Youth
Up to the age of seven, Vetter lived with his mother in a flat in the Moabit district of Berlin, and in Frohnau up to the age of 18. His parents were low-paid civil servants, and he has a younger half-sister named Julia. His mother often played records by The Beatles, and he was introduced to music at a young age.
At the age of nine he decided to take guitar lessons with an elderly woman who taught him classical standards. He played guitar while visiting holiday camps. Ironically in hindsight, his later music teacher advised him: "Whatever you do when you grow up, don't do anything with music!". At the age of 16, Vetter went on a school trip to London, and returned home as a punk with dyed blonde hair.
In 1980 he met Dirk Felsenheimer (later known as Bela B.) at the club Ballhaus Spandau, one of the few clubs in West-Berlin that occasionally played Punk Rock, and joined his band Soilent Grün, replacing the previous guitar player whose guitar had been stolen. When the time came to make up stage names, Vetter decided to refer to his favourite hobby of travelling, contracting the phrase "Fahr in Urlaub" ("Go on holiday") to Farin Urlaub. After completing his Abitur (school-leaving exams, equivalent of A-levels) in 1981, he enrolled in archaeology at the Free University of Berlin, but soon gave up studying to focus on his musical career.
Read more about this topic: Farin Urlaub
Famous quotes containing the word youth:
“Columbus stood in his age as the pioneer of progress and enlightenment. The system of universal education is in our age the most prominent and salutary feature of the spirit of enlightenment, and it is peculiarly appropriate that the schools be made by the people the center of the day’s demonstration. Let the national flag float over every schoolhouse in the country and the exercises be such as shall impress upon our youth the patriotic duties of American citizenship.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)