How I Got Involved With Attempting To Hijack 99 Red Balloons From Nena

I’d reckon that young people have no real idea of just how revolutionary MTV was when it first appeared on cable service throughout North America in the early 80s. The idea of being able to turn on your TV and watch nothing but videos made to your favorite rock star’s hit songs 24 hours a day was mind-blowing.

I can’t be absolutely certain but I believe that Reno and Sparks didn’t get MTV added to its cable system until 1982 and I don’t remember knowing anybody in Reno who could afford cable. There was a big curiosity about it but I wouldn’t get my first taste of it until one night that year when I went up to South Lake Tahoe to hangout with some punks and hardcore kids living up there.

South Lake Tahoe already had MTV.

Back then, my only real connection to SLT was Troy Mowat and his punk rock pals living up there. Troy played drums in a great SLT hardcore band called Urban Assault (not to be confused with the scary SF band of the same name) and UA had a small but loyal following who would come down to catch punk and hardcore shows in Reno. Eventually, the Urban Assault crew started throwing punk gigs at an A-frame house owned by a guy (forgetting his name…I suck) who was once a well-respected skier and snowboarder who ended up losing his legs.

7Seconds would travel up there to play and many of our Skeeno (a nickname I made up for the punk rock/hardcore community covering Reno, Sparks, Tahoe and Carson City that stuck) friends would come up with us. The SLT-Skeeno connection was palpable. Not only did we all share a deep love for all things punk and hardcore but many sweet little connections between the two small towns were made (let’s just say that there was a whole lot of hooking up between boys and girls, girls and girls, boys and boys and boys and girls and boys).

So yeah, we’d go up to SLT, play these great house shows (always with UA, oftentimes with our buddies the all-girl Wrecks and our Carson City pals The Yobs) and afterward, if we didn’t drive back to Reno, we’d stay at some brave punker’s house, eat food and watch MTV all night long. Some kids smoked cigarettes, some smoke weed, drank beer and did harder shit. Some kids (like me) didn’t do any of that stuff but there was one thing for certain, we all genuinely loved being around each other and had a blast watching this crazy new music video channel that was taking the world by storm.

There was so much about MTV that I loathed. Artists like Michael Jackson, Pat Benatar, John Cougar Mellencamp and Huey Lewis and The News were huge and seemed to be releasing music videos every other week and I hated them all.

But then there’d be something fun and interesting from bands like Madness, The Alarm, U2 or even Motley Crue ('“Live Wire” was the shit!) and it would almost make it worth watching MTV for 3 hours straight in hopes of catching one of these.

One video that just blew my mind was for the German band Nena’s song, “99 Luft Balloons”. I saw it one late night and I’m not kidding, it left me speechless. I asked everyone I knew if they were aware of the band or had seen the video and no one really had at that point. The video looked cheap as hell. I’m talking, as though it had been shot on a home Betamax camera or something, but the visuals were striking and the song was one of the most amazing things I had ever heard up until that point.

I also - like so many young lads - developed quite a crush on Nena herself (we share the same birthdate…she’s a year older than I) and could not take my eyes off her in the video.

Before long, someone gave me the vinyl single of the tune and I played it over and over again. I couldn’t get enough of it. I even attempted to learn how to sing the German version but failed miserably. It was a while listening to the record that the idea came to me: 7Seconds should cover this fucking song!

I could hear in my head how it would sound long before I presented the idea to Steve, Troy and Poz. I could imagine how we’d handle the funky breakdown part after the verses and how we’d add our own unique flair (WHOA-OH! WHOA-OH!) to make the song ours.

Then one day in the Spring of 1984, during a rehearsal at our friend Kella’s house, I brought it up with the band and braced myself for a berating. It never came. No one seemed particularly grossed out by the idea. Steve and Troy both openly loved the new wave-y sounds of hit tunes being played on AM radio at the time and were far more receptive to music from the likes of Bananarama, Men At Work, Culture Club, The Fixx and Human League than I was. They loved the Nena song too.

We must have spent 2 hours figuring out the chords and arrangement we liked but once it clicked, we KNEW instantly how much fun we were going to have adding the song to our live set.

We would debut the song on March 23rd, 1984 - the day before my 23rd birthday - on the stage of the old Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles (opening for the U.K. Subs, T.S.O.L. and Battalion Of Saints, in front of close to 5,000 punk rock lunatics. The punk gang bangers were in attendance. There were LADS, Suicidals, FFFers, the Family/PUNX crew….all were dressed and ready for battle and I did give some thought to the fact that it might be a bit risky for a band like us to get up on that stage after raging through our crowd pleasers “Young Til I Die” or “Fuck Your America” and do this silly little German pop song.

I’ll admit it, I nearly chickened out. I wondered if we had rehearsed it enough. Just before we busted into it, I had a panic moment because I couldn’t remember the first line. I closed my eyes tightly and when Troy counted us into the song, the first line of the song floated right out of me and we went for it. I open my eyes and saw hundreds of people, smiling and singing along with me. Then the funky breakdown part came up and that was when the whole crowd went nuts.

The huge Southern California punk rock crowd LOVED it and the energy that we felt made us love the song even more and convinced us that this was a cover song well worth doing everything possible to make it our own.

Since then, there have been only a handful of shows where we didn’t play “99 Red Balloons”. I still love playing the song. It has never gotten old to me.