In 2006 my band played a gig at a small local summer festival in the Rhineland, a beautiful, peaceful countryside of western Germany. We drove there for about ten hours.

There are classic talking points for musicians trapped inside vans: new music that just came out, how underrated our band obviously is, who’s gayer - Coldplay or Keane (hint, Keane is gayer, but they have the better singer), etc.

It’s usually pretty fun, but this trip was one from hell. The tension between the bass player and the singer, which had been there for months, finally reached that point where things get personal and words are said that cannot be taken back. We arrived completely exhausted.

Every musician knows that performing with a band creates a very special, intimate atmosphere on stage. It carries the basic chemistry behind the show. This time, even when the grooves locked and the notes were put down correctly, something felt off. Disturbance in the Force.

Before the set was over, we all knew, without a single word being said, that the bass player was leaving the band. I was mad because I liked the guy, and also because finding a new bass player would be hard. When we left the stage, there was really nothing to talk about at the moment, so I told everyone to go fuck themselves and went looking for the place we were supposed to stay at.

Finding it was the first good thing that happened that day. It turned out to be a luxurious, cozy cabin with glass walls and a huge living room that was obviously meant for music listening. There were piles of records everywhere, literally thousands of them, and a no-joke sound system. As if it wasn’t dreamy enough, in the corner was enough wine to keep me drunk until sunrise.

I topped up the first of many glasses and lighted up a doobie. I wasn’t in the mood for an endless chase for the right record, so I just pulled out a random one from the middle of one particularly stuffed shelf:

David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

Of course I knew about Bowie, but the music somehow never found its way to me (I was 17 by then). It felt like a good opportunity to catch up. So I dragged one of the comfortable cabin chairs onto the patio, turned the volume up loud, and listened to Bowie’s masterpiece for the very first time.

By the end of Five Years, I forgot all about the band problems. To be honest, I think I actually forgot where I was. As the album kept going, I felt like Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting when he sank into the carpet.

When the right records comes at the right time, it’s magic. Back then, I already had a few of those falling-in-love-with-record moments, so I knew right away, that it’s special. I immediately loved every second of it. When the album ended, I played it again, then again, and then a few more times.

All the shit from that day transformed into pure love and excitement for music, and gently reminded me why I became a musician in the first place.

That weekend we spent about 20 hours in a van in the middle of a summer, had one of the worst fights in the band’s history, the bassist left, and we didn’t become Germany’s new darlings, but it’s still one of my personal favorite music stories.