The Rolling Stones are turning 50. In Germany, the band had fans from the very beginning on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In communist East Germany, though, the fans had a somewhat more difficult time.
"Wuschel didn't go to classical dance classes. He wasn't into any of that. Wuschel wasn't really into anything - except music. And even there he was only into music when it was by the Rolling Stones. And while the others went to dance classes, he tried to get hold of Exile on Main Steet, the 1972 double LP by the Rolling Stones."
Wuschel is one of the lead characters in the 1999 novel The Shorter End of Sonnenallee. Author Thomas Brussig describes the everyday life of a group of teenagers in East Germany in the late 1970s. The music from the West was only available on the black market and at horrendously expensive prices. But that only added to its popularity among young people. 'Beat music' had been officially rubber stamped as subversive and the GDR government was afraid that modern rock and pop would stir the already simmering discontent of young people.
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