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:
“Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A glimpse through an interstice caught,
Of a crowd of workmen and drivers in a barroom around the stove late of a winter night, and I unremarked seated in a corner,
Of a youth who loves me and whom I love, silently approaching and seating himself near, that he may hold me by the hand,
A long while amid the noises of coming and going, of drinking and
oath and smutty jest,
There we two, content, happy in being together, speaking little,
perhaps not a word.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“If I use the media, even with tricks, to publicise a black youth being shot in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey ... then I should be praised for it, and it’s more of a comment on them than me that it would take tricks to make them cover the loss of life.”
—Al, Rev. Sharpton (b. 1954)