Missus Beastly | Interview | Art Zen
Missus Beastly from Herford originally began as a free improvisation psychedelic rock band in a true sense of underground.
In the following interview, the original guitarist, Atzen Wehmeyer (aka Art Zen) shares what it was like to be part of original Missus Beastly and beyond. Garden of Delights will run a very special edition of their debut album at the end of 2024-25.
“We were part of underground bands that freely improvised and jammed together while stoned and on LSD”
“Art Zen is a veteran of the progressive rock music of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968. Back then under the name Reinhard “Atzen” Wehmeyer, the guitarist and singer was part of the founding generation of the avant-garde band Missus Beastly, which emerged in Herford, Westphalia. The band was known for their exuberant, psychedelic-inspired jam sessions and appeared at the last of the legendary festivals at Burg Waldeck in 1969 as well as at the second Essen Pop & Blues Festival. At the Free Flow Festival in Gedelitz, Art Zen performed political songs and thus continued an artistic tradition that moved him as a socially active person back in the 1970s.” (Interview in Gedelitz im Wendland on August 23, 2014: Wendland free despite everything. Buddhism, left-wing songs).
Atzen Wehmeyer (aka Art Zen): “Born on September 7, 1949 in Herford, a small town in West Germany, I grew up in an old house with a spacious garden. My mother, who never hit me, was a ballet dancer and played the accordion. Her brother, who gave me the name Reinhard, played the French horn. My grandparents lovingly looked after me since my biological father was not there. Later my mother married and we moved to the country. I went to elementary school at a time when Christmas was still white. Every Saturday after class, the children were sent to the shower and helped the class teacher pick up the apples in his garden. We sang German folk songs in class, and when I was ten years old, my class teacher took me to a guitar teacher from whom I had my first lessons.
Meanwhile, in our house, my mother often listened to the radio with music from the fifties and early sixties: Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and also German hits. I changed my guitar style to be able to play these rock ‘n’ roll songs. We later moved to Spenge, where my stepfather built a house in 1964, in which I still live today after a long career in the municipality and numerous trips. At night I heard the emerging blues music on the radio: Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf. This music was relatively easy to play – but it was nothing without that special blues feeling. My mother recognized my talent and bought me my first electric guitar and a small amplifier.
I was lucky because not far from our house lived a long-haired guitar player who gave me Ray Charles LPs and was a member of a rhythm and blues group (Gerry Stone and The Wreckers). They took me to some gigs, crazy people who broke into abandoned houses on the weekends to have their wild parties.
When I was 15 years old, my mother allowed me to go to the Star Club in Bielefeld, where I was able to experience the first British and American bands live. Then the legendary Jaguar Club opened in Herford, managed by Carola Frauli. One of the first concerts was that of the Spencer Davis Group on May 24, 1966. With the exception of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the most popular bands of that era played there: The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Cream, TheWho, The Small Faces… Later, when Missus Beastly formed in 1968, we played there three times, once supporting Ohio Express.
At 15 I played in my first electric band: The Cadillacs. The first performance took place in a youth home. It was also around this time that I discovered how much fun it was to dance (‘Let’s Twist’). When I was 17, I attended the educational and musical high school in Lübbecke and got an apartment with a classmate.
I met Lutz Oldemeier, an extraordinary drummer who created space for improvisations by artfully playing around the “1,” Wolfgang Nickel (Hammond organ), who could not only play blues, rock and jazz, but was actually at home in classical music was and still performs classical (organ) concerts today, and Petja Hofman as a bassist and singer. We discussed and agreed that the name Missus Beastly, a black doll from an American television series, should become our band name. At one of the first gigs we won a band competition because a fan who worked at the newspaper introduced us with a wild fake story. At that time we were playing blues rock songs by Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Canned Heat, some with extensive improvisations of over 30 minutes in the pieces. There was also our own piece called ‘XOX’ which can be heard as the theme at the beginning of Missus Beastly’s first LP. I believe the opening theme of the first gig was ‘Gimme Some Lovin” by The Spencer Davis Group.
I got my first Fender Stratocaster guitar and a 100 watt two-speaker tower from Marshall. A VW bus was purchased, which we painted brightly with our band name on it.
At the weekend we toured to southern Germany to play in clubs for American soldiers and at universities like in Mainz, where the rebellious students celebrated their exuberant parties, protested against the Vietnam War and shouted “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” as slogans; a couple had sex backstage. Oh, what times those were!
We returned early on Monday mornings, after which I often slept off in the classroom. I stayed put twice, but was happy to have recorded one of the first self-produced LPs, ‘Missus Beastly’. My stepfather wanted me to quit music and study, but my mother, who was the “boss” of the family, refused, saying: “He needs this” and “The most important thing is that you are happy.”
So we continued touring and slowly got more and more fans. We played two performances in the city garden of Bünde. The first time was shortly after we won the band festival. The hall was packed, and similar to the early performances of The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, the kids screamed loudly and stormed the stage at the end. The second time we were the opening act for The Lords, a well-known German band. When we performed, the audience went crazy again. Afterwards The Lords played and it was relatively quiet. After the show, The Lords spoke to us and later wrote an article about Missus Beastly in “Underground Magazine” (“Missus Beastly – The Group with the Brutal Sound”).
In those days of the sixties, there was a worldwide uprising of the young generation against the Vietnam War. Alternative ways of life were tried out: municipalities, shared apartments, municipalities 1 and 2 were created in Berlin. Rudi Dutschke and the APO organized protest marches and happenings.
My hair grew longer, my clothes became more colorful, and I became a hippie (and I think I still am to this day). Woodstock took place, and under many a Christmas tree the kids argued with their parents about why a tyrant like Adolf Hitler could trigger the Second World War and murder millions of Jews, Sinti and Roma, and homosexuals in the concentration camps.
At the beginning of 1970, our manager Günter Scheding brought us to the CPM studio in Erlangen. We had no special concept and stayed for four days. 1000 records were pressed, one of the first self-produced LPs in Germany alongside ‘Grüß Gott mit hellem Klang’ by Checkpoint Charlie. It was primarily a blues rock album. Hansi Fischer from Xhol Caravan stopped by and recorded the flute for ‘Shame on You’ and we jammed extensively. Günter had the idea of turning the recording tape over and recording it backwards. To hear what came out, you have to put the LP on the turntable and run it backwards with your finger. The text reads: “We are the ones our parents always warned us about. 2000 years ago there were people with long hair, chains and sandals. They were called Christians and thrown to the lions. Today there are people with long hair, chains and sandals again. They call them hippies and accuse them of Christians.” (from “Hotcha,” Swiss underground magazine).
The record is rare because management was chaotic and many LPs in the studio attic had deformed in the hot sun and only some were still playable. An original LP ‘Missus Beastly’ recently cost $3,000 in the USA. Although everything was recorded live under poor conditions, some pieces later appeared, such as ‘Chinese Love Song’ in a play in Hamburg or the intro to ‘Mean Woman’ in a documentary about a freedom fighter in Sicily. After a long time, I realized that my piece ‘Mean Woman’ was probably inspired by the suicide of my uncle, who first fired a gun at his unfaithful wife and then shot himself.
Fraudsters like Henry From later appeared, who threw a copy of Missus Beastly’s first LP onto the market with an ugly cover and musicians who had never played with us.
In these wild and chaotic times, money didn’t matter much (to me). The two managers – one for the south, one for northern Germany – never presented an invoice or filed a tax return. When the first cast of Missus Beastly came to an end, my Marshall tower was taken away from me, I was only allowed to keep the Stratocaster.
I was burned out, refused military service and spent two years in Bethel, Bielefeld, doing my community service there, slowly returning to reality and getting a clear head again.
We played at the last Waldeck Festival (1964-1969), the first open-air festival in Germany, shortly before the studio recordings. It was quite chaotic: some students abruptly interrupted the songwriters (Franz Josef Degenhardt, Hannes Wader, Reinhard Mey, Walter Mossmann) in order to force political discussions. When we played there, we were part of underground bands that freely improvised and jammed together while stoned and on LSD (Xhol Caravan, Tangerine Dream…).
From this point on, Missus Beastly finally became a psychedelic band. A phase of exclusively free improvisations began, without songs, long pieces. On the tours we had a special guy with us who only went along to get hashish and LSD. Once when he couldn’t find anything in Heidelberg and tried to sell us heroin, I successfully protested with the last of my strength. No hard drugs. Some gigs, when our mood was good, sounded like composed music, real highlights. When the mood was bad, we quickly emptied many a hall. It is unfortunate that these performances of “living music” with all their ups and downs, clusters and “no one knows what happens next,” a tightrope walk, unrepeatable, inaudible, as far as I know, were not recorded.
During these times we didn’t talk to each other much, only the bare minimum, assuming that words only lead to misunderstandings. One of the mistakes of this time. I now believe that only open conversations can change something. On the other hand, there was also a tendency towards isolation, a kind of “double talk” that those not in the know could not understand.
So the group became more and more introverted and concentrated all their energy on the performances. Other musicians joined the band. One of the first was Paul Vincent Gunia from the beat band Park Lane, who later recorded in Munich as a studio musician with Sting, Freddie Mercury and Udo Lindenberg. Other musicians came and went – but not, as falsely claimed, Dieter Serfas and Chris Karrer.
When I refused military service to do my community service and left the band, Roman Bunka, a great guitarist and oud player (also with Embryo, Aera and Mohamed Mounir), replaced me. I took part in the legendary “Free & Outdoors” festival (1975-1979), which was inspired by the Woodstock Festival. Musicians without big fees, clowns, artists and people from independent youth centers gave young and old visitors the opportunity to celebrate a festival without fences and big commercialism. 5,000 visitors came in 1975, almost 100,000 in 1979. Although nothing serious ever happened, we decided to ask people to organize their own festival “Free & Outdoors” and stopped because the work of the volunteers also became more and more extensive. In fact, other “Free & Outdoors” festivals emerged, some of which still take place every year. The original festival has now started again.
I now studied education, sociology and psychology at Bielefeld University and graduated as a qualified educator. With the band Einhorn (Wolli Thümmler on the saxophone, Michael Mertens on the vibraphone, Achim Kemper on the bass, Thomas Kretschmann on the drums and me on the guitar) we played at the festival “For Free & Outside” in 1977. Later we played as a music community under the name Störtrupp. We are at the festival again, of which there are also film recordings.
At this time I increasingly composed political songs in German, including progressive children’s songs, and worked as a qualified music teacher (1975-2016). Christian Burchard often called me to invite me to perform and tour. Embryo as the German world music group does not have a “low budget,” but rather a “no budget.” But playing with this legendary band (with jazz greats like Mal Waldron, Chuck Henderson, who gave me my stage name Art Zen, Gnawa, Indian musicians) was worth more than mere money. We toured at festivals in Italy, the Netherlands and in freaky clubs that only Christian, with his many contacts, could know. He always featured me, encouraged me, and we became friends and soulmates.
In 1995, I needed a break from teaching and decided to travel to India for a year. I took an apartment in Hyderabad and met a teacher and singer, a writer for The Hindu newspaper and was introduced to South Indian classical Carnatic music by B. R. C. Iyengar. I had time and some money and focused on new fusion compositions, inspired by the scales (Melakarta ragas) and the sometimes tricky rhythms of Indian music, anything you can do with the “2” and “3” beats. I made a few recordings (‘Moonchild,’ ‘On My Mind’) at Shri Studios in Hyderabad. When the blues band with Indian musicians in which I also played broke up, I moved to Chennai (formerly Madras).
I stayed in the house of U. P. Raju, mandolinist from the family of Upalappu Shrinivas, mandolinist who played in John McLaughlin’s project “Remember Shakti” and often gave musical lessons to this master on the guitar with a relaxed face and with a smile after a brilliant solo . We became closer because he lived not far away and we became friends. He was gentle and reserved despite his international fame and recognition as a brilliant virtuoso. When my mother was dying, he encouraged me. I have never met another person with such a soft handshake (the right hand). When he died in 2014 with a liver problem, I was very depressed. So many musicians, when they become famous, come across as arrogant and self-centered. The really great ones – like Jimi Hendrix – remain human and open.
After 33 trips to India, the deaths of Christian Burchard (2018), Roman Bunka (2022) and Paul Vincent Gunia (2016), I am currently playing solo as Art Zen, mainly political protest songs in German in independent youth centers, at small festivals or jamming in clubs.
Waking up the lethargic, narrow-minded people doesn’t always go down well in these confused times of war, power-hungry psychopaths like Putin, Trump and all these corrupt tyrants who feel no love or empathy and have their hearts frozen in the freezer. The number of AfD voters is increasing and right-wing terror does not shy away from murder. It’s always the other person’s fault, the mirrors are broken… Thank Allah: Five fingers are not the same.
My favorite songs are ‘Moonchild’ and ‘Bootchild’. I have a half-brother and three half-sisters, but there is little or no contact, many dear friends have died.
Now as an old man, I go back to the roots: I drank a bourbon on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, visited Graceland, the Sun Studios, the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was shot, and Beale Street in Memphis with the many music bars, the Red House in San Francisco, where Jimi Hendrix lived, was near the homes of Janis Joplin and The Grateful Dead. But I didn’t meet any hippies anymore.
For me it’s not desirable to play in front of thousands of people like at Umsonst & Draussen or other commercial festivals. It’s enough for me when, after a performance like in a small club in Charlotte, North Carolina, an African American comes up to me and says: “Great job.” Or when an Indian waiter in Pondicherry, who listened and understood, congratulates me on a song to remember for one of my adopted foster sons who had a tough childhood and took his own life. Not least this Indian listener in Chennai: “I get goosebumps when you play.”
Here and today I am an unrecognized provincial musician who has listeners who, in their idyllic world view and in their ignorance, feel disturbed by the depiction of the killing reality and give an image like these famous three monkeys: see nothing, hear nothing, nothing say.
“A prophet is worth little in his own country.” (Jesus) “Telling the truth doesn’t bring many friends, but it does bring the right ones.” (John Lennon)
In 1973 Missus Beastly reformed. Only Lutz Oldemeier remained from the original cast. I had to audition and Friedemann Josch commented: “You play well, but we decided to play without a guitarist.” The music of this line-up(s) was more oriented towards jazz rock and had nothing to do with the extensive psychedelic improvisations.
On February 12, 1988, the original line-up gave a last concert in Herford in front of a sold-out house. Ms. Carola Frauli was also present and distributed Jimi Hendrix posters.
In 2018 and 2019, the “Krautrock faction” met and jammed in the Omnibus, a bar in Würzburg.
Times and people change, often not for the better. What Petja Hofman wrote about me in the booklet of Missus Beastly’s first CD, I describe as chatter and not true to the facts: “Atzen didn’t like improvising anymore and would rather write pieces.” Unless I’m very much mistaken, I was the one who “invented” free play right from the start and pushed it forward until my involuntary retirement.
People who once made me think and act consciously, like Günter Scheding, to whom I also thanked for that, are changing, no longer rebelling, becoming civil and are now presbyters in the church. When a long concert with a number of musicians from near and far took place in his church, I (as a Buddhist) was forgotten and not invited to make my contribution. When I recently asked him about the political protest songs that I had given him, I noticed that he had not listened to them, if at all, or listened to them very little, and that he had listened to a piece by Rio Reiser (‘The Boy by the River’) with my songs confused. What an honor to mix up the authentic Rio, who I consider to be the best German songwriter, with me. It has comedy and unintentional humor.
I still play freely improvised music and jam when I get the chance, and learn oud with oud master Hosam Alibrahim.
Music is a great gift, a universal language with many facets. It brings people from different parts of the world together. Thanks to the influences of a wide variety of styles, musicians and cultures, I try to create a counterweight in my compositions to the walls of intolerance, hatred and exclusion – for a fairer, peaceful world in which it is worth living and letting live. IMAGINE
Garden of Delights Official Website
