Bauhaus, Gesamtkunstwerk and transcendence

Bauhaus at the Hollywood Palladium, November 3, 2019

During college, I was living rent-free in a dilapidated three-bedroom house with the understanding that my roommates and I would fix up the place in exchange for essentially squatting. 

One evening, one of my roommates, Scott, who had incredible taste in music, invited me to a “wake” at a bar called “On the Air” in Deep Ellum, Dallas, to celebrate and mourn the break up of one of my favorite groups, the seminal post-punk, proto-goth band, Bauhaus. The group was named after the German art school (1919-1933) that was formed by modernist architect Walter Gropius in Weimar in order to develop a Gesamtkunstwerk – a totality of art that ran the gamut from architecture to art, graphic design to typography and everything in between. The band adopted the iconic Bauhaus logo (minimalist face in profile) as their own and their stage shows were a study in Dr. Caligari-esque black and white theater. 

The design of the 4AD albums were, along with Peter Saville’s incredible designs for Factory Records, hugely influential to my creative education. 

Anyway, back to the Bauhaus wake. As Scott drove Phil (our other roommate) and myself in his enormous custom-painted circa 1970s Pontiac Grandville convertible (the color was “murder at midnight” – he had it custom-blended: translucent candy apple red and purple over a metallic black), he told us that he wanted to detour to Lake Arlington and drop by to pick up a friend he met at a Gang of Four concert a couple of weeks prior. We pulled into a nice neighborhood, got out of the car, crossed a bridge that traversed a small creek filled with koi fish and were at the door to a rather upscale home. We knocked and a beautiful middle-aged woman answered the door and welcomed us in. Scott’s friend then entered the foyer and I was stunned: JC was a tall brunette, wearing a black leather jacket, matching black leather mini skirt, fishnet stockings, fingerless black lace gloves, a wrist full of silver bracelets, and high heels. I immediately took off my Elvis Costello-esque glasses and stuffed them into my jacket. Two reasons for this: (1) I wanted to look less dorky and (2) being painfully shy, I knew I couldn’t look directly at her the entirety of the evening without being aided by the natural blurring of my myopic eyes. JC was effusive and had an encyclopedic knowledge of music, down to the track order, sidemen, back up vocalists, producers, and engineers of albums ranging from Led Zepplin to David Bowie to Echo and the Bunnymen. 

We talked about Bauhaus and the sexy appeal of their dynamic sound, strident and melodic, dramatic moments of bombast with gentle acoustic 12 string interludes. We were both burnt out on “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” (a Halloween favorite) but loved “The Passion of Lovers,” “She’s in Parties,” “Third Uncle” and their cover of Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust.” 

We went to the club (On the Air) and I still recall exactly what songs, and their accompanying videos, were playing in the bar.

“Run and Run” by The Psychedelic Furs

“Pretty Vacant” by The Sex Pistols

“The Cutter” by Echo and the Bunnymen



“How Soon Is Now” by The Smiths

Those songs were indelibly etched into my psyche, the perfect soundtrack to the most liminal moment in my life – years later I was fortunate to marry JC and we are still going strong. 

And we have a teenage daughter. As I’ve written in past essays, I took her to Lana Del Rey at the Hollywood Bowl and we’ve seen Billie Eilish together at the Greek. But our daughter’s musical range is expansive and her first rock concert was The Cure at the Hollywood Bowl. JC and I have taken her to see Depeche Mode, The Psychedelic Furs, The English Beat, U2, and Nick Cave together (she loved the opening band, Cigarettes After Sex – an incredible shoe-gazing band from El Paso, Texas).  Our goal is to expose our daughter to the bands that influenced her parents at her age before they fade away.

And life does what it does so serendipitously and years later, JC and I made a point of taking our daughter to a reunion concert of the band that first brought us together:  Bauhaus at the Palladium, November 3rd, 2019. The wear and tear of time bear down on all and the lead singer, Peter Murphy, suffered a heart attack a couple of months ago. This brush with mortality must have been enough for the boys in the band to bury the hatchet and reform Bauhaus, after years of internal strife, especially between Peter and the brilliant guitarist Daniel Ash. 

The show was beyond expectations. Peter’s voice was in full force, powerful and primal, ancient and vampiric, comforting and then scary, backed against the pounding rhythm section of the brothers Kevin Haskins on drums and David J on bass. Daniel Ash wove his vitreous minor chords through the din of Wagnerian visions of flat fields, dark entries, stigmata martyrs, and, of course, Bela Lugosi.

Art transcends. If the human condition is one of isolation in our physical bodies, then music is a communion of spirit in a shared experience. If someone loves the same music as you, then for a moment you both can experience the sonic journies of flying over a moonlit forest at night followed by spiraling through galaxies as the music swells and then the plunge into the deep green sea as the notes descend yet again to clash upwards towards transcendence before the final chords fade out and everyone, as one, applauds the communal spectacle of the last vestige of the modern-day shaman: the rock star. The  Bauhaus show ended, appropriately enough, with a cover of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust. Another rock god, now gone.

The Bauhaus concert shared with my wife and our daughter brings us full circle. The unlikely magic of gothic music brought JC and I together, and the union ultimately brought forth the truly extraordinary gift of our wonderful daughter, who, in an interestingly meta-manner, could experience the sounds, perhaps for the last time, of a band that connected her parents so long ago. 

Before the show started, I had texted my daughter from the long line for merch if she’d like a concert t-shirt and she texted back, Nah, I’m good. Of course, I bought t-shirts for both my wife and myself. At the end of the concert, I asked her how she liked the show and she said, It was awesome! Can I get a Bauhaus sweatshirt? Of course, I said and the three of us, daughter, wife and myself, stood in another long line for half an hour to get her a classic black hoodie, emblazoned with the minimal face logo on the back. 

In a Bahuasian sense, life is a Gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of experiences that if viewed through the right lens, is a totality of art. And my wife and daughter are my co-creators of that totality and for that, I’m grateful and fortunate.

John

What I’m reading:

The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac. Early Beat-Zen inspiration; a gentler book than On the Road but equally profound. 

Hamilton by Ron Chernow. Yep, the book that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to launch the Broadway play. 

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of their Lost World by Steve Brusatte. Why? Because I love dinosaurs.

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking by Chris Anderson. Why? Because I love TED Talks (and aspire to the stage someday). 

What I’m watching:

Atypical on Netflix. A family drama about a teenage boy on the autism spectrum, starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michael Rappaport. 

Young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks. 

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Whose brain did you put in him?

Igor: Err... Abby something...

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Abby who?

Igor: Abby... Normal. Yes that's it, Abby Normal!

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Photo by JC Caldwell