Red Army Faction

The Red Army Faction (RAF; German: Rote Armee Fraktion), in its early stages commonly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group (or Baader-Meinhof Gang; German: Baader-Meinhof-Bande, Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe), was a West German far-left militant group. The RAF was founded in 1970 by Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Horst Mahler, and Ulrike Meinhof. The West German government considered the Red Army Faction to be a terrorist organization.

The Red Army Faction engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shoot-outs with police over the course of three decades. Their activity peaked in late 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the "German Autumn." It was held responsible for thirty-four deaths, including many secondary targets, such as chauffeurs and bodyguards, and many injuries in its almost thirty years of activity. Although better-known, the RAF conducted fewer attacks than the Revolutionary Cells (German: Revolutionäre Zellen, RZ), which is held responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson and other attacks between 1973 and 1995.

Baader Meinhof (album)

Baader Meinhof is a 1996 album by Luke Haines, under the pseudonym Baader Meinhof. The name was given after two of the main members of the Red Army Faction, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, and the album, composed of 10 tracks, tells the history of group, since the ideas that might have inspired the group (in the first track, there's a quote from the student movement leader Rudi Dutschke: "Rudi said 'we got to be wise and we got to get armed'"), their first actions ("Burn Warehouse Burn"), their travel to Jordan ("Meet Me at the Airport"), their capture, the hijacking of a Lufthansa airplane by the members of the "second generation" of the RAF, in 1977 (one of the events that marked the German Autumn) ("Mogadishu"). In 2014, British independent record label 3 Loop Music re-released the album on heavyweight 180gsm vinyl and as an Expanded CD Edition which included four remixes from a previously unreleased EP.

Track listing

Luke Haines

Luke Michael Haines (born 7 October 1967) is an English musician, songwriter and author, who has recorded music under various names and with various bands, including The Auteurs, Baader Meinhof and Black Box Recorder.

History

New Wave

Haines formed numerous bands when he was at school. At college he joined The Servants who recorded two commercially unsuccessful albums. It was only when Haines formed The Auteurs with his girlfriend Alice Readman (who had also been drafted into The Servants from time to time) and Glenn Collins in 1991 that he began to achieve some success.

Regular gigging in the London area and an NME-sponsored gig brought them to the attention of Hut Records. They released their first single, "Showgirl" in 1993, and their debut album New Wave a month later. Haines was later to claim that this was the album that started Britpop, though he later showed disdain towards the movement, stating in a 2003 interview that Britpop consisted of "a bunch of bands who weren't good enough to exist in their own right, like music's equivalent of the Bloomsbury Group." Certainly it was ahead of its time in turning back from the acid house then popular to more traditional songwriting in the vein of The Kinks or The Small Faces. It is arguable that more commercially successful bands (such as Suede) owed much to Haines' vision. In any case, the album sold only 12,000 copies but was nominated for a Mercury Prize although the eventual winners were Suede

Baader-Meinhof (disambiguation)

The Baader-Meinhof Group, also known as Red Army Faction, was a left-wing militant group active in West Germany from 1970-1998.

The name Baader-Meinhof may also refer to: