Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany Page #3

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the influences of the European avant-garde, jazz and minimalism.

Can was founded in '68.

That was the year of the kind of

student revolutions in Germany.

A mental revolution happened at that time.

The war was definitely finished

and the old way of thinkings had to be...

destroyed.

We did not try to play rock and roll.

Because we knew it is not the thing we are born with.

We have to find our own way.

Key to Can's driving sound

was the drumming of Jaki Liebezeit

who had been Germany's top jazz drummer

until he had an epiphany.

A guy came to me and said, "You must play monotonous."

He said it with a voice and with an expression

so I was quite impressed.

I don't know if he was a kind of freak.

Maybe he had taken LSD trip or something. He was completely... strange.

I started thinking about it...

to play monotonous - what did he mean, monotonous?

So I started to repeat things.

We played live in Munich -

we had a concert there, which was a sold-out concert.

And I was sitting, in the afternoon, with Jaki Liebezeit, with the drummer in a cafe.

And suddenly I saw someone coming up the street, in the middle of the street,

and they were praying to God and getting down to the street and behaving very strange.

And I said to Jaki, "Jaki, we have our new singer."

Damo Suzuki.

I'm the nomad.

Nomad in the 21st century.

Traveller...

Hippy, but not really hippy.

Metaphysical transporter.

Human being.

I went to Damo and said, "What are you doing tonight?"

He said, "Oh, nothing, I don't have anything to do."

"Do you want to become singer in a concert? It's sold out."

"Yes, and when do we make a rehearsal?"

"No rehearsal. No, you go on stage and then you sing. Don't worry."

Damo was first like a Samurai, but a very peaceful one.

When, suddenly, out of nothing, he broke out in an eruption like a volcano...

# Hey you... #

'And the people got so aggressive.'

# You're losing, you're losing, you're losing, you're losing your vitamin C... #

'I would say about 30 people were left, and one of them was David Niven.'

# You're losing... #

And they asked him, "Mr Niven, what do you think about this music?"

and he said, "It was great, but I didn't know it was music."

Actually, I don't have so much memories because at the time I was quite stoned.

And...that's it.

the Liverpool to Cologne's Manchester

Dusseldorf would give the world Germany's greatest act.

But, in 1970, you might not have recognised them.

This is Kraftwerk's first televised performance.

It features Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter -

two classical music students

who formed the creative nucleus of the band.

Kraftwerk, then, were a Krautrock band, who also experimented with electronics,

and shared the same vision of German music as their peers.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN:

Ralph and Florian would employ what they would later call "Musikarbeiter" - music workers.

At that time, I was 20 and I was working in a psychiatrist hospital.

And there was another guy working the same job,

and he was invited to join a band called Kraftwerk in the studio.

He asked me, "Would you like to join me?"

I didn't know the band, and I didn't have anything better going on, so I said, "OK, I join you."

When I jammed with Ralf Hutter it was so apparent that we both had the same idea for melody and harmony,

which was definitely not American, not blues.

It was a European music.

There's a German expression called "Stunde null" - hour zero.

And that was more or less my situation, so I was really fortunate to meet those guys at that time.

Rother, and Kraftwerk drummer Klaus Dinger,

would leave Ralf and Florian to form their own project in 1971, called Neu!

The basic idea of this fast-forward movement

was already with us when we performed as Kraftwerk,

but when Klaus and I started recording the first Neu! album, we just had this basic vision.

I always lived near water.

I lived near water in Hamburg, where I was born.

In Munich, right next to the river - Isar.

In Wilmslow, on the Bollin.

HE LAUGHS:

River Bollin.

And in Pakistan, at the seaside, and Dusseldorf at the Rhine.

And I feel very comfortable in water and with water and...

It has... It has some... Some... An effect I can't really explain.

It's like time, something to do with time, the passage of time.

And, in a way, it's also a picture like music -

moving along...

Like the music, it's... There are some parallels.

Boy, to put Neu! into words...

The drummer was playing in a...

..a way that, when you listen to it...

allowed your thoughts to flow.

Allowed emotions to...come from within,

and occupy the active parts of your mind, I thought.

It allowed beauty to get there...

The guy has somehow found a way to free himself from the tyranny of stupid...

blues, rock...of all conventions that I'd ever heard.

Some sort of a...

..pastoral psychedelicism.

I mean, at that time it was still a period of leaving the German history behind.

That was also part of the story, the...

the conservative remains of post-war Germany, Nazi times, was still to be found everywhere.

I admired Willy Brandt, for instance.

That was a figure I really looked up to.

Neu! once played for Willy Brandt. He was for reconciliation of Germany with the eastern countries.

Kneeling down in Warsaw, asking for forgiveness in the name of Germany.

That was something that really appealed to my thinking.

Despite combining a spirit of sonic adventure with a desire to transcend Germany's past,

none of these bands could catch a cold in their homeland in the early '70s.

Germans, who liked progressive rock, simply bought records by British and American bands.

Since the mid-'60s, German record companies had been searching for their own Beatles...

without success.

But, in 1969, Uwe Nettelbeck - a sort of teutonic tony Wilson -

was tasked, by Polydor, to find the Electronic Beatles.

This is what he came up with.

SQUEAK:

CRASH:

SQUEAK:

CRASH:

Faust formed in 1971. They came from Wumme, near Hamburg.

CRASH:

Yes, Uwe was interested in revolutionary ideas,

and he took this opportunity and...

sold us, maybe, as the new Beatles.

But that's where it ends.

He was well aware, and everybody except Polydor was well aware that we were doing experimental stuff.

And they gave us a studio, which was great, with a day-and-night sound engineer at our disposition

which was great, we were very privileged.

Because of the social situation in the '60s, '70s,

there was lots of revolutionary thoughts in the air, on all levels

so I guess artists usually are just a mirror of what's happening.

And rock'n'roll was not enough to reflect all the facets of what was happening.

We are very influenced by whatever is around us.

So anything that sounds good, looks good to us, we would use it.

And so it's left to chance.

Cement mixer - I like it, so I will play it and I will try to go a bit deeper into that.

You know, living is art, art is living, life is art.

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