Talk about a kid in a sweetshop. After 30 years of rabid fandom I’m finally on the blower to Kraftwerk, a group so reclusive they’ve only recently started communicating with the outside world by means other than fax.
Given this you’d expect mainman Ralf Hütter to be a reluctant interviewee but, nope, the only time the 59-year-old sounds like he’d rather be re-wiring a circuit board is when I ask him if he approves of the term ‘Krautrock’.
“It only exists in the mind of stupid journalists,” he says firmly putting me and my profession in its place. “Anybody who knows music realises that Kraftwerk is not the same as Can or Tangerine Dream. They try to create a scene when none exists.”
Never mind Germany, there wasn’t anybody in the world who sounded like Kraftwerk when they arrived on the international stage in 1974 courtesy of ‘Autobahn’. A musical epiphany for everyone from Bowie to Bambaataa, its aftershocks are still being felt today. What was the first record that blew Hütter away?
“The ‘Tutti Fruitti’ by Little Richard,” he says sounding like a 12-year-old again. “German state radio didn’t play rock ‘n’ roll, so we tuned in to the American Forces Network transmissions from Stuttgart. I remember being very excited when The Beatles came along, and annoyed with my parents because they wouldn’t let me go to one of their concerts. Later we would drive all over Germany to see bands, and because we had no money for hotels sleep in our cars.”
Hütter might have ended up living a life of rock orthodoxy were it not for late ‘60s flirtations with Pink Floyd and LSD. Horizons broadened, Kraftwerk set up their legendary Kling Klang operation in Düsseldorf with equipment that was state of the art then but now looks like it belongs in a folk museum.
“We all met at improvisational courses that were run at the university here,” he resumes. “Compared to then our equipment was both very simplistic and expensive – the first Minimoog I bought cost as much as my Volkswagen! We worked a lot with echo chambers and different types of tape machine.”
With analogue the industry norm rather than a retro affectation, Kraftwerk were forced to employ some rather primitive editing techniques.
“To edit one piece of music on to another, we had to cut the tape with a razor blade and then stick the different pieces together. You’d lose four or five seconds and find it later glued to your elbow. It was all very…minimal.”
Minimal or not, those early studio outings earned them such high profile fans as Brian Eno and David Bowie, who for a couple of years almost turned in to a Kraftwerk tribute act.
“We met David Bowie after one of his gigs in Düsseldorf, and he told us he’d been driving around in his Mercedes listening non-stop to Autobahn,” Hütter reminisces fondly. “Having such a respected figure in rock say, ‘You must listen to this group’, meant that suddenly we gained a mainstream audience. Because of that we were able to tour abroad and buy some new equipment.”
Kraftwerk’s maverick status meant that they were one of the few groups that weren’t thrown out with the punk bathwater.
“Maybe we have a bit of that punk attitude,” Ralf reflects. “Doing things our own way and using the environment we’re from as the inspiration for our music. The Ramones did the same in relation to New York, and the MC5 and the Stooges were both very much of Detroit.”
The number of punk and post-punk bands Kraftwerk influenced is staggering, with Siouxsie & The Banshess, Adam & The Ants, PiL, The Boomtown Rats, Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, The Human League, Simple Minds, Depeche Mode, Tubeway Army, OMD and Ultravox all pilfering their back catalogue. More astonishing still is the part they unwittingly played in the birth of New York hip-hop in 1981.
“Our publicist took us to a club in New York where the DJ played ‘Trans-Europe Express’,” he says switching into proud parent mode. “Instead of ending, the song kept going and kept going for maybe 15 minutes. I went up to the box and there was Afrika Bambaataa at the turntables. It was a big surprise, but a pleasant one.”
Two years later and Kraftwerk were indulging in some human beatboxing of their own.
“For ‘Tour De France’, we used the sound of my breath and heart taken from a electrocardiogram. That song has, in the most literal sense, a human quality.”
When Hütter said recently that, “Cycling is the man-machine, it’s about dynamics, always continuing straight ahead, forwards, no stopping,” it was almost as if he were outlining the Kraftwerk manifesto.
“Cycling is very parallel to certain aspects of music, yes,” he agrees. “In 2003 we were invited to be guests on the Tour De France helicopters, which placed us right inside the race and its organisation. We cycle ourselves and have taken all the passes in the Alps and Pyrenees.”
I’d be guilty of gross dereliction of journalistic duty if I didn’t ask Ralf about the cover of ‘Neon Lights’ that U2 put on the flip of the ‘Vertigo’ single.
“Bono sent us the recording they did, which I think is very good,” he enthuses. “It gives you the same sense of wandering around the city late at night as the original. He said once that Kraftwerk are one of the great soul bands – well, U2 have that quality too. They make big things seem intimate, and connect with people on a very personal level. Not only that, but for a band of their size, they take a lot of risks – musically and politically.”
I don’t want to rub salt into the wounds of those who couldn’t get tickets, but Kraftwerk’s March 2004 visit to the Dublin Olympia was the stuff electric dreams are made of. Along with their arsenal of classics, we were treated to the very un-robotic sight of Ralf trying to keep a straight face as Fritz Hilpert got an attack of the giggles.
“Sometimes things make you smile,” Hütter concludes. “That’s just the concentration because we’ve been twiddling and turning the knobs and the faders and everything. You are operating hi-tech machinery and little movements can create big effects.”
Kraftwerk headline the Saturday night at the Electric Picnic.