anymore. I like to describe this as an irrepressible hysteria that drives us as a group. On the other hand, there are bands that want to be “cool” and perform accordingly to underline their seriousness. That’s not our method. And we’re cool anyway.

The band’s music has always had a special sense of humor…

Exactly, that’s a whole cauldron of elements: exaggeration, reversal and contemporary mockery, for example. This has always been part of our approach to the scene – including the political one. In doing so, we tried to question dogmas again and again and to counteract a certain hardening of our own – to put it in North German: “Buten und Binnen”, i.e. externally and internally. This faster-harder-louder attitude of the early punk scene quickly threatened to solidify into dull assertions of clarity and humor was always a good way to counteract this to some extent. We love questioning definitions: For example, the slogan “Forever Punk” was absurd and ridiculous back then, because punk can only irritate in a meaningful way at a given moment. At the same time, despite some ironic abstractions, we were always concerned with the serious background. Sometimes it is overlooked that the Lemons were just as political a band in the early fun punk times as they were later.

This is probably due to the well-known problem that strong irony always ends up eluding oneself and making positioning unclear or even impossible?

Yes. That’s why sharpness and attitude in humor are important to us. We always have discussions and points of contention within the band. For me, irony as an exaggeration is still sometimes a useful tool. Detours can sometimes be stronger than stubborn clarity. We also use art strategies and are not politicians. The ridiculous or the pathetic can also be an excellent description. For example, we are currently publishing old concert posters on social media. It says, for example, “Sexy Blutsommer 89” or “Young people are freaking out” – which is obviously consciously Gaga and self-deprecating. At that time it was a necessary spin on the clumsy announcements of the sometimes quite one-dimensional competition.

The band has often taken a clear position, especially politically?

That’s correct. Actually, always. Most clearly in the early 1990s during the pogroms of that time. That was a turning point, to which we responded with radical clarity, also because we thought that fairy lights were too silent. In the end you have to wrestle with yourself and see from case to case when a mocking attack is appropriate and when it is lame. I love ambiguity, but it requires unambiguity. Otherwise you risk becoming ingratiating or even cynical.

In addition to the Golden Lemons, you have also been active in a number of other music projects over the years, but none have achieved anywhere near the level of fame as your main band. Is that also a reason why people stick with it for so long despite recurring conflicts and crises – because the band has become a brand in a certain way?

I see the group as something valuable in its own right, a kind of rare raft. Of course, the term “brand” has something very ambivalent in relation to us, but ultimately many people see us as something of a unique selling point. At the same time, we weren’t and aren’t a closed cosmos: we’re now going on tour again with a lot of our colleagues and continue to see ourselves as part of the scene.

Was it actually controversial within the band to celebrate the anniversary? There is always something established and bourgeois about it, which is inevitably accompanied by the museumization of one’s own art.

We’ve experienced that, time and time again. In the summer I had a theater project for the election in Thuringia and at the same time I published a new song every day under the title “Election Watching” on ARD Kultur. Afterwards, the “Haus der Geschichte” museum in Bonn contacted me and asked if they could have my – really sick costume – for their collection. And our video for “The Little Manslaughter” will also be shown in the museum. When it comes to anniversaries, we are, of course, skeptical on the one hand, but on the other hand – and this brings us back to humor – we simply feel like celebrating ourselves incorrectly. That’s why we’re playing the tour under the motto “Magical ball night with the lemons and their comrades.”

The title of your accompanying best-of record is “Inventur”. If you stick with this image: What from the band’s history still exists and what doesn’t?

Inventory also means going through and clearing out, and it felt a bit like that. We also put some older stuff on it. On the one hand, I admire the impressive energy in it, but on the other hand, I find it sometimes completely terrible and shit, including the way I act like a shouter, sometimes not at all ambiguous and very, very testosterone-driven. Like a squeaky alarm balloon, unthinkable today. Today I wouldn’t know how I could adequately perform a song like “Porsche Genscher Hallo HSV.” Even though I still think the idea, especially the title of the song, is great to this day. Because there is an attempt to grasp the world in all its contradictions. I wouldn’t distance myself from this early work, but it’s aesthetically far removed from the band we are today.

You were criticized for your change of style in the early 1990s?

Yes, unfortunately mostly with the wrong arguments. For example, we were accused of doing “commercial shit,” which is of course total nonsense. On the contrary, I believe that we were never really marketable, given how bulky we were. But the headwind was already enormous back then; there were some punk arguments with violent, even physical conflicts at and after concerts. But the trouble was actually really cool, especially since: If it comes from the wrong side, you somehow know that you’re on the right path.

After the doctors were disbanded at the end of the 1980s, the industry even considered developing the Golden Lemons as a doctor replacement product. The band declined and instead released the album “Fuck You” in 1990…

Yes, that was pure madness. Suddenly “Bravo” arrived and wanted to do home stories with us. There were Bild newspaper stories and Tim Renner (then Polydor employee and later Berlin State Secretary for Culture; interviewer’s note) offered us a handsomely paid record deal for five albums. But we really just found that laughable.

So that wasn’t a question that was dealt with within the band? Rocko Schamoni embarked on this path for two albums back then.

We didn’t think about it for a second. Being stuck in the suitcase of an industry representative who also promotes things that you really have nothing to do with and don’t want to have anything to do with was out of the question. But I don’t blame everyone who handles it differently. It was and is not the way of lemons.

The Golden Lemons: »Inventory. 1984–2024« (Buback). Tour: 2.12. Frankfurt/Main, Zoom; 3.12. Cologne, Gloria; 4.12. Berlin, ballroom; 6.12. Munich, technical center; 8.12. Berlin, Festival Hall (additional concert); 12/19 Hamburg, Kampnagel; 12/21 Vienna, Arena