Source: – Conny Planks New Website
The Trbiute to Conny Plank box set was released earlier this year – available here and now a 4 track EP has been announced see related posts at the bottom. On Conny’s own website they have featured this piece on Annie Lennox talking about Connie.
It’s hard for me to refer to Conny in the past tense.
He was such a powerful man in both stature and presence that his impression is still immense and lasting.
I have a mental picture of him sitting at the control desk of the studio in Neunkirchen (but is wasn’t really Neunkirchen, it was our own special music planet).
He had a certain way of rocking his shoulders from side to side when the music started to inspire him. You always knew you were onto something good when Conny started shaking, a satisfied grin spread across his face.
He was a huge inspiration for Dave an I, in so many respects. A thought provoker… full of unique opinions insights and humour. He hated bullshit, could smell it from miles off and was suitably unimpressed.
He spoke at times of the thrill of the electronics sound potential of technology and machines. He made us think… stimulating the creative processes to go further. Over the years we became really good friends, exchanging similar ideas, we were “comrades in arms,” with a shared mistrust of music industry systems, antiquated conventions, consumer hype and corporate culture.
In a way, his views could have been described as somewhat anarchic, but he conformed to no other group or creed… they belonged to his own unique thought patterns. I always felt the world was a fascinating place to be when Conny was around in him we found a lime minded soul brother-agent provocateur.
On one particular trip to Tokyo, he discovered that the Japanese racist term for white people could be roughly translates as “butter stinker”, so Conny went out immediately to print up a T-shirt in Japanese, to wear on the subway which read… I am a f…. white butter stinker. It created the desired response.
Some people leave this world too soon, creating a massive space behind them that can’t be filled. I wish he was still here, and I can’t really accept that he’s gone because it just doesn’t make any sense to me at all.
(p. 48 in ‘Pop Kultur, Das Jahrbuch der Musikkultur, Musikmedien & Medienindustrie’ published by Dieter Gorny & Jürgen Stark; Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag