Mark Lager’s Summer Vinyl: Amon Düül II – Carnival in Babylon & Wolf City (1972)
Amon Düül was originally a collective that emerged from a far-left commune in Germany, the more musically talented members of this group formed the band Amon Düül II, arguably the most psychedelic band of the Krautrock scene, led by Chris Karrer on guitar, violin, and vocals and featuring John Weinzierl on guitar and vocals, Renate Knaup-Krotenschwanz on vocals, and Falk Rogner on organ. Although Yeti contains their most sprawling instrumental improvisations and is obviously the band’s trippiest album, the two albums the band recorded and released 50 years ago in 1972 contain their best songwriting. While their earlier albums had jams that would last for up to twenty minutes, the band condensed their music into shorter songs (the longest track on Carnival in Babylon is 10 minutes and the longest track on Wolf City is 8 minutes). While Carnival in Babylon featured the four founding members of the band, as well as returning members Lothar Meid (bass), Peter Leopold (tambourine), and Karl-Heinz Hausmann (keyboards), the presence of a new drummer (Daniel Fichelscher, who was later Florian Fricke’s closest collaborator in Popol Vuh) added different rhythmic sensations to the band’s sound. Danny Fichelscher is standing with his finger to his mouth on the back cover of the record sleeve amidst a vast desert landscape. This image presages the change in sound on this album.
The opening track of Carnival in Babylon features a softness that was nowhere to be found in the louder, roaring Yeti. Renate Knaup and Joy Alaska (on background vocals) chant choral, wordless vocals (later singing lyrics) that, along with the band’s guitars, share a spirit with Jefferson Airplane. “C.I.D. in Uruk”, written by guitarist John Weinzierl, is “dedicated to Herrn Wagner and the heads of the C.I.D.” Uruk was a city in ancient Babylon, now in the desert of Iraq, while C.I.D. refers to Criminal Investigative Division. The second track, “All the Years ‘Round” features an even softer vocal melody composed by Renate Knaup, guitar by John Weinzierl (that is reminiscent of Richard Thompson from Fairport Convention), and puzzling lyrics by Falk Rogner:
“Neo-Nazi doom advisors sticking in the mud
While Hindustanian horses refuse a haircut
Windswept children running wild on the land
Pig-pink-coloured ministers are ready to drop
They cut down all their flowers on their way to the top”
The band cuts loose on a jam at the end of the track. The first side of the record concludes with “Shimmering Sand”, composed by Chris Karrer, that opens with delicate acoustic 12-string guitar that is soon joined by fiery electric guitar, exploratory keyboards/organ, and soprano saxophone.
The second side of the record opens with “Kronwinkl 12” by guitarist John Weinzierl. Kronwinkl is the name of a neighborhood in Bavaria (the album was recorded at Bavaria Studio in Munich.) This is one of the shortest tracks and least interesting instrumentally on the album, it’s Amon Duul II doing a classic rock 70s radio track. John Weinzierl’s hard rock guitar at the end of the track is similar to Deep Purple’s Steve Morse. “Tables Are Turned”, music composed by Chris Karrer, features Renate Knaup on vocals (who was, by far, clearly the band’s best vocalist), an acoustic guitar that gives the track a lightness, and congas played by Danny Fichelscher that adds to the organic feeling of the track. Falk Rogner’s lyrics might be the most memorable on the album on this track:
“But in your eyes
I see a sunbeam
Like the rising sun of dawn
On your finger’s a ring of crystal
Like the cry of a flying swan
In your right hand nothing more is left than a shadow
In your left hand you hold a letter from the girl on the road”
The closing track, “Hawknose Harlequin”, features Falk Rogner’s Syd Barrett style lyrics (he mentions a voyage of seventy days and nights and playing on the wings of a crane, the imagery seems similar to the album’s cover artwork that Falk Rogner designed) and starts off with standard guitar, however, this track composed by the entire band soon takes them back into a weirder world with rasping lyrics and strange sax. This disappears quite quickly, however, with a guitar jam that takes up the bulk of the track, with some abstract accents added by keyboards that trail off until the record spins to a close.
Where Carnival in Babylon seemed rather restrained compared to the band’s earlier, more experimental soundscapes (this could be a bit disappointing for listeners who have heard Yeti), their return to the studio in July 1972, when they recorded Wolf City, combined the best of both worlds – it had more in common with the heavy, mind-melting psychedelia of Yeti, alongside the more succinct song structures of Carnival in Babylon, plus exotic eastern instrumentation. Wolf City is arguably the band’s most successful album in their career at balancing different sides of their sound. The opening track, “Surrounded by the Stars”, could be considered the definitive Amon Düül II song – Renate Knaup’s vocals at their gothic greatest, as if Barbara Steele as the witch Asa Vajda from Mario Bava’s Black Sunday suddenly transported to 1972 to smoke weed and join a rock band. Chris Karrer’s violent violin, Jimmy Jackson’s haunting choir organ, John Weinzierl’s wicked guitar, Falk Rogner’s crazy clavioline and synthesizer.
“You knock
At the gates of night
No answer
And you say to yourself
Maybe I should leave this town?
You walk
Beside the twilight street
I don’t believe the TV screen!”
“Green Bubble Raincoated Man” contains another both delicate and powerful lead vocal by Renate Knaup and one of the most memorable melodies not only on this album but in Amon Düül II’s discography. Jimmy Jackson’s choir organ adds an epic grandeur to this track. The rhythm section of Lothar Meid on bass and D. Secundus Fichelscher on drums is mesmerizing. The chorus summarizes the effect of Amon Düül II and Renate Knaup on the listener’s mind:
“Look into my eyes
You have to face the facts in time
Don’t forget you’re high”
“Jail House Frog” features both haunted house horror movie sounds (Falk Rogner’s eerie raven noises and Jimmy Jackson’s creepy choir organ) and heavy rock.
The second side of the record opens with what sounds like an alarm, “Wolf City” is a chugging, grooving, headbanging late night ride through a dystopian, futuristic German urban wasteland that anticipates Lemmy Kilmister’s “Lost Johnny” (that appeared two years later with Hawkwind).
“Your voodoo-graph is going
To conquer the world
While the greyhound leans back
In the president’s chair
And thousands of children
On their way home
Gasp for fresh air”
According to Falk Rogner in an interview with Mojo, “Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse” (“Wind at the End of the Street”), was a few minutes extracted from a five hour session where the band “all took acid and used Florian Fricke’s great Moog synthesizer” and was the only time the band recorded under the influence of LSD. This hypnotic instrumental swirls around the listener’s brain and ears with bass, drums, guitar, pauken, sitar, synths, tablas, tambura, and violin leading the listener on a magical, mystical, spiritual space rock trip! “Deutsch Nepal”, similar to its title, has a heavy metal, massive, Teutonic doom and gloom that makes Black Sabbath seem much milder in comparison. This bizarre Germanic gothic madness is reinforced by the vocals that sound like an insane dictator commanding his troops on their march to the Himalayan mountains or to war. “Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge”, in complete contrast, is a soaring, uplifting closing track led by Daniel Fichelscher’s multi-instrumental skills and talents on acoustic guitar, electric guitar, and drums. John Weinzierl’s guitar is at its most fiery while Chris Karrer’s violin is symphonic in its scope.
Daniel Fischelscher’s lyrics are daydream heat-haze reveries summoning summertime:
“Chasing the swarm of dragonflies
Green flooding meadows under the cloud-ridden sky”
by Mark Lager