Peter Schilling
Fehler im System

It happens very often.

The song is beautiful, probably

(four)

famous, certainly iconic; but the artist is ignored by everyone, barely

(three)

known. It happens; especially if the track in question, at once, recalls

(two)

an immortal classic even in the title and is practically present in every

(one)

screen adaptation of the period when it was released.

(Earth below us drifting, falling)

I discovered it some time ago in a great series on the Cold War, and I loved it; then, my mind always busy with other things, little time for music, it ended up in a corner of my mind, the storage area.

Suddenly - the blonde spy, the wall, the ice tank, Berlin - it reappeared, in all its splendor.

Major Tom.

Peter Schilling.

A long career, reduced to the most classic of one-hit wonders, that of this Western German singer-songwriter, born in 1956, the year of the Winter Olympics, upheavals, tragedies, and the first Eurovision. Great success came early, with the first album - Fehler im System, 1982 - which, indeed, contains what would become his only international hit, Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst), a gold record and twenty-three weeks at the top in his homeland. The translation into English, of both the song and the entire album, was immediate: Error in the System was released the following year, the single - renamed Major Tom (Coming Home) - reaching the fourteenth spot in the United States of America.

The thematic inspiration for the single is evident: Major Tom is the same from Space Oddity, the immortal character who watched the blue planet Earth - there is nothing I can do - in David Bowie's first big hit. Although Schilling's song fills with syncopated '80s vitality what Bowie and Rick Wakeman left deliberately suspended in an empty and fearsome mellotron space, the tragic scope of the two songs is the same: it doesn't change - more than ten years later - the fear for the fate of the world, made explicit by the astronaut lost in the void, a sacrificial victim of the anguishing silent conflict that down there, on that pale blue dot, frightens both sides of the iron curtain. The difference lies in Bowie's resignation which, surviving the devastating mourning of Dik Dik's Help me, now becomes a furious will to return home.

This is my home. I'm coming home.

The rest of the album is a pleasant series of more or less beautiful, more or less memorable pieces, with a different lineup from that of the main course (Gunther Gebauer bass, Gonzo Bishop keyboards, Curt Cress drums), except for guitarist Armin Sabol, who is also a co-author of some tracks. For the - let's say - rest of the album, the musicians are instead Rolk Kersting (bass), Frank Hieber (keyboards), and Dicky Tarrach (drums).

Without dwelling too much, ... Dann trügt der schein is a calm lullaby with a nice bass, while Fast alles konstruiert is a long reggae (a genre that is exalted by the soft Germanic language) - in reality, jokes aside - it is a decidedly listenable piece. The following Die Wüste Lebt is a nervous synthetic chant introduced by apocalyptic gaps that suggest something completely different (like Battiato singing Magic Shop after half a minute of Pollution); only for this track, the drummer is Mickie Stickdorn.

It closes the first side - as understood and despite the quotes, I'm talking about the original version of the album - the song that gives the title to the entire work; Fehler im System is a disturbing ballad, suspended between the theme of a manga and the atmosphere of a pretenious lounge bar; the melodic chorus, at any moment, seems to almost merge the sounds with what, years later, would be Pure Shores by All Saints (and above all, the advertisement of Pan di Stelle). A thorny song, but all in all beautiful.

Floating weightless, calling, calling home.

At the beginning of side B, Schilling has placed his masterpiece. Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst), on first listening, almost seems like a prototypical version of what would later make the Stuttgart singer famous, certainly more refined; the song and its atmospheres, in any case, are the same, and the ending is equally heartbreaking - one of the most beautiful in all music. Then follows, surprise!, a dark Major Tom - indeed, to facilitate future searches on the tube (not true: it's not found), in the English version it was renamed Major Tom, part II - which takes up the disarming and boundless atmospheres of open space - and the anxieties and fears of the album and of the Cold War itself.