MICHAEL ROTHER & FRIENDS CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF NEU!

VENUE CLAPHAM GRAND, LONDON DATE 03/11/2022

Forty years ago, the Rolling Stones created a media frenzy by celebrating their 20th anniversary. Yet, as has been evidenced since, age is no barrier to playing music and nor does that music have a particular sell-by date, not least when it’s as influential as that created by Michael Rother and his late partner Klaus Dinger in the volatile yet fruitful partnership that was Neu!

Alumni of an early incarnation of Kraftwerk, the seismic work they created across just three albums left its mark on both Brian Eno and David Bowie, and the resurgence of the psychedelic underground over the last decade owes a huge debt of gratitude to Neu! Eschewing blues-based influences in favour of Dinger’s insistent motorik beats and Rother’s harmonised guitar playing with melodies rooted in a Central European sensibility, the pair made good on their name.

Little surprise, then, that the mood inside the Clapham Grand is one of celebration for half a century of genuinely unique and groundbreaking music. A palpable sense of excitement ripples through the crowd when the 72-year-old Rother walks on stage with guitarist Franz Bargmann (formerly of Neu! disciples Camera) and latter-day Neu!/La Düsseldorf drummer Hans Lampe. Grinning with obvious delight, Michael Rother takes a strum of his Les Paul and there it is: that glorious fuzz sound that’s uniquely his own. Lampe launches into the celebrated motorik beat created by Dinger and the anthemic Neuschnee lifts off and propels ever forward.

What’s pleasing to note is that

Rother isn’t an artist given to overly self-reverential sentiments. As he acknowledged to Prog in 2022, the abundance of modern technology allows him to reach the sounds that

Neu! strived for in a live environment. So it is that, by taking a brief detour into the music he made with Cluster under the Harmonia banner, Deluxe (Immer Wieder) is given a widescreen makeover.

And what with this being a grand celebration, it stands to reason that special guests will make an appearance. Augmenting the trio for a colossal reading of E-Musik is New Order’s own metronome Stephen Morris on additional electronic percussion and – somewhat bizarrely – Paul Weller, who tonight takes on the sobriquet of ‘Der Modvater’. And while the former looks entirely at home, the latter takes some relaxing into a one-chord groove. Elsewhere, Rother’s musical and life partner Vittoria Maccabruni adds new vocals to the thumping Negativland that rises, falls and rises again.

Fifty years on, Neu!’s hypnotic grooves remain unbroken.