Fringe Benefits : Nina Hagen Is Happy to Be Outside Looking Inward

“I’m running for president of the United World Organization, the sister organization of the United Nations,” chirps German lunatic-fringe songstress Nina Hagen on the phone from San Francisco. “After all, I am the East German master of punk, funk and hip and hop.”

With a platform of humanitarian concerns and a book titled “I Am a Berliner” that outlines her beliefs, life story and politics and is about to be released in Germany, Hagen’s career and aspirations are stretching far beyond her records.

That aspect of her life has yielded such categorically strange works as “Unbehagen” in 1980, “Nunsexmonkrock” in 1982 and the disco-influenced “Fearless” in 1983. Currently without a record contract, Hagen is in the midst of negotiations.

“This tour is about live rock ‘n’ roll,” said Hagen, who plays the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight. “You don’t always have to have a record out. I’m not a sausage factory, you know, turning out records every year.”

Instead, Hagen has spent much of her time raising her 7-year-old daughter, Cosma Shiva, and re-evaluating her priorities. In addition to seeking a new record label, the wild-voiced Hagen has severed her management ties.

“My old manager told me that if I left her my career would be finished,” Hagen said, “which is about the meanest thing anyone’s ever said to me. I couldn’t believe it. But now I’m making my own decisions because I know what’s best for me and I want to do things my way. So, now I listen to my inner voice and my heart--and that’s how I make my decisions.”

That may sound excessively cosmic, but Hagen has always walked the edge of acceptability, even as a youth.

“It wasn’t fun to go to school because we had to wear these blue things around our necks. We had to join the Pioneer Society and we had to salute with our hands over our eyes. Even then I was thinking for myself. I thought this wasn’t so different from the way the Nazis had conditioned people.

“So, when some of my friends were getting kicked out of East Germany, I went with them and eventually ended up in the United States. But living outside East Germany isn’t any different because everyone is conditioned the same way.”

Consequently, Hagen’s music is designed to break down those pre-programmed responses. Aside from her anti-nuclear, anti-pollution, pro-animal, pro-humanist beliefs, Hagen’s core message is simple: “We can change the world if we change ourselves. We just need to get hold of the old patterns of thinking and dealing with things and start listening to our inner voices and trusting our own superpowers.”

Considering the fate of fellow avant-garde German chanteuse Nico, who died last week of a brain hemorrhage, Hagen said: “It’s OK, it’s wonderful that she died because she was a junkie for years and years and lived such a wretched life. I know because I met her in 1981 and again a year later, and she was always so strung out. Now she’ll be able to start over in this world.

“Yet, with her heroin addiction, she still managed to keep going, singing her depressing little songs--and I loved that about her. So, I know her spirit will be all around.”

As for Hagen, who has squatted in abandoned houses across America, Amsterdam and Berlin, there is still so much to do. She’s been married less than a year and still helps People for Ethical Treatment for Animals, the organization for which she recorded “Don’t Kill the Animals” with Lene Lovich in 1987. Beyond that, she’d like to help people visualize the world into a better place.

“I guess I define myself as a teacher--but as super-freak teacher, not a boring one,” Hagen said. “And this world could be such a paradise if people would just see beautiful things with their hearts.

“Hopefully, people see me and get the light, the message, the truth and the energy. I’m an everlasting child, and I’m so happy and I think people get that because I’m not bound to old world boundaries. I’m one of those people who’s free to listen to my heart--and if people can learn to do that, then we’ll all be a lot better off.”