Don Van Vliet at the Gallerie Werner, Cologne,
5th of May 1985
Carl Berger
A personal view from Carl. Click here
to view his photographs
Ahm gonna tell you the story of how I came to meet
Don Van Vliet. Well, to be honest, I stood in front of him, yes,
but whether that qualifies as a "meeting" I'm not sure.
In May 1985 about 30 galleries in Cologne were having
exhibitions of new artists or new work of old artists. I donīt keep
my eye on this stuff, and it was purely accidental when I saw his
name in the advert for this gallery-event all over town. I was on
my way home from school - Jesus, this is so long ago! I called the
gallery, asking whether the artist would be there, and to my excitement,
the answer was yes.
Gallerie Werner is located right in the centre. There
are about 3 rooms, one of which is rather large and with enough
wall space to pack those big paintings. It was a Sunday; the same
day ex-US-president Ronald Reagan and ex-German-Chancellor Helmut
Kohl were visiting a graveyard in Bitburg, Germany. This was quite
a scandal at the time since some SS-nazis are buried there, too.
I'm guessing at the exact timing here; memory fails.
He was due to arrive at the gallery at around 12 oīclock. When I
arrived there were already about 40 people hanging around. Some
of them were like me, obviously misplaced fans, some obviously journalists,
and some of them were art-scene-dudes with nice black suits and
big cigars, and if looks could kill all of the fans would have been
dead right on the front door.
Van Vliet was late. About 1.5 hours. Finally he arrived,
directly transferred from Frankfurt Airport by car (2 hours' drive)
with his hat and his wife Jan. He seemed to be in a good mood, even
a little shy, since everybody was starring at him (the fan-section)
or trying to look not too impressed (the artist-section) or just
curious. So he walked around, talked a little with some people,
took a look at his pictures, got himself a drink and a cigar, and
began to make longer conversations to those around him or those
who came to him.
There was this "artist" called Julian Schnabel from
New York. By that time I didnīt know he was a "popular artist",
but the way he behaved classified him as a downright asshole. He
kept calling a Dutch journalist (a woman who just wanted to have
a short interview) "Blondie" in the most arrogant way, even when
she made it clear that she didnīt want to talk any longer, he shouted
something like "Hey Blondie, come back" after her. There were others
like him, who at least ignored those not of their standard. You
can see them in the pics, with their black suits and cigars.
Don Van Vliet was talking to people, got some drinks,
talked, smoked, talked, and obviously got pretty drunk. He ended
up in one room in the gallery, sitting in the chair, laughing, talking
to a couple of people at the same time, began reciting poems, but
words failed him, so he grabbed the exhibitions catalogue with some
poems in it and read them. As far as I can remember it was either
"Skeleton Makes Good" or "Falling Ditch" (or both). Sorry, its 13
years ago, I was 17 years old and kinda nervous and stuff. And boy,
he was in the mood and pretty drunk. But what I remember was that
his voice filled the small room. Real loud and full, and not the
broken voice on the "Stand up to be discontinued" CD. I stood for
a few minutes, thinking that this is my reward for never having
seen a concert. People were taking pictures, and the fan-section
was just looking happy. I must have been smiling like a jerk.
Finally someone must have decided that the show was
over. That's when autograph-time began. Suddenly the fan-section
produced their vinyl-albums from their bags, and I realised I hadnīt
brought any. While I was in the queue waiting with some scrap of
paper for him to sign, I realised with a twinge of fear that he
was chatting and asking people things. You know, for people who
only learned English in school, understanding something like "whhasssupnme"
is hard work. Eventually I worked out that he was asking each person's
name to sign it, and writing "Love over gold" in huge letters on
the album covers. The guy's name in the queue before me was "Werner",
like the gallery, but Van Vliet wrote his name with a "V". The guy
corrected him, and Don began to laugh, "What, with a
īWī, like this?" and tried to correct his mistake. Afterwards, the
name looked more like one of his abstract paintings.
So I got some photos, his signature with my name on
it and I left very happy.
It was years later when all of this reoccurred to
me. I got on the Internet in 1992, I think. Shortly after I discovered
what a "newsgroup" was, I read this posting in alt-fan-frank-zappa,
where a guy called Gerry Pratt placed an add for the first issue
of a Beefheart-Fanzine. That's when I remembered the photos I shot,
wrote him an email, offering him the pictures in exchange for the
fanzine, and Gerry was so thankful that I got free copies of all
the zines he produced. (This is another story, I never met the man
or anything, and we didn't even talk about anything other than Beefheart
in our emails, but when I got this email from one of his colleagues,
saying that he was dead, I was really shocked and sad. Strange kinda
virtual-friendship-thing, I guess).
So that was my Don Van Vliet day. Gallery Werner did
some more exhibitions with his paintings, but Don never came back
in person. I still think that it was kinda stupid of me to go there
with just one film in my camera, and trying to take pictures of
the paintings instead of buying the catalogue, but I didnīt have
that much money, and developing a film was a small fortune to me
then. Stupid me.
I should have pushed the button at 3 frames a second.