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Writer's pictureDr Stephen HIll

Peter Schilling and the Sublime Backbeat of the Cold War

Updated: Mar 17, 2021


Peter Schilling's 1983 hit 'Major Tom' and the title song from Deutschland 83 captured the mood of the Cold War and stands out amongst a raft of synth-pop anticipating nuclear Armageddon.


Peter Schilling's Bowie-inspired 'Major Tom' was originally a number one hit in West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland in 1983. Missing out on the UK Top 40 at the time, it has recently enjoyed a second life as the title theme of the Sundance/RTL television series Deutschland '83. Remarkably the song peaked at 14 in the US Hot 100 and also topped the chart in Canada.


With its 4,3,2,1 countdown at the beginning of the chorus, the song captures perfectly the anxiety of the latter half of the Cold War, specifically the NATO operation Able Archer: the exercises simulating DEFCON 1, and the preparations for a nuclear attack. The drill was so convincing, that, according to papers from 1990, declassified in 2015, the USSR was on the verge of launching a pre-emptive strike.


Reputedly it was the closest the two superpowers had come to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, with the Soviets loading warheads onto combat aircraft at bases in East Germany. The crisis was deescalated thanks to the intervention of the Director of Defense Intelligence Leonard Harry Perrot, who advised leaders not to respond to the Soviet activities that were in contravention of the Warsaw Pact, based on intelligence sources gleaned from a UK double-agent.


Oblivious though much of the general population was to its brush with nuclear Armageddon, the music of the synth-pop, new-wave era captures the sublime terror of the age. From Blondie's 'Atomic' to Nena's '99 Luftballons', the period is filled with romantic allusions to the nuclear apocalypse. OMD's 'Enola Gay', Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 'Two Tribes', and Ultravox's 'Dancing With Tears In My Eyes' are also exemplary of the genre.


In most instances, the Teutonic mechanical rhythms underpinning these tracks (often from a drum machine), combined with the retro-futuristic sounds of synthesizers create a sense of both foreboding and nostalgia that is disarmingly prescient to the reveal. However, with Schilling's 'Major Tom' the dysphoria is compounded by the shift in the percussive accent in different parts of the song. In the introduction and chorus, it is placed on the backbeat, propelling the music forward. However, this accent is displaced in the verses, creating inertia and confusion, which is entirely in keeping with the Cold War anxiety it encapsulates.



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