How did Krautrock happen?

germany kept it weird... some were deep underground like Hirscht Nicht Aufs Sofa, but I heard Krautrock in early Mouse On Mars

Conny Plank's Studio

Didn't a lot of the original success of the Krautrock scene have to do with the fact that it was a UK phenomenon? I guess that sounds very circular, but weren't some of the bands (Faust for example) popular in England and unknown or hated at home?

I always wondered if

2000 Light Years from Home by the Rolling Stones

was a secret influence on krautrock

the rhythm chugs in kraut ways kinda...and the swirls, the swirls

(lol, me saying SPK = krautrock.)

One word I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet in this thread: MINIMALISM. A lot of the main riffs of krautrock, if you're a musician, are really hard to avoid if you are consciously playing minimally. I guess this is what the VU contributed, and that's obvious. The Dream Syndicate bootleg recordings, which I'm not sure the krautrockers would have had access to, have a lot of similarities with a lot of this stuff, having shared an ideological foundation -- minimalism being a hot new current in influential classical musics at the time and LaMonte Young's fluxism being very much influenced by Dada and surrealism, which were much closer to home for the Germans.

And, yeah, I bet the Rolling Stones sounded really awesome to some stoned out Germans at the time! Their rhythm section had some almost-motorik moments before they went all hillbilly. The Stones, the Stooges and the Velvets were actually the only rock & roll bands (pre-kraut, i suppose i mean) who weren't dumb as rocks, but the Velvets get all the credit because they were the only ones pompous enough not to hide it. (they were probably the dumbest of the three, too)

The Stones, the Stooges and the Velvets were actually the only rock & roll bands (pre-kraut, i suppose i mean) who weren't dumb as rocks

!! Oh come on -- the Yardbirds and Beatles and Doors and Animals and Byrds and Beach Boys were as smart as your more primitive plants, at least.

So, nobody here has put forward the "trying to do Miles Davis but getting all the notes wrong" theory?

And how do the Godz fit into this? And Hapsash and the Coloured Coat? And Yoko Ono? And James Brown?

expanding on Andrew L.'s first dead-on thumbnail post

There's enough truth to the stereotype of Germans as hyper-efficient engineers to explain how their musicians weren't afraid of using technology to directly express themselves, unlike other countries where the electronics were usually deployed self-consciously, cerebrally or with an element of kitsch -- Germans had no problem identifying with the new machines & heard the cosmic music. Stockhausen was a huge public figure in the 60's, giving concerts & seminars everywhere (& had two members of Can for students, the earliest & most mainstream Krautrock group). German teenagers had an extra dose of revulsion & hatred for their parents' generation that gave the music even more of an edge. And though all major record labels were indiscriminately releasing weird things at that time, the German record labels were hungrily searching for a German correllative to the Beatles or the Beach Boys -- so things like Kraftwerk / Neu! / Faust were getting signed to majors to release bizarre debuts entirely on the basis of sounding different, no one knew what was going on

Faust is my favorite example of all of these threads -- most of the group were anarchic madmen, but with a journalist / record exec advocate, & most importantly a live-in engineer hired from Deutche Grammofon who built them a studio and captured every last freakout in high fidelity -- so they had not only the ability to space but the mentality to engineer the document

I posted this to another thread I can't find, but in 1996 I was chatting with Dieter Moebius and after the second beer I asked him 'What was it about Germany that allowed Krautrock to happen' and his instant response was 'You have to understand, we hated our fathers'

Dieter Morbius

xp

Also, certain memebers of Jefferson Airplane were rumored to have IQs approaching those of tree shews!

Seriously, though -- "Don't Worry Kyoko" Live Peace In Toronto came out in 1969; certainly some future German rockers must have heard those, right? Also wondering if "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly (a very repetitive 17 minutes, 1978) might have been an inspiration; I'm guessing there's a pretty good chance it may have been an actual hit in Krautland, given that at least two German disco acts (Disco Circus and 16 Bit) covered it in later days.

And speaking of German disco (which I swear somehow evolved out of Kraut-rock -- the liner notes to the first Silver Convention album offered clues* to that effect), Boney M actually put out an album and song called 10,000 Light Years in 1984 which I've always thought might be inspired by the Stones song.

* -- says the group "belongs to a new generation of artists who have broken with the established image of German music."

(Oops, Iron Butterfly 1968 not 1978, obviously)

First Silver convention LP 1975, btw (so it's unlikely that the new German "generation" they were claiming to be a part of contained other disco acts, since hardly any other disco acts existed it yet)

(And Airplane IQs = tree SHREWS, not shews.)

also posting this archival release, probably of interest to anyone reading this thread

http://www.nepenthe-music.com/catalog/humanbeing.html

xpost Czukay was a record geek and loved the J.B.'s & almost certainly heard those Yoko records, & Yoko's albums from "Kyoko" to Plastic Ono Band to Fly might as well be Krautrock albums.

also Can pretty much went disco themselves in their singles 1975 and after, so there's a case to be made

my car's right speaker is broken. on the radio the other week they played the vinyl stereo version of "In A Gadda Da Vida" & it was trippy as fuck because the drums were panned hard right except for part of the drum solo. It was one of those great musical moments for me.

MINIMALISM: OTM

along that line of thinking, with Germany's history of orchestral music, it may have easier for the members of the ensembles to stay minimal; more natural to play as though contributing to a score, rather than trying to fill out a song. I especially hear that in Neu!.

so no mention of Pink Floyd on this thread?

Weissensee predates Us and Them

xpost - i've got only a basic working knowledge of krautrock, but weren't there german bands doing stuff as/further out there than floyd's pyschedelic stuff around the same time? i'm trying to think what years "saucerful of secrets" or "set the controls" were made vs. the years can/popol vuh/TD etc starting putting stuff out

yeah, it's not like germany was that far behind the u.k. as far as acid rock and psych is concerned. the 60's german legacy of faroutness is pretty solid. BUT, the full flowering of german psych certainly occurred in the 70's. at a time when the u.k. and the u.s. had pretty much given up the acidic ghost. or at least any vast audience for the stuff had disappeared by the 70's. people didn't stop making the music. in germany it just seemed to flourish and mutate and become so many different tantalizing variations of sound and hybrids of sound just as other places were starting to get burnt out and decide to put on cowboy boots and relax.

which is why the old lie about hippie and acidrock being dead by 1968 has always been one of the fattest of lies ever told or sold. 1969 to 1973 is when things started to get REALLY good and REALLY weird all over the world. ANYTHING was possible and inspired invention was par for the course. until the sex pistols ruined everything.

you could say the same thing about a lot of south american countries and even the country of japan. the best stuff came later. maybe it just took them a little longer to get the drugs.

Not implying they were far behind, but I'd always though of Floyd as a pretty key influence on that stuff, always read Can referring to the Velvets and Floyd (and Stockhausen). Go back to Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive if you want.

My question: Where did krautrock go? What did it morph into and why? Just techno? Why did they lose interest in the rock part? Was krautrock as we know it, the bands we cite today, the german mainstream of the time? Or were neu, can, amon duul, popol vuh, faust, harmonia etc etc all one big underground thing? If so what was the mainstream? what were these bands relationships to each other? Besides the ones that shared members, did they all tour together?

ps

if CCR didnt invent the motorik beat noone did

"but I'd always though of Floyd as a pretty key influence on that stuff"

you are correct.

"Where did krautrock go? What did it morph into and why?"

prog and new age. people got sleepy.

xpost?

Peter Noone?

"Mrs Brown, you have a lovely HERO!"

prog and new age. people got sleepy.

people got OLD!

I'm glad xhuxk mentioned the Airplane and the Doors. The Doors' minimal hypnotism seems like it had to have been an influence. Plus, isn't it possible more folks in Germany were listening to the Doors than VU? Now, I'm not discounting VU's influence, but how popular were they in Europe? (I have not a clue.)

Also, I'm convinced the European release of the Great Society LP influenced a few future krautrock musicians. In fact, their version of "Sally Go Round the Roses" has the motorik groove...basically. It's even kinda Stereolab-like. Of course, this record probably didn't sell too well, but import copies can even be found in America. So it did "move some units."

As for the Airplane, what they were trying to do on After Bathing at Baxter's sounds like an inspiration on krautrock.

Where did krautrock go? What did it morph into and why? Just techno? Why did they lose interest in the rock part?

Well, I mentioned disco above. But I assume it also evolved into the early '80s Neu Deutsche Welle (Der Plan, Pyrolator, Ja Ja Ja) or however you spell it. And industrial music (from Einsturzende Neubauten and D.A.F. and Mekanik Destructiw Komandoh all the way to Rammstein, etc, with lots of Sprockets and Belgian newbeats in between.) And new age, even! It's not like German music just ended in the '70s..

Was krautrock as we know it, the bands we cite today, the german mainstream of the time? Or were neu, can, amon duul, popol vuh, faust, harmonia etc etc all one big underground thing?

The latter, I'm pretty sure, though there may have been some exceptions -- Kraftwerk must have had actual German hits, right? Anyway, there are so many huge bands in Germany that nobody in the West knows about -- from Puhdys to BAP to whoever, all these bands I used to ignore in record stores in Frankfurt and Mainz and Bad Kreuznach in the early '80s -- and I've always assumed they were they (and their '70s predecessors) were the German mainstream. Though it's possible I'm wrong. Also: Ute Lemper!

I don't think I've ever heard Harmonia, by the way. And I've barely heard Popul Vuh. Also, when I was in Germany back then, I was buying old used LPs by Amon Duul, Can, Faust, and Kraftwerk, but I swear I never even heard of Neu! until people like Sonic Youth started namedropping them several years later. Weird.

I also never heard anybody call it "Kraut-rock" then, by the way! In my heavy metal book, which came out in 1991, I call the genre "improvise freely and babble Krishna nonsense atop an obsessive bongo groove unidentified-flying-rock," and I include the Godz, Yoko, the Chambers Bros, and Hapshash and the Coloured Coat along with Can, Faust, and Amon Duul. I didn't know it had a real genre name; maybe people had long been calling it that in the UK or Germany, but if so, I had never even come across the term.

Faust and their first record were tagged krautrock by the Brit press - I think that was the initial genesis of the term

i wrote this in 1999 (for chuck's newspaper) and i think i made most of it up, but i did happen to mention vu and pink floyd there at the beginning:

"This is where the trouble starts. Because in Germany at the end of the '60s, there was a seemingly endless number of engineering students looking to break into the music biz. Taking their cue from early VU and Pink Floyd, and serious as a heart attack when it came to psychedelic gnome worship, bands like Can, Faust, Amon Düül, and Ash Ra Tempel held rock'n'roll as alleged intellectual pursuit to its highest standard. Rolling jazz, classical, raga, electronic, folk, and sheer ear-splitting cosmic sloppery into one big Teutonic ball, the Krauts made music for really pissed-off hippies.

If you could still hear an echo of Wa-Watusi backbeat in Lou Reed's VU output, the Germans made sure any such links to rock's golden years were wiped off their boots. Germany as a country was all about forgetting the past and not asking Daddy what he did during the war, so why not make noises that beforehand had only been heard in space and in Karlheinz Stockhausen's fever dreams?"

I think it was in the liner notes to a cd reissue of Tangerine Dream's first album (Electronic Meditation) where I read the story about TD forming because one of the TD dudes procured Pink Floyd's sound system and they may as well call up some bros and JAM IT OUT.

I'm just as interested in all the great swedish and dutch and finnish hippie jams, too. Why was Bo Anders Persson driven to go from Tunis to India in Fullmoon on Testosterone?

chuck is OTM re: industrial music etc (although I hear a lot more of the psych-y side of Krautrock in British industrial and post-punk bands e.g. Throbbing Gristle, Pink Dots). Also in the late '70s punk helped to fill the cultural void that the Krautrock bands were trying to fill.

Well, I was referring to how Kraut-rock evolved into later German stuff. (If you wanna get non-German, you can clearly start with Public Image Ltd. and the Fall and move on from there. But I'm pretty sure the question had to do with what the music turned into at home, or did Krauts just abandon it.)

Where did krautrock go? What did it morph into and why? Just techno? Why did they lose interest in the rock part?

I think that some of that improvising, experimental attitude carried over into the German free-jazz and non-idiomatic improv scene. People like Peter Brotzmann, Alex Von Schlippenbach, the FMP crowd, etc.

Though I guess some of that actually pre-dated or was contemporary to the Krautrock scene, so maybe it's not correct to speak of it as an outgrowth.

Who were the first krautrock revivalists? The Legendary Pink Dots? Thin White Rope was much later.

like chuck said, PIL.

and PIL were way early considering that there were still people in germany making actual krautrock in 1978. they were pre-revival-revivalists.

Wire were pretty early, too. And Swell Maps weren't far behind.

Revival might not even be the right word, no?

by the early 80's there were loadds of bands working off of krautrock though. i was just listening to that hunters & collectors album that they did with conny plank the other day. from,like, 1983. and they are a minor example. (though they did name their band after a can song which is nice)

only Tangerine Dream & Kraftwerk had continued commercial success, and mostly by abandoning everything they had in common with the other bands, Can struggled on with disco singles, Brain and all the other fringe labels dried up and stopped putting things out. Some of the other bands threatened to go mainstream, that's the way I hear the inclusion of lyrics on Neu! 75 / Harmonia Deluxe & La Dusseldorf, and the clips of them playing their singles live on German TV shows. Klaus D. Mueller's pretty dismissive 'insider' account hasn't been linked yet on this thread: http://www.furious.com/perfect/krautrock.html

I'd recommend Hirsch Nicht Aufs Sofa's Im Schatten Der Möhre as a signpost of where the ethos was by 1987 i.e. way underground. Lots of great music - Metabolismus, Asmus Tietchens (once he went industrial), Doc Wir Mirran, but it's less about the cosmic rock, more about alienated weird urban industrial, so a smaller audience

so have other folks seen that BBC4 documentary on krautrock? it's typically limited and the ending is not satisfactory at all, but there are lots of good interview segments and there is much speculation on this thread question.

one other thing i learned from the documentary = michael rother is extraordinarily well-preserved. he is a good-looking gentleman. also appealingly soft-spoken.

the guys from faust are nuts. i've always thought that band was a bit overrated compared to some of the other german bands of the time. but what do i know.

Motorik seems to have so infused music in this decade, I gotta wonder if the next decade will produce a Nickleback of motorik.

... we've already got one, Kasabian

Well you just got me to listen to a band I'd been ignoring. Can't wait for the North American derivative. I'm thinking the singer should sport a rat tail.

I've been ignoring them as well but I have heard it said they have Krautrock influences - maybe via Primal Scream, rather than directly. Personally I think Primal Scream aren't far off being the Nickelback of Motorik but people seem to take them seriously, for some reason.

primal scream are the pearl jam of motorik

discussing motorik and the velvets and nobody's mentioned Sister Ray?

Sorry, I can't get past the krautrock cookies. Mmmmm.

http://bigozine2.com/features06/DTkrautrock.html