FRANK ABENDROTH
December 26, 1962 - September 5th, 2000
by Joseph B. Raimond
On September 5th, my long-time friend and fellow Doc Wör Mirran member Frank Abendroth died of a burst artery near his heart. The result of a years long problem with high blood pressure and chronic asthma, Frank was only 37.
I have known Frank for over twenty years. We first met at Frankfurt American High School in an English class. I will never forget my first impression of him; we all had to read aloud essays that we had written. Frank’s was by far the best. He had a real talent at talking to people. His essay was witty and intelligent, and above all it was the way he spoke that was so captivating. It is no wonder that later in his life he was so successful at his job, which included giving speeches and workshops for Microsoft. We were both class of 80’. During high school Frank lived in Giessen and I lived in Darmstadt, so we only really saw each other at school. Sometimes we would stay after school on Friday in Frankfurt together, just hanging around and drinking German beer which we both loved. After high school I started college near Los Angeles and Frank moved a few hours drive south to San Diego. Soon after he moved there he was joined by our mutual friend Tom Murphy. I drove down to SD every weekend, grateful to have some fellow Frankfurters to hang out with. After San Diego Frank moved to Seattle, where he bought his first computer. He seemed to be a natural talent at computers, quickly learning the basics of programming. He soon got a job with Microsoft, who after a year or so transferred him to their Munich office. By that time I was living in Nürnberg. Soon after arriving he married his long-time German girlfriend Sabine. I was the best-man at their wedding. Frank quit working for Microsoft after a few years and became self-employed, designing computer programs.
In 1992 Frank and Sabine’s first son Phil was born. I happily accepted Frank’s invitation to be Phil’s godfather. A few years later, in 1997 their second son Leon was born. Frank loved his children very much and was a devoted father, and only regretted that he did not have as much time for them as he would have liked. I did not see Frank as often as I would have liked. He always lived several hours drive away, and was always so busy with his job. I last saw him in October 1998 when he came to my wedding. But we talked on the phone very often, usually for hours at a time. He was always willing to help me out with my computer problems. Frank loved music, and one of his dreams was to become a musician. He played guitar well and briefly was a member of a band in Giessen. A few years later when I began recording my own music and releasing it, I invited Frank to play on one of my albums. He was very proud to finally be on a record. The last time I talked to him in July, a few months before he died, he told me that I had fulfilled one of his dreams, that of being on a record. It was funny, I said I envied him because of how much money he made at his job, and he said that he envied me because I was making a living in the music business.
In high school, when it was popular to say things like "New Wave Sucks", Frank was the only person who told me that I was wrong and that I was too closeminded when it came to music. He said there was nothing wrong in admitting you like something that was not the usual Van Halen, Rush, Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd that everyone else was listening to then. He liked a new wave band called "The Vapors" and played their two LPs contstantly. To this day I still have never seen one of their albums in a store! Frank liked anything that he thought "jams", regardless if it was punk, new wave, industrial or good ol' Black Sabbath.
The above picture of Frank, taken directly from one of the labels of the DWM 3LP box-set "Odds, Sods And Dirtclods",was typical for Frank. Frank enjoyed being different, being radical even, just to shock people.
Although Frank did not live close, he does appear on several DWM recordings. He often sent me little drawings, poetry and several tapes of him talking and playing guitar and synthesiser. He ended up appearing on many DWM releases, either musically, or just with poetry and his strange little drawings. One of these releases, the DWM double tape set "Yeeg", features exclusively the music of Frank Abendroth. Frank did not pretend to be an artist, but at the same time enjoyed making these strange little sketches. Several of these can be seen by checking our Doc Wör Mirran gallery. The first four of these pictures have already appeared on DWM releases, but are here shown in color for the first time. The last five have never been shown before.
Frank was a very dear friend, and I will miss him. Somehow, I can’t quite imagine that he is really gone and that I never again will be able to just call him up on the phone and have him answer with his usual "Hey, Joe!, what’s up man?" Besides his wife Sabine and their two sons, Frank is survived by both his parents and a grandmother.
A mutual friend of both Frank and I, Dave Wilkie, also wrote something very nice for Frank:
Take care, brother. Mr. Frank, Abbey.
He was the first one most of us newcomers to Giessen became acquainted with. Frank walked in two worlds. The son of German parents who worked for the United States Army, Frank lived in Dulles Housing Area, two buildings away from my family. When at home, Frank and his parents spoke German, but among us Americans, you would never have a clue that Frank's heritage was German, his English was so perfect.
And Frank was the guy to be with in any German situation. If you just shut up and let Frank do the talking, you wouldn't stick out like the American sore thumb that you were.
Frank was the one-man welcome committee to Giesseners, and he knew no boundaries.Frank befriended every little clique and sub-culture we could devise, invading them with his persona, that of "Mr. Frank." No questions, no games, just Frank. Take him or leave him. And most of us took him. And he'd strut down the Strasse, leather jacket and wild hair and German shoes. And he'd be a loner some times. But he was never far from another group who would welcome him. And he watched as we all came and went on our little 3 year tours.
He could be brash. He could be outrageous. He could piss you off in a second and laugh at how easily he had done it. He would share whatever "gifts" he had, and tell you to go to hell if you didn't like the fact that he mixed it with tobacco. He was Frank. Take him or leave him. He didn't care.
What Joe said about the music was true. Not only would Frank listen to anything new that he thought "jammed", he would embrace the old as well. I was at his apartment one day in Dulles when he said, "Check this out, man!" as he put a Sly and The Family Stone album on the turntable. If You Want Me To Stay came through the speakers with all the funk and hope that Frank wanted it to and I was mesmerized by this old group he had uncovered in who knows what weird record shop downtown. It was a stretch from my usual diet of Aerosmith and Rush. And the Chili Peppers never did it justice in their cover, Joe.
Frank was brave. He was afraid of no one, and least of all, what people thought of him. Almost as if to prove this point, we were walking through San Diego in the early 80s and Frank was making a style statement. It was too much for me. He was wearing a straw hat with playing cards in the hatband, purple sunglasses, a cigarette in one of those long black filters that Hollywood stars of the 40s used, his ever-present leather jacket over a T-shirt, yellow gym shorts, black socks, and those big wide German shoes. It was a strange sight and I actually walked on the other side of the street I was so embarrassed by Frank. And he wasn't embarrassed at all. He was loving it. And to play it up even further, he began to do the pimp walk, and hollering to me on the other side of the street that I was the one with the problem if I couldn't handle the way he looked. And he was right. I wish I had walked on the street with him that day. He was just being Frank.
I've talked to couple of friends tonight in Seattle and Dallas and we reminisced about Mr. Frank. Abbey. About how he welcomed all of us. The ambassador from Germany. The one-man welcome wagon who liked anyone. And we had completely forgotten about that asthma-medicine inhaler he was always using. Maybe that's because he never talked about it, it was just a part of him. And we agreed we will all miss him. A fallen soldier. A rebel in the battle. A rare and one-of-a-kind guy who had settled into a peace in his children and the road he had finally carved for himself.
Frank always used to say, "How do you know? You gotta know." It was his way of trying to get everyone to put themselves in everyone else's shoes. To look at the world from the other side and find out why other people are the way they are. Or better yet, to become one of those people and really find out. He was a missionary. Not many can walk it like Abbey did. Pimp strut and all. We will miss you, Mr. Frank.
Dave