COUPE DE (EXTRA)ORDINAIR(E)” or “NACHSPIEL DER FRANKFURTER BUCHMESSE ‘91”)
October 1991. A train coupe. Figurants: A ignorant DUTCH GUY, an arrogant GERMAN PUNKER, a well-suited INDIAN BUSINESSMAN, and a mysterious EASTERN EUROPEAN WOMAN.
COMPLETE SILENCE, until “we” hear a furious fight in the connecting coupe, fought out in such a vicious way, that it almost raped the beautiful German language: a ticking timebomb; doors violently closed, and seconds later, a somehow familiar man walks into a new environment, could be a chance for redemption, just not sure for “whom.”
Silent now but still boiling, he replays what just happened before his mind’s eye: the ‘mindboggling’ injustice he had to endure. Life is ‘so’ unfair!
BOILING MAN hesitantly takes the only remaining seat besides the Dutch guy -- Dutch Guy having no clue: “You really look like Bobby Farrell”. BOBBY (while thinking “Du Narr”): “That’s because I ‘am’ Bobby Farrell”…
and the coupe EXPLODES… NOT.
The INDIAN, with a face like “business as usual,” hands him his business card; the MYSTERIOUS WOMAN looks down; the German Punker is even quieter now, feels he’s above all of this nonsense. And while Dutch guy is all-excited, finally, the mysterious woman looks up from her Citizen calculator, thinking “here he goes again,” and surely he does…
BOBBY: “When I was seventeen, before I went to Germany and became successful, I lived on the Dutch streets, getting my food out of trash cans. Trust me, after I went to Germany I had to work hard to become successful…”-interrupting-
Dutch guy: “I always loved your dancing, when I was…”-interrupting-
Bobby: “I was much more than just the ‘dancer,’ without me there ‘was’ no real Boney M., but I found three new girls that respect me for what I am, in a lawsuit now with the old ones. Clearly, I’m the only one who can use the name” Boney M. You must understand: first Fabian fucked me over, and then the “Three Witches of Eastwick” threw me out of the group -- after all I’ve done for them, I was left penniless, gone almost full circle… until I met my beautiful wife…
The FIGURANTS look at the STUNNER of a WOMAN (that she's gorgeous, probably the only thing they can agree on) and back at Bobby who continues his ego-trip… “now my new single is out.” His WIFE opens an ‘Aktekoffer’ and grabs a few signed singles -- reaching to hand them out to every bloody one of…screech… Only the Dutch guy overly enjoyed accepts the gift – the rest is ‘above’ taking a single, it would ruin their “çool.”
Inspired by “COUPE DE (EXTRA)ORDINAIR(E),” the weirdest thing that I ever was part of, I set up a tv concept website with my favorite concept, “Daddy Cool”: a ‘Docufiction’ showing interviews with Bobby; the original girls; and last but not least, Fabian – all who believe they ‘walked the walk and did the talk’ -- vomiting their side of the story.
. Like so many things, it wasn’t to be; time caught up with me as it did with Bobby -- in a hotel room in Russia, where he died all alone of a heart attack.
A few years later, in 1994, thinking back at – what I feel now was -- “The Breakfast Club” of FOOLS -- all in their unique way -- I play his new ( -now old-) single “A Tribute To Josephine Baker “ his kind wife gave me.
Girls and guys. By now you must have thought “but aren’t there SIX SEATS in that sort of (international European) coupe? You’re right! But I just can’t remember who the SIXTH person was. I only remember (after Bobby enterred the coupe) that there ‘could have been’ one seat left, the one opposite Bobby.
Besides that seat, sitting at the door, the German punker, and sitting at the window, Bobby’s wife.
Maybe it was Zanin, as very quiet baby, I do not know; tried to check but could not find his age or when he was born.
I could find that that Zanin now -performs/gives shows- as "Bobby Junior."/ Boney M. Junior.
What I ‘CAN’ remember/know is two things:
(1)The GASOLINE INCIDENT. I translate from Dutch into English -- what was described in the Dutch papers as:
“In 1994, he was given a suspended prison sentence for dousing his wife with gasoline and threatening to set her on fire. A friend just managed to prevent this. Farrell and his wife argued over ownership of the Boney M . name.”
I stopped listening to his ’91 single and (2) put on my favorite song, “Sunny”; the single topping the charts in 1976 -- originally brought out in ’63 by Bobby Hebb, as a soul Jaz song.
A song that (that almost literally) lifted me as a ten year old child when lying in the hospital: I just could not understand why each time my parents visited me in the hospital, half an hour later, they left -- abandoned me. The lyrics to that song:
Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain
Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain
The dark days are gone, and the bright days are here
My Sunny one shines so sincere
Sunny one so true, I love you
A few simple words that as a child felt like they literally saved my life.
“Sunny ones so true”;
Once they were such a beautiful pair, he and his wife Yasmina Ayad-Saban an ex-Yugoslav photo model from Skopje, or simply Jasmin Farell, who he married in 1981, and after the incident divorced in 1995.
In 2005 he made a commercial about Farian ripping him of for the insurance company Ohra on the song Daddy Cool. A subtile payback.
In January 2007, Zanillya Farrell (Bobby's daughter) and his ex-wife renewed the rights to the Boney M. name in Germany for a period of ten years.
Many years later, december 2010, after a gig: in a Russian hotel room, he got a heart attack; a beautiful pure man leaving this brutal world all alone. Like that kid in 1976, all alone, lying in a hospital bed.
Not a God fallen from his throne like Bobby because of a money-hungry ?diplomatic advisor?, but a simple mortal looking for
“PURPOSE” --
I guess as we all look for purpose, in whatever manner suits us.
If making movies gives you life’s-perspective… At least if you make movies, when lucky, they survive you for a couple of decades, maybe even a few hundred years, until they too go into oblivion. That fact is not good or bad, it just ‘is’.
If ‘granted’ to WRITE and/or MAKE FILMS, is GOD, ‘MUSIC’ for sure is HEAVEN, even if God dies.
AFTERMATCH:
Wiki: “In January 2007, Zanillya Farrell (daughter of Bobby Farrell) and Yasmina Ayad-Saban (ex-wife of Farrell) renewed the trademark to the name Boney M.”
Bobby is survived by his daughter Zanillya and his son Zanin..
www.discogs.com/artist/2526203-Zanillya
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/bobby-farrells-daughter-tells-of-the-fame-...
------------------
If you made it this far, which I doubt,
Best wisches,
Rutger Oosterhoff
Wow! That's a lot to bang on to the page! You clearly have a wild imagination. Hope you connect with people on this platform that see the talent and engage you about your material.
Thanks for your kind words Ilan. But that's the thing, this really -did- happen, down to "The Three Witches of Eastwick". A lot of the information about Bobby, Farian, his family, his career, is 'standard knowledge' , but what played out in the coupe that day, me in the hospital, and me reading that he tried to set his wife on fire, not -- thats from my memory recalling actual facts I was part of. Otherwise I would mot have dared to use " " -- although it is inpossible to "literally" remember every word. I am not going to rectify. But if you want it down, pleaae tell.
Best of luck to you reaching your dreams and finding connected like-minded people on Stage 32 to engage with and her you seek your dreams out.