![]() ![]() ![]() Hagen's first American album Nunsexmonkrock-a mixture of hard rock and funk, with elements of Islam and the witch cult of the Middle Ages-was recorded in New York and released in 1982 on the Columbia label. When Hagen learned that she was pregnant, she moved to Los Angeles alone, where Frank Zappa's manager Bennett Glotzer took over her career. A year later, the first Hagen record was released in the United States-a limited edition commercial ten inch EP with two songs each from her first and second album. With Dutch guitarist Ferdinand Karmelk, Hagen auditioned musicians for a new Nina Hagen Band in New York and Hollywood and met with Columbia Records executives. In the meantime, Hagen's extensive European media coverage focused more and more on her scandalous lifestyle rather than on her anti-establishment lyrics and music. Unbehagen, released in 1980, was a success throughout Europe. She finished a second album with the band to fulfill her obligation to her record company. On the way to becoming an international star, however, Hagen dissolved her band because she felt that guitar solos had become more important than her voice to her accompanists. Hagen was in high demand and the renowned German news magazine, Spiegel, celebrated the band as "one of the hottest European bands since the Sex Pistols." It included cover versions of the Tubes' "White Punks on Dope," and Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" with German lyrics, and used elements of American new wave similar to Patti Smith or Blondie. In 1979, her first album Nina Hagen Band was released. After exploring the London reggae and punk scenes, she formed the Nina Hagen Band and, in 1977, gave three sold-out performances in West Berlin. When her mother's new boyfriend-Wolf Biermann, a prominent singer and songwriter who had publicly criticized the East German regime-was forced to leave the country at the end of 1976, Nina Hagen followed him with her mother to West Germany.Īt age 21, Hagen settled in Hamburg and her stepfather helped her to get a recording contract with CBS, giving her time and money to learn about western culture and the music business. She then performed with several bands at various jazz events in East Berlin and toured East Germany. Hagen studied sound engineering in a one-year intensive course at the Studio for Popular Music in East Berlin, which included road-show training. Instead, she sang along to tapes of Tina Turner and Janis Joplin and went on a trip to Poland where she performed together with a band for the first time. She was excluded from the communist youth organization, left school after the tenth grade and, when she was 17, failed the admission test for the East German Actors School in Berlin. In the shadow of her mother's fame, Hagen's early rebellion often went unpunished. ![]() Hagen sang in the theater choir and later with the Lacomy singers, a studio background group. When she was about nine, she started taking classes in classical voice, guitar, and piano. She stayed with her mother and was heavily influenced by her theater work. When Nina Hagen was born in March 1955, her parents-script writer Hans Hagen and actress Eva-Maria Hagen-were at the peak of their success in the German Democratic Republic. After some rather quiet times in the late 1980s, Hagen jumped off to a new start in re-united Germany in the 1990s. But her eccentric style which emphasizes her belief in individual freedom, UFO's, and in the divinity of humans hasn't changed much over the years, while her extreme exuberance was in part replaced by political statements and action. When Billboard's Roman Kozak arrived at her New York East Side apartment for an interview before a performance at the Ritz, Hagen received him in her kitchen, "dressed in what looked like a white paper diaper, a black Valkyrie bra, and a leather cap that hid what was left of her cropped red hair." Hagen's career has been a cycle of ups and downs. "Nina Hagen is at once the most outlandish of rock clowns and the most intensely committed and flaked-out female pop visionary since Patti Smith herself," wrote Tim Holmes in Rolling Stone, "She sings, mumbles, growls, yelps, shrieks and warbles." On stage as well as in public Hagen loves eccentric appearances. Nina Hagen is one of the most controversial rock singers of our time, one that people either love or hate passionately. Addresses: Record Company-BMG Ariola Hamburg GmbH, Osterstrae 116, D-20259 Hamburg, Germany. Born Nina Catharina Hagen Main East Berlin, German Democratic Republic daughter of Hans Hagen (a script writer), and Eva-Maria Hagen, (an actress) children: daughter Cosma Shiva (born 1981) and son Otis (born 1990) married David Lynn in May of 1996. ![]()
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