TOTEN HERZEN ARE:

Susan Bekker – Lead guitar
Born, Susan Johanna Bekker, Rotterdam, 1951

Dee Vincent – Vocals, rhythm guitar
Born, Denise Leslie Vincent, Lincoln, 1953

Elaine Daley – Bass guitar
Born, Elaine Daley, Lincoln, 1950

Rene V – Drums
Born, Rene van Voors, Rotterdam, 1952

Peter Miles – Rhythm guitar (disputed)
Born, Peter Miles, Ipswich, 1953 – 1973

ALBUMS

Pass on By 1973
We Are Toten Herzen 1974
Nocturn 1975
Black Rose 1976
Dead Hearts Live 1976
Staying Alive (unfinished) 1977

FORMATION, DESTRUCTION AND RETURN

Toten Herzen were formed in 1973 when Suffolk based rock promoter and scrap metal merchant Micky Redwall put the band together following a gig at Hooly Goolys in Ipswich. Bekker and van Voors’ original band was After Sunset from Holland, whilst Vincent and Daley came from the British band Cat’s Cradle.

Between 1973 and 1976 Toten Herzen sold over eight million albums, but their success was cut short on the night of March 21st 1977 when all four members were murdered by Lenny Harper. Harper was never charged and the band disappeared for thirty years until they were found by Rob Wallet, a British music journalist, and persuaded to make a comeback.

This is the first part of the story of their comeback.

PART 1: SALVATION

1 – The builders are in

Three men struggled to carry one body. Weight wasn’t the issue, the corpse was, according to Ronnie the Peeler, small enough to fit in his inside pocket. No, it was the narrowness of the steps dropping into a mouldering basement that caused the anxiety and Elmer, doubling at the knees to fit his lanky frame beneath the low door, complained the loudest.

“It’s all right for you two, I’ve got the ‘ed.”

“What’s wrong with that?” said Ronnie.

“It keeps, you know, nudging me groin.”

“She was the lead singer, she won’t mind.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Cynics would say it wouldn’t matter if they dropped the body now and again, but Ronnie was a professional, didn’t like to do things by half and when he said he’d dispose of your embarrassing waste you knew it would be in a safe pair of hands. After ten minutes of how’s your father, the three manhandlers set foot on the floor of the basement. Elmer blushed one last time and turned ninety degrees to lower the body next to the other three.

“Hang on, that’s not right.” Johnny Smith took a sheet of paper out of his back pocket and prodded it. “She’s supposed to be in the middle, next to the punk.”

“Right, get on with it then.” Ronnie and Elmer dragged the lead singer next to the wall, pulled the drummer fourteen inches to the left, pulled the guitarist alongside him and finished off the arrangement by lowering the singer into the new gap.

“Don’t see what difference it makes. Not exactly a pleasing composition. I mean, look at her, she’s nearly half the height of the other one.”

Smith sniffed and coughed up some of the cement dust circulating in the stifling atmosphere. Up above, London roared, made its usual din necessary to conceal the hammering and banging, the pneumatic cacophany of subterranean construction work. Excavating basements, extending basements, subdividing basements, bricking up basements. A universe of cyclists and pedestrians, bus passengers, taxi drivers, harrassed, lost, clueless, ditherers, all oblivious to Ronnie the Peeler’s waste disposal service, no questions asked.

“I think we’re done, gentlemen.”

“No, we’re not.” Smith looked beyond Ronnie’s shoulder to the top of the steps where a strange man stood watching them. “Can we help you?”

The man hesitated. “Well,” he laughed as if he couldn’t think of any other reaction, “I’ve got a feeling I’m too late.”

“Too late for what?” said Ronnie. “You’re interrupting.”

“Sorry. I was supposed to meet. . . .”

“Yes.”

“Sorry, is that Susan Bekker?” His curiosity made Ronnie sweat.

“Which one?”

“The tall one, next to Rene van Voors. What’s she doing down there?”

“Late night,” said Smith. He rubbed his gloved hands with a bundle of tissue paper. “You know the Dutch. Drink like fish when you put free booze in front of them.”

“Coffins arrive tomorrow,” said Ronnie. “Always looks better when they’re in their coffins.” Ronnie didn’t need telling his gold tooth never reassured anyone when he tried to pass them off. The man at the top of the steps made no effort to leave.

“You’re not the manager, are you?” said Smith.

“No, I was supposed to be interviewing them.”

“Journalist.” The penny dropped. Ronnie winked at Elmer. “You’re that Rob Wallet geezer, aren’t you?”

The man held his breath. “Yeah.”

“Didn’t know you were Irish?”

“Yeah. Dublin. When will they be in a fit state to talk? Or is that a stupid question?”

So far, the conversation had taken place over a height of seven feet. The man, Rob Wallet from Dublin, talking from on high, Ronnie, Smith and Elmer down below, fidgety and eager to return to sunlight and a van full of breeze blocks.

“Let me make a quick phone call,” said Ronnie. “Why don’t you go through to the kitchen.”

Ronnie made the call. Ronnie listened and nodded to the instructions. Wallet wasn’t meant to be there. Wallet had vanished, in fact someone, someone with too much knowledge, someone who had been in hiding for thirty years and had chosen now to creep out from their tombstones, had spirited Wallet away to a clandestine location. By the end of the one sided conversation Ronnie had to hold the phone away from his ear.

“Didn’t sound too ‘appy,” said Elmer.

“No, they’re not. They are most displeased, to use the vernacular.” Ronnie sucked in his cheeks and forced his chin against his chest. “We’re going to need the bow saw, gentlemen. Mr Wallet up there is telling porkies.”

Like Old King Cole’s men they marched up to the top of the steps into a gutted hallway. Ronnie locked the door to the basement and scratched his throat. Without soft furnishings the interior of the house repeated everything that was said. Ronnie leaned towards Smith’s ear. “We’re to make it gruesome, apparently. Make it look frenetic.”

“Frenetic?”

“Not frenetic, frenzied. Like a psycho done it or a monster. We can do it here and then decorate over the mess. Chuck the bits and pieces in the Thames near Millennium Bridge. Once he washes up it’ll all make sense.” With the delicate details out of the way Ronnie raised his voice. “Another victim of the Toten Herzen curse.”

Next to a stack of plasterboard, a lump hammer waited to enter the drama, a solid object and Ronnie’s weapon of choice when he needed a quick result. The hammer fitted the front pocket of his coveralls. In the kitchen, the Irish man had helped himself to a brew.

“Make yourself at home,” said Ronnie. Smith and Elmer loitered in the hallway. “What’s the matter? That wall’s not going to brick itself up, is it? Bring the stuff in.”

Ronnie waited for the front door to close, but his colleagues were born in barns, left it wide open for the inquisative street noise to intrude. “Mr Wallet,” he tapped the boiler unit with the hammer, “remind me, you came here to speak to them?”

“Yeah. Find out what all the fuss is about, what are they doing.” The man added the last brown sugar lump to his tea. “Why do four septuagenarians want to make a comeback now?”

“Septuagenarians? They’re not in their seventies.”

“That lot down there aren’t in their seventies, no.”

“No, I don’t mean that. Toten Herzen are in their sixties. That makes them sexagenarians. No wonder your journalism career went down the toilet.”

“Whatever. They don’t look in their sixties. Who are they?”

“I don’t know, do I? I’m just told to take care of them. And if you were Rob Wallet you’d know all that, wouldn’t you, Mr Wallet? The man who allegedly discovered them alive.”

The man didn’t have time to finish his tea. When Ronnie finished hammering and banging he got to work with the saw. Smith and Elmer whistled in competition with each other until Smith, who was the more tuneful, prevailed, a combination of lung power and perseverence. Leaving Elmer to mix the first batch of cement, Smith stood at the door to the bathroom.

“You should have waited a few hours. Let the bood thicken a bit.”

“Yeah, it’ll be all right. I thought I could mix it with the mortar for the flooring. Look nice with those terracotta tiles we’re using. Bit of contrast, you know.”

“There was something bothering me a bit. The gases.”

“The what?” Ronnie had to concentrate going through the thigh bone. “Give us a minute, Johnny, lot of arteries in the legs.”

When the sawing was done Ronnie turned around. He had blood on his chin. “Gases?”

“Yeah. They’ve not been embalmed have they?”

“Embalmed? They’re not mummies. Anyway, that’s someone else’s problem.”

“Yeah, but, it’s like an oven down there and once it’s bricked up, no circulation or anything, the gases might, you know, build up. Explode.”

Ready to work on the other leg, Ronnie tutted and shook his head. “You don’t unerstand the human body, Johnny. You should watch CSI Miami. You might learn something.” He pointed the bow saw at Smith. “They’re not wales. Yeah, they’ll bloat a bit, but you’re talking about them like they’re twenty kilos of Semtex. They won’t blow up. Get the brickwork done and the plasterboard up. For Christ’s sake we’ve got the plumbers coming in tomorrow.”