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Published on October 16th, 2003

The yello of the eye

Early November the yello album "the eye" will be released. "20 minutes week" chatted with Dieter Meier (58) and Boris Blank (50) about their works.

Interview – Ralph Hennecke – Photo – Dina Haas

Dieter and Boris, why did you call your new album “The eye”?

Blank: Because the listener can close his eyes hearing the sound and will see pictures showing up in front of his inner eye.

Meier: I found the title, because I can imagine a figure with every song. This was also mostly the way to create the lyrics for our new album.

How do you work together? Dieter is living abroad most of the times.

Blank: I am in the studio every morning at 9am and always go swimming in the evening. If Dieter is visiting me, we feed in (sing in?) the lyrics of the songs. This takes one to two days per song.

Meier: Philosopher Kant lived 40 years at the same place and followed an absolute strict sequence every day. He lived in and for his huge philosophic works. According to this, Boris is the Immanuel Kant of synthetic music.

Is politics part of your music?

Blank: We had some religious lyrics in the past, but politics never played a role in the music.

Meier: Good music is politic itself, because it tracks down the individual at a location, where he learns about himself and where he emancipates himself. Every good work of art impersonates humanity, identity and therefore it is much more politic compared to the so called politic art.

Blank: With which (political) party would you associate our music?

Meier: Unfortunately, you did not listen.

Blank: Correct. But where do you affiliate the message of our music?

Meier: For example, I think, that our music would have been banned during the era of fascism. Good art is anarchy. Anarchy in a meaning, that the individual is in the foreground, not a superior idea of state.

How is this shown at Yello?

Meier: Our music is not created out of an academic composition building, but through Boris, who is basically an anarchist. He is resisting the constraints of Rock’n’Roll, which ran down whole Europe as an imperialism of culture.

So you are successful as anarchist for more than 25 years. Did you ever think of stopping?

Blank: No. No second. I can bluster in my occupation like a kid in a sandpit. If I enter the studio, this is like daily meditation for me. My fascination for sound research is unbroken.

Meier: If you want to be successful, you must listen to the pulse of time. My 90 year old father is a banker and pursues the share prices daily because of fascination and hungry for success.

Do you stay faithful to yourself also in the visual way? Or asking different: When will your moustaches fall?

Meier: Once Boris stops coloring his (laughing). No, this moustache belongs to my face. It will stay – although my daughters say repeatedly, I should cut it off.

Blank: (grinning) as long as Dieter does not separate from his toupee, I will keep my moustache in every case.

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