Shaping the Future of Experimental Rock

Transmission 073: Interview with Michael Rother

Michael Rother is a German experimental musician and composer. He is known for his work as a founding member of the influential bands Neu! and Harmonia, as well as for his solo career. Rother was also briefly a member of Kraftwerk in the early 1970s. Born in 1950, Rother spent parts of his childhood in Munich, England, Pakistan, and Düsseldorf. These varied experiences exposed him to diverse musical traditions, including Pakistani street musicians, which may have influenced his later work.

In 1971, Rother formed Neu! with drummer Klaus Dinger. The duo released three albums in the 1970s that pioneered a repetitive, minimalist style sometimes called “motorik.” Rother later joined with members of Cluster to form Harmonia, releasing two studio albums in 1974 and 1975. Rother began his solo career in 1977 with the album “Flammende Herzen.” He has continued to release solo material and collaborations over the decades, including work with Brian Eno. His music often features layered guitar sounds, electronic elements, and driving rhythms.

How did your childhood experiences in places like Pakistan and England shape your musical style? Did the hypnotic rhythm of Pakistani music influence your style?

It’s very difficult to say how much impact my stay in England, and especially in Pakistan when I was between the ages of nine and 12, had on my later decision to start doing my own music. That’s a matter for psychological analysis. But I do remember being fascinated by the music I heard in Pakistan, particularly from local musicians walking the streets and playing in front of houses.

I didn’t understand the elements, having no knowledge of the tradition of Indian and Pakistani music. But it was fascinating in a hypnotic way; the music seemed to have no beginning and no end. Maybe that’s a link to this idea of an endless forward movement in music, which I then picked up with Neu about 10 years later. This is a possible explanation, not a scientific one. We are always shaped by the influences we’re exposed to.

My musical ears were already very active. I remember being very attracted to music. My brother, who was nearly 10 years older, brought some singles from Germany to Pakistan, which made me want to create a guitar out of a local instrument. This had to fail, but the emotionality of rock and roll and the twist sounds of Chubby Checker in 1960, and then the Apache song by a Swedish guitar player (later I found out the original was recorded by The Shadows) – still today, a beautiful example of guitar work – were influential.

My mother was a trained classical piano player, so I guess it’s in the family. After Pakistan, when we moved to Düsseldorf in 1963, the British music explosion hit us. That was fascinating for a teenager and a young German boy living in a very conservative, traditional musical landscape in Germany at the time. There was nothing like rock and roll or experimental music on radio or TV stations. The radical freedom of music by the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles fascinated me for many years before I decided to leave that musical tradition behind to develop my own musical identity, which had to be different and independent from Anglo-American musical traditions.

Why did you decide to leave Kraftwerk with Klaus Dinger?

The episode with Kraftwerk was very important for me. I didn’t know the band when I entered the Kraftwerk studio and started jamming with Ralf Hütter, who is now the last remaining member of the two main figures in Kraftwerk. For the first time in that jam, I realized that I was not alone with my feeling, my desire for music that was basically Central European in its roots, melodic harmonic approach, and minimalistic at the same time, different from the rock and pop music that was in the air everywhere.

It’s really strange. By pure chance, I met the only person, the only musician with whom I could communicate without words, just throwing these melodies and ideas back and forth. That led to my entry into the band Kraftwerk. The other people were listening, Florian Schneider and Klaus Dinger. We all exchanged phone numbers. We all had this common feeling.

When we played together, Ralf Hütter had left. So the music that Florian Schneider, Klaus Dinger, and I created live was sometimes very exciting. It was very simple, basic, and raw.

After a few months of some very good concerts and some not so great, we tried to record the second Kraftwerk album in the studio with Conny Plank, the producer. We were highly dependent on the situation, audience feedback, and our mood in the evening, as the music was primarily created on the spot. That transition didn’t work.

The transfer from a live environment into the sterile studio environment where there was no one giving you feedback, like an excited audience pushing you forward, was frustrating. It became clear to all three of us that this combination wasn’t working. It would probably have been different if Ralf Hütter had been in the band because with him I could have established a more harmonic, melodic basis for the music. But with only my guitar, Florian Schneider’s flute and sometimes electric violin, and Klaus Dinger’s amazing drum sounds, it was too little.

To be self-critical, it was logical for us to part ways, especially because there were always, unfortunately, some atmospheric battles with Florian Schneider. He was a fascinating musical mind, but also a rather spiky, edgy, unrelaxed human being. There were too many arguments, too many struggles, sometimes about nonsense.

So it was rather easy for Klaus Dinger and me to try and work as a duo, as we knew we had more in common musically. Luckily, Conny Plank was interested in recording with us, and in the same year, we recorded the first Neu! album in Hamburg. I guess that was also very fortunate for me. I think I had some vital turning points and was very fortunate with the decisions and what happened.

Your music has an aquatic and almost healing quality. How has nature influenced your sound?

That’s a very demanding question. You can guess or speculate about the influence of nature or any elements from the outside world. If you’re talking about Harmonia, which was created in the middle of Germany, in the countryside, a very green area right next to the river Weser – I loved the surroundings, watching the river, looking for kilometers down the valley to soft hills. That was an environment that I loved.

I guess it’s maybe a reflection of my own personality and at the same time, something that put me into a mood or encouraged me to record the kind of music that I did with Harmonia and later as a solo musician. If I try to imagine myself living in a cellar with no daylight and recording music at that time without any environmental influences, no bird sounds in the air, no long-distance views, just four walls and the music – maybe the music would have been similar, maybe even more intense because the necessity to create tranquility and beauty would have been even more pressing.

I’ve always been very interested in psychology, so these questions are not new for me. I think about them, but it’s not a mathematical equation. I have no precise answer of how much influence the environment has. I can only say for sure that I always enjoyed the beauty of the landscape. So if you are at ease with the surroundings and maybe at ease also in a partnership that enables you to focus your energy on music and art, and you don’t have to fight against demons that are causing problems and creating obstacles for your work – that’s helpful.

The decision to move to Forst to work with Harmonia also came with some changes. Harmonia was not so successful commercially. We were maybe artistically equally successful – that’s at least the impression I get in recent years. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the first Harmonia album, which came out on Record Store Day as a double vinyl with contributions by very well-known musicians and artists. Because it was so successful, it will be released as a double CD in October this year.

So this is a story that had commercial success with a long delay. In the ’70s, Harmonia music was impossible to sell to the audience. People were not ready. Artists like David Bowie and Brian Eno were listening to our music, as we found out when we met Brian Eno and talked to him. We didn’t know that before we heard it from him. That was commercially and economically a very challenging time. But I would not want to miss a single day of my collaboration with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius as Harmonia, because it inspired me in so many ways to create my solo music in later years.

How did you meet Roedelius and Moebius?

I think the first time I met Roedelius and Moebius was when I played with Kraftwerk in Hamburg at an auditorium of the university. They were the second band on the bill, Cluster. Of course, Kraftwerk was the more popular and famous band, but we were democrats. So before we went on stage, we talked backstage and said, “Who’s going to start? Do you want to start or should we start?”

Nowadays, in the commercial world, it’s quite clear that the main act comes later. But they said, “Oh no, you start, guys. We can hang out in the backstage and relax a bit.” It was a big mistake, as it turned out, because the audience went wild when we played as Kraftwerk. At a certain point, we said, “Okay, now we have to stop.” The audience didn’t want us to stop. They just kept on stomping and shouting “hurray, hurray.”

Then Cluster started playing and people came down from the steep auditorium. It felt dangerous. There was some kind of threat. Some people disconnected their speakers and I feared there would be violence, that they would be beaten. I think that didn’t happen, luckily, but it was something that impressed me incredibly.

The Cluster people also worked with Conny Plank. So we were always sort of in touch and also released on the Brain label. I remember one track that appealed to me where Roedelius played on a guitar, I think it was even maybe an acoustic guitar, four strings, open strings over and over again, just these four strings, like a repetition. Along with the world of electronic sounds, they also created wonderful sounds.

When Neu! was in a difficult situation – we had an invitation to play live from the British label United Artists for a tour, but Klaus Dinger and I as a duo couldn’t play live. We needed multi-track technology, and we didn’t know any suitable musicians. We tried two musicians but they didn’t really fit in with our world.

Then I remembered this track, it’s called “Im Süden” I think, on the second Cluster album. I thought maybe I should visit these guys and talk to them, maybe jam with them and find out whether they would be musically suited and willing to join Neu! on the tour, to enable me also to work on the guitar and contribute things that were impossible with just a drummer at the time.

So I took my guitar and drove to Forst, where Cluster were already living. I jammed with Roedelius, who was playing his electric piano. It was musical love at first sight, or first hearing, because the combination of his electronic piano patterns, endless repetition patterns, and my guitar enabled a completely new world of music for me.

Moebius was careful. He didn’t join in the jam, but just the experience of my jam with Roedelius made me think. The tour didn’t happen, but then I decided to move to Forst and to live with Roedelius and Moebius. We started the project Harmonia in 1973. And when Moebius joined us, sometimes this was magical music, though sometimes we let the audience wait for nearly two hours before we found something.

Because in the beginning, the idea was that one of us starts with a musical idea, and then the others just listen and join in if they have an idea to contribute. That was a very demanding approach for the audience, and also for the musicians. I remember one concert we did in Forst. It was, I think, the first live performance, because we played for friends in the place. There were maybe 10 people listening. I have a very clear memory of us – Roedelius, Moebius, and me – searching and searching for nearly two hours and not finding the magic. We kept trying different approaches, but nothing was working.

But after one hour and 55 minutes, we created the five minutes of the track “Ohrwurm” (you hear it on the first Harmonia album). For me personally, it is five minutes of pure magic, which you could not have created in the studio as a concept. You could have tried, but this was the result of the spark hitting us at the same time. If I listen to it today, I’m still amazed that Roedelius did electrifying things, Moebius added wonderful stuff, and my guitar wailed along.

So that was my experience with Harmonia. We started working and playing live with not much success because people didn’t have the patience. Letting people wait for musical connections for an hour or an hour and a half without finding things, people started talking and leaving. Not many people showed up to our concerts anyway, but I was still totally convinced of Harmonia. We struggled for three years.

We released the second album, “Deluxe,” in ’75, which was quite different from the first album. There was a musical direction, a development. In my view, both albums have their justifications. There’s special music on “Musik von Harmonia ’74,” the first album, but also great music on “Deluxe.” That album also failed commercially. Unfortunately, in ’76, Roedelius and Moebius lost hope.

There were struggles for musical direction, which are understandable and logical. If you have three artists with clear minds for what they want to achieve, it’s not one giving orders and the others following. It’s three artists with ideas that sometimes meet and make sense, and sometimes contrast and struggle.

The name Harmonia itself was also a joke. People thought at the time, “Oh, that’s such a boring name” because Harmonia was very old-fashioned and choirs or singing groups doing old folk music called themselves Harmonia. But in our case, it was quite different music. Moebius had a very special mind for irony, wordplay, and jokes. So we chose that name, and I think it was good. But people didn’t see it that way.

Nowadays, I’m happy when I go to Australia, the UK, China, Russia, Mexico – wherever I play, people are happy to hear “Deluxe” or “Dino” or other Harmonia tracks being played. It’s such a change. I mean, okay, it’s 50 years later, but people seem to have much more understanding for what we were trying to create back then. Maybe it’s better this way than the other way around.

You had the privilege of playing with two of the most influential drummers of all time: Klaus Dinger and Jaki Liebezeit. What were the key differences in their styles?

They were also very different in their personalities. Klaus Dinger was a very strong, powerful drummer, very determined, very energetic. Jaki Liebezeit was a magician at the drums. He was a very talented, skilled drummer who played with much ease and with incredible precision. He was a very soft-spoken person.

So there were huge differences, but it’s true, I had the privilege of working with these two drummers. I met Jaki Liebezeit when I played with Kraftwerk and Can played on the same bill. I remember being very impressed by Jaki Liebezeit’s playing. So when I started planning my first solo album in 1976 with Conny Plank, I approached Jaki Liebezeit and drove to Cologne to play him some of my ideas, some sketches. Luckily, he was very interested and available.

So we went to the studio together and it just worked so well with Jaki Liebezeit. But these two drummers really are two very different, hardly comparable personalities and drummers, which reflects, of course, in the way they play drums. There’s this one story which tells us a lot about Klaus Dinger’s determination.

Klaus loved the sound of broken cymbals, so he had these broken cymbals where pieces had fallen out. During one concert, he injured his hand because he hit one of the raw edges and blood was flying all over the stage, but he never stopped for a second. This was so impressive and of course terrifying, but really shows how Klaus was driven by his wish to perform and to be the musician that he was famous for.

Jaki Liebezeit, on the other hand, was a very careful person. He was gentle. There was a cat-like quality about Jaki Liebezeit. When he also came to record on my fourth solo album in 1980-1981, I had my own recording studio in Forst and it was amazing to see how precise his drumming was when I recorded two takes of his drums on top of each other. The small drift which created a very special effect on tracks like “Silberstreif” just shows you his amazing skills. It was very different working with Jaki compared to Klaus, but both definitely had their big qualities which enabled them to be so impressive with their musical work.

What role did Conny Plank play in the production of Neu! albums and how did his contribution shape your sound?

Conny Plank was an essential partner in the production team. He was not involved in composing the music or playing the instruments. In some other productions, he also played some instruments, I think for Cluster, maybe sometimes he played a trumpet, but that was not required of him for Neu!.

He was, I think, a unique character in the ’70s in Germany. He was like us, driven by this wish to create a new musical landscape. He was willing to take financial risks with us when we rented a professional recording studio in Hamburg. He put the same amount of money on the table, and we were able to record the first two Neu! albums in these rental studios thanks to Conny’s willingness to take financial risks with us.

But even more important were his qualities as a member of the production team, maybe sometimes also helping us overcome some difficult situations. And lastly, his ability to create soundscapes with little or no special sound creation tools. At that time, all he had at his disposal was a small tape machine, which he used for delay effects, and a reverb plate. All the special sounds that he created and the organization of all the instruments, the ideas we put on tape, were the result of a really impressive musical mind.

He had the memory of a conductor, I would say, to be able to identify over 10 minutes in “Hallogallo,” for instance, or “Für Immer,” where individual instruments had to be shown, presented at the top and then others put to the back. That way of working without computer aid was just the result of a very special musical mind with a clear ability to handle the mixing desk and the studio technology of the time.

In later years, when he had his own studio, he created some tools that enabled him to work even more efficiently in the studio environment. It’s fair to say that without Conny Plank’s contribution to our albums, the result would have sounded very different if we would have been able to create them at all.

So really, it is my joy and my duty to point out to everyone the importance of Conny Plank’s work for Harmonia, for Neu!, for Cluster, for Kraftwerk also. His legacy will stay with our music. We owe Conny Plank very much. I feel grateful for having worked with Conny Plank.

How did your collaboration with Brian Eno come about? And what was the experience like?

It was funny because nowadays it’s impossible to imagine how disconnected we were from what was happening around the world. There was no possibility of knowing that Brian Eno and David Bowie, for instance, were talking about our music, listening to our music. This only became known to us when we met Brian Eno in 1974. He came to Hamburg to see a Harmonia concert.

We were introduced and we talked, and he also joined us on stage for a little jam. We invited Brian to visit us in the Harmonia home in the countryside. For a while, that was the end of the story. We nearly forgot about him. I mean, not his music – we were very well aware of his music and we liked it.

But in ’76, when Harmonia had already stopped existing (we disbanded Harmonia in early summer of 1976), Brian called us in the summer and said, “Could I visit you now? Would it be fine for you?” We hesitated for a very short time, but then we didn’t want to turn him down.

So we invited him to come stay with us. He stayed for, I think, 11 or 12 days. It was a very special experience to chat with Brian. He was very much into certain theories and concepts. I was more interested in the practical exchange of musical ideas.

The important element was that it was actually only a visit and he brought a small synthesizer with him and some blank tapes, fortunately, which I could put on my four-track recorder. We didn’t have much money, so blank tapes were always in short supply. With Brian, we sometimes went to the studio only as a duo, then sometimes three people, sometimes all four of us were in the studio at the same time. We played around without pressure, without any real idea of recording or releasing the music.

It was just a collection of sketches. When he left, he wanted to return. That was the idea. He took the tapes with him. Luckily, I made a cassette tape, a rough mix of all the sketches. I think there were more than 30, 35 sketches, which we had just recorded on those blank tapes.

Many years later, Achim Roedelius visited Brian in London and found one of the tapes because they were considered lost. Brian didn’t know where they were, but Achim found one of the tapes. So we were able to release the first Harmonia and Eno version in the ’90s. For the release of the second version, which had three additional tracks, I found them on my cassette. The second version is now available on Grönland Records.

It just shows that there was so much musical material that we played with and just moved around and quickly took note of and then moved on, drank tea, went for walks, played ping pong. So it was very casual. It was a wonderful experience not to have the studio clock ticking and no pressure to be wonderful on the instrument. It was just the joy of exchanging musical ideas. That was a very special situation.

Did working in a psychiatric hospital as a conscientious objector influence your approach to music?

Oh, I don’t know. I think I already mentioned that as a 17 or 18-year-old, I was very interested in psychology. I even started studying it. When the military wanted me to serve, I refused and chose to work in a mental institute instead, serving nearly two years there.

It was a valuable experience, one of the most valuable of my life. At the time, people with mental handicaps and disabilities were usually kept out of public view in hospitals. On my first day, the boss took me and a few others around the entire hospital. It was one of the most difficult experiences of my life. Since then, I believe the situation for people with chronic disabilities and mental illnesses has improved.

Back then, it was terrible how patients who couldn’t be healed were kept. I don’t want to go into too many details, but it was frightening and challenging. In the end, it was the most valuable experience in my life. I’m not sure if there’s a direct line from there to my music, but it was the most important chapter in my early life.

And what are your favorite pieces of equipment and instruments central to your music?

Oh, I like to play music on all instruments that have special or beautiful sounds. This can be a pot, a ukulele, or a guitar. I started as a guitar player, and both electric and classical guitars have sounds that I find beautiful and are always close to my heart. When I play live, I use my electric guitar with humbucker pickups and a few electronic instruments to shape the sound. It’s a small fuzz box, a specially created fuzz box, some delays, and not too many other instruments.

Basically, I always keep my ears open for beautiful sounds and do not limit my choices. For practical reasons, I can’t have a stadium full of instruments. In Germany, I have many simple synthesizers, which sometimes sound silly, but they were used for the third NEU! album as well as Harmonia´s and my solo albums. The initially sterile sounds of pianos and synths of companies like Farfisa come to life when treated with delays, wah, equalizing, or fuzz.

The important lesson is that you can take nearly any sound and turn it into something interesting by treating it with unusual and extreme manipulations. The main work is finding these sounds and being aware when something special happens, sometimes by pure chance or accident. Keeping your mind and ears open for surprises and accidents is key.

And that’s part of the main work, really, finding the sounds and, when working, noticing when something special is happening. Not just moving forward at a fast pace, but being aware of elements that suddenly appear by pure chance, sometimes accidents, something you do without intention. But that’s part of the main artistic work, I guess, to keep your mind open and your ears open for surprises and for accidents.

Can you share any upcoming projects or collaborations?

With my partner Vittoria Maccabruni, who is also in the band, we are always working on new music whenever we have time. I’m currently talking to promoters and agents about concerts in the UK, Japan, and America, which will keep us busy. Whenever we have time, we enjoy working in the studio, and there will be more recordings. That’s what I can say for the moment.

Photos courtesy of Michael Rother
Michael Rother’s official site