|
De Morgen - What the hell did you do
during those eighteen years? |
| Ralf
Hütter - I have cycled a lot. We have also
been busy digitalising our music archive. Now with one fingertouch we are
able to produce all the sounds we recorded since the late sixties. For it
isn't so that tapes are playing during are concerts. Everything you hear
is one hundred percent live. |
| De
Morgen - The first time I saw Kraftwerk live, the stage looked
like the control room of a spaceship from Star Trek. Nowadays you are performing
with only four laptops. |
| Ralf
Hütter - When we started computers were as
big as a room, and still the possibilities were limited. These last years
these devices have not only become much more user-friendly, but also more
compact. I remember tours where we needed for every computer a separate
truck. Nowadays, in a matter of speaking, we can step into a little Trabant
and we put those laptops in our briefcase. That travels a lot easier. |
| De
Morgen - You once played with the idea to send your robots on
tour, so that you could go to the beach every day. I suppose that tomorrow
there will be people on the stage in Ancienne Belgique? |
| Ralf
Hütter - We will be coming ourselves, yes.
Although I still find that concept interesting (thinks: ) I was looking
for a way to go on tour without missing an etappe of the 'Tour de France'.
That seemed a valuable solution to me. There was only one disadvantage:
the lack of interaction between the synthesizers and us. You have to know:
we not only play the machines. The opposite is als true. |
| De
Morgen - What are you attracted to cycling? |
| Ralf
Hütter - There are a lot of similarities
between cycling and music. To start, you have to keep on to a certain rhythm,
otherwise you will stop. So you have to stay in balance. Also: the only
direction you can go during pedalling, is forward. That is the same way
it goes with composing. Next to it the progressing of the kilometers has
something repetitive and that aspect plays, as widely known, an important
role in pop music. I am cycling very often en for it is the perfect balance
between man and machine. One half cannot without the other. And furthermore
I am a big admirer of Jan Ullrich. By the way, his nickname is 'The Man
Machine', named after one of our old songs. I still find that a great compliment.
By the way, last year we were invited by Jean-Marie Leblanc, the organiser
of the Tour de France. Thanks to him we were able to experience a few important
etappes from a following car. And Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle was the driver,
a former cyclist that I have always admired a lot. That was a beautiful,
surrealistic moment. |
| De
Morgen - I heard you are a good amateur yourself. Do you think
you would be able to follow in the Tour? |
| Ralf
Hütter - I have done it. But on my own tempo,
of course, not in a competition. I am training regularly. The climbing of
l'Alpe d'Huez is the most beautiful thing existing. But since I followed
the real Tour de France so close, I now know for sure what I knew in the
past already: my condition is not really of that nature to be able to compete
with the profs. It is really another world, isn't it? |
| De
Morgen - But apparently a world, which fascinates you enough
to make a whole cd about. |
| Ralf
Hütter - Of course. Because there are many
spiritual accordances with what I am doing myself. That devotion, and also
that concentration. The will to come to a good result. The winding road
to the finish. Continuingly going up and down. It is very familiar. For
me cycling is more than a way of moving. It is an emotion. That is also
true for making music. |
| De
Morgen - The myth that Kraftwerk members are living like hermits
and rarely or never appear in public, is it true? |
| Ralf
Hütter - Iam afraid that it is true. We are
working on new music every day from nine to five, so there is not so much
time left to do other things. We never outsource anything and we are collaborating
on every aspects of a band like Kraftwerk. Florian and I we are putting
a lot of energy in the creation of videos, decoration and record sleeves.
That is all a vital part of our music. |
| De
Morgen - Do you regret that Kraftwerk has not released more records
during the last twenty years? |
| Ralf
Hütter - No, because we did a few short tours
regularly and the one cd we released in between still was a kind of best
of, but most of the songs on that album were revised. Having said this,
I believe that we will release new work more often in the future. I am aware
that we have exaggerated somewhat the last times (little laugh). |
| De
Morgen - So yet a feeling of guilt? |
| Ralf
Hütter - The point is that other bands have
it much more easy than Kraftwerk. The record a cd and that's it. We are
building most of our instruments ourselves and that is very time consuming.
We start from a concept, compose music around that and also we look after
the visual presentation. That is why it all goes slower. |
| De
Morgen - Aren't you sometimes nostalgic to the time that computers
were indeed heavy and big but also more unique? Today everybody has such
a thing in its home. |
| Ralf
Hütter - But that's something I find positive.
We never had the ambition to be elitary. It is a good evolution that today
computers are common everywhere. They are also not that vulnerable anymore.
When we went on tour in the seventies, we had to soundcheck twice a day.
Our computers were very sensitive to temperature changes and once the public
came into the concert hall, the place started to warm up and all our sequencers
went mad. I cannot say that I miss that period. With the laptops of today
we are able to play in the freezing cold. But also in the heat of Australia,
like we did last year. |
| De
Morgen - The music of Kraftwerk has become timeless, but also
time does not seem to get a grip on the band. On publicity pictures you
look like ageless robots. |
| Ralf
Hütter - That's a very conscious choice.
I am not making any difference between the packaging and the content. What
you see and what you hear is very closely related to each other. I am also
not convinced that the one thing can exist without the other. Probably a
lot of our music would lose its impact if we would stand on stage in jeans. |
| De
Morgen - You have been blamed often that Kraftwerk makes cold,
distant music. What do you think about that kind of criticism? |
| Ralf
Hütter - I agree that some of our songs sound
very cold, but it would be wrong to retract that argument to all our music.
In a song like 'Tour de France' there is for example a lot of melancholy.
We always try to hide a flow in our songs, an atmosphere that - in the case
of this cd - reproduces the emotion of the cyclists when they are cycling
through these breathtaking landscapes. We have tried to catch their joy
when they reach the top of the mountain, but also their suffering when they
reach exhaustion. We strive to cover all human emotions. Coldness is indeed
a part of it, that's true. |
| De
Morgen - Kraftwerk has had en enormous impact on the music of
today. Were you aware in the past that you were busy doing groundbreaking
things? |
| Ralf
Hütter - We had a vision: to make electronic
folk music. To become the Volkswagen of pop music: accessible to a big audience
but still innovating. Today we succeeded in that. I recently was in a club
in Detroit and there I heard a lot of Kraftwerk, while we wrote none of
those songs. It is nice being the basis of a whole new cultural movement. |
| De
Morgen - Do you know Señor Coconut, who recorded a complete
cd with salsa remakes of Kraftwerk-songs? |
| Ralf
Hütter - I have heard that one, yes. Some
of those songs were extremely funny. That project proves that the songs
are strong enough to survive in a completely other environment. I hear that
a lot of our songs are often covered, but I am not following it. But I still
go to nightclubs and discotheques. And as said before: sometimes I hear
things over there. But it is not that I am searching for it consciously. |
| De
Morgen - What kind of city was Düsseldorf when Kraftwerk started?
You once said that that city had an enormous impact on the music. |
| Ralf
Hütter - I grew up in an industrial city
of which a big part was destroyed. The whole environment was rebuilt and
that you can hear in the songs we wrote in that period. There was nothing,
so we sounded like we come from a kind of "niemandsland". |
| De
Morgen - That explains why Kraftwerk already worked with synthesizers
while the mind of the rest of the world still was in Woodstock. Like you
were living in an air bubble. |
| Ralf
Hütter - In a way it was. Because of the
war we did not have reference points anymore, so we had to start from scratch.
Around us new factories were built, a new industry was arising. The sound
we heard there inspired us to make this kind of music. Later we started
to design our own instruments, which could reproduce these sounds. In a
way nothing much has changed. I still like to walk on industrial terrains.
There I find most of my ideas. |
 |
| Interview
to Bart Steenhaut |
| Translation
to english by Ivo Peeters - Leuven - Belgium |
|
