How After the Fire’s Cover of “Der Kommissar” Became Their Big Hit After They Broke Up

How quickly bands can change. Take a listen to After the Fire’s 1978 debut album Signs of Change and one can hear Genesis-inspired progressive rock played with spirit. Check out their fourth album from 1982, Batteries Not Included, and new wave influences shine through. The British quartet certainly evolved in an interesting way, and they ultimately became best known for their rocked-up cover of Falco’s synth-pop hit “Der Kommissar.”

ATF’s road to success was rocky. The band was formed by keyboardist/singer Peter Banks (not the Yes member) in 1972, and after a few roster changes settled on the core lineup of Banks, guitarist/vocalist Bob Price, and bassist/frontman Andy Piercy, with three different drummers across their albums—the last being Pete King, who played on their famed song. Although the group’s debut single “One Rule for You” hit No. 40 in their native UK, none of their albums cracked the Top 40 at home. But they were fairly prolific in a short period of time, and in 1982 they even opened for Van Halen’s U.S. arena tour in the summer and fall. This came unexpectedly after ATF toured Europe, opening for ELO and Queen. That’s a respectable run right there.

English-Singing Covers Wanted

“Der Kommissar” came into the picture after they had released Batteries No Included in March 1982. The song was originally co-written and recorded by Austrian synth-pop artist Falco and released in December 1981. While it became a No. 1 smash in Austria and Germany, its German-language lyrics prevented it from becoming a broader international hit. Thus Falco encouraged English-singing artists to cover it and help spread his music that way.

Falco’s synth-pop original had a tongue-in-cheek bent to it, augmented by the American video that featured him “gliding” or running in front of blue-screen images of police cars behind him. The lyrics were mostly in Germany with some English phrases tosssed in. (Interestingly enough, Falco would later find American chart success with two German-language singles from his 1985 album Falco 3 that would go Gold in America. The cheeky “Rock Me Amadeus” shot to No. 1, and “Vienna Calling” reached No. 18. But America was not quite ready for that in 1982.)

Growing Tensions

After the Fire recorded their version of “Der Kommissar” in mid-1982 amid growing band tensions. They retained the rapping verses and sung choruses, but amped up the song with more guitars and less synths, and Banks tweaked and rewrote some of the lyrics. The single was playful but slightly more dramatic than Falco’s version, with the ATF promo clip featuring moody and arty visuals that caught people’s attention.

“We tried to merge the ideas of pop music and rock music,” Banks told interviewer Gord Wilson in 2005. “This was a deliberate policy: to not be too heavy and not be too light. So we would try to have the weight of mainstream rock, but with the tunes and the melodies of pop music. What we did with ‘Der Kommissar,’ that was originally a hit track, the one by Falco, but it was quite lightweight. We tried to really beef it up, give it some guts and energy, and yet retain that kind of modern hip-hop feel, which at that time was quite a daring thing to do.”

Funnily enough, Laura Branigan recorded a song called “Deep in the Dark” around that time. It was a reworking of “Der Kommissar” with new lyrics, but her version would not emerge until her Branigan 2 album came out in March 1983.

In August 1982, with the Van Halen tour a go, CBS Records released ATF (later renamed Der Kommissar), a compilation of the band’s second through fourth albums packaged with their new cover of “Der Kommissar.” The collection did respectably, hitting No. 25 on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart and reaching No. 29 in Canada. But the cover single did not gain traction here—it would go Top 20 in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden—and in December 1982, After the Fire announced at a UK show they would be splitting up.

A Hit Too Late

Ironically, ATF’s version of “Der Kommissar” finally took off in America in March 1983 and peaked at No. 5, particularly because of a lot of MTV airplay. But it was too late: After the Fire were officially done, and their successful cover could not reunite them. (Of note: German artists Peter Schilling and Nena made English-language rerecordings of their European hits in 1983 and 1984 and found some North American and UK success that way. Perhaps ATF paved the way.)

Banks and Russell reunited After the Fire with new members in 2004 and soldiered on until 2013, along the way releasing the collections AT2F (featuring unreleased recordings from 1982) and Radio Sessions 1979–1981, as well as their three CBS albums. At least they got a second chance.

One could view the success of “Der Kommissar” after the band’s breakup as sadly ironic. One could also observe that because of the single and video, many young Americans weaned on MTV at the time will always remember the song and ATF. There’s something enigmatic about this band who became known for one hit, shot a moody video, and then disappeared from view. The four versions of “Der Kommissar” are among the band’s most-streamed songs on Spotify with 27 million plays, while the YouTube video has 10.5 million views. On the flip side, the Falco original has proven more popular with nearly 87 million Spotify plays and 53 million YouTube views.

One’s favorite version will depend on what kind of musical sensibility they favor, but in this writer’s opinion, After the Fire made the song much more charming.

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Photo via afterthefire.co.uk