Rocko Schamoni’s life: “Pudel’s core”: When Tobias became king

Lütjenburg, 1986: 19-year-old Tobias Albrecht has just finished his apprenticeship as a ceramicist. But instead of looking for a permanent position in the tranquil small town on the western coast of Schleswig-Holstein, he now has what he has been longing for for years: leaving his parents’ house and moving to Hamburg – the pulsating, less geographical than more culturally distant metropolis on the northern Elbe.

The pull of the big city that he feels when he arrives. There is Uta, for example, whom he already knows from the country and with whom he moves into his first, shabby apartment. Or Frenchy, his lover, who also comes from Lütjenburg and who made the jump from the province some time before him. And then there is Schorsch Kamerun, singer of the already legendary Golden Lemons, who also comes from the coast and who after a short time became a loyal companion and with whom he would later open the Pudel Club. Like a busy house spider, Tobias builds a resilient web within a short period of time. Instead of defenseless insects, experiences, impressions, acquaintances and adventures get caught up in them. They become his staple food during those years.

20 years after “Village Punks”, Rocko Schamoni builds on his surprise literary success at the time with his new book “Pudels Kern” and tells with a lot of humor and at the same time great seriousness how Tobias became Rocko in those years. He writes about the Hamburg nightlife of that time, the beginning of his career as a musician and artist, fleeting and close acquaintances with actors such as the Toten Hosen or the Einstreichen Neuhäusern, about grueling tours and excessive drug consumption, the highest highs and the lowest lows. In doing so, Schamoni spares no one, neither others nor himself.

Schamoni’s comments about his short trip to the epicenter of the culture industry are particularly exciting to read. Because after the then Berlin teen idols Die Ärzte announced their departure from the stage in 1988 (and then took it back less than five years later), Schamoni of all people was chosen by the then powerful record company Polydor and their up-and-coming manager Tim Renner to fill the resulting vacuum. So a financially lavish deal was signed without further ado, which tied Schamoni to the company for two albums. But his 1990 album “Jeans and Electronics” fell far short of commercial expectations, as did “Disco,” which was released a year later.

Schamoni describes his inner roller coaster mercilessly: On the one hand, he dreams of a career as a musician. On the other hand, he fears the expectations of the outside world, which threaten to corrupt him as an artist. And so in the end the joy prevails when Polydor finally drops him like a hot potato and he lands gently back in the lap of his clique and scene.

Throughout the course of the book, Schamoni consistently continues the path he has taken in recent years with works such as “Five Holes in the Sky” or “Great Freedom” and combines the humorous, entertaining style of his early books with insights into his sometimes profound inner life. In “Pudels Kern” he writes more openly than perhaps ever before about recurring depression, deep-seated self-doubt, regular loss of control in drug intoxication and long talk therapies, which emerge as the downside of his excessive lifestyle. He writes in detail about the difficult process of growing up, reports about wrong paths and fantasies of redemption, about art, intoxication, spirituality and the realization that homosocial men’s groups are part of his problem.

In terms of content, we have read all of this many times over the past 30 years. If you want, you can view the book as another autofictional coming-of-age work among many. But among them you will only find a few books in which the keyboard of the tragic and the comic is played and synthesized as perfectly as here. Anyone looking for good and entertaining entertainment is in good hands with Rocko Schamoni in 2024.

Rocko Schamoni: Poodle’s core. Hanser blue, 304 pages, hardcover, €24.30.