Thoughts on Kraftwerk, the death of Florian Schneider & art becoming life
The death of Florian Schneider closes a chapter, making what went before all the more important.
Better cultural commentators than me will write detailed appreciations of the man who teamed up with Ralf Hütter to form the band that I’d listen to more than any other. This is just a personal missive to mark a moment.
It was a sunny afternoon in 1978 when a 16 year-old lad went down to the local card shop that also sold records and bought a 7" single called ‘The Robots’ that he’d read about in Sounds. An hour or so later he took it back, lied that he’d made a mistake buying ‘the new Kraftwerk record’ for someone else, got his money back and bought the album instead.
Down the years he loved to wind people up by saying Kraftwerk were more important than The Beatles. It was fun because even though he would later become a huge Beatles fan himself, it was still true.
In common with most of ‘the greats’ The Beatles would prove to be a beautiful musical cul-de-sac versus Kraftwerk’s endless open road.
Kraftwerk are the intersection between history and prophesy, a thread between science and heart. This makes the music of Kraftwerk a permanent liminal state. Always becoming and never arriving. The perfect companion through a life spent listening to, thinking about and sometimes trying to make music while also trying to make sense of the world.
It was while listening to Autobahn on an actual autobahn that I realised what art is, if you understand art as a processed reflection of actuality.
Aside from art, it was engineering. Literally. They engineered their own instruments.
It was cold and warm all at once. Four pasty-looking German blokes, who didn’t move about much at all (who sometimes hilariously substituted their physical selves for dummies to make a point about their insignificance contrasted with the music. I guess) inspired an entire genre loosely described as dance music.
They were also quite mad. Google the stories about their studio phone, their obsession with cycling, everything about them.
It’s all art becoming life.
Although it felt like a gut-punch to learn of Florian Schneider’s death it wasn’t as if I could even have picked him out in a photo of the band. Even after 42 years of rarely going more than a couple of weeks without listening to Kraftwerk, it wasn’t personal in the usual way that things are personal. It’s just that I’d introjected this sound to such an extent that it now partly defines me and his death draws a line under that.
I missed the 1981 tour for Computer World for the most ludicrous of reasons. It wasn’t until October 2013, at Evoluon in Eindhoven, that I actually saw a Kraftwerk live performance and by then Florian Schneider had left the band.
So now we know there will never be any more music made by Ralf and Florian together, which makes what there is exponentially more important. It feels like part of life is now preserved in aspic.
A fond memory is of driving east through Germany, toward Leipzig, in October 2017. Kraftwerk’s Neon Lights providing a perfect soundtrack for a phone video clip shot by my passenger. It felt like being in something made by Florian and Ralf. Here it is.
Postscript: thanks to Michael Scanlan for permission to use his tattoo as the featured image in this post.
