Back in the days before Twitter allowed us to find out what they
were having for breakfast, pop stars could be quite mysterious and there was no
act quite as mysterious as Kraftwerk. After they released their albums, they would invariably carry out a perfunctory
bit of promotional work (usually, if memory serves, on the TV science show
'Tomorrow’s World') and maybe do the odd concert, after which they would retreat to
their studios in Dusseldorf (the splendidly named Kling Klang) to start work on
their next project, or maybe that should be projekt.
When I say they ‘started work’, that would have been a guess. In those days,
we had no idea what those mysterious Germans got up to. Years would pass; pop fashions and prime-ministers would come
and go, but Kratfwerk wouldn’t even answer the phone. What were they working
on? New music? Testing new synthesisers? Building robots? Constructing a time
machine? Or perhaps a combination of all of the above? It turns out, according to David Buckley’s
biography, that they were quite often goofing around with gizmos, enjoying
coffee and pastries or indulging in that most rock and roll of pastimes,
cycling.
Their imperial phase came in the mid-to-late seventies, with
the albums ‘Radio-Activity’, ‘Trans-Europe Express’ and ‘The Man Machine’, with
the latter -for my money- representing their finest work; the composition, structure
and pacing on that album is flawless, a perfect realisation of their artistic vision. I love Kraftwerk’s warm analogue sounds and insistent
rhythms, but my affection for their music is also informed by memories of a time
when they didn’t just 'represent' something new; they were something new. In the 21st century, electronica has
become the lingua franca of pop, but in the seventies, Kraftwerk were revolutionary,
not in the sense of having anticipated or embraced the latest fashion or sounds, but in
the sense of having invented a new way of making music, of having forged a new
language for pop. That might be something
that only a middle-aged person would say and, to be honest, I am not
unsympathetic to Buckley’s ‘dad watching Top of the Pops’ view that pop and
rock appears to have evolved into a self-referential ‘curator’ culture, wherein
pretty much everything we hear now is ‘a bit 60s’ or ‘a bit folky’ or maybe ‘a
bit RnB’ or ‘a bit 80s’.
The author points out (correctly, in my view) that, by the
time they had released ‘Computer World’ in 1981, the world had caught up with Kraftwerk. For the first time, they sounded
contemporary, part of the pop landscape, where –just a few years
earlier- they had sounded like they had arrived from the future. In the 1980s, their output declined to the point where to have described it as sluggish would
have been a generous exaggeration. The two
main creative forces, Ralf Hutter and Florian Scheider, were happy living off
the royalty cheques from the likes of 'Autobahn' and 'The Model' and were so into their
cycling that the other two members, Karl Bartos and Wolgang Flur, had to find
other ways to pay the bills.
Buckley offers some good background material
on the German cultural milieu of the late 60s and early 70s, but the book leans
rather too heavily on interviews with musicians who have been influenced by the
band. The author also reveals a bit too
much about his own political views, which I’d wager are of no real interest to
most readers. As one might expect, Ralf
and Florian only appear in snippets from old interviews. Even in the age of
social media, there exists an information black hole out of which very little emerges
about these men; we know as little about them as we did thirty five years ago. Karl
Bartos makes a modest contribution, but I suspect that he is keeping his powder
dry for a book of his own.
This might not be the definitive tome on
Kraftwerk, but if you’re a fan of the band it’s a pretty good read. If you’re
waiting for a comprehensive warts-and-all guide to the life and work of this
fascinating combo, I’d advise you not to hold your breath.
