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Die Toten Hosen (literally 'The Dead Trousers', although 'tote Hose' can also mean 'boring, nothing going on') are a German punk band, one of few well-known outside their home country, although their musical influences also encompass drinking songs, gypsy music, jazz and reggae. They are prolific (14 LP releases to date), long-lasting (they were formed in 1982 while most of the members were still at school and are still extant) and support numerous causes, including Greenpeace, PELT (posing naked for anti-fur publicity) and anti-right wing groups. They are life-long supporters of the football team Fortuna Düsseldorf.
Something of their punk attitude can be gleaned from the fact that they began by playing private birthday parties for free on the condition that unlimited beer was provided and that the hosts paid for all damages caused by the band. The 1987 release Never Mind The Hosen-Here's Die Toten Rosen had a cover that parodied the Sex Pistols' similarly titled debut, and the 1991 LP Learning English Lesson One mainly featured covers of punk classics with at least one member of each original band present (this included Ronnie Biggs, who had appeared on the Sex Pistols' Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle, and T.V. Smith of the Adverts, with whom they continue to work).
Due to the domestic success of their early singles, they signed to EMI in July 1983 and produced a controversial video for the song Eisgekühlter Bommerlunder which the company financed. In 1984, the BBC asked them to record a Peel session, but the high costs involved in their journey to England provoked a row with the record company, which was further inflamed by the band parodying another EMI-signed German artist, Heino, during a concert. The band consequently left the label and signed to Virgin (just as the Pistols had done), but incurred EMI's wrath once again by sending up the HMV label's Nipper dog on their next LP (EMI successfully took out an injunction to have the cover altered).
The session itself inflamed even Peel, who only found out after the broadcast (and a vinyl release that he played on BFBS) that the songs contained a considerable amount of swearing (albeit in German). [1] Feeling that the band had unfairly tricked him, he refused from that point to play their material, as he outlined on the 11 October 2001 show:
"The reason why there’s no Toten Hosen to be honest with you is they did a session for the programme and took advantage of the fact that I knew no German and recorded a couple of songs of breathtaking vulgarity that could have got us taken off the radio. So I kind of hardened my heart against Toten Hosen and I haven’t played any of their stuff since. I know it’s a bit childish, but to hell with them."
In spite of this, track listings show a couple of outings in later years for Bommerlunder and Peel even praising it, somewhat begrudgingly, as "the only decent record Die Toten Hosen made...a great record."
The year before the recording of the session, Peel met a couple of the band members in Düsseldorf during a trip to Germany in May 1983. They drank Bommerlunder schnapps in a "most peculiar little bar" in the city. [2]
11 August 1986: Bommerlunder (7" - Bommerlunder / Opel Gang) Virgin
05 August 1995 (BFBS): 'Bommerlunder (7")' (Totenkopf) (JP: 'When the John Peel Roadshow was delighting a handful of people in Bochum recently, I mentioned to somebody there, my pal Arnie Matthews, that I'd lost my copy of, I'm tempted to say, the only decent record that Die Toten Hosen made, and he was good enough to send me what I suspect could easily have been his copy, so, in honour of this, I think it's time we played it again, because it is a great record.')
↑He probably realised this after the BFBS airplay, as it is highly likely that German-speaking audiences complained. In a later show on that station, he referred to the band as 'twerps' who had caused him a great deal of trouble.
↑As recounted on his first show upon his return to the UK on 30 May 1983. JP later claimed to have this drink at home, sent to him by BFBS listeners.
