"Dream of Everything" Melody Maker: August 9, 1986 by Jim Shelley Or The Seven Shades of Yello. Or The Nine Lives & Seven Souls of Dieter Meier. Or Who Is Dieter Meier And What The Hell Is Yello? All this by Jim Shelley. Who is Dieter Meier? Dieter Meier is a man who knows how to live. Dieter Meier is proof that the man of genius does as he pleases. Dieter Meier is the businessman singer and writer in something called Yello. He is a Swiss anarchist, painter, gambler, jet-setter, children's novelist, sculptor, essayist, filmmaker, adventurer, philosopher, _golfer_: "I played before The EuroTube, the first time in 20 years and the best I had ever played. I love that almost Zen Buddhistic mixture of aiming without aiming, the _controlled uncontrol_ and the _uncontrolled control_, that dialetic of total control and total looseness. _This_ is what makes a golf swing; this is what makes life worth living." The Way To Live: 1 "I invent myself every day as I hope everybody does." The Seven Shades of Yello: 1 Yello have just released a single and on that single Dieter Meier sings: "doo-pahdumtpah-doo-pahdumptpah." The Way To Live: 2 "To me,it's all about walking. Sometimes on my walk from childhood to the grave I walk past some bells, so I play these bells. Sometimes I pick up a paintbrush, and I paint, then I make a film and write a book and then I go: 'doo-pahdumtpah-doo-pahdumptpah.' "I like to invent names for things, objects that don't exist. I like to do everything." Who is Dieter Meier? Dieter Meier is devoius like Dick Dastardly, smart and snobbish like Enouch Powell, scrupulously stylish like David Niven, a romantic cad like Terry Thomas. In fiction he might be Isherwood's seedy smuggler, Mr. Norris. He is Caprice plus Suspicion plus Energy plus Mischief plus Chivalry and cunning, with brilliance and a love for faking brilliance. With black coffee, white water, a copy of The Times and a room at Claridges, he has all the manners and dashing charm of a duke or diplomat. His face is shaped like a rugby-ball, with intense, shrewd features and a blue-eyed, bug-eyed stare that attacks and inquires of life: _How can I take to an Adventure?_ There is a permanent revolution going on in his head: "Every human being is anarchic, by definition, because it is different from any other human being. It must live up to its divine uniqueness." The Seven Shades of Yello: 2 Yello makes fizzy muzak, spectacular soundscapes for an imaginary film that would be something between a Kia-ora commercial and a Marinetti manifesto, something that stole from and alluded to "Goldfinger," "Touch of Evil," "Wacky Races," "Joe 90," and a decent "Blade Runner." You could say that Yello have ..._yellowed_, but then, Yello have been a _Nineties_ invention for so long that they are beginning to sound a little dated. Very fast, very loud, very, very modern, Yello exist on the line that runs from Abba to The Residents, a line that people like The Human League, DAF, Kraftwerk and Heaven 17 always wanted and a line that Propaganda, The Art of Noise and The Eurythimcs could not have survived without pludnering. "The more they steal from us, the more I like it. It honours me. This is how you initiate a school, the school of Yello." The Way To Live: 3 Dieter Meier once asked people to send him money. If he received 10,000 dollars he would declare it a work of Art and donate it to a museum. He was sent 7,131 dollars and promptly sent it all back. He set up an office, buying the words "YES" and "NO" for one dollar from passers-by, photographing the transaction and awarding his customers with a certificate of the event. There is also a plate on Kassel Railway Station in Germany. It says: "On March 23, 1994, Dieter Meier will be standing on this platform between 3 and 4pm". "Those things I did with money and metal were only there because _I wanted to do them_. They had no justification whatsoever." The Seven Shades of Yello: 3 As always, the two new Yello records, a retrospective re-mixed collection, "Yello 1980-1985 The New Mix In One Go" and a single, "Goldrush," travel very fast and make a lot of noise(s). You can hear: the motor of Penelope Pitstop's car, a thunderstorm, a confession, an angel's choir, a locomotive, the promise of revenge, "YEAH," a pinball, a jet taking off, a line like "I wish I could cry," a car-crash, a scream, a sigh or a line like "I never knew how much I loved you." Boris Blank, producer and sound surrealist is responsible: "Boris is like a painter. He creates 200 or 300 noises, like banging a pot of water, throwing a rubber ball into it, going 'Wooooo,' smashing a glass against a wall, with a woman screaming, all together. He turns these into noises, throws them all into a Fairlight." The Way To Live: 4 "I must tell you I recently bought a chair. Finally. I fell in love with this one chair, otherwise, you know, I use cardboard boxes to sit on at home. But this chair . . . I fell in love with this tie too, yes, these Swiss shoes and the socks. (Holds up one leg and grins with wicked relish, _fiendish_ delight). My brother maufactures these socks. You know, whenever I am in London, I look to fall _in love_ with a teapot because at home I am still using plastic cups and teabags. This morning I went to a silver auction at Sotherby's. I wanted a teapot like a dog in Casablanca that follows you home. One that says: 'I'm _your_ teapot . . .' But there wasn't one." The Way To Live: 5 Are you in love with he shape of your moustache? "Yes, I don't think I could lose it. It would be like losing an ear. My surface has to fufill the possibility and necessity of being able to walk into Claridges and then into a Punk Club and then into a very rough area in Cuba, any situation. Who else has that? Prince Charles I think. He's always dressed correctly but never boring, always something creative, humorous. Women have it much more, of course. My wife has it." The Way To Live: 6 "When I walk across the room to that table the fact that I am going to _arrive_ there is not interesting but _HOW I walk there: that is the thing._ It is what I learn about the world and myself that matters, not the result. I cannot take a single step without having the alter-ego watching myself, whatever I do." The Seven Shades of Yello: 4 That Yello are not famous here and the Pet Shop Boys are hints at the way this country, unlike the rest of Europe, is still horribly conservative and will always select Trivia over Terror, the insipid over the inspired or inventive, how Britain operates on drab safety rather than speeding adventure. This bothers me. It does not bother Dieter Meier. The Way To Live: 7 "I design silk fabrics now. I put hundreds of pieces of paper all over the floor and spend all night long doing 500 or 600 designs and then next morning I choose about 10 and we make them into dress designs. How do they look? Oh they look very different." The Way To Live: 8 "A story never ever interests me in a movie, or the ending. _It is how a character in a certain situation orders a bottle of beer that matters._" Dieter Meier has been saying this for some years and is still saying it simply because the rest of the world has yet to cotton on or catch up. The Seven Shades of Yello: 5 "Like all other Yello records, "Goldrush" and "New Mix" are the _product_ of, as well as having the subjects of, Colour, Sensation, Destiny, Desire, Greed, Mystery and Fantasy. Give it to me. They are to do with the speed of life and a life of thrill, full of maverick wit, DADA dance styles and sly beauty, they are between Cartoon and shiny sound sculptor. As Helen Fitzgerald said, reviewing "New Mix," a mad collage, sinister, funny hi-surrealistic disco. Sometimes it seems Yello songs are too controlled, too perfect, but "Goldrush" showers you with sensation, with its stunning golden scream from guest voice Billy Mackenzie and the seduction of the lush, lavish drama of its ploys and plays: it sounds like Quantum Jump or Chicory Tip on space-dust and in heaven. It is something new, even for Yello: "It's a vignette for a movie project, about a gold-digger who's hooked on going to this cave, where he pays with a gold nugget. I play this strange entertainer who presents visual sensations in this tiny theatre." What do people like most about Yello? "People like the nonsense, the irony, the adventure, and sometimes the boredom, the kitsch. People say we used to be Avant-Garde, which is banal to me, and how we make only slick electronic dance music, that to me is the mis-conception of the petit-bourgeois." The Seven Shades of Yello: 6 Yelloyelloyello: we have Yello records, Yello videos, Yello studios, Yello ties, Yello cars, Yello banks, Yello soft-drinks. What do you like about Yello? "For me it's the music for a movie that you create in your head that is always a different movie every time. You know, I hardly ever listen to Yello. [Here comes a hot one -jh] _Some of our records I have only ever heard once or twice_." Who is Dieter Meier? Deiter Meier is someone who says Heroin in this country is a symptom of the total lust for life, that it is all that makes sense of life for some people. Dieter Meier goes to Milan for the fashion, then Zurich, Munich, London, New York, Havana. He says England and Italy are the only civilised countries in Europe and that England interests him because it is the first country to have to deal with the collapse of capitalism, having been the first to create it. The key people for him are his two-year-old daughter, his wife, Mickey Rourke (with whom he is negotiating to make a "a dream project, a thriller in Havana"). He likes James Joyce, Sevvy Ballasteros, Arnie Palmer, Tinguely, Coppola, William Blake and Swiss writers Robert Walse, Gottfried Keller. He despises Margaret Thatcher as a member of the petit-bourgeois. He is a story-teller. "If I was born in Marakeesh, I would've been a story- teller, in the market, making up stories on the spot." The best new story is of his early gambling days when Marilyn Monroe was at the table, watching. Monroe died in '62, Dieter Meier is 42, this is 1986, Dieter Meier started gambling when he was 17. It's possible. It doesn't matter. _It's the story that matters._ "The future? There is an LP, an opera-movie with Jean Paul Goude, another children's novel, more silk fabrics, more features, _play more golf_. . ." The Way To Live: 9 "I have a kid-like approach, like a kid who sits in a sandpit. I just like to do and then look at what I did and then not be interested anymore. I am playing on many different playgrounds. . ." Seven Shades of Yello: 7 Having studied Law, Money and Style, Yello could give Sputnik a lesson or twenty. "Yello is not just music, it's a _circus. It's like Christmas every day._ If we wanna build a castle, we build a castle. If we wanna go: 'doo- pahdumptpah-doo-pahdumptpah,' we go 'doo-pahdumptpah-doo-pahdumptpah.' YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE AFRAID THAT NO ONE LIKES IT!" Who is Dieter Meier? Dieter Meier is someone who has put his genius into his life. I dash home and wait for the news that Yello has been grand conspiracy, that Dieter Meier is a spy and has defected, having brought about the collapse of Capitalism in the West. I dash home and wait for the news that Dieter Meier has invented a new color. Large photo: Boris stares into camera, Dieter vogues against window. Similar to back of "Desire" EP (same location). Small photo: Child in foreground carrying assault weapon skitters by -- Dieter and Boris observe from street corner in background.