The band who started it all
Kraftwerk are the band that have had more impact on electronic beats than any band before or since. The recent passing of founding member Florian Schneider saw obituaries written the world over that cited Kraftwerk as the main influencing force behind genres from hip hop to acid, house to breakbeat. The band’s percussionist during their most prolific and influential period was Wolfgang Flür and editor Andy Jones was lucky enough to interview him a few years ago to discuss the defining moments that started the electronic beats that have influenced so much of the music that we hear today.
“I wasn’t in search of them, they were in search of me,” says Flür recalling his first meeting with Kraftwerk’s founders Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider. “OK, maybe they were not especially after me but they were in search of a drummer. They always had good drummers that came from jazz backgrounds but they drummed too much for the band’s new minimalist music!”
At this time Kraftwerk’s music may have been minimal but it was not yet synthetic.
“When I joined the group there was nothing especially electronic,” remembers Wolfgang. “Ralf played a Farfisa and Hammond organ and Florian played a flute. He had an echo tape machine and amplification for effects but that was all. They had a broken drum set for me and I said: ‘I’m not playing that! We need a new kit.’
But they didn’t want to get one.”
“But then I saw a tiny beat box lying in the corner. It had only had Samba, Foxtrot and Beat 1 and Beat 2 presets but also some knobs to play the tones. I said: ‘wow, let’s put it through an amplifier, I can play it like that, by hand’. I thought: ‘this is something new, but I am a drummer, so we have to build something that a drummer would use.’ So I thought about sticks and round metal plates to make an electronic circuit to trigger the pads.”
“Anyway, they asked me three times to come and join the band so I said ‘only if we build that [electronic drum set]’. It took three days to build and we took it to a television studio in Berlin to play our first TV show together. We played
Tanzmuzik and all the TV cameras were on the drum machine and me! They’d never seen such a thing.”
With Wolfgang’s electronic beats, the band started to move more towards a totally synthetic sound, but Wolfgang claims that this was more by luck than judgement.
“I can’t remember that we made a single decision to do that. Really it started with the development of my drum pad board. Then we had a rehearsal at Conny Plank’s studio. Everyone who was in the business at the time including David Bowie went through that studio. Florian was very nervous and very excited because they had a little machine that looked like a home organ made from wood. I said, ‘what’s so special about it?’ and he said, ‘look at the knobs, the filters and all of that – it is a ‘synthe-siser’!’. I hadn’t even heard the name but he connected it and it was the first time I’d hear that fat analogue sound. That was the MiniMoog and we thought: ‘this is the next step’. First the drum machine, Ralf then had the MiniMoog and Florian then bought an ARP synthesiser.”
And suddenly Kraftwerk had a sound like no one else…
“We used to make our music in more of a pop song type of structure but everything was made with ‘computer music’. I think we were the first. I’ve not heard of any other group that used those instruments so early. They were brand new to everyone.”
So did they realise quite how new and groundbreaking their sound was?
“No, of course not,” says Flür. “We were young, shy and childish! We loved to construct things and we never thought we would get famous from that.”
“I said, ‘what’s so special about it?’ and he said, ‘look at the knobs, the filters and all of that – it is a ‘synthe-siser’!”