“Why the hell was I so gross after I had a drink? Everyone else just made fun of them, did great things and then slept with a beautiful woman, but I preferred to pour beers on women and do other embarrassing things,” wrote Rammstein keyboardist Christian “Flake” Lorenz in 2017.
It’s a quote from his book “Today is the World’s Birthday”, a reviewer of “Deutschlandfunk” called it “harmless but entertaining”.
But those who read the book today look at the anecdotes that Flake strings together on 352 pages with different eyes. Because they reveal even then what was going on in the Rammstein backstage area. And that doesn’t sound “harmless”.
Rather, clues can be found that match the reports of the women who report alleged sexual assaults in the band’s environment. The fact that Flake writes at the beginning of his book “Any resemblances to real people and events are not intended” may surprise some of today’s readers.
In the book, first-person narrator Flake writes about a day with his band, a 24-hour glimpse. He takes his readers with him into the supposed everyday life: Arrival in Budapest, in his dressing room he is asked by the band assistant Tom: “Do you have guests?” Tom always asks the question in the early afternoon. Flake don’t have any, but bandmate Till all the more. Till’s name is on “various notes”, “it doesn’t want to end at all”. Assistant Tom is visibly happy, it says, he writes everything down: “No problem, we’ll bring them all in.”
He takes readers backstage: there’s a clock hanging on the wall, supposedly from a one-euro shop, and it’s also on tour. That evening Flake shares his wardrobe with Till. “Welded-in notes” with the names of the two hang on the door, Flake describes the setting. More signs in the hallway showing the way to the stage and to the food. Till now starts the dressing-up music, Flake knows: It’s an hour before the concert starts, so Till always puts on the same playlist. So he knows for each song how much time he has left. “Some kind of acoustic clock.”
Then Flake goes to the toilet, he writes, when he comes back, “suddenly everything is full of people.” Till would “generously” distribute sparkling wine and vodka. “Women screaming excitedly” with cigarettes in their hands are now on the sofa. He writes: “‘Hello, let’s fuck!’ I shout as a greeting and to lighten the mood a little more.” But Flake is ignored, the attention is focused on Till, who turns up the music loud and starts dancing. “Every now and then the door opens because the crew members want to see what kind of women are sitting with us.” The mood is “really boisterous”, the women “laugh and scream”.
“Till explains to them that they should decant the vodka into water bottles because they can take them to the concert.” Then everyone wants to take photos with Till. “So that everyone is on it”, Flake should take the photos, so he doesn’t have to be on it himself.
“What happens to all the photos? Who wants to look at them? Or should I ask, who needs to look at them?” Flake asks in his book.
Then Tom comes back, the assistant, he takes the guests to their seats in the hall. The women’s jackets and bags remain in Flakes and Till’s wardrobe. When everyone is gone, “Till pensively takes a sip of sparkling wine and we remain silent.”
Then the performance, a fire show, suggestive, provocative. Flake describes it like this: “As musicians, our appearance is pure courtship behavior, and we also sing about sex. Musically, we probably also try, if only unconsciously, to get people sexually aroused.”
Back in the dressing room, the ladies from the pre-party are there again. And even more new guests. “People who bring drugs and women” would come backstage much easier than “those who want to talk to us about books and social aid projects”.
Flake describes in detail how the after show party unfolds. Most of the guests are now “very drunk”, especially those from the pre-party. Some women could have “strayed here because of Till”. They would try to “get attention” by “laughing and squeaking loudly”. Others would try to “quietly flaunt their physical assets. They keep running to the bathroom to check their looks.”
He even comments on the looks: “There are really some very beautiful girls. I can’t deny that.”
The book also deals with Flake’s alcohol consumption, which he consumed “en masse” after the concerts. “This alcohol should give me the courage to ask the girls to sleep with me.”
It was like that when Rammstein was still the opening act, for example at Korn in 1998. Flake and other band members “shoved their way into the dressing room to get some of their wives. We shed all dignity.” At these after-show parties “were the most beautiful women from the audience, who had already been selected during the concert by professionals who had been brought along.”
This description is reminiscent of statements made by women in 2023. It is also about a casting and selection process that supposedly chose women for the Rammstein parties.
Flake also describes these parties in detail in his book. So the band took “as many women as possible” to the hotel, “whom we immediately threw into the pool. Then the women mostly undressed.” Their things were also thrown into the pool “so they couldn’t flee so quickly”. Then filled schnapps bottles into the water, which would be emptied quickly. “After that, we couldn’t find our way around the hotel corridors and wandered around the elevators naked.”
Only with growing success did each band member afford a single room, writes Flake, before that everyone often slept in the same room. If “someone managed to take a woman with them,” the others were “allowed to share in his pleasure, at least acoustically. Or right. We’ve all seen our colleagues having sex.”
In the meantime (as of 2017, editor’s note) the hotel lobby, where people meet before the shuttle departs, is the first meeting point after the night of partying. If someone has had a nice evening and even taken a “nice woman” to the hotel, you can tell by looking at the people. “Even when they’re tired and hungover, they have that special grin on their faces. The others are very eager to know every detail of the night. Recently, cell phone photos are even being shown. As evidence, so to speak.” The bandmates would then ask pointed trick questions to find out everything. It’s like at the crime scene.
For the critics in 2017, the book allowed a look into the “inner life of the most successful German rock band”, the “Deutschlandfunk” even called its text “Inside Rammstein”. The fact that the critics didn’t notice these scenes at the time, that they weren’t discussed, is at least surprising from today’s perspective. But there were other, more critical opinions already at the time of publication. “I had to cancel it. Disgusting,” wrote a reviewer on the book rating platform LovelyBooks.
Source: Book “Today is the world’s birthday”, “Deutschlandfunk”, “LovelyBooks”
