Last night, Michael Azerrad went and saw Klaus Beyer performing at Incubate Festival. He wrote down his experiences of the fascinating performer who translates all the Beatles’ songs in German:

Friday night I just let myself be a cork floating on the rolling tides of Incubate and followed a group of new friends to some shows I never would have seen otherwise.  The best was a set by Berlin’s own Klaus Beyer.

Late at night, I found myself in the tightly packed Kafee ‘t Buitenbeentje bar on Heuvelstraat, observing Beyer, a paunchy, wide-eyed middle-aged man in a polo shirt and jeans standing expectantly on a stage the size of a bath mat.  Music began flowing out of the speakers: it was the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR,” played at loud volume.

Beyer began singing along in German, in a squeaky, somewhat uncertain tenor. His delivery was matter-of-fact, just a guy singing a song, not acknowledging the apparent silliness of the situation — there was not a knowing smile or an ironic, overdramatic gesture. He was singing for us because he loved the music and wanted to share it with us.  The crowd clearly knew and loved him.

But there was something about the backing tracks — they sounded familiar and yet they sounded strange.  What was going on here?

Turns out Mr. Beyer is at once a tribute band and a wholly original artist.  Over 30 years ago, he began translating Beatles lyrics into German so his mother could understand what they were singing about.  Eventually, he translated all of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band into German, then painstakingly edited and looped the original music on reel-to-reel tape so he could sing over unaccompanied instrumental tracks.  The result was Hauptmann Pfeffers einsamer Herzenklub.  Over the course of 13 years, Beyer, now in his late 50s, has since remade the entire Beatles catalogue in German, fashioning the original recordings into collages that he can sing to.

Last night, it turns out, he sang selections from his latest release, the Beatles’ white album — oh sorry, das weisse album: “Blackbird,” “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” “Honeypie,” etc. During the false fade-out on “Helter Skelter,” he calmly admonished the crowd not to applaud because the song wasn’t over, and when it was, he obligingly intoned, in German, Ringo’s immortal plaint, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!”

Sure it was a little silly, and yet it was very moving.  This quite ordinary man, a former candlemaker, has made this quirky project his life’s work, and while he is hardly a dynamic performer, he exuded a joy and pride that was in the best sense child-like and irresistibly infectious. The audience was bonding not just with their love of the Beatles but with Beyer’s love of the Beatles, his single-minded determination, the way his low-key, unselfconscious bliss embodies that of all people in the act of creation, and the way his art so sweetly confonts our notions of originality.  I’m really glad I saw him play.

Now that Beyer has completed all the Beatles’ albums, he’ll start on the solo stuff.  I can’t wait for his George Harrison homage, Alle Dinge müssen schwitzen.