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Sometimes I Wonder Lyrics
We met at the airport at a quarter past four
North through the suburbs we rode
Andreas driving with Gudrun beside him
Took care to avoid the patrols
It was cold it was dark it was raining
Sparks from our cigarettes flared
The headlamps and beams of the oncoming streams
We met with amphetamine stares
Then Andreas looked behind him
To where Ulrike was sleeping and frowned
At the loneliness sadness and traces of madness
Etched in the lines on her brow
She looks tired he said and used to seem much younger
Then Andreas groped for his German soul
And talked of his childhood days
Of artists and cafes and Opel-gang wars
Of taking and driving away
He spoke to the parson's daughter
Of a father he couldn't recall
Who was blown by defeat to the ends of the east
On the wind of another man's war
He spoke of his mission of mercy
And in a vision not fully explained
Of his elders and betters of silenced Berettas
And Frankfurterallee in flames
Lord of the flies in his pre-stressed tower block jungle
Someone has stolen our thunder
Disarmed and abandoned headless we stumble and blunder
Through newspaper articles radio plays
Headlines and deadlines and posters on public display
Are these all illusions we're labouring under
Sometimes I wonder
Sometimes I wonder
Andreas passed to a German hell
Ulrike preceded him there
Gudrun has gone to the place she belongs
And I hope that the Devil's prepared
But I sat alone into uncertainty thrown
Stalked by the flies on the wall
Until anxious to please and as keen to appease
I was ready and willing to talk
To turn in my gun now and run with the hounds and the hunter
North through the suburbs we rode
Andreas driving with Gudrun beside him
Took care to avoid the patrols
It was cold it was dark it was raining
Sparks from our cigarettes flared
The headlamps and beams of the oncoming streams
We met with amphetamine stares
Then Andreas looked behind him
To where Ulrike was sleeping and frowned
At the loneliness sadness and traces of madness
Etched in the lines on her brow
She looks tired he said and used to seem much younger
And talked of his childhood days
Of artists and cafes and Opel-gang wars
Of taking and driving away
He spoke to the parson's daughter
Of a father he couldn't recall
Who was blown by defeat to the ends of the east
On the wind of another man's war
He spoke of his mission of mercy
And in a vision not fully explained
Of his elders and betters of silenced Berettas
And Frankfurterallee in flames
Lord of the flies in his pre-stressed tower block jungle
Disarmed and abandoned headless we stumble and blunder
Through newspaper articles radio plays
Headlines and deadlines and posters on public display
Are these all illusions we're labouring under
Sometimes I wonder
Ulrike preceded him there
Gudrun has gone to the place she belongs
And I hope that the Devil's prepared
But I sat alone into uncertainty thrown
Stalked by the flies on the wall
Until anxious to please and as keen to appease
I was ready and willing to talk
To turn in my gun now and run with the hounds and the hunter
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
The song is an imagined interaction between the narrator and members of the Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group, a terrorist organization active in Germany mainly during the 1970s. The names mentioned in the song are all those of members of the RAF.
Andreas -- Andreas Baader, one of the leaders of the RAF.
Ulrike -- Ulrike Meinhof, another RAF founding member.
Gudrun -- Gudrun Ensslin, another prominent RAF member.
Specific lines in the song reference elements of the history of the group and its members.
"talked of his childhood days/of artists and cafes" -- before becoming a terrorist, Baader was part of an alternative arts scene
"Opel-Gang wars" -- the Opel-Gang were German criminals who drove modified Opel cars. The lyric may just mean that the Opel-Gang were contemporaries of Baader, not that he had any direct connection to them. "Opel-Gang" was also the title of the debut album by the German punk band Die Toten-Hosen. Joseph Porter, vocalist and lyricist of Blyth Power, was a member of various punk bands and often references other bands in his songs.
"the parson's daughter" -- Gudrun Ensslin was the daughter of a pastor.
"a father he couldn't recall" -- Andreas Baader's father was sent to the Russian front during WWII ("blown by defeat to the ends of the east/on the wind of another man's war"), taken prisoner by the Russians and probably died in a Russian prison camp; Baader was 2 years old when his father was captured.
"his mission of mercy/and in a vision not fully explained" -- the RAF were Communists, and their terrorist actions were presumably intended to create a better society, although the lyric suggests that they didn't have any very coherent plan for this.
"his elders and betters" -- the targets of the RAF included prominent German politicians and capitalists, members of an older generation. "betters" is particularly ironic, as the RAF were angered above all by the fact that many former Nazis had successfully avoided punishment and were now once again in positions of power in German society.
"silenced Berettas" -- Beretta is an Italian firearms manufacturer; in this case, the reference is probably to a popular line of automatic pistols, and "silenced Berettas" would be pistols fitted with a suppressor (popularly known as a 'silencer') to reduce the noise of gunshots
"Frankfurterallee" -- a major street in Berlin
"Lord of the flies" -- a reference to William Golding's novel "The Lord of the Flies", in which a group of schoolchildren abandoned on a tropical island revert to savagery. The implication is that Baader is of the same kind: an unsupervised child who turns to violence.
"prestressed tower block jungle" -- the 'prestressed' seems to have a double meaning here; concrete used in construction is 'prestressed' (compressed) to make it stronger, but the suggestion is also that the urban environment -- a "tower block jungle" -- in which Baader grew up was subject to particular stresses as a result of events of the recent past, i.e. WWII.
"Andreas passed to a German hell/Ulrike preceded him there/Gudrun has gone to the place she belongs" -- the leaders of the RAF were arrested in 1972. Ulrike Meinhof was found hanged in her prison cell before the end of their trial on terrorist offenses. Andreas Baader and fellow RAF member Jan-Carl Raspe were found shot to death in their cells in Stammheim prison in 1977, while Gudrun Ensslin was found hanged in her own cell. The deaths were probably suicides, although some supporters believe that they were murdered.
"I was ready and willing to talk/to turn in my gun now and run with the hounds and the hunter" -- the identity of the narrator of the song is unclear, but these lines suggest that it might be an RAF member who cooperated with the authorities. 2nd-generation RAF members Volker Speitel and Monika Helbing both received reduced sentences in exchange for cooperation, but both of them joined the RAF after the leaders of the 1st generation (including Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin) were already imprisoned, making the imagined dialogue in the song impossble.