Dusseldorf --
Farewell to drummer Charlie Weiss. Jazz musicians, Kraut rock, pubs Legends: 500 years in Düsseldorf subculture in honor of gray. All represented!
Helge Schneider, best friend of the deceased, was at the entrance to the cemetery, the direction of North: "If you still want Charlie's see who is back there."
"Over there" was the little room behind the farewell chapel. Here stood silently companions to take a last look at Charlie.
The musician was laid out with a drum in the coffin. The sticks in hand, sunglasses, sneakers.
As support for the long "tour", a flyer for the band Kraftwerk (White was once a drummer for the famous Dusseldorf), and a record of rock and roll legend Bill Haley. Helge Schneider: "The've tricked me - anyway belonged to him."
The Chapel - totally crowded. Kraftwerk founder Florian Schneider, the artist Peter Rübsam, Markus Tollmann, Jürgen Weber. The musicians Uwe Walter, Frank Michaelis, Frank Köllges, Peter Thoms, Peter Weiss and Wolfgang Engstfeld, ex-Dr. Jazz Lous Dassen boss: tightly packed, they listened to the funeral music and were able to suppress a smile now and then not.
Helge himself had sat down behind the church organ, played one last time for his friend. Schneidermäßig. Somewhere between Bach, jazz and fidelem solo. Sad, witty, oblique.
No sermon, but Hermann Hesse and anecdotes from Charlie's life. Then it was final. The black hearse Charlie Weiss went to his last "tour". He was 70 years old.
