Dresden China

This is The Story of Dresden China,
It was the summer of 1985 in Germany and The “Neue Deutsche Welle” (German New Wave) went to an end. New instruments were on the market, new synthesizer sounds were getting hold of the listeners, groups like Alphaville, The Cars or Bangles, Trio Rio or Bronski Beat were getting involved in the pop musical spirit of the age in Europe.
This also didn’t bypass Uli Werdin and Werner Littau from Bad Homburg and Frankfurt in Germany. Both were familiar with the legendary “Hubert Kah” Live-shows in pyjamas and straitjackets on stage, and blow-up dolls with their mouths wide open which hovered above the audience. Uli Werdin was hired as the tour manager, Werner Littau as the keyboardist.
The time was right in the summer of 1985. The managers at Musik Park Studios in Bad Homburg –Theo Werdin and Klaus Zundel, also the producers of the successful songs with Hubert Kah (Rosemarie, Sternenhimmel, Einmal nur mit Erika) were on holiday. In the recording studio, there was nothing except the summer heat.
Uli Werdin had been a sound engineer for a while under the guidance of his older brother Theo Werdin and had been told to take care of the studio that summer. And that was the beginning of Dresden China. “What Alphaville can do, we can do too, but of course with our very own unmistakable style.” This thought of Uli and Werner was probably a kind of crossroad. And the million-dollar recording studio that could have been used secretly and adventurously in the summer holiday for free by the two musicians was well used.
Uli Werdin and Werner Littau then met up in the Musik Park Studios in Bad Homburg, the rich area just before the gates of Frankfurt am Main. They activated the complete “holiday sleepy” sound system (at that time everything analogue) and started, day and night, their 24-track demo of their project “Meißner Porzellan”: in English: Dresden China.
Ulrich Werdin - Lead vocals
Werner Littau - Keyboards
Lutz Sommer - Guitars
Wahrmut Sobainsky - Drums
Patrice T.Bass Jones - Bass
Stephan Neumeier - Guitars
Jürgen Beckmann - Keyboards
Then it all went step by step. Shortly afterwards, they had produced numerous demo compositions in their day and night work. They were perfect for each other.
Uli and Werner as songwriters and Uli as the singer of Dresden China. He had never been known as a singer before that. Theo Werdin, owner of the studios came back home after about 4 weeks on holiday and sat, still shaking a bit because of the flight and the general conversion from vacation back to work-life, in the control room. Uli pressed the start button in the control room to play his brother the demos they had made. “I was ashamed then, as I heard that my brother had been producing such brilliant music while I was lounging around by the ocean. With Werner Littau he had produced the foundation of the subsequent album “Dresden China”. Honestly I had tears in my eyes, I was overwhelmed, I never expected anything like this from them” says Theo Werdin today about the situation then.
Theo immediately offered the songs to the music industry, and RCA with the A&R manager “von Auersberg” came on board. But von Auersberg wanted, that the final productions were more “rock-guitar-oriented”… a wish that is still disputed today. Finally Theo Werdin received the RCA´s production order with the result that much-needed funds flowed into the production studio. Then a huge argument began between the producer, Theo Werdin , and his partner at that time, Klaus Zundel, about the production rights of Hubert Kah; the company rights of Musik Park Studios; the production company and also the production rights of Dresden China.
The music industry in Germany listened. Dresden China nearly ended as a result of this. None of them, neither Theo Werdin nor Klaus Zundel , had survived this dispute intact. But, in the end, Klaus Zundel lost and the great production with Dresden China was able to be set up with RCA without any problems. It was like a wonder in which the law firms and the courtroom temporarily did not believe.
The production of the album started with the best requirements: Lots of known musicians with Theo Werdin as their producer who made Dresden China to a hip sound. At the same time, the Dresden China´s live band came to life. It started really well but sadly the band released their album “Dresden China” at the time of radical change within the distribution company RCA. RCA was taken over by BMG-Ariola. The successor couldn’t take care of the band as much as they deserved. In 2012, 26 years later, a new release through Pokorny Music Solutions came out. The label, which successfully takes new releases of music albums from the 80s and makes them known internationally. Yes, and the producer from the 80s, Theo Werdin, held his archives together for 27 years and found the tapes from Dresden China in an old garage in 2012. He is 64 today and likes to remember the big TV appearance from Dresden China with the breathtaking Dresden live band by P.I.T (Peter Illmanns Treff im ZDF) 1986 with: ”Fire and Rain”. At that performance, they gave out thousands of silver pins to the audience: The motive being two crossed swords.
Theo Werdin, who already did the complete production and sound for Dresden China in 1985/1986, digitalised and newly mastered the analogue original album in 2012 (26 years later) for Pokorny Music Solutions and all other interested listeners. That means: freshened up with modern digital techniques; frequency outputs improved; restoration of signs of aging on the analogue tapes, caused by storage in the garage by cold and heat; the sound made a bit stronger and more open much more… a load of work, which will give Hi-Fi lovers and everyone else even more authentic audio pleasure than the old vinyl records ever did. Also, original tapes with the demo recordings from Dresden China from 1985 and even unpublished demo songs were found in the archives. Some audio samples are now added to the new release of the album on CD. For this purpose, they were purposely only slightly changed to show originality and sound development from at that time.
In memory of Dresden China 1985-2012