+conatcha You don't know Nina. She is among the nicest people on this planet. Her being in the Punk rock scene was due to the fact that she grew up in the GDR and all of her performance was a kind of political protest. She is still a political activist. Don't get fooled by her acting. ;) She has a Facebook page if you're interested.
@Way to Mars I have never been taught to hate anyone but if you need to slander people to feel better with yourself, I am OK with it. I also have a certain opinion about people that make shallow assumptions about people they never met, like you.
I am from Berlin and knew her personally! I made a Accessoire for her hair, a Sugar head and she loved it, she is privat a very nice person as well!!!! Love her👌♥️🎈
She is absolutely awesome. Totally unique, unashamedly original and completely comfortable in her own skin. The world could do with more Nina Hagens. xx
I love you guys btw. The audience is a very positive thing about the video and makes it a very wholesome video. In German talkshows and interviews nobody wants to understand her, here she´s always either a joke or a problem to everyone.
It's crazy to think she inspired Lady Gaga and Rammstein who are both completely different artists but you can hear and see it in their music and them as artists.
kinda unrelated but i feel like gaga could have developed a way more interesting sound had she not gone down the marketable mainstream "party" pop sound. i still can appreciate her work but seems like her full artistic potential was never reached.
Nina is so super kind, so super intelligent, so super talented, so super original and so so so super sexy.! Letterman was great at what he did too but he looked at her wild appearance and had no idea that he was talking to brilliant woman that spoke 5 languages and was deeply educated on everything from religion to politics. She went right over his head and he didn’t even know it. Hagen music legend!
She is a heroin addict and stoned out of her head most of the time. Or was then. She might have weaned herself off now but only a couple of years ago people stopped inviting her on German talk shows as they never knew how she would be once there. If she would even be coherent.
@@lisamayes7761 Oh god, one of these people why I left the German speaking area. Close minded, who sees the "mistakes" of their neighbours more than their own one. Oh I forget, people like you do not have ANY MISTAKES, isn't that so? Reducing people like her on this, instead of seeing what she could do! Sind wir neidisch, weil wir es nicht so "geschafft haben"? (just asked if she is jealous, because she did not get what she wanted).
She loved to provoke - also with a pronounced german accent (but Letterman had no idea), is exceptionally intelligent and a true extraordinary talent. @Lisa Mayes: Whoever is invited to german talk shows is either completely dumbed down or has been forgotten.
Her intelligence and self-awareness is obvious from her first word. I'm a Letterman fan but this interview isn't one of Dave's finest moments. BTW, the eye makeup gets an A++. When Dave asks her "explain your performance" and she sweetly says, "It's beyond words, of course". Truer words have never been spoken.
Letterman had also no idea of her playful accent. She lived before this interview many years in UK and spoke a english like people from Manchester. But for Letterman: THE GERMAN PANZER. So great. And his mind is empty.
Every life has it,s sad moments.She had some heartbreak i,m sure with her partner at the time being a drug addict.But i know what you mean,i love her wild abandon.She,s fantastic.
She came from East Germany (A suppressing totalitarian government). Arriving into the free world, as an artist she could do anything AND make a living out of it too! Good for her!
They are both charming. That is why people tuned in to him for 3 decades & why she returned to Letterman again & again. They are both contradictory of one another yet get along wonderfully.
A friend and I once bought tickets to see Nina Hagen in De Melkweg in Amsterdam. If i remember well it was also in 1985, probably november or december. The show was set to start at 21:00 but Nina, or the band were nowhere to be found. Anouncements of the delay were made so the audience waited and waited. Some people who brought they're instruments started jamming, which i found, brought a nice atmosphere. Eventhough the spirit was still pretty good, clearly not everybody was cool with the situation. Some of them got unpatient and by the time it was about 23:00 some started shouting and demended a refund. Not long after this half of the people gave up and left. We just had a couple of beer, stayed untill about 00:30 and decided we had to take the last bus home, which is about 22 KM from De Melkweg. When we got outside we were schocked. While we inside it had started snowing and by the time we got out Amsterdam was covered under a thick layer of snow! We managed to take a tram to the busstation but we knew with this sudden snow chances of finding transport home were slim. And exactly as we expected, buses were suspended due to weather conditions. We didn't know what to do now. We were stranded in Amsterdam in the middle of the winter, in the middle of the night and with little money left. There were no trains going to our hometown, a taxi was financially out of reach, if they would be riding in the first place. After careful consideration we decided to do something we would NEVER do in any "normal" situation. We counted our last money and bought ourselves a big shawarma, fries and a big coffee, and last but not least, a bottle of water. After that we walked through Amsterdam and it wasn't long before we found what we were looking for: a good, sturdy, stable bicycle with a passenger seat and a cheap lock. A few minutes later we were on our way home. On the way we changed every 10, 15 minutes or so. Luckily we chose a good bicycle which was a great help. Riding a stolen bicycle thrue a thick layer of snow with an adult man at the back after too many beers is not for the faint hearted. It must have taken us more than two hours before we arrived at my friend's house and from there i continued to my house near the police station. When i passed the police station i parked the bicycle next to the entrance and left a note with the place where the bicycle was stolen. Whether they have brought the bicycle back to Amsterdam, i can only say, i hope so😀 By the way, we are still friends and i still like Nina Hagen but i never had another chance to see her play.
Nina Hagen is one of the performers who defined the NEW WAVE era of rock'n'roll music. Roughly, the NEW WAVE era encompassed the years, 1978 to 1985. Other bands that defined the NEW WAVE era of rock'n'roll music include, Devo, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Bow Wow Wow, Human League, Gang of Four, Killing Joke, The Police, Tears for Fears, Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, Siouxie and the Banshees, and many others. How infinitely glad I am that I was able to witness this NEW WAVE era.
and not just any "celebration", but the ceremonial send-off for chancellors leaving office, a "grand tattoo". it's a weird and anachronistic ceremony that nobody really cares about in Germany, performed by a military orchestra that looks really scary with soldiers in steel helmets carrying torches. so this very serious military orchestra played songs Merkel requested, among them this one by Nina Hagen. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zTuzXvLk7AQ.html
This is simultaneously my favorite interview on RU-vid and the hardest to watch: Nina is funny and fascinating and almost ridiculously adorable--it is physically impossible to not love her beauty and personality... While Dave never gets past: "Let's all point and laugh at the weird foreigner! She sounds and looks different from us--I find her appearance and beliefs irrationally threatening, so I will do my best to make her feel small and weak to hide my own insecurities!" He has all the tact of a 9 year old playground bully--and even less maturity. Letterman makes me ashamed to be American here :(
I loved watching Letterman but I have to agree with you nina is so precious and intelligent Letterman really screwed up what could have been an excellent interview.
I remember Nina Hagen. I was a big fan as a teen back in the day. She, Laurie Andersen, Lena Lovitch, Grace Jones & Siouxsie Sioux of the Banshees were stand out artists of the day. New Wave was and is a great music genre.
I wonder how many of the 1980s American audience understood that she said that she grew up in the Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill tradition? Let’s just laugh at her hair!
Marlene Dietrich, Nina Hagen, Nico, Klaus Nomi, Kraftwerk, Rammstein and so many more: i love german musicians. They always changed music for the better, their influence is beyond words.
and so on with: Accept, Scorpions, Erosion, Sodom, Kreator, Assassin, Despair, PROTECTOR, Destruction, Rheingold, Fehlfarben, Extrabreit bis hin zu Blind Guardian, Edguy or Nena.
Beautiful, intelligent, and talented. Talk about a triple threat. Her deep gravily singing voice is incredible. I never expected her normal voice to be so soft and wonderful....
A friend of mine was obsessed with her when we were teenagers. I always thought she was a little petite woman. She was tall and modelesque! She was way ahead of her time!!
She kinda rolls her eyes when it's apparent Dave will demand she 'explain' what a modern punk musician who dresses like an alien would be doing onstage. But that could also just be the drugs she is tripping on at several strange moments.
Omg I have such admiration for Nina. She is probably the funniest woman with the best voice the eighties ever produced. She has an underrated voice. It's amazing.
The range she had was insane. Guttural and growling one minute, operatic the next, and then singing like your average 80’s pop star the next. Simply amazing!!
@@GrtLakes812 Given the unbelievable versatility of her voice, I always thought she would kill as a voice actor. Imagine...she could voice the entire cast of an animated series. It's not too late 💗💗💗
Letterman really missed the boat on this one - a real shame. I would have loved to hear what she would have to say with a real interviewer who doesn't interrupt.
Our planet doesn't deserve Nina Hagen 😪 She truly is 'the only unique Nina Hagen'.. love her so much. So quick witted and intelligent and an insanely talented artist/performer who inspired so many other amazing artists. I think Letterman was intimidated by her, so he kept circling back to hair extensions.
I've got nothing against Lady Gaga specifically, but back in her heyday the rock media made a big deal about her strange outfits and quirky videos as if she were some cutting-edge artist, which was just ridiculous as her pop-music was as bland and banal as anything else you'd hear on the radio at the time. People had been doing much more interesting stuff for decades before Gaga half-assed her way to stardom.
I remember hearing she going to be on letterman and staying up to watch and being disappointed that she didn't sing . Still great to actually see her . I had only heard her music on a cassette tape my friend dubbed for me . I really didn't know what she looked like , no interwebs back then and I kinda lived in the sticks I guess .
She was not only a great success in her day (well, is, actually). She also comes from a very cool artistic family and has beautiful, talented and famous children of her own.
NINA HAGEN is a brilliant, eccentric, unique and extremely talented artist. I love her voice. She looks incredible in this clip! Shame the music industry/music magazines rarely mention her, though I've requested they do some features on her extraordinary career. C'mon Mojo, Uncut, Rolling Stone, etc etc!!
@@PinkyPuff69 So are you! Speaking of "expression" Ms. Hagen's elastic faced, eye rolling lip twists and all, singing or speaking, are so much a part of her art, to me. You could just play her songs on Spotify for someone unfamiliar, but they would be missing a big piece of Nina. She does a bit of expressing here in the interview that speaks volumes...ha!
When Nina did this appearance on Letterman, maybe 1% of Americans knew who Bertoldt Brecht was, and now in 2021 maybe 3% know. Anyway, Dave likely wouldn't have known of Brecht either and so didn't pursue any good questions w/Nina after she said she was from 'Brecht's' tradition, which is a whole school of thought where she is from. But at least people got to see what a sweetheart she really is, 1 of a kind.
In they early 80's "weirdness" was all the Rage in the USA, The B-52's, the Ramones, the Plasmatics, the Cramps, Oingo Boingo were a few of our own homegrown weirdos.
