The Monks Were Manufactured Before 'N Sync Were Even Born

Every now and then, you stumble across a snippet of a tale that seems so ridiculous it makes you do a TV sitcom-style double take. Take the story of 1960s garage band the Monks. Made up of five American soldiers stationed in Germany, the group formed in 1964, adopting the aesthetic of Catholic monks complete with cinctures and shaved tonsures. But religious devotees they were not. They may not have had the floppy haircuts or glossy pop sound buoyed by mega songwriting teams but, for all intents and purposes, the Monks had a load in common with a boy band. They were manufactured no differently to your 'N Syncs or your Boyzones, except their music was of the ear-splitting, trouble-making, anti-war screaming sort that most parents would have been less than thrilled to hear blaring from their children's bedroom.

The Monks created a style of music as idiosyncratic and unforgettable as their appearance, playing a form of heavily rhythmic proto-garage beat that bundled together tom-heavy drums, an organ that sounded demonically possessed and a banjo hit with the force most people would reserve for a 2AM brawl punch to a jaw. They publicly railed against the Vietnam War while playing to towns full of GIs, recorded their debut album, Black Monk Time, in two days in 1966 before it was all over and then disappeared in 1967. Predating groups like The Stooges and The Velvet Underground, it would take decades before their wonky brilliance was truly appreciated and understood.

One of two surviving members, bass player Eddie Shaw, recalls the group's highs and lows and the ongoing impact that taking a political stance in music can have. "The Hamburg nightlife was starting to kill us," he tells me now, reflecting on the group's final days, often driven by booze, women and quaaludes to keep them up through the late nights. "Playing the Monk music – the hard, minimalist stuff – and wearing the clothing; people not giving you eye contact or if you're on stage, attacking you. You get tired."

Before being the Monks, the band were the Torquays, a hard-working covers band playing the hits of the day in GI bars in and around their military base in Gelnhausen, Germany. One night they were spotted by Walther Niemann and Karl-H Remy, two German design graduates who saw potential in the group and proposed managing them with the promise of a record deal and a unique idea. Guitarist and lead vocalist Gary Burger, bassist Eddie Shaw, banjoist Dave Day, organ player Larry Clark and drummer Roger Johnston accepted. And so, the Monks were born, though not of natural artistic development – they were an art concept and construct by Remy and Niemann, who wrote up a manifesto of sorts and convinced the group to adopt this lifestyle and dress code 24/7. They introduced Dave's banjo, helped write lyrics and worked almost as producers in a role that set the band's template and tone.

Jack White's Third Man Records recently released a long-lost recording from the Monks' dwindling days, Hamburg Tapes 1967, which captures them in a period of turmoil, drained from three years of nonstop work. By 1967, they were ditching the heavy minimalism of their debut, growing out their hair and returning to normal clothes – a shift mirrored in the return to more pop-orientated songs on the release. But first, they pissed a lot of people off.

In many ways, the Monks are a brilliant rebuttal to the Real Music brigade. Despite being conjured out of a covers band by Niemann and Remy, they were all dedicated and talented musicians. They employed their military discipline to their own practise and tour schedule, playing six hours a night, seven days a week, plus an extra two-hour matinee on Sundays. From '65 to '66, this intense schedule allowed them to perfect this sound, which became an exercise in reduction. "It was about deconstruction, about getting rid of all the unnecessary words and chords and notes," Shaw remembers. "It was about playing music with tension and taking something so far to breaking point that the audience is getting nervous waiting for the change."

From Cologne to Hamburg, when not on stage they'd get attention everywhere they went. "We'd be walking down the street and these elderly women would watch us with adoring eyes, like 'there they are, the brotherhood' and we'd walk past them and say, 'oh fuck that and all this bullshit, let's go get a shot of whiskey' and you'd see the shock on their face." On stage the crowd response was expectedly mixed and occasionally violent. "If the audience is staring at you and looking confused, then you know you're doing something right." Shaw says. Sometimes the Monks were simply too much for people, though; the screeching organ and bass' room-shaking fuzz, along with the political bite of certain lyrics, would sometimes send people over the edge. "There was one night when a guy attacked the stage. He jumped up and he was slamming and strangling Gary and trying to knock him off the stage, so I hit him with the back of my bass guitar."

Initially music was a release for the group. "We were looking for some outlet to relieve the pressure of military life." Shaw says. GIs would also open their stress valves with fights, something the group witnessed so many times they'd be impossible to count. "We'd play these GI clubs on a Saturday night and they would fight every night and the military police would come in to diffuse it and we'd get tear gassed in the club. Larry would always bring his army issue gas mask with him so he could carry on playing. Chairs would be thrown at the stage." It created character though, Shaw feels. "A lot of people have never stood in front of an audience and seen some people love you and some people absolutely hate you. You learn that, in a sense, that is a reflection of life and that is a good thing to know."

The group's alignment with politics no doubt contributed to that love-hate relationship. They become synonymous with anti-Vietnam War sentiments, showcased on 1966's "Monk Time" as the song asked: "Why do you kill all those kids over there in Vietnam?" That single line cemented much of the group's reputation as a band of soldiers playing anti-war songs, though the political element of their music isn't quite as black-and-white as that.

Shaw felt the lyric could be perceived as exploitative and wanted it cut. "The Monks did not agree politically on everything, so we would fight over the lyrics. In the case of that line, I was against it, I wanted it out. I didn't like getting into the particulars of a war in which people were dying and making myself sound like I was making money from someone else's misery."
The Monks may seem like an anomaly as this weirdo band based in 60s Germany but that idea slots in easily alongside the role of politics in today's music. The ongoing argument over whether an artist should, or must, use their platform to vent or share political opinions rages on now, and was as fraught back when Shaw had his tonsure shaved.

Despite feeling at the time that, as an ex-soldier, he was "betraying his comrades" in using that lyric, Shaw does feel that – for good or bad – the song captures the friction of the period. It still follows him around today. "Forty years later I was sitting in my home town in a bar drinking a beer and a guy sits down next to me. He was in Vietnam and in Germany too. He told me that he went to Hamburg one night with his girlfriend and there was this fucking band singing, "why do you kill all those kids in Vietnam" and I stopped drinking my beer and I looked at him and I said, 'I hate to say this but I was in that band'. He said, 'I hate you'."

"But then the thing is, years later Robert McNamara [the often referred to 'architect' of the Vietnam War] was on television apologising to the American people and saying it was wrong and I said, 'look at what happened and how it turned out.' Even though I wasn't feeling comfortable doing that lyric, look at what the outcome was. And he agreed with me. Then he turned around, bought me a beer and said, 'but I still hate you'."

The group were in fact due to tour Vietnam in 1967, along the same route that had ended in death for another group when a grenade was thrown into a bar as they played. Some Monks members went AWOL after their visas were approved and they were due to fly in a day's time. "A couple of Monks disappeared and I'm kind of glad they did," Shaw says. The moment broke the band up (although they would reform later twice). Shaw then put the Monks behind him and never spoke of them again to anyone for 30 years. It was only after writing a memoir that interest piqued, and Shaw realised that the rest of the world had caught up. "The reaction of people was totally unexpected, I guess we didn't fail after all," he says, "I thought we did." Whether they succeeded in changing people's views or not, it's one of those stories you'd struggle not to retell time and time again.

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