East Berliners Love Their Rock ‘n’ Roll

KLOS-FM’s peripatetic rock reporter Gayle Murphy has really gone to the wall for rock ‘n’ roll.

In 1986 and 1988, she visited the Great Wall of China, reporting back on the burgeoning pop music scene. Now she’s returned with her own souvenir of the Berlin Wall. Much of what she learned from local experts will surprise Americans who’ve always viewed East Berlin as a primitive, isolated pop gulag.

According to Murphy’s sources, East Berlin’s brigades of young rock fans adore heavy-metal, are far more accomplished musicians than their West Berlin counterparts and are dying to buy those vinyl records U.S. record companies are hurriedly phasing out. For example:

* The hottest band, among East Berlin fans, is AC/DC. “After they opened the wall, everyone was over here buying AC/DC albums, by the packet,” said Tom Weidemier, a West Berlin promoter. “Normally my friend’s record store would sell one or two a week. But he was selling 40 or 50 in a day.”

* Compact discs are out. “American record companies should learn that their move to kill the vinyl record was a definite wrong move as far as eastern and central Europe is concerned,” said Yance Peter Laubos, manager of West Berlin’s huge One World of Music store. “We still have a hungry market for vinyl records. No one has compact disc players yet.

* Musicianship is back. “I was really amazed by how much more skilled the East German players are,” Weidemier said. “All these guys have been to school. The people in East Germany don’t just take a guitar and say ‘Well, I’m a guitarist now because I could afford to buy a guitar and an amp.’ It’s the other way around. They have very bad equipment, that no one would touch over here, but they know everything--they can all read music!”

* Things have changed. “It used to take two years for a new album to come out in the East--and even then you could only get about 20 copies in a East Berlin store before they were all gone,” Laubos said. “So when the East Berlin kids came in, they wanted the highlights from the last 20 or 30 years of rock--all the groups they’d heard of, but could never buy--the Rolling Stones, Genesis and Pink Floyd. On Nov. 10, our store’s best-seller was the Stones’ ‘Sticky Fingers.’ ”

* Concert-going is a new experience. “Kids from the East are so much more enthusiastic,” Weidemier said. “Somebody here can say ‘Oh, it’s the same old light show again.’ But these guys say, ‘Wow! What’s this? A laser show? I’ve never seen a laser show in my life!’ We haven’t had concerts in East Berlin because we have to find out what works. Can we get a stage crew over there? Can we hang lights from the ceiling? Have they even got electricity?”