Having released only one full length LP and a single, Germany’s Dies Irae were a powerhouse of blues, psychedelia and heavy riff madness from 1968 up until their unfortunate split in 1972. Mr. Wahlmann was the front man of Dies Irae and later of Green Wave. I remember the first time I heard ‘First’. Such an incredible rumble of thunderous musicianship and heaviness. It was true pleasure speaking with Rainer about his life and career in music. Enjoy!

When and where were you born? Are you originally from Saarbrucken, Germany? What was growing up like for you? When did you first begin to fall in love with music and what led to you being a vocalist? Are you able to play any other instruments?

I was born in Riegelsberg, a small village near Saarbrücken. I grew up in a rather strange post-war-scene, where the adults always used to keep discussing the shame of having lost another world war, at family parties, in drunken moments, they started singing their German folksongs again, that they used to sing while marching throughout Poland, Russia, The Netherlands or France and they tried to tell us kids stories about all our (still) enemies in the world : the French, the Russians, the English, the Americans and all the others. As far as for music I first grew up with that kind of German traditional (and originally innocent) folk music.

My father often played guitar in their gatherings and wanted me to learn playing the guitar. He had come home from war in the beginning of 1947 as a real broken man, full of deception and hate, because he hardly had survived a US- PW camp in the Netherlands. At the age of 12 I got really pissed with all the German folk music and the endless still-Nazi-talk; all of my older cousins and their friends were already listening to Elvis, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and others. My father hated this kind, as he called it “negro music”, but I loved it. One of my cousins saved all his money to buy an old Adler motorbike and with that bike he caused some trouble as one of the first teddy-boys in our region. I was honestly impressed : this kind of weird music really disturbed the adult world so much and was able to make them really angry!

Later, about 1963/64, I started to listen to early British beat bands like The Searchers, The Kinks, The Animals, The Who etc. My first records were of the ( then really weird looking ) Rolling Stones and my record player and my singles got thrown out the window by my father. The war had begun: I decided to fight with music for freedom of thought and against intolerance. As a result I refused to learn to play the guitar and my father’s music. I learned playing the harp. When I visited the Netherlands in1964 and 1965 I met many hippies and protest people (especially from the Dutch “kabouters” and “provos” movement) They organized anti-war-demonstrations and demonstrations for a better environment, sang protest songs from Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Odetta and others. There, one day in Amsterdam, op de Dam, I decided to become a protest singer; guess I stayed that way till my last concert in 2015.

Did you participate in any groups prior to Dies Irae? If so, what were they and what were those early days like? Who were some of your influences early on? Where would you go to see shows and who were some of the first you saw?

Joachim Schiff, the later bass –player of dies irae, who played guitar in the early days and me sat in the same class at high school. He had some little song ideas to impress his girlfriend, and since he had no idea for lyrics, I started writing lyrics during the boring school lessons. A bit later another schoolmate who played guitar joined us and we began jamming with different bass-players and drummers. The first band we called THE MMB369, but that day we were about to play our first gig (1965), the guitar-player, who owned ¾ of the equipment, didn’t show up, neither did the drummer: so we had to look for new musicians. Pretty soon Harald Thoma, the later DIES IRAE guitar player came along with a bass player, different drummers came and went; we had some gigs as THE ORCHID, then things started getting better when we called ourselves THE FLASH (1966/67).

`The Flash - previous formation of dies irae with Rainer Wahlmann, Harald Thoma and Joachim Schiff.`

First we covered Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Small Faces. But as soon as we discovered all the fantastic British Blues Bands like John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, the Yardbirds, Cream, Taste and started listening to the American Blues Legends like Muddy Waters, Howlin´ Wolf, Willie Dixon Elmore James, B.B. King, we knew we wanted to play exactly such a kind of progressive music! I used to visit some locations in our region, where bands covered all that sixties music, so, quite funny, I liked a band very much, who covered most of all Rolling Stones songs- Red Diamond & the Black Stones (with their singer Frank Fahrian). My first big concert I visited in 1965 in Neunkirchen/Saar, The Kinks were topping the bill and I definitely fell for them for the rest of my life! On a bike tour through the Netherlands and Belgium in the same year I saw Cuby & the Blizzards, a Dutch bluesband.

When and where did you initially meet your bandmates Andreas F. Cornelius, Harald H.G. Thoma and Robert J. Schiff? What were your first impressions of them? What led to the decision to form a group together? What commonalities, or interests did you guys share
together?

Jo Schiff, about half a year later Harald Thoma and I have so been playing together already since 1965. In the beginning Jo Schiff was playing the rhythm guitar, there was another bass player, as I remember till 1966/7(?) Jo and I always discussed, if blues music is pure emotion, or not. Jo was an upper class guy and as a math student, Beatles- and Bee Gees- Fan he alway mocked about the simplicity of blues. I, from my personal background, „felt the blues“. We had conflicts on that every once in a while (even some fights on stage) as long as we played together.

In the beginning Harald was a Beatles-Fan too, but I listened day and night to strange radio stations then like Radio Veronica, Radio Caroline, Radio Luxembourg France, and spent days in record store, and so I made more and more proposals like early Fleetwood Mac,Them, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Taste, Ten Years After, The Jimi Hendrix Experience,The Yardbirds, The Pretty Things and of course The Kinks, and Harald got more and more interested in that kind of music, that had such fantastic guitar players as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix. So in the end we pulled ourselves together.

After having tried out about 12 different drummers in the first 3 or four years, we found Manni von Bohr (until today one of the finest German professional drummers) and changed our name into DIES IRAE ; still cover music, but only progressive. Jo changed from rhythm to bass guitar, and Harald – already in those early days one of the finest guitar players here around grew better and better day by day! But Manni failed at school with his examinations and his father locked him away from music (for one year – he failed a second time and then decided to become a professional drummer)

We had gigs, but he, as our drummer couldn’t come, because he was locked at home! It was a sad goodbye, but we had to look for a new one, because in the meantime we had gathered lots of gigs. After some rehearsals Andreas “Bonny” Cornelius came along, a really spaced-out high-class free jazz drummer. He said:” I’m gonna join your band, but only if you start writing your own material!” – All of our friends disagreed:” do you guys think, you can write songs like John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, Cream, Taste, Jimi Hendrix and all the other progressive musicians? You megalomaniacs?” 2 real good friends that had managed us left us with these words.

How did the name come about? Were you guys influenced by Thomas of Celano? Where would you rehearse and what was the band’s first gig like? When/where was it and when did you guys begin writing your own material compared to starting off with covers, etc.?

On my radio I once had heard this dark dies irae – theme, didn’t know nothing over Thomas of Celano, but it fitted exactly to my inner feeling – angry about all shit that happened in the world! What a band name! The Day of Anger! We rehearsed in a catholic youth home in a rather rough social hotspot area. I can’t remember exactly our first gig, but one gig I’ll never forget: we played a big town hall with a huge new wooden stage. Manni von Bohr had forgotten his drum carpet, and so before the soundcheck started, he nailed his drums, so it couldn’t slip. But since he had placed himself too much in front, he had to move more into the back. There he nailed it a second time into the new wooden stage, but forgot to remove the nails in the front area. I always been getting on stage barefooted, and so a bloody show began: I ripped my feet and my blood spread all over the stage. Of course, I didn’t stop, I enjoyed it in a certain way: we had spoiled the brand new wooden stage in the town hall! Andreas “Bonnie“ Cornelius had „forced“ us to write our own material! On a beat- competition on in Wesel with 4000 people we were the only band with own material; even the Scorpions, who were there too, played Jimi Hendrix-covers then still.

`Circa: 1971 photographed somewhere in Merzig / Saarland by Jürgen Schmeisser (Pilz Records Hamburg).`

You guys were a group for three years, ‘68-’71, before your first album came out. Can you tell me about those early days and what the band’s process was like when developing the sound as well as the overall vision?

As a progressive rock band playing material of Ten Years After, Taste, Black Sabbath, Cream and Jimi Hendrix we had gathered a big followership in our home region and in neighboring France. After our two “managers“ had left, because they thought, we were crazy, writing our own music, pretty soon we found a new manager, who cared for gigs in places all over Germany. I had written nearby conceptional lyrics for our new songs, dealing with the dark, my drug experiences and my (then pretty naive) belief, we could change the world into a better one by using drugs. I played the role of a drug ambassador.

How did the deal with Pilz come about? Can you tell me about recording the LP ‘First’ and the process of how that was created? Where did you guys record and how long did it take to finish the album? What was it like to work with engineer Conny Plank and producer Jurgen Schmeisser?

Our manager was pretty successful, even though (or maybe because) he was a „psychotic big mouth“, who tried to steer us like puppets or his own little unsuspecting children. We didn´t care too much about that in the beginning, we only wanted to play our music. We even didn´t care about the money he made. 4 blue-eyed musicians signed an exclusive management contract without reading it.(the bill we had to pay later) But now we played a lot of gigs outside of our home region, finally! One of them was in Lila Eule/Bremen where a goup of people were having a party. We didn´t know them, but after the show Jürgen Schmeisser came up and told us, that they, PILZ-record label people, really enjoyed the show and he asked for our address. Some months later, he asked us to hire a stage and to show him, why PILZ should produce an LP with us. We hired a small location and played the show for one person, him. He liked it. It took some months more till we were invited to record a LP in Hamburg. In the mean time, PILZ –records had changed a lot. BASF (the owner of PILZ) didn´t want to invest too much more money into progressive music, more and more they changed their program to German “Schlager.”

`Circa: 1971 in Hamburg. Photo by producer Jürgen Schmeisser from Pilz Records.`

We were quite surprised, as we heard we got only about 20 hours to record an LP plus 2 songs for a X-mas sampler. Can’t remember the name of the studio, only remember it was a small one in a suburban terraced house area; good thing: they had hired Conny Plank to do the recording; bad thing: after some hours of recording he left for a mixing job with Kraftwerk at the Hamburg Markthalle. After a 5 hours break he returned into the studio at about midnight, along with him some Kraftwerk and some The Rattles folks. We got stoned, forget to record the lyrics to a pretty complicated jazzy “ shepherd’s song” for the X-mas sampler “Heavy Xmas” and returned back home. They dropped the instrumental, all thats been left is a 20 secs long stoned la-la-la singalong of everybody in the studio at the end of the song. All I can remember about Jürgen Schmeisser is his “tough, guys! Pretty good!” after every song we had recorded (nearly every song in one take) Not quite sure, if thats what you call “producer”, you really could “smell” the lack of time.

Can you walk me through the process of writing each song as well as recording them? How did you guys come across Holger Matthies for the design work? What is the concept of the front and back of the record? Was this the first time you had ever been in a studio?

We had never before been in a studio. The soundcheck was an “hommage“ to Elmore James, that Harald and me liked very much. Conny cut it a little and it became “run off“.

Lucifer: I chose Lucifer, the fallen angel, to be my alter ego. He had revolted against god, got thrown out of paradise for bringing the enlightenment to mankind. This world is not holy, holy; its death, hatred and war, but nevertheless, lets search for life, love and peace, not to forget – satisfaction, lets find our real selves without any restrictions! Looking back, many of my beliefs haven’t changed that much until today.

Salve Oimel: If my memory serves me well, Conny Plank brought up this silly little Latin sentence. Like Jo and I, he had run through an humanistic education and what a result this was! We had a good time with Conny. Jo spoke the words and Harald showed the world how it feels like.

Another Room: I had suffered from an authoritarian education. When my fascist father threw out my girlfriend out my room, I left home and started my new life in the city.

Trip: Need to explain acid? This song live never had a fixed structure. We always let it flow. Main direction was chaos –beauty -chaos. Only Harald’s guitar riff always stayed the same. On our 1991 revival-live version in Le Garage (CD-R make ends meet- dies irae) you can hardly recognize the song “trip” until Harald’s beautiful riff sets in.

Harmagedon Dragonlove: A strange disturbing flashback to my childhood bible-poisoned days ringing in Dies Irae, the day of doom, the last days, mixed with Romanticisms blue flowers and a touch of Wordsworths mellow meadows descriptions.

Witches' Meeting: For me, my most uninspired lyrics on this record! Sorry for that, really! But Harald plays an excellent guitar!

Red Lebanese: Might sound strange today, but I always was in search of the mind-expanding effect of drugs then, the heightening of my awareness; I liked the softness of red Lebanese.

Tired: Here I tried to express the right to live your own dreams, as long as you do not hurt anybody by purpose. As I see it now I waved my freak flag a bit too high in this one, and I understand by now some critics I unleashed at that times, even if I'm still convinced, that smokin´ a joint really is much more harmless than carrying a gun. I liked the design work of Holger Matthies. The barbed wire really expressed my feelings about my place in this world at this time. Most of all I liked the broken barbed wire with the band name on the front cover. The four-leaf clover on the back I hated – “Kitsch”!

`Rainer Wahlmann and Harald Thoma Stadthalle Merzig circa: December of 1971.`

Did you begin touring in order to support the release? What shows stand out in your mind, till this day for you? What happened that following year in ‘72? What led to the band’s split? What journey did you take after everything was said and done? Did you continue to pursue music, or did you take a different path altogether?

We toured to support the release, played a town hall in Zurich/Switzerland, Karlsruhe, Bielefeld, Starclub Harburg and Bremerhaven. I really enjoyed the Hamburg gigs in Grünspan and The Fabrik. But best of all were two improvised gigs: to promote our gig in the Starclub Harburg we entered the place in front of the Hamburg town hall without permission, built up our equipment, got electricity from a construction site for 10DM and started playing in front of a gathering community, about 100 people, for about 15 min. until the police stopped us.

`Original poster signed by all the members.`

We announced our gig in the evening and happily left without getting fined. The other day we rode through Hamburg with our tourbus, aimlessly, and stopped at a Jazz club to see a concert. But the band had cancelled the gig and so we suggested to play for free a one hour concert: Terrific! In Hamburg we fired our manager, because he wanted to control every move of everyone of us. We signed a severance pay contract over 10000.-DM, only to get rid of him. Pretty soon, the record company informed us, that nearly all of the German radio stations would not play our music because of my lyrics.

`The band’s only single which feat. tracks Lucifer and Tired`

I had insisted to print them on the cover inside, nobody had had any objections. A month later, PILZ informed us, there would be no follow up LP because of the radio boycott. We were sacked. No, there was no real discussion about it in the band, but I had written the lyrics. Jo wanted us to go into a new direction, something more soft like Blood, Sweat & Tears, that I hated. Rehearsals became more and more boring without any aim or direction.

The manager forced me by lawyer to pay my part of the money. I had none. I left the band frustrated and had to make money. I got a job in Berlin as a teacher in a special school for people with learning disabilities. on the side I wrote concert reviews to pay my part of the severance payment to our manager -The Pretty Things, Flo & Eddie, Alice Cooper,Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel a.s.o. Never had thought of stopping making music. Down and out. The other three continued with dies irae for one more year. One long year I worked as a teacher, but the prospect of life imprisonment made me break out again after a year. I returned to Saarbrücken, earned my living as a railroad worker in the black forest and other places and started jamming with folks in different bars – back to music at last!

`Circa: September 9th of 1970. Opening of the Saarbrücken-Malstatt talent shed`

What led to the group reforming in the early 90’s? Had you kept in contact with them during that whole period leading up to this? What was that like to finally be reunited with your old mates after all that time?

The brief contact with the big music business had sobered me and led to my decision to only make music with really good friends and without money-go-round, no need for professionals, cause its the amateur who really loves music, the professional makes money out of it! I jammed in the pubs with lots of people till I met an fine American guitar player, Bernie Ayling. With him, another guitar player, Marc Fournelle, who had accompanied us as roadie on a DIES iRAEt our throughout Northern Germany, a real fine bass-player, Deddé Schäfer, his brother Hans-Gerd on drums and a second drummer, Helmut Scheid we started rehearsing more and more and finally in the end of 1975 decided to form a new band, GREEN WAVE. In the meantime the other guys from DIES IRAE had stopped in 1973; Jo Schiff had decided to start a career as a mathematician and the other two found new members and formed a cover-band called LUCY GANG: They played lots of US Army clubs in the nearby region round Kaiserslautern. I still was in loose contact with Harald and Bonnie, but even there were many demands to reform Dies Irae, we kept refusing, especially I couldn’t imagine to get on stage with Jo anymore.

I kept on with GREEN WAVE, the other two with LUCY GANG. 1991, 20 years after “first” the City of Saarbrücken planned a big concert event in Le Garage, but at a short notice the top act band cancelled their gig. Harald invited us all for one only reunion concert, and then at that time I had the feeling, that my relation to Jo had slightly embettered after had suffered a heart attack some months ago, we came together for some few rehearsals and did the gig astonishingly well after a 20 year break. The following one and a half year we were invited to play many more gigs, in fact we had more gigs than rehearsals. We even started to write 5 new songs, but then we couldn’t decide, which direction we wanted to go. Déja vu – one time too many, arguing again, but pretty soon we decided to split definitely as friends. “second“ - the real Dies Irae finale in 1993.

In our correspondence you mentioned you've suffered from severe hearing loss. Can you tell me what that’s been like for you as a musician/artist as well as an individual? How and when did Green Wave initially form? What were those times like? You mentioned releasing a new album this year, can you tell me about that? Are you officially retired from music at this point? How have the other guys been holding during these strange times? How have you been? You mentioned you’ve really taken to gardening!

From the early beginnings in 1975 GREEN WAVE was a pure live band for about 7 years. Our home region Saarland is a blind spot when it comes to the music business, and we cared the fuck about it. Politically seen I’m absolutely green-left wing and so we supported, similar as in DIES IRAE times, left wing projects, environmentally engaged groups and many demonstrations. Unfortunately, sometimes because of the lack of money, we had many changes in the line-ups, mostly guitar-players came and went.Once we even got invited to play on the “festival of fools” in the Amsterdam Melkweg. 1981 I suddenly had serious hearing problems and had to undergo ear drum surgery .the operation failed. Sometimes I heard only low, sometimes mid and sometimes only high frequencies. I couldn’t exactly distinguish tones anymore.

But for 1982 we had decided to record our first single in the Frankfurt Hotline Studio: "merry-go-round / fine, fine woman “. For me it was a kind of a drag. I had a second operation, that also failed. To top it all, in 1983 I had a two ears ' hearing loss, no longer repairable, 50%. Looked like the final curtain for all of my musical aims. Our guitar player asked the band to take over most of the vocals. The band decided to wait for me and he left the group. I didn’t give up and we replaced the second guitar from now on with a keyboard player. I decided to build up a recording studio of our own. We did it. With my hearing loss of 50% my musical energy increased surprisingly.

In 1989 I started my concept program “ ...we used to cut the green grass..” which we brought on stage as a kind of multi-media rock-opera in the Saarbrücken “le Garage”, but we had no money to get it on stage more than 3 times. I expanded the concept of the program and it became the environmental story"... green days on a planet blue", which grew from the first CD "the inner garden" in 2000 to the double album”... we used to cut the green grass... / ... the war is over... "2009 to our final work" stolen dreams in a nearby lost & found "2020 extends over a period of more than 25 years.

We had our last live gig in summer 2015 at the Altstadtfest Saarbrücken. We went on recording our good-bye CD until 2017. Then my health problems began and that was the end of Green Wave. I had a heart attack in 2018, a stomach ulcer in early 2019 and shortly afterwards cancer. Fortunately, I survived everything, but the chemo treatment has had severe aftereffects to this day. Then my health problems began and that was the end of green wave. I had a heart attack in 2018, a stomach ulcer in early 2019 and shortly afterwards cancer. Fortunately, I survived everything, but the chemo treatment has had severe aftereffects to this day. So I gave up music without sadness and enjoy my garden from now on.

Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?

As I was proofreading the whole interview, I realized, that all of this was just my personal point of view; every band member of dies irae or green wave would have told a completely different story, a different truth, a different reality. Certainly I have also told too little about the wonderful musicians with whom I have been fortunate to work for more than 50 years; many, many stories have remained untold. dies irae, from around 1968 to 1972/73, was only an extremely small part of my more than 50 years of active musical life. In this short time we achieved a certain amount of public attention, because as part of the rebellious youth movement we had written and lived its content on our flags.

In comparison, green wave, active from 1975 to 2015, offered me the opportunity to gradually find and shape my personal place in my environment: continuing to raise my voice in protest against all injustices in this world, but gradually learning that potentially every human being has the skills of black and white, and socially fundamental changes can only be achieved very, very slowly with perseverance. With dies irae I had carried the freak flag high, with green wave I gradually put it aside and became myself. Therefore the last album "stolen dreams in a nearby lost & found" is for me the most important and the most personal album that I have ever worked on. I would like to thank all of the musicians involved in recording this last album by name: (on this album only as a guest) Stefan Richter - keys on "de groene slang (Amsterdam´65 tot ´68)".

Deddé Schäfer - bass, voc.; Rainer Wahlmann – vox, harp; Daniel Minnerath - guitars, saz, banjo, programming; Sven Groß - keys, voc; Mauel Schwierczek - drums, perc.

To this very day I feel deeply connected to my fellow musicians from dies irae and green wave.