KRAUTROCK DELUXE Michael Rother (Part 2)
Jul. 17th, 2011 02:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yannisBLURT: Getting back to Harmonia, in July '73 you put NEU! on hiatus and moved from Düsseldorf to rural Forst to live with Roedelius and Moebius. Did the communal experience shape how you worked?
ROTHER: Well, we lived in one house and shared the same bathroom and the same kitchen. We had very little money. Harmonia, you will have heard maybe, was such a commercial disaster and people really hated us. I mean, hardly anyone wanted to hear Harmonia in the '70s and the sales were very poor and surviving on that little money was very difficult. But it was a very important period of my life, musically and living together with these people. Actually, I still live in the same house now.
Was the first Harmonia album,Muzik von Harmonia, created largely out of improvisation?
Improvisation, yes. It was just the idea of listening to what the other two were doing and then adding some ideas and spinning the tale. On the first Harmonia album, there are two tracks that we recorded live -- "Sehr Kosmisch" and "Ohrwurm" -- and it's quite interesting to look at those two tracks. "Ohrwurm" is just five minutes taken from a concert we gave for our friends in '73 and that concert went on for, maybe, one-and-a-half or two hours and everyone was either fainting or falling asleep because it was very hard to follow and there was not much happening. But when something did happen, it was so intense -- and these five minutes of "Ohrwurm" belong to the most interesting music I think that has ever been made by Harmonia. But that was the situation in early Harmonia because we didn't have any premeditated structures in the beginning: when we played, we searched a lot, for a long time, and sometimes we didn't find anything. That was the logical result of not having any fallback plan.
Did the "searching" part of it sometimes get to be a bit much, then? You enjoyed playing live with Harmonia, right?
Oh, definitely. I mean, the good moments were very beautiful and very intense, but that was something we started struggling about -- about the direction of Harmonia: I wanted to change the ratio of the searching and the beautiful moments and increase the amount of good music but, well, maybe I wasn't wise enough back then with the methods I chose [laughs]. But it's difficult to judge. You can look back and say maybe you gained something but lost something else -- and I guess that's what happened to Harmonia when we played live and we had more structured music. That's what happened when we did the recordings with Conny Plank in '74-'75 for the second album, Deluxe, which has more compositions, or at least more clear ideas.
So the approach on Muzik von Harmonia was more experimental, whereas on the second album you had a stronger sense of what you were aiming for.
Yes. The first album was a collection of what we did when we were in the studio, just creating. It wasn't like, "Oh, we are recording an album now." It was just making music and having a tape running -- and then we had to erase most of what we recorded because we were so poor and the tape, the Revox 2-track tape, was so expensive.
You had to erase what you'd been working on and recycle the same tape?
Yeah, we recorded over most of the tape and erased the music and that was one reason I am so happy about the Live 1974 recording [released in 2007]. You know, there are only a few documents, a few recordings, of Harmonia still with me in my archive. That tape remained untouched. I knew at the time that that was a special evening. It was a very special concert. We were on very good form. I was very excited because that night I fell in love with a girl who was there and I think that had a positive effect on my guitar playing [laughs]. But the reason we didn't record over that tape was because of its musical value, not its sentimental value. So when I transferred that tape onto the computer a few years ago, I was really surprised by the freshness and the quality of the music -- and by the technical quality. And I was so surprised to get all that positive reaction from people when we released it.
Was the material on Live 1974 edited down considerably?
Well, to be honest that was the way we played back then. Sometimes we didn't know how to stop. So the endings could be as long as the whole idea because we just grew softer and softer and faded -- everyone had these volume pedals. In a way, we were shy also and we just didn't know how to stop and so the endings could be very long. So for the album, I left out what wasn't necessary on the recordings. Apart from that, I didn't have to do much -- just some level adjustments. There's no trickery involved on Live 1974. That's how we sounded; that's what we did.
Do you remember how the audience responded?
I don't think they paid much attention [laughs]. In the press release, I think I said that you can't hear any crowd noise because maybe they were all too stoned to react. Maybe that was true but, to be honest, I think that people just weren't very excited about us. So if you listen closely, especially if you use headphones, on the fade-outs you can hear people talking. There weren't that many people in the club. It was a very special club, though. I played there with Kraftwerk a few years earlier and also had a great evening, so it must have been a very special place. It was a cool place and cool people. The crowd was polite to us, but I don't think they had the idea that they were witnessing something that would create excitement 30-something years later.
Harmonia met Brian Eno when he came to a gig in '74. Was that planned?
No. The story was that -- I'm not sure -- maybe he was on a promotional tour for one of his solo albums. It was post-Roxy. Anyway, he was in Bremen and talking to a German journalist who was a fan of Harmonia and NEU! -- a journalist named Winfrid Trenkler. He was one of the two-and-a-half journalists who really picked up on our music and promoted it. So they were talking about our music and Winfrid Trenkler told Brian that Harmonia were playing in Hamburg that night and Brian said, "Please take me to see them." So we talked and we had Brian sitting in the first row in the concert at the Fabrik in Hamburg and he joined us onstage for a bit of a jam. Then we invited him to collaborate with us and it took two years to happen, but he finally showed up in Forst in late summer '76.
Around the time you first met him, were you aware that he'd called Harmonia "the world's most important rock group"?
I think I read that in the New York Times. Of course, when we met in 1974 he told us that he and David Bowie had been talking about us and knew all of our albums and that they were talking about how great they thought they were. So we knew about those guys, but I'm not sure how many more there were, how many other people were listening to Harmonia. Maybe a few more people were listening to NEU!
So the Harmonia records weren't selling and no one was really writing about you?
Yes, that's right. We were really below all the radars.
It must be very gratifying now that Harmonia's work is garnering such a positive response.
I am especially happy for Harmonia because, when I started Harmonia, I was just as enthusiastic about that project as I had been when I started NEU! And I expected the same response. I felt my own love for a project and then thought everyone should feel the same way [laughs], and I found out quite early that that isn't always the case....
By the time Eno showed up to work with Harmonia, is it right that the band had split?
Yes. We split in summer '76 and all three of us recorded solo projects. I recorded Flammende Herzen with Jaki Liebezeit and Conny; Roedelius recorded Durch die Wüste and Moebius had a project with other musicians called Liliental. And in September '76 Brian showed up in Forst, and I'm not even sure if it's right to say that we were Harmonia then. Maybe we were three individual musicians working together with Brian, but we decided to call it Harmonia.
Were you all familiar with Eno's work?
Yes. We had the Roxy Music albums. I'm not sure how many, but they were around and we listened to them. I think what he did later appealed to me more, in a way. I think Moebius liked Here Come the Warm Jets.
Which of his records did you enjoy most?
On Another Green World there are some quite beautiful pieces of music, but it could also be Before and After Science.
How long did the recording last with Eno?
He stayed in Forst for, I think, 11 or 12 days.
Did working with Eno alter the way Harmonia worked at all?
I don't think so. It certainly isn't true for me, but I really enjoyed collaborating with Brian and having him around. It was a very creative phase, a very good collaboration. As you probably know, we didn't actually try to record an album. It just happened. We were just four musicians, four scientists sort of, and musicians, meeting in the studio and then exchanging ideas. It was quite similar to the way Harmonia worked in the beginning: one guy with an idea and the others listening and then joining in. I had a 4-track tape recorder at the time and it was four people -- four musicians -- and four individual tracks.
What did Eno bring to it?
I think Roedelius has some different memories from mine. I read somewhere Roedelius talking about Brian passing some notes, writing some notes....
You don't remember him getting out the Oblique Strategies cards?
I don't think so. My memory may be wrong. I remember Brian was very interested in cybernetics and talking about that a lot. But for me, it was just a case of him listening and then he processed my guitar and then I started a beat and processed a beat and he joined in. It was just very practical -- the way I prefer to make music -- not theorized: you just do it. Making sounds and not talking about it too much.
The result of the collaboration wasn't released for over 20 years. Was that because there was never any specific intention to make a record but, rather, just to experiment?
That's right. Well, the story was that Brian brought some fresh 4-track tapes, four blank tapes, along to Forst and when the tapes were full, he departed with them. Before he left, I made rough mixes onto a cassette recorder. These were meant only as a memo until Brian returned a few months later -- the idea was actually to meet again and continue, but we now know this didn't happen. He went on to Montreux to record with David Bowie on Low and I'm not sure really where things went wrong or just changed course because I released my first solo album in March 1977 and that took off like a rocket in Germany and I was quite busy from then on and very happy with that. Roedelius and Moebius did meet Brian again a little later on and worked with him in Conny's studio. Years later -- in the '80s -- Roedelius came to visit Forst. When we talked about those 1976 recordings, he mentioned that Brian had told him that the tapes had disappeared and were untraceable (ha ha). We were all quite unhappy about that loss -- but what could we do? It was very unfortunate, but then being busy I just accepted that. So I was surprised in 1997 when Roedelius suddenly sent us Tracks & Traces version 1, what he had unearthed: in 1996 or 1997, during one of his visits to Brian, Roedelius had found one of the four 4-track tapes and had mixed the 4-track down to stereo.
Were you at all dissatisfied with that first version Roedelius put together?
Well, at the time, there was a lot of friction between Roedelius and Moebius, in particular, but also between all three parties: Moebius and myself on one side and Roedelius on the other. I was especially unhappy about the way he had finished that project without asking us. The first thing I said was, "Well, the music is great, but why didn't you do it with us?" I mean, it would have been perfectly natural for us to meet and finish that album, finish that music. But he decided to do it that way. But then, on the other hand, the music was great and he did a good job and so Moebius and I just said, "OK, the music is all right. Let's release it."
How did the second version of Tracks & Traces come about?
I kept that cassette, the one I'd copied before Brian left Forst, in my archives and didn't listen to it for many years until I checked the material early this year when we started discussing the new release of Tracks & Traces. I knew that we had a good time and that it was a creative period, but I was surprised to find, I think, 27 or 29 fragments, ideas, sketches -- most of which were worthy of release. I was astonished by some of that material I found, which sort of shifts the overall impression, the mood of the 1997 album. The musical quality of the tape impressed everyone to the extent that we agreed to neglect the inferior audio quality -- the lo-fi sound actually has a special quality, quite befitting the project -- and to release those documents.
So how does the new version differ?
I think it's fair to say that the first release reflects some of the dark moods which are common with Roedelius's work, but there were also other different materials -- and maybe Achim [Roedelius] didn't have those materials when he did the first version. I'm happy now that the new version of Tracks & Traces has a somewhat different balance between a darker mood or atmosphere and a harmonious, melodious sound. There are three new short pieces -- that's the sketches. The second track, I glued together out of two fragments of the same idea. Roedelius and Moebius were as enthusiastic about the music as me. With their consent I picked and edited the three bonus tracks. That wasn't a big job compared to the importance of the original material: the editing is not a big deal. I work like an archivist. It was an honorable duty to unearth and to feature that material in the best possible way. But it's nothing that I can use for my ego. That's not the idea.
It's interesting that you haven't incorporated the new tracks in the conventional sense -- i.e., by tacking them on the end. You've sort of reframed the original release.
That's right. I thought about the best way to connect the new tracks to the original release and felt that it would be boring to just add them at the end. So I decided to play around and had the idea to present two tracks at the beginning and another one at the end, which is like a frame to the original version. But if you listen to it, I hope you can understand why I thought that was a good idea. When I did that, everyone was happy with the idea and so that's how it's going to be released.
How involved were the others in the reissue?
Well, this time all the work with the music in the studio was done by me. The recordings were de-noised and I did the remastering in the studio in Hamburg, but there wasn't that much I had to do. I just made the choice of all these sketches that I mentioned, to complement the album and show what I think is a much more complete view of the material we worked on, a more complete view than Roedelius's original version of the album showed.
Harmonia reconvened in 2007. How did that come about?
I think the record company Grönland asked us, because of the amazing reviews and all the attention that Harmonia's Live 1974 was getting, especially in the UK. This great reception was surprising for me, but maybe not for the label. So the idea was, "Is there any chance that you could play live?" and I had been playing live with Moebius for many years, and so we all met and discussed it. We met in a good atmosphere, free of tension, and we decided to give it a try. It seemed to work quite well.
How does it seem different now?
To be truthful, no one would want us to start searching for one-and-a-half hours like we did in the early '70s. People would start running out of the venue! So the material was pre-organized and when we played live it was mostly one piece by Moebius, one by Roedelius and then one by myself, with each of us joining in whenever possible. That was the idea of the Harmonia collaboration in 2007 and 2008, until January 2009 when we were in Australia, which was great. But we decided to stop the live collaboration again. There was some arguing and quarreling -- an atmospheric pressure drop [laughs].
Obviously, you can never say never, but does it seem to be over?
No, you can never say that because if you look at it in the right way, you have to realize how foolish all this fighting is. It's very difficult to explain in English -- it's even harder to explain in German.... The lack of wisdom in our personalities.... On a lighter side, it was funny to see all the same psychological elements working when we met and first played again in 2007. Maybe it's not so funny and not even surprising, but we haven't changed, really. I mean, the surroundings have changed and the reception has changed and, of course, the sound is much better, but maybe only in a way. Maybe some people think the old sound is great.
Since Harmonia first worked together in the '70s, the technology has changed enormously. Has that altered the way you do things now?
I use computers and the effects machines that are available these days, all the amazing new stuff, but I'm still the same person; it's still the same vision of music. Also, some of the gear is actually still the same. I still have some of the same fuzzboxes I used in the '70s. In fact, I've just asked a technical wizard I know to readjust my old tremolo machines. I collect all that gear. It's like having all those different colors at your fingertips.
Your work has always combined an interest in technology with a human, emotive presence, which comes across in the strong melodic dimension. Are you aware of having to balance the two?
Maybe sometimes you're in danger of being too fascinated by the possibilities of sound creation -- especially when I look back at the '80s and some of the things that changed then. I was completely fascinated by the Fairlight music computer in the '80s. But it all moves in spirals. The basic idea of taste in music hasn't changed -- at least maybe only in some small shifts -- but the gear has changed. Sometimes I use the same old gear. As long as you have your own vision, an idea, a vision that comes out of your own mind and that is not premeditated by some software program or some sound designer, then that's safe, that's OK. But I use all the new tools. I mean, it's great to have tools like the Kaoss Pad, for instance. The idea is to create exciting sounds, exciting music, and if you can do it with a wah pedal, a fuzzbox and a delay machine, like what I had in 1971, then that's fine. But it would be artificial to say that I can drop all the new gear and go back to what I had in the '60s or early '70s. It's the same idea with the amount of time spent recording. We recorded the first NEU! album in four nights and I remember being very anxious, very afraid of crashing -- of failing -- and we were very close to failing, I know, but it's something that leads to a special result. Maybe that's one of the explanations for the freshness of the first NEU! album -- that there was not much time to reflect and to change things. We just had to move forward all the time, very fast. If I tried to work that way today, it would be artificial. In the early '70s, we just couldn't afford to hire the studio for any longer time.
You seem to have always worked in small set-ups -- with Kraftwerk, NEU!, Harmonia, with Moebius and as a solo artist. Has that been intentional?
I'm not sure it was intentional. Originally, it happened because, most of the time, there was no one else around who interested us. If you imagine the situation in the late '60s/early '70s, if you try to remember, I was surprised, as I already said, that I met someone like Ralf Hütter -- someone with the same melodic approach. That was something I didn't expect to find. Maybe there were other people in other cities, well definitely there were, but I didn't find out about them and so we worked with the people we knew. People are willing to accept that a writer works on his own or that a painter works on his own, and I think this can also be true for a musician: if a musician has an idea for a complete music, he can work on his own. Maybe it's a good idea to exchange ideas, to pick up inspiration and to stay alive in an exchange, but I think for me it's quite natural to work on my own, and it's been that way all the time.
Is it true that you turned down the chance to collaborate with Bowie on "Heroes"?
Well, that wasn't true at all. The story was that I talked to his secretary, who called me and asked me on behalf of David. I said that I'd be interested, but that I'd prefer to talk to David. Then David called me and we were both very enthusiastic and talked about details and so on. And then, another guy called me from his management, who wanted to talk business with me. Maybe I didn't give the right answers -- I said, "Don't worry about the money, as long as the music's great" [laughs]. I'm not sure that they wanted to hear that! But I think that the main reason for the funny thing that happened next was that they needed to protect David from doing more crazy experiments in the '70s; the kind of music that David was starting to make wasn't popular. It's a fact that the sales were going down and his management was probably getting a bit restless or nervous about the sinking popularity of David Bowie. So, next, somebody called me and said, "I have to tell you that David's changed his mind and he doesn't need you." So that was that, and I thought, "That's funny -- that's not how it sounded to me!" But I was busy. That was in the summer of '77, after the release of Flammende Herzen, and I was in the middle of recording Sterntaler, my next album, and I didn't think about it that much until 2001, maybe, when there was an interview with David Bowie in Uncut magazine. In that interview, I read that he said something like, "Unfortunately, Michael turned me down," and also he mixed up the names "Dinger" and "Rother" -- calling me "Michael Dinger." Later he contributed a quote about NEU! for the 2001 Grönland re-releases of the NEU! albums and we exchanged some emails. Anyway, I think one day we can talk about that, but I had to make it clear that I didn't turn him down at all. Somebody must know what happened. Maybe it was a mistake, but it seems logical that people were taking care of him. Also, I think David was also a bit fragile at the time, with drugs. Maybe they thought he needed protection, maybe against himself.
I understand you're preparing some NEU! reissues.
I'm working on a NEU! vinyl box set, which will include an LP-sized booklet with text about NEU! and some as-yet unpublished photos. I'm still in the middle of the project. So far, the idea is to release NEU!, NEU! 2, NEU! '75 and a re-worked version of NEU! 4 (which I think will be called NEU! '86 like we'd originally intended) including some material from 1985-86 that is as-yet unknown to the public. Plus -- possibly -- excerpts of Live '72 (the recording of a rehearsal). When I've finished editing NEU! '86, I'll check those live recordings and edit the highlights. I'm in the process of reliving that project with Klaus. When we separated, we weren't finished with the project and Klaus decided to do that behind my back because I think he was just paranoid and needed the money, etc. -- well, he'll explain later when we meet again. But now I'm reliving that project and I will do my best also to present what we did in the '80s in what I think now is the best way. Then, sometime after the vinyl box set, if everything goes OK, we also plan to release a new CD version of NEU! 4/NEU! '86 and to make available all of NEU!'s recordings for download. You see, there is still a lot of work to be done here. I met recently with Grönland and the last partner of Klaus and I'm optimistic that we'll agree. She understandably hopes that we will release as much of the two CDs Klaus put out illegally in Japan as possible. I was happy to see that she also respects my reservations and my approach to this unhappy chapter of my collaboration with Klaus. I'm optimistic that we will agree on the best possible release for NEU!
When do you think the box set will come out?
We hope to release it later this year, but it could well end up being next year. What I really like about Grönland -- and that's due in part to Herbert Grönemeyer being an artist himself -- is that they respect artistic ideas. It has to be done in the best possible way. It would be best to have the box set ready before Christmas for all the fans. We'll see. It depends on how quickly I can find my way around the material. I was in the studio today editing one track and I've been transferring music from all the analog tapes to the computer. I also stumbled across some old NEU! music that I'd forgotten because Klaus and I split the tapes and he didn't have all the material in Düsseldorf when he released that version of NEU! 4. This is all quite interesting and another piece of work for the archivist [laughs]. And when that's done, next year I'm thinking of doing some live solo concerts. I've been in touch with my musical friends of recent years. Josh Klinghoffer and Benjamin Curtis are both of course on my list and are excited to join me and also John Frusciante and Flea, actually. He's a great guy. We jammed together with the Chili Peppers twice in concert in Germany a few years ago. He told me that whenever I need a bass player, I've got one. I'm thinking of playing my idea of NEU! music and also some Harmonia and my solo stuff. I think that could really be very exciting. I'd love to play live again soon. Next year. I'm in touch with Barry Hogan for All Tomorrow's Parties.
I heard that when you were at ATP in upstate New York in 2008, you had to leave halfway through the My Bloody Valentine set.
[Laughs] Well, I was so tired. I had jet lag and I had to play the next day. I met Kevin Shields backstage with Benjamin Curtis and I talked to him. I wanted to see My Bloody Valentine and stay around, but halfway through their set I nearly fell asleep standing up.
Very few people can claim to have almost fallen asleep at a My Bloody Valentine gig.
It was funny. They were giving out earplugs to everyone. It was so loud, but there are magical moments in that music. I hope I have another chance to see them when I'm not so sleepy.
ROTHER: Well, we lived in one house and shared the same bathroom and the same kitchen. We had very little money. Harmonia, you will have heard maybe, was such a commercial disaster and people really hated us. I mean, hardly anyone wanted to hear Harmonia in the '70s and the sales were very poor and surviving on that little money was very difficult. But it was a very important period of my life, musically and living together with these people. Actually, I still live in the same house now.
Was the first Harmonia album,Muzik von Harmonia, created largely out of improvisation?
Improvisation, yes. It was just the idea of listening to what the other two were doing and then adding some ideas and spinning the tale. On the first Harmonia album, there are two tracks that we recorded live -- "Sehr Kosmisch" and "Ohrwurm" -- and it's quite interesting to look at those two tracks. "Ohrwurm" is just five minutes taken from a concert we gave for our friends in '73 and that concert went on for, maybe, one-and-a-half or two hours and everyone was either fainting or falling asleep because it was very hard to follow and there was not much happening. But when something did happen, it was so intense -- and these five minutes of "Ohrwurm" belong to the most interesting music I think that has ever been made by Harmonia. But that was the situation in early Harmonia because we didn't have any premeditated structures in the beginning: when we played, we searched a lot, for a long time, and sometimes we didn't find anything. That was the logical result of not having any fallback plan.
Did the "searching" part of it sometimes get to be a bit much, then? You enjoyed playing live with Harmonia, right?
Oh, definitely. I mean, the good moments were very beautiful and very intense, but that was something we started struggling about -- about the direction of Harmonia: I wanted to change the ratio of the searching and the beautiful moments and increase the amount of good music but, well, maybe I wasn't wise enough back then with the methods I chose [laughs]. But it's difficult to judge. You can look back and say maybe you gained something but lost something else -- and I guess that's what happened to Harmonia when we played live and we had more structured music. That's what happened when we did the recordings with Conny Plank in '74-'75 for the second album, Deluxe, which has more compositions, or at least more clear ideas.
So the approach on Muzik von Harmonia was more experimental, whereas on the second album you had a stronger sense of what you were aiming for.
Yes. The first album was a collection of what we did when we were in the studio, just creating. It wasn't like, "Oh, we are recording an album now." It was just making music and having a tape running -- and then we had to erase most of what we recorded because we were so poor and the tape, the Revox 2-track tape, was so expensive.
You had to erase what you'd been working on and recycle the same tape?
Yeah, we recorded over most of the tape and erased the music and that was one reason I am so happy about the Live 1974 recording [released in 2007]. You know, there are only a few documents, a few recordings, of Harmonia still with me in my archive. That tape remained untouched. I knew at the time that that was a special evening. It was a very special concert. We were on very good form. I was very excited because that night I fell in love with a girl who was there and I think that had a positive effect on my guitar playing [laughs]. But the reason we didn't record over that tape was because of its musical value, not its sentimental value. So when I transferred that tape onto the computer a few years ago, I was really surprised by the freshness and the quality of the music -- and by the technical quality. And I was so surprised to get all that positive reaction from people when we released it.
Was the material on Live 1974 edited down considerably?
Well, to be honest that was the way we played back then. Sometimes we didn't know how to stop. So the endings could be as long as the whole idea because we just grew softer and softer and faded -- everyone had these volume pedals. In a way, we were shy also and we just didn't know how to stop and so the endings could be very long. So for the album, I left out what wasn't necessary on the recordings. Apart from that, I didn't have to do much -- just some level adjustments. There's no trickery involved on Live 1974. That's how we sounded; that's what we did.
Do you remember how the audience responded?
I don't think they paid much attention [laughs]. In the press release, I think I said that you can't hear any crowd noise because maybe they were all too stoned to react. Maybe that was true but, to be honest, I think that people just weren't very excited about us. So if you listen closely, especially if you use headphones, on the fade-outs you can hear people talking. There weren't that many people in the club. It was a very special club, though. I played there with Kraftwerk a few years earlier and also had a great evening, so it must have been a very special place. It was a cool place and cool people. The crowd was polite to us, but I don't think they had the idea that they were witnessing something that would create excitement 30-something years later.
Harmonia met Brian Eno when he came to a gig in '74. Was that planned?
No. The story was that -- I'm not sure -- maybe he was on a promotional tour for one of his solo albums. It was post-Roxy. Anyway, he was in Bremen and talking to a German journalist who was a fan of Harmonia and NEU! -- a journalist named Winfrid Trenkler. He was one of the two-and-a-half journalists who really picked up on our music and promoted it. So they were talking about our music and Winfrid Trenkler told Brian that Harmonia were playing in Hamburg that night and Brian said, "Please take me to see them." So we talked and we had Brian sitting in the first row in the concert at the Fabrik in Hamburg and he joined us onstage for a bit of a jam. Then we invited him to collaborate with us and it took two years to happen, but he finally showed up in Forst in late summer '76.
Around the time you first met him, were you aware that he'd called Harmonia "the world's most important rock group"?
I think I read that in the New York Times. Of course, when we met in 1974 he told us that he and David Bowie had been talking about us and knew all of our albums and that they were talking about how great they thought they were. So we knew about those guys, but I'm not sure how many more there were, how many other people were listening to Harmonia. Maybe a few more people were listening to NEU!
So the Harmonia records weren't selling and no one was really writing about you?
Yes, that's right. We were really below all the radars.
It must be very gratifying now that Harmonia's work is garnering such a positive response.
I am especially happy for Harmonia because, when I started Harmonia, I was just as enthusiastic about that project as I had been when I started NEU! And I expected the same response. I felt my own love for a project and then thought everyone should feel the same way [laughs], and I found out quite early that that isn't always the case....
By the time Eno showed up to work with Harmonia, is it right that the band had split?
Yes. We split in summer '76 and all three of us recorded solo projects. I recorded Flammende Herzen with Jaki Liebezeit and Conny; Roedelius recorded Durch die Wüste and Moebius had a project with other musicians called Liliental. And in September '76 Brian showed up in Forst, and I'm not even sure if it's right to say that we were Harmonia then. Maybe we were three individual musicians working together with Brian, but we decided to call it Harmonia.
Were you all familiar with Eno's work?
Yes. We had the Roxy Music albums. I'm not sure how many, but they were around and we listened to them. I think what he did later appealed to me more, in a way. I think Moebius liked Here Come the Warm Jets.
Which of his records did you enjoy most?
On Another Green World there are some quite beautiful pieces of music, but it could also be Before and After Science.
How long did the recording last with Eno?
He stayed in Forst for, I think, 11 or 12 days.
Did working with Eno alter the way Harmonia worked at all?
I don't think so. It certainly isn't true for me, but I really enjoyed collaborating with Brian and having him around. It was a very creative phase, a very good collaboration. As you probably know, we didn't actually try to record an album. It just happened. We were just four musicians, four scientists sort of, and musicians, meeting in the studio and then exchanging ideas. It was quite similar to the way Harmonia worked in the beginning: one guy with an idea and the others listening and then joining in. I had a 4-track tape recorder at the time and it was four people -- four musicians -- and four individual tracks.
What did Eno bring to it?
I think Roedelius has some different memories from mine. I read somewhere Roedelius talking about Brian passing some notes, writing some notes....
You don't remember him getting out the Oblique Strategies cards?
I don't think so. My memory may be wrong. I remember Brian was very interested in cybernetics and talking about that a lot. But for me, it was just a case of him listening and then he processed my guitar and then I started a beat and processed a beat and he joined in. It was just very practical -- the way I prefer to make music -- not theorized: you just do it. Making sounds and not talking about it too much.
The result of the collaboration wasn't released for over 20 years. Was that because there was never any specific intention to make a record but, rather, just to experiment?
That's right. Well, the story was that Brian brought some fresh 4-track tapes, four blank tapes, along to Forst and when the tapes were full, he departed with them. Before he left, I made rough mixes onto a cassette recorder. These were meant only as a memo until Brian returned a few months later -- the idea was actually to meet again and continue, but we now know this didn't happen. He went on to Montreux to record with David Bowie on Low and I'm not sure really where things went wrong or just changed course because I released my first solo album in March 1977 and that took off like a rocket in Germany and I was quite busy from then on and very happy with that. Roedelius and Moebius did meet Brian again a little later on and worked with him in Conny's studio. Years later -- in the '80s -- Roedelius came to visit Forst. When we talked about those 1976 recordings, he mentioned that Brian had told him that the tapes had disappeared and were untraceable (ha ha). We were all quite unhappy about that loss -- but what could we do? It was very unfortunate, but then being busy I just accepted that. So I was surprised in 1997 when Roedelius suddenly sent us Tracks & Traces version 1, what he had unearthed: in 1996 or 1997, during one of his visits to Brian, Roedelius had found one of the four 4-track tapes and had mixed the 4-track down to stereo.
Were you at all dissatisfied with that first version Roedelius put together?
Well, at the time, there was a lot of friction between Roedelius and Moebius, in particular, but also between all three parties: Moebius and myself on one side and Roedelius on the other. I was especially unhappy about the way he had finished that project without asking us. The first thing I said was, "Well, the music is great, but why didn't you do it with us?" I mean, it would have been perfectly natural for us to meet and finish that album, finish that music. But he decided to do it that way. But then, on the other hand, the music was great and he did a good job and so Moebius and I just said, "OK, the music is all right. Let's release it."
How did the second version of Tracks & Traces come about?
I kept that cassette, the one I'd copied before Brian left Forst, in my archives and didn't listen to it for many years until I checked the material early this year when we started discussing the new release of Tracks & Traces. I knew that we had a good time and that it was a creative period, but I was surprised to find, I think, 27 or 29 fragments, ideas, sketches -- most of which were worthy of release. I was astonished by some of that material I found, which sort of shifts the overall impression, the mood of the 1997 album. The musical quality of the tape impressed everyone to the extent that we agreed to neglect the inferior audio quality -- the lo-fi sound actually has a special quality, quite befitting the project -- and to release those documents.
So how does the new version differ?
I think it's fair to say that the first release reflects some of the dark moods which are common with Roedelius's work, but there were also other different materials -- and maybe Achim [Roedelius] didn't have those materials when he did the first version. I'm happy now that the new version of Tracks & Traces has a somewhat different balance between a darker mood or atmosphere and a harmonious, melodious sound. There are three new short pieces -- that's the sketches. The second track, I glued together out of two fragments of the same idea. Roedelius and Moebius were as enthusiastic about the music as me. With their consent I picked and edited the three bonus tracks. That wasn't a big job compared to the importance of the original material: the editing is not a big deal. I work like an archivist. It was an honorable duty to unearth and to feature that material in the best possible way. But it's nothing that I can use for my ego. That's not the idea.
It's interesting that you haven't incorporated the new tracks in the conventional sense -- i.e., by tacking them on the end. You've sort of reframed the original release.
That's right. I thought about the best way to connect the new tracks to the original release and felt that it would be boring to just add them at the end. So I decided to play around and had the idea to present two tracks at the beginning and another one at the end, which is like a frame to the original version. But if you listen to it, I hope you can understand why I thought that was a good idea. When I did that, everyone was happy with the idea and so that's how it's going to be released.
How involved were the others in the reissue?
Well, this time all the work with the music in the studio was done by me. The recordings were de-noised and I did the remastering in the studio in Hamburg, but there wasn't that much I had to do. I just made the choice of all these sketches that I mentioned, to complement the album and show what I think is a much more complete view of the material we worked on, a more complete view than Roedelius's original version of the album showed.
Harmonia reconvened in 2007. How did that come about?
I think the record company Grönland asked us, because of the amazing reviews and all the attention that Harmonia's Live 1974 was getting, especially in the UK. This great reception was surprising for me, but maybe not for the label. So the idea was, "Is there any chance that you could play live?" and I had been playing live with Moebius for many years, and so we all met and discussed it. We met in a good atmosphere, free of tension, and we decided to give it a try. It seemed to work quite well.
How does it seem different now?
To be truthful, no one would want us to start searching for one-and-a-half hours like we did in the early '70s. People would start running out of the venue! So the material was pre-organized and when we played live it was mostly one piece by Moebius, one by Roedelius and then one by myself, with each of us joining in whenever possible. That was the idea of the Harmonia collaboration in 2007 and 2008, until January 2009 when we were in Australia, which was great. But we decided to stop the live collaboration again. There was some arguing and quarreling -- an atmospheric pressure drop [laughs].
Obviously, you can never say never, but does it seem to be over?
No, you can never say that because if you look at it in the right way, you have to realize how foolish all this fighting is. It's very difficult to explain in English -- it's even harder to explain in German.... The lack of wisdom in our personalities.... On a lighter side, it was funny to see all the same psychological elements working when we met and first played again in 2007. Maybe it's not so funny and not even surprising, but we haven't changed, really. I mean, the surroundings have changed and the reception has changed and, of course, the sound is much better, but maybe only in a way. Maybe some people think the old sound is great.
Since Harmonia first worked together in the '70s, the technology has changed enormously. Has that altered the way you do things now?
I use computers and the effects machines that are available these days, all the amazing new stuff, but I'm still the same person; it's still the same vision of music. Also, some of the gear is actually still the same. I still have some of the same fuzzboxes I used in the '70s. In fact, I've just asked a technical wizard I know to readjust my old tremolo machines. I collect all that gear. It's like having all those different colors at your fingertips.
Your work has always combined an interest in technology with a human, emotive presence, which comes across in the strong melodic dimension. Are you aware of having to balance the two?
Maybe sometimes you're in danger of being too fascinated by the possibilities of sound creation -- especially when I look back at the '80s and some of the things that changed then. I was completely fascinated by the Fairlight music computer in the '80s. But it all moves in spirals. The basic idea of taste in music hasn't changed -- at least maybe only in some small shifts -- but the gear has changed. Sometimes I use the same old gear. As long as you have your own vision, an idea, a vision that comes out of your own mind and that is not premeditated by some software program or some sound designer, then that's safe, that's OK. But I use all the new tools. I mean, it's great to have tools like the Kaoss Pad, for instance. The idea is to create exciting sounds, exciting music, and if you can do it with a wah pedal, a fuzzbox and a delay machine, like what I had in 1971, then that's fine. But it would be artificial to say that I can drop all the new gear and go back to what I had in the '60s or early '70s. It's the same idea with the amount of time spent recording. We recorded the first NEU! album in four nights and I remember being very anxious, very afraid of crashing -- of failing -- and we were very close to failing, I know, but it's something that leads to a special result. Maybe that's one of the explanations for the freshness of the first NEU! album -- that there was not much time to reflect and to change things. We just had to move forward all the time, very fast. If I tried to work that way today, it would be artificial. In the early '70s, we just couldn't afford to hire the studio for any longer time.
You seem to have always worked in small set-ups -- with Kraftwerk, NEU!, Harmonia, with Moebius and as a solo artist. Has that been intentional?
I'm not sure it was intentional. Originally, it happened because, most of the time, there was no one else around who interested us. If you imagine the situation in the late '60s/early '70s, if you try to remember, I was surprised, as I already said, that I met someone like Ralf Hütter -- someone with the same melodic approach. That was something I didn't expect to find. Maybe there were other people in other cities, well definitely there were, but I didn't find out about them and so we worked with the people we knew. People are willing to accept that a writer works on his own or that a painter works on his own, and I think this can also be true for a musician: if a musician has an idea for a complete music, he can work on his own. Maybe it's a good idea to exchange ideas, to pick up inspiration and to stay alive in an exchange, but I think for me it's quite natural to work on my own, and it's been that way all the time.
Is it true that you turned down the chance to collaborate with Bowie on "Heroes"?
Well, that wasn't true at all. The story was that I talked to his secretary, who called me and asked me on behalf of David. I said that I'd be interested, but that I'd prefer to talk to David. Then David called me and we were both very enthusiastic and talked about details and so on. And then, another guy called me from his management, who wanted to talk business with me. Maybe I didn't give the right answers -- I said, "Don't worry about the money, as long as the music's great" [laughs]. I'm not sure that they wanted to hear that! But I think that the main reason for the funny thing that happened next was that they needed to protect David from doing more crazy experiments in the '70s; the kind of music that David was starting to make wasn't popular. It's a fact that the sales were going down and his management was probably getting a bit restless or nervous about the sinking popularity of David Bowie. So, next, somebody called me and said, "I have to tell you that David's changed his mind and he doesn't need you." So that was that, and I thought, "That's funny -- that's not how it sounded to me!" But I was busy. That was in the summer of '77, after the release of Flammende Herzen, and I was in the middle of recording Sterntaler, my next album, and I didn't think about it that much until 2001, maybe, when there was an interview with David Bowie in Uncut magazine. In that interview, I read that he said something like, "Unfortunately, Michael turned me down," and also he mixed up the names "Dinger" and "Rother" -- calling me "Michael Dinger." Later he contributed a quote about NEU! for the 2001 Grönland re-releases of the NEU! albums and we exchanged some emails. Anyway, I think one day we can talk about that, but I had to make it clear that I didn't turn him down at all. Somebody must know what happened. Maybe it was a mistake, but it seems logical that people were taking care of him. Also, I think David was also a bit fragile at the time, with drugs. Maybe they thought he needed protection, maybe against himself.
I understand you're preparing some NEU! reissues.
I'm working on a NEU! vinyl box set, which will include an LP-sized booklet with text about NEU! and some as-yet unpublished photos. I'm still in the middle of the project. So far, the idea is to release NEU!, NEU! 2, NEU! '75 and a re-worked version of NEU! 4 (which I think will be called NEU! '86 like we'd originally intended) including some material from 1985-86 that is as-yet unknown to the public. Plus -- possibly -- excerpts of Live '72 (the recording of a rehearsal). When I've finished editing NEU! '86, I'll check those live recordings and edit the highlights. I'm in the process of reliving that project with Klaus. When we separated, we weren't finished with the project and Klaus decided to do that behind my back because I think he was just paranoid and needed the money, etc. -- well, he'll explain later when we meet again. But now I'm reliving that project and I will do my best also to present what we did in the '80s in what I think now is the best way. Then, sometime after the vinyl box set, if everything goes OK, we also plan to release a new CD version of NEU! 4/NEU! '86 and to make available all of NEU!'s recordings for download. You see, there is still a lot of work to be done here. I met recently with Grönland and the last partner of Klaus and I'm optimistic that we'll agree. She understandably hopes that we will release as much of the two CDs Klaus put out illegally in Japan as possible. I was happy to see that she also respects my reservations and my approach to this unhappy chapter of my collaboration with Klaus. I'm optimistic that we will agree on the best possible release for NEU!
When do you think the box set will come out?
We hope to release it later this year, but it could well end up being next year. What I really like about Grönland -- and that's due in part to Herbert Grönemeyer being an artist himself -- is that they respect artistic ideas. It has to be done in the best possible way. It would be best to have the box set ready before Christmas for all the fans. We'll see. It depends on how quickly I can find my way around the material. I was in the studio today editing one track and I've been transferring music from all the analog tapes to the computer. I also stumbled across some old NEU! music that I'd forgotten because Klaus and I split the tapes and he didn't have all the material in Düsseldorf when he released that version of NEU! 4. This is all quite interesting and another piece of work for the archivist [laughs]. And when that's done, next year I'm thinking of doing some live solo concerts. I've been in touch with my musical friends of recent years. Josh Klinghoffer and Benjamin Curtis are both of course on my list and are excited to join me and also John Frusciante and Flea, actually. He's a great guy. We jammed together with the Chili Peppers twice in concert in Germany a few years ago. He told me that whenever I need a bass player, I've got one. I'm thinking of playing my idea of NEU! music and also some Harmonia and my solo stuff. I think that could really be very exciting. I'd love to play live again soon. Next year. I'm in touch with Barry Hogan for All Tomorrow's Parties.
I heard that when you were at ATP in upstate New York in 2008, you had to leave halfway through the My Bloody Valentine set.
[Laughs] Well, I was so tired. I had jet lag and I had to play the next day. I met Kevin Shields backstage with Benjamin Curtis and I talked to him. I wanted to see My Bloody Valentine and stay around, but halfway through their set I nearly fell asleep standing up.
Very few people can claim to have almost fallen asleep at a My Bloody Valentine gig.
It was funny. They were giving out earplugs to everyone. It was so loud, but there are magical moments in that music. I hope I have another chance to see them when I'm not so sleepy.
