Hey there! It's me, Musician with Tinnitus (eBook)

The Suspicion

As all the live playing became more and more exhausting, I decided to build up an additional financial pillar. In 2015, I finished my training as a sound engineer and invested a five-figure sum to set up an acoustically optimized room in my 65 m2 flat. Here I worked on productions, did exercises to train my ears or simply listened to music. The latter almost like before. The only difference was that I was no longer lying on a mattress, but sitting in an office chair.

On December 15, 2016, at the age of fifty-three years, eight months and twenty-two days, my life changed, even though I didn't realize it at the time. I made myself comfortable, started a sound experience from the forge of Bruce Swedien, MICHAEL JACKSON's sound engineer, and closed my eyes. However, what came out of the speakers was anything but a feast for the ears. It sounded as if my monitoring system, which was only three months old and cost more than three thousand euros, had malfunctioned. The voices sounded overdriven, surprisingly not all the music. After a few minutes, I ended the session and moved on to other things.

The next day, I sat down again – shit! Annoyed, I got my old speakers and amplifier out of the cellar to try and find the cause of the problem. Despite replacing the individual components and conducting a series of tests, I was unable to achieve a satisfactory result. In every configuration, the voices sounded as if they were being played through a megaphone that had been dropped multiple times. I did not consider looking for the issue within myself.

Days later, having postponed troubleshooting indefinitely, I listened to music with the headphones on – also distorted. It seemed unlikely to me that both the headphones and speakers were defective at the same time. The suspicion towards my ears began to grow.

When I came to Hamburg in 1985, there was a live club on Karolinenstraße called ›Let's Rock‹. Ebbe was a regular. »Do you want to come with me?«

»Is there anything to smoke?«

»For sure. Herbert always comes by as a part of his evening round.«

That sounded like a land of milk and honey.

We went downstairs to the catacombs. Steve, the landlord, was waiting for us on the other side of the front door. He was chubby, had a moustache, and a thinning hairline. I guessed he was in his late twenties.

The ›Let's Rock‹ was a dive bar with no natural light, which was certainly a good thing. I didn't see a stage, just a drum kit in an otherwise empty room to the left of the bar. When there were no concerts, people jammed here. There was no pay, but the beer was free.

We went inside the sparsely filled dining room and sat down. I looked curiously at the posters on the lime-plastered walls. With a broad grin, Steve brought the beers.

»Are you the bass player Ebbe told me about? Jimmy's coming today, he's already looking forward to play with you.«

Monty, a well-known drummer on the scene, was sitting at one of the other tables with two broads. He never went home without finishing a bottle of tequila.

Then came Jimmy – singer, guitarist, bon vivant, and chatterbox. He was able to meticulously explain how the show business works.

»What do you say we go for a little spin?«

»What do you want to play?«

»Red House, everything else will fall into place. But you can only play the song if you know what it's about.«

I had no idea what he was talking about.

Amplifiers were fetched from a side room, which also served as a dressing room for bands. Beer on stage, cigarette out of the corner of my mouth.

Somehow, nobody was really interested in what I was playing. The self-promoters around me were too busy with themselves. Then, maybe half an hour later, the one everyone was eagerly waiting for arrived.

»Hey, let's see the list!« Jimmy leaned his guitar against the amplifier – break.

Herbert, whose snippy grin was framed by a little goatee, placed a notepad on the table. We could neatly see which pieces were available.

»I'll take that for twenty-five marks.«

»And me the twenty-two.«

»Have you got anything for eighteen?«

And so it went across the club. Herbert rummaged in his little bag, handed us what we wanted, and counted the money he had received. Then he neatly crossed the sold items off his list and said goodbye. He was undoubtedly the accountant among Hamburg's dealers.

Joints were being rolled and smoked everywhere, and the atmosphere was much more exuberant. We jammed until the early hours of the morning. Dude, that was cool.

»Hey Monty, can you recommend a bass teacher?«

»I can give you the phone number of Detlev Beier. He's the hottest jazz bassist in Hamburg.«

I came here almost every evening. Unfortunately, the whole thing didn't last long. Steve stopped, and nobody really knew why. That was the end of ›Let's Rock‹. After the rooms had been empty for a few months, they mutated into a Thai restaurant.

I have no idea how loud it was back then. Certainly not quiet, like most of the things I did at the time and in the years that followed. Nobody thought of any kind of ear protection, why should they? On the contrary: the louder the stereo system, the amplifier on stage, the band, the concert, or the disco was, the better. In a drugged state, anyway.

December 20, 2016. I called the ENT emergency department of a Hamburg hospital and was given an appointment with Dr. Rudolf Kempe for the next day. He, always with a flippant remark on his lips, suspiciously relaxed, got straight down to business.

»Which ear is affected?«

»Both«

»Then we can rule out a sudden hearing loss. A sudden loss of hearing in both ears at the same time is completely unknown. Let's go to the extreme and do a hearing test.«

No sooner said than done.

»You have a dip in the left ear at two kHz and in the right ear at three kHz. This is completely normal due to age. I can't tell you anything about your distorted hearing.« It seemed as he had never heard of such a phenomenon.

Dr. Kempe prescribed me a prophylactic medication, ›Prednisolon 20 mg‹ – cortisone. The fact that the distortion could not be diagnosed further made me wonder. I left with a bad feeling. I took the pills for ten days but noticed no improvement.

My next performance was scheduled for New Year's Eve. Final preparations for Christmas were currently in progress: Who was going to visit whom, when and where, getting the last presents and everything else that went with it. There was no reason for me to stay away from the festivities based on my suspicion.

On Christmas Day, fourteen of us sat around Petra's family table. We talked, ate, drank, unpacked, and commented, often several at the same time. My ears started to hurt.

The next day we set off in the car to my childhood home, which is a good six hundred kilometres away. Petra turned on the radio, and it sounded horrible.

»Please turn it off again, or at least turn it down.« It stayed off for the entire journey.

We stayed with Andreas Hunke, a fellow musician from the seventies, one of the few people from my hometown who credibly gives the impression that he is satisfied with the way his life has developed.

I spent the first evening doing more research on the internet. I discovered a clinic specializing in ear and hearing problems in Hamburg, which I contacted the next day.

»Unfortunately, we can't do anything for you. We are a clinic for private patients only.«

I realized how difficult it is to get medical assistance between Christmas and New Year. Many doctors have closed their practices, including my GP. It is an unfavourable time to develop health issues, especially when the time factor plays a not insignificant role.

In the evening, we met up with friends. The pub was small but full. It's just a sociable crowd down there. I felt comfortable, although the volume was immense. Everyone was chattering, and it got louder and louder as the alcohol level increased. The jukebox played non-stop. But my ears didn't hurt and I didn't notice the distortion.

One topic of the conversation was a concert from 1987 that I played with my first Hamburg jazz band at the Ellwangen Youth Centre.

Jazz? DEEP PURPLE and FRANK ZAPPA were my world. I couldn't do anything with jazz. But it certainly could help to sharpen my skills as a bass player. The decision was made, I called Detlev. On March 19, 1985, I set off for the first time.

»Come in,« he said, cigarette in hand, as he opened the door to his two-bedroom flat in Altona. I entered the small classroom. There were two chairs, a music stand, a stereo system, a sofa, a television, and a well-filled ashtray. It was undoubtedly the living room of a musician. My eyes fell on the only poster on the wall: JOACHIM KÜHN QUARTETT. I recognized Detlev from it. Only then did I realize the league this man was playing in. And I was just about to have my first lesson. I had been in Hamburg for less than two months, and it already had nothing to do with what I had experienced over the past twenty years. Since that day, ›Joachim Kühn Quartett‹ from 1982 has been on my record shelf.

I went to see him every Tuesday and practised for an average of six hours a day.

After a few months, he...