Michael Rother Interview

When I heard that Michael Rother was going to be performing in Nottingham, I immediately selfishly thought that this was my excuse to try and interview him. Finding an email address and sending off an introductory email, past experience at this has told me that this would end up in the inbox of some disinterested intern to remain unread until it is eventually deleted unanswered. I was pleasantly surprised then when a few hours later Rother himself responded and agreed to talk to me. A few emails are exchanged back-and-forth until we eventually nailed down a day and time to talk.

It’s not often I get to spend a Saturday morning speaking to a personal musical hero, someone who has written albums and played in bands that would go on to have an impact not only my own personal music tastes, but on whole areas of contemporary music with the likes of Radiohead, David Bowie, Stereolab and Portishead and many more all proclaiming his music an inspiration.

After a wobbly start to our Skype session in which Rother at first struggles to hear me, we finally land a stable connection…

“You heard that Safe as Milk was cancelled?”

“I did. Did you find out the same day that we all did, Thursday?”

“Since then the wires are buzzing because it was part of the tour - the ferry crossing had been booked, plans had been made. Now we have to sort out the situation and plans have already been made to play in Leeds at The Brudenell Social Club. I played there in September. I spoke to Nathan who runs the club and there’s a festival with Wire on that weekend. That could be a solution. Some other people are also checking, like Nigel Humberstone of Sensoria in Sheffield where we have also played. I’m slightly buzzing around instead of working on the music which is what I should be doing.”

You lived in the UK when you were younger. Do you remember much about that time?
I have a lot of memories. It was nearly a year, eleven months. We lived in Wilmslow, near Manchester. I went to school there and I had friends. I have vivid memories of running around the countryside, a lot of green; everything is an adventure at that age. There was this river called Bollin and we used to jump in to the river because there was a waterfall and such nice foam. I was eight or nine years old and you didn’t think about the pollution. I guess the foam in that water was not really a good sign for us or the quality of the water. It was a really wonderful time, my mother said it was the best time of her life. Everyone was so polite, it was surprising - it was ’59, only fourteen years after the end of World War II, and of course as a child I was not connected to the war - hearing my parents talk about how friendly they were treated. My friends of course had no connection to the war, although some people would talk, like even today, “The German tanks are coming” when there is a football game.

How come your family ended up in England?
My father worked for Lufthansa, the German airline. At the time he was working for British European Airways, which became British Airways, in Munich. Then we moved to England and he started working for Lufthansa. We then moved to Pakistan for three years.

That must have been quite an experience at such a young age…
I have really strong memories of these impressions I got in England and in Pakistan. Pakistan was a completely different story, being exposed to the music. I have clear memories of listening to these bands and musicians in the streets - they would come to the house and play and ask for money. I was totally fascinated by this music that was so different to what I had grown up which was Central European classical music, my mother played classical piano, folk music of Central Europe. This music in Pakistan really had a strong emotional appeal to me. Of course I couldn’t make head or tale of it, but maybe that was part of the fascination because I couldn’t understand the structures and the scale. This idea of a music that kept on going without repeating or a real end, that had a strong appeal and in left a mark in my heart, in my musical brain.

Did you take that influence with you back to Germany when you started playing in bands?
Yes, with a detour - I jumped in to British pop music at a young teenager. My family moved to Dusseldorf in ’63, and as you would know, that was the high time of the British pop explosion.

Were those 1960s British groups popular in Germany?
It was so fresh and inspiring. The music scene in Germany was nothing that could be compared to what was coming out of England and America at the time. Most people in Germany were behind the hills; there was strange folk music and cheesy pop music. I saw the Pretty Things when I was fifteen in Dublin. Maybe today it is different but back then being young in Germany in the sixties, the society was very conservative. To have musicians with long hair and acting like they were taking drugs, you know, there was not much information about that. These [American and British bands] fell from the stars for us. The music was about revolution and freedom, everything that was so important for a teenager in the sixties in Germany.

You were in an early version of Kraftwerk. How did that come about?
That was a pure coincidence because I didn’t know the band. When the sixties came to an end my fascination for that music which was rooted in America and Britain also came to an end. I started to become upset and unhappy about the whole concept of the blues. Becoming 18-19 starting to think about philosophy and politics and your personality, you realise this is not my culture, I am just an echo of somebody else's idea. So I was looking around and steering away but I didn’t know where to go, I felt completely alone. You must know that there was not a scene of people I could meet where brand new things were happening; the German bands were still very influenced by American / English music and there was no artists no bands I knew who were in any way inspiring or could help me find a new way.

I was working in a mental hospital, doing social service like a conscientious objector, that was early ’71. There were so many struggles and issues that we were fighting to change the system to help the patients life, so we were demonstrating. One day, a special day looking back, we were in the town of Dusseldorf and this other guy working in the same hospital told me he was also guitar player and had this invitation to go to a studio after the demonstration and record some film music. He asked me to go along and I thought should I go or should I go back to my girlfriend? He told me the band had a name called Kraftwerk and I said “That’s a stupid name” [Laughs]. Anyway, I decided to join him, and that was a crossroads, when you decide should I go this way or that way. It was the big crossroads in my life meeting Klaus Dinger and Florian Schneider, who were in the studio and jamming with Ralf Hutter. Suddenly everything fell in to place because I had this blind understanding with Ralf, he was obviously on the same path melodically, his approach to music that I had in my heart which was away from blues. We just played around for a while and Klaus and Florian were listening. We exchanged phone numbers and a few weeks later Florian called me and invited me to join the band. That is sometimes forgotten because Kraftwerk that part of the history is considered prehistoric. Whatever, it’s strange but it is there decision, really.

I have a bootleg of a Radio Bremen session you did as part of the Kraftwerk line-up [At this point Ralf Hutter had temporarily left the band to continue his university studies. The band at this time were Florian Schneider, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger]. It is a great sounding session, and I don’t know if you had given the songs you are playing names, but one track on the bootleg has been titled Heavy Metal Kids...
We had this concert in Bremen in a cinema called Gondel, and I don’t remember the reason why, but Radio Bremen recorded the concert with their professional equipment, which is why the sound is better. It wasn’t even a great concert as far as I remember, I have memories of better concerts. Obviously, we would never had given a piece of music the name Heavy Metal Kids.

The reason I brought-up that particular song is because on that track the guitar is this heavy, metallic, fuzzy drone, and it’s such an amazing sound…
First of all I have to point out that the recording engineers, and in the TV performance of Beat Club [a performance also found on the above bootleg], they just didn’t understand how important Florian’s contributions were, they were the more important and interesting. I was just trying with my guitar to fill the sonic gap. Klaus is an amazing drummer, but if you just hit the drums, sonically this is very limited signal; and I tried to create a basis for what Florian played on his treated flute and the violin. Maybe even back then I was playing something that I would not have done if there had been other instruments around, which created an interesting or strong basis for the music. I have that bootleg, I haven’t listened to it really, but I think I know the sounds and it is just me thrashing these harmonies, riffs. I think I played the Gibson Les Paul during those concerts and had a fuzz box, a wah-wah pedal, and I had an amp with Altec Lansing speakers. Maybe the combination of those instruments, the Les Paul has a great sounds anyway. I hear quite often that people are impressed by the sound on the bootleg. I cannot really enjoy it that much because Florian did much more interesting things, but he is so low in the mix. Also in Radio Bremen and the Beat Club session, it is silly, but if I had chance to do a mix of the individual tracks it would sound very different, but then maybe people wouldn’t like it [Laughs]. But really my music started with Neu!

Through Kraftwerk you met Klaus Dinger and the two you went on to form Neu! The music of Neu! is very propulsive and driven. Was that a conscious decision or did that sound arrive organically due to the way the two of you made music together?
Klaus was this kind of guy, he was very strong-headed, and I guess he compensated, to be honest, the lack of technical skills on drums. If you compare him to a talented gifted drummer like Jaki Liebezeit (Drummer in Can), who has passed and is no longer with us, Jaki was the natural gifted drummer. Klaus was the strong person and he invested a lot of energy and determination in his drumming, and that was Klaus and that was what he could. He played the way he played and I liked it; it made it for me to add colours and layers on that strong basis if you had the chance to do overdubs. When we tried to play live as a duo in ’72 that failed completely because it was just the two of us and there were not enough layers in the music - just one drums and one guitar, that didn’t take us far. But with Conny Plank at the desk, you must always remember to point out his contribution…

One of my questions is what did Conny Plank bring to your music and the ‘scene’ in general? As you point out, he was very important…
We didn’t have to make him do experiments, he was just as open minded as we were and interested in creating new stuff. Conny was an impressive character but at the same time he was very modest. I haven’t really worked with producers but I think they sometimes try to make a musician create something that they [the producer] want. Conny saw his role, he compared it later to that of a midwife helping the musician give birth to their ideas, and that was his was a modest approach. He understood where we were going, what we had in mind, our intentions, he picked them up very early and with his experience at the desk he organised the sounds. Klaus and I wouldn’t have been able to create the organised sound, that was Conny’s part. We contributed the basic ideas, the message of the music and the individual tracks, but if you listen for instance to a track like Hallgallo, it is a mystery to me still today how Conny could remember the good parts of my guitars and the less good parts and that over a span of ten minutes. There was no computer aided mixing; the three of us would stand next to one another, he was the main operator and we would help out when more than two hands were needed. But to memorise these things, the colour of my guitar, we called them ‘clouds’ - the short melodies, backwards and forwards - and to organise that was such an amazing contribution. Without Conny plank it would have been very a different and probably not a half as pleasing result, so he was a very important character in the picture. And of course with Harmonia…

You mentioned previously that with Neu! you couldn’t easily get the layers because it was just the two of you. Harmonia, to my ears at least, feels more layered, more lush. Would that be a fair assessment?
The main reasons for me to move to Forst was to work with the two guys of Cluster and start Harmonia. With Hans-Joachim Roedelius playing these patterns on the electric piano with the interesting treatments he gave them, and Dieter Moebius adding crazy, surprising elements, that he could never really remember quite often actually, he was very talented, such good taste; that was a situation the three of us could create music in one moment on stage. The first [album] was recorded with very simple gear - sometimes we would ping-pong one mix to the other using a Revox [tape] machine, then I would add a guitar. Deluxe (the second Harmonia album) was recorded on Conny Plank’s mobile 16-track studio in Forst, so I had a lot of guitars on top of each other. The spirit of Harmonia, these two guys of Cluster, that was a feel that left so much space, there was so much to discover and develop with them, it was for me a vital period. I learnt so much about what I wanted to do and what was possible with music and sound in collaborating with Roedelius and Moebius. Neu! 75 took a lot of positive input from my work with Harmonia.

Harmonia worked with Eno around this time and that music eventually came out years later as Tracks & Traces. What was the experience of working with Eno like?
Actually we weren’t working, we were just having a good time [Laughs]. In September ’76 we invited him to visit us in Forst. He was on the way to record with David Bowie in Montreux. He stayed for eleven days. He brought some blank tapes with him. Maybe we asked him to bring blank tapes because we were so poor we didn’t have blank tapes. I had a nice four track recording machine, a Teac 3340, I still have it, it’s not the same audio quality that you would get working with Conny’s studio, but at least you had four tracks that could be recorded and erased individually. We had that in the studio. When we weren’t drinking tea or taking a walk in the woods, we did all that and played ping pong quite a lot, we went to the studio. Sometimes it was only two of us, sometimes all four us, but without any pressure and without any clear goal. At least that was true for Harmonia, I can’t say for Brian as I haven’t met him after that period, I haven’t met him again.

Your paths haven’t crossed again?
No, never! I mean you see him and you read about him and so on. We nearly met in ’77 when David Bowie invited me to join them in Berlin.

Why didn’t you end up playing with David Bowie?
It is so strange now that David Bowie is no longer with us. David contributed a nice quote for the re-release of the Neu! albums in 2001. He made some mistakes and I exchanged emails with him and he apologised for his bad memory. He mixed-up our names, ‘Michael Dinger’ and ‘Klaus Rother’. Maybe it was the British polite way, but he said if you ever come to New York please say hello. It would have been nice, not only to talk about what went wrong in ’77.

The thing is, is that he was told that I had changed my mind and didn’t want to work with him. We had a phone call, and this is a very clear memory, we were both totally enthusiastic about working together in Berlin on his album, talking about what instruments I can contribute, and I even suggested bringing Jacki Liebezeit because he had just played on Flammende Herzen my first solo album. A few days later somebody called to tell me, “We don’t need you anymore”. I was surprised, this was pre-mobile phone or email, and I just thought that’s strange, well okay. I was busy with my second solo album and so I moved on. He was told that I had changed my mind and didn’t want to come to Berlin. That’s what he said, at least his memory of it, in an interview with Uncut. When I read that I was very surprised because the truth is that I did not turn him down. He said in that interview “Unfortunately, Michael Rother turned me down”, which was just not true.

That is a great shame…
But you know the story of his Berlin albums at the time? They were not popular. It made sense for some people in his environment to think maybe we should not encourage David to add this crazy German experimentalist unpopular musician, we will lose money. Maybe that was the motivation, you know?

Similar to Bowie’s ‘Berlin trilogy’, a lot of what would be termed ‘Krautrock’ albums were not hugely popular at the time. It is only in the past 20 or so years where they have been re-released and the musicians and bands have started touring again that they have picked up in popularity. Faust are active, there is the Can Project coming up at the Barbican, Kraft-werk still tour, you are touring. Do you find it remarkable that 30-40 years later you and your contemporaries are arguably more popular now than you were back in the day?
Well, it is definitely true for me. It was strange for me back then to find that my enthusiasm for the music was not shared by the public. I was completely convinced, I was thrilled by the music. Then people said “No, we didn’t want that” and I thought that was strange. Later on the people changed their minds and said “We love the music”. I don’t understand it, I don’t have to understand it. I learnt to rely on my own judgement of my music, and of course it is easier to accept when people are willing to listen to you and are interested in what you are doing and love the music just as music as I…I’m not going to say I love my music, but it’s my music, I criticise myself, but it’s my music. I enjoy touring the world - I was in China, Japan, Russia. Now I am talking to Goethe Institute in Mexico, I will be touring in Mexico and Central America in October. Just to travel the world, Europe, up and down, as long as Britain is still…

What is your take on Brexit?
For me it is a disaster. You can criticise bureaucracy in Brussels, that’s fine, but to not see the advantages of a union what has developed over the last 40-50 years in Europe? I don’t even want to go in to the economics, but to be able to just sit in the car…I remember the times before when you had to go through a border, show your passport. Now it is, “Oh, are we already in the Netherlands”, “Now we are in France”, “Now we can go to Britain”, I don’t have to apply for a permit. There are so many advantages. I think the Brexit decision was largely based on false information from politicians, it is depressing. On the morning when I woke up and heard the news I couldn’t believe it, I thought it would be a landslide victory for remain. Like in America, I don’t even want to get in to politics, but voters who put Trump in to power, they will be disappointed, they will be the ones who are going to pay. This is utterly unbelievable. These people who are out of jobs, who are afraid of losing their jobs, they will have to pay for health insurance and will be the victims of these changes, of these conservative administrations. There are a lot of things to worry about - Turkey, Russia, Putin, Syria, we could talk for days…

Okay, one final question, away from the politics - are you still a snooker enthusiast?
Yes, I still love snooker. Funnily, when I was on to the phone to Nathan from the Brudenell, I told him that I played with with Graeme Lewis from Wire in Oslo. He said in your backstage room you even have a snooker table. That is of course a big plus. I played pool quite regularly, but if you try to do the same on a snooker table your ego goes down, even if you think you are a great player you will realise that you are nothing. The thing is, it’s not only about the winning, it is the concentration, the contemplation, the quietness of the game is something that has a very positive effect on me.

Michael Rother performs at Rescue Rooms on Tuesday 25 April 2017. Buy tickets here. 

Michael Rother website