Michael Rother interview transcript
- Issue #208 (Jun 01) | Published 21/05/08
- By: Biba Kopf | Featuring: Neu!, Michael Rother
Interview with Michael Rother by Biba Kopf in early 2001 for the Neu! article that appeared in The Wire 208.
Note: Kopf’s comments no longer exist except as indicators of the subjects at hand [in brackets].
[regarding early Kraftwerk live in a lineup featuring Florian Schneider, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger]
I played all that stuff with all my own ideas. People recognised the flute, the rhythm of the flute [played by Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider], but everything else was new. Ah yes I was saying, sometimes the shows were really fantastic for us and the people. I felt that way in this TV show. We were performing in a large hall, production hall, three, four or six technicians and three people standing at the back. But we were used to large feedback from the audience. It didn’t sound exciting, it sounds alright on the TV, but for us it wasn’t the same atmosphere we needed to really get excited. We tried to do our best like we always do. Sometimes we had those shows that didn’t work, and the same happened when we went into the studio as Kraftwerk, we went in to record the second album, but in that studio it was like in outer space, there was no room, we were playing in a small box, everything was acoustically dead, probably a room for recording a singer, I don’t know, it had absolutely no sound for us, that was one reason why we weren’t successful, we recorded two or three songs I think, 20 minutes, and that was when we were sure it wasn’t going to work and we stopped the recordings, shortly afterwards we even split. No, Kraftwerk, Klaus and I and Florian, Klaus and I agreed on most things musically, so it was quite normal that we go together. In the end it was clear at one certain moment that we didn’t want to continue [as Kraftwerk]. I remember it a little bit different from Klaus, there was a lot of arguing and psychological warfare going on, there were extreme personalities, Klaus and I and Florian, apart from maybe having different opinions of the direction the music should take, apart from Florian, maybe he had the idea that he was a minority with us, and we were taking his name, Kraftwerk, in a direction that wasn’t his. Maybe that’s near the truth, and maybe at that time Ralf Hütter reconnected to Florian, and thought maybe they should try again. At that time, we were with Conny Plank, Klaus and I, when we did the Kraftwerk session in the studio and said, straightaway, we said OK, lets do something on our own with Conny. I collected some ideas, Klaus collected some ideas, for two or three months, booked the studio in Hamburg, and recorded the first Neu! album with Conny. So that was the direct way from Kraftwerk. Of course we took our experiences and ideas, which we had developed with Kraftwerk into Neu!, the Kraftwerk live ideas which were different from the Kraftwerk album ideas.
This is always the very complicated question, because it’s like explaining why you like this dinner. Explain the music, it is impossible. Maybe we have to focus specific parts.
[Neu!’s driven drum sounds, driven music, “Hallo Gallo”]
That’s right, “Negativland”...
[It feels so far removed from US or UK rock, a rock that is not like rock]
To be honest we all have roots. Klaus and I admit that. There have been drummers before him, like Maureen Tucker, driving, or Jaki Liebezeit in a different way, but Klaus has purified it in the Dinger way and I liked this flow, like making melodies fly over this driving sound, that is what I want to do, combine this dynamic fundament, bass, and on top of that record something like Klaus, like changing melodies and sounds on top of something that is driving very straight, of course changing in a dynamic way, getting softer going stronger, I think it was very much emotion. Of course there were thoughts and intellectual processes involved but that was very much like I said, going back to the roots, that was very much one step further, with Kraftwerk, that was one note, one string, this was a second note. On the first Neu! album there is one track “Weissensee”, which has a second harmony, which was a great step for me. I remember clearly really thinking hard, can I do that?, is that really necessary to change the harmony, but it is like breathing, going up and going down. It’s not the idea of Bach, it’s still basic, but I remember clearly, it was something that I really thought about, before doing it.
I didn’t follow the minimalist music at that time, I got into that more closely with Roedelius later on. We were listening to Terry Riley and people like that. It is just the result of going many steps back from where I ended as a teenager and then going step by step trying to build a musical structure, language is too boasting, a musical expression that contains elements like harmonies and melodies of course, I need that to express emotions, expression of emotional processes, but to do that in a very thoughtful way, now it has been done lets go on adding these harmonies, adding two new notes, in “Weissensee” adding a second harmony that was breathing, going up, going down, and that was a new song. So I continued that way until after the second Neu!, it collided with some stage in my life, some personal things that went not in the best way, relationship and so on, I had the feeling that my development had come to a halt. I wasn’t sure which way to continue, I had the idea that the next step had to come, I wasn’t sure how to do that. With Klaus, I thought it was not going to work. In a way there was quite some desperation, for me I hear it on the second album, even on the first side. Partly for me it is the feeling again of driving in a strong way and adding some clouds on top. But to be honest I hear some desperation, maybe people don’t feel it but anyway that’s my feeling, and I listen to my own feelings, and at time in early 73, when UA invited us to do this tour in England, they had released the first album and it was quite successful at that time, moderately successful, and people quite like it, people said come over and then we had to find a way how to do it on stage. The same situation again, I had heard the first or second Cluster album, Im Süden, that title, I had heard it, there is something there, maybe these people now... you know there is a guitar in Im Süden, maybe these people could help Neu! So I went to visit Hans Joachim [Roedelius] and Dieter [Moebius] in the countryside and took my guitar along, and I jammed with Roedelius and I had the same feeling, this is it, with Roedelius, this is what really inspired me, so I dropped Neu!. I couldn’t continue at that point and four weeks later I moved to this place, and we did Harmonia.
[Was it a sudden move?]
Not really because that was the beginning of going into sound, apart from the hypnotic repetition of melodies, which I hadn’t done in that way, so I was studying all the time, you have to try and go on learning, so it fascinated me, and that is what I wanted to do in 73, so we didn’t do the tour. Klaus was in Düsseldorf so I think he joined forces with his brother and some other guy, I’m not sure whether they were called La Düsseldorf at that time. After two years with Harmonia we lived together, we did a lot, it was very... I had started developing again new ideas on my own, which were not compatible with Harmonia, which were more I thought ideas that I could realise with Klaus as Neu!. So we had this contract for the third album, so said, OK, let’s try. We had this deal, where Klaus and I would do the one side of this album as a duo, which I actually wanted to do, but he said he actually wanted to do the whole album with two drummers, because Klaus didn’t want to be at the back with the drums, he wanted to be at the front of the stage and also play with guitar, that’s part of the truth, so we ended doing half of the album this way and half the other, and it was a good result, I think.
[regarding early Kraftwerk live in a lineup featuring Florian Schneider, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger]
I played all that stuff with all my own ideas. People recognised the flute, the rhythm of the flute [played by Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider], but everything else was new. Ah yes I was saying, sometimes the shows were really fantastic for us and the people. I felt that way in this TV show. We were performing in a large hall, production hall, three, four or six technicians and three people standing at the back. But we were used to large feedback from the audience. It didn’t sound exciting, it sounds alright on the TV, but for us it wasn’t the same atmosphere we needed to really get excited. We tried to do our best like we always do. Sometimes we had those shows that didn’t work, and the same happened when we went into the studio as Kraftwerk, we went in to record the second album, but in that studio it was like in outer space, there was no room, we were playing in a small box, everything was acoustically dead, probably a room for recording a singer, I don’t know, it had absolutely no sound for us, that was one reason why we weren’t successful, we recorded two or three songs I think, 20 minutes, and that was when we were sure it wasn’t going to work and we stopped the recordings, shortly afterwards we even split. No, Kraftwerk, Klaus and I and Florian, Klaus and I agreed on most things musically, so it was quite normal that we go together. In the end it was clear at one certain moment that we didn’t want to continue [as Kraftwerk]. I remember it a little bit different from Klaus, there was a lot of arguing and psychological warfare going on, there were extreme personalities, Klaus and I and Florian, apart from maybe having different opinions of the direction the music should take, apart from Florian, maybe he had the idea that he was a minority with us, and we were taking his name, Kraftwerk, in a direction that wasn’t his. Maybe that’s near the truth, and maybe at that time Ralf Hütter reconnected to Florian, and thought maybe they should try again. At that time, we were with Conny Plank, Klaus and I, when we did the Kraftwerk session in the studio and said, straightaway, we said OK, lets do something on our own with Conny. I collected some ideas, Klaus collected some ideas, for two or three months, booked the studio in Hamburg, and recorded the first Neu! album with Conny. So that was the direct way from Kraftwerk. Of course we took our experiences and ideas, which we had developed with Kraftwerk into Neu!, the Kraftwerk live ideas which were different from the Kraftwerk album ideas.
This is always the very complicated question, because it’s like explaining why you like this dinner. Explain the music, it is impossible. Maybe we have to focus specific parts.
[Neu!’s driven drum sounds, driven music, “Hallo Gallo”]
That’s right, “Negativland”...
[It feels so far removed from US or UK rock, a rock that is not like rock]
To be honest we all have roots. Klaus and I admit that. There have been drummers before him, like Maureen Tucker, driving, or Jaki Liebezeit in a different way, but Klaus has purified it in the Dinger way and I liked this flow, like making melodies fly over this driving sound, that is what I want to do, combine this dynamic fundament, bass, and on top of that record something like Klaus, like changing melodies and sounds on top of something that is driving very straight, of course changing in a dynamic way, getting softer going stronger, I think it was very much emotion. Of course there were thoughts and intellectual processes involved but that was very much like I said, going back to the roots, that was very much one step further, with Kraftwerk, that was one note, one string, this was a second note. On the first Neu! album there is one track “Weissensee”, which has a second harmony, which was a great step for me. I remember clearly really thinking hard, can I do that?, is that really necessary to change the harmony, but it is like breathing, going up and going down. It’s not the idea of Bach, it’s still basic, but I remember clearly, it was something that I really thought about, before doing it.
I didn’t follow the minimalist music at that time, I got into that more closely with Roedelius later on. We were listening to Terry Riley and people like that. It is just the result of going many steps back from where I ended as a teenager and then going step by step trying to build a musical structure, language is too boasting, a musical expression that contains elements like harmonies and melodies of course, I need that to express emotions, expression of emotional processes, but to do that in a very thoughtful way, now it has been done lets go on adding these harmonies, adding two new notes, in “Weissensee” adding a second harmony that was breathing, going up, going down, and that was a new song. So I continued that way until after the second Neu!, it collided with some stage in my life, some personal things that went not in the best way, relationship and so on, I had the feeling that my development had come to a halt. I wasn’t sure which way to continue, I had the idea that the next step had to come, I wasn’t sure how to do that. With Klaus, I thought it was not going to work. In a way there was quite some desperation, for me I hear it on the second album, even on the first side. Partly for me it is the feeling again of driving in a strong way and adding some clouds on top. But to be honest I hear some desperation, maybe people don’t feel it but anyway that’s my feeling, and I listen to my own feelings, and at time in early 73, when UA invited us to do this tour in England, they had released the first album and it was quite successful at that time, moderately successful, and people quite like it, people said come over and then we had to find a way how to do it on stage. The same situation again, I had heard the first or second Cluster album, Im Süden, that title, I had heard it, there is something there, maybe these people now... you know there is a guitar in Im Süden, maybe these people could help Neu! So I went to visit Hans Joachim [Roedelius] and Dieter [Moebius] in the countryside and took my guitar along, and I jammed with Roedelius and I had the same feeling, this is it, with Roedelius, this is what really inspired me, so I dropped Neu!. I couldn’t continue at that point and four weeks later I moved to this place, and we did Harmonia.
[Was it a sudden move?]
Not really because that was the beginning of going into sound, apart from the hypnotic repetition of melodies, which I hadn’t done in that way, so I was studying all the time, you have to try and go on learning, so it fascinated me, and that is what I wanted to do in 73, so we didn’t do the tour. Klaus was in Düsseldorf so I think he joined forces with his brother and some other guy, I’m not sure whether they were called La Düsseldorf at that time. After two years with Harmonia we lived together, we did a lot, it was very... I had started developing again new ideas on my own, which were not compatible with Harmonia, which were more I thought ideas that I could realise with Klaus as Neu!. So we had this contract for the third album, so said, OK, let’s try. We had this deal, where Klaus and I would do the one side of this album as a duo, which I actually wanted to do, but he said he actually wanted to do the whole album with two drummers, because Klaus didn’t want to be at the back with the drums, he wanted to be at the front of the stage and also play with guitar, that’s part of the truth, so we ended doing half of the album this way and half the other, and it was a good result, I think.