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# It's more fun to compute | 0:00:34 | 0:00:35 | |
# It's more fun to compute | 0:00:38 | 0:00:39 | |
# I program my home computer | 0:01:21 | 0:01:25 | |
# Beam myself into the future | 0:01:25 | 0:01:28 | |
# I program my home computer | 0:01:57 | 0:02:01 | |
# Beam myself into the future... # | 0:02:01 | 0:02:03 | |
'The comment that Kraftwerk are more influential, more important,' | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
more beautiful than the Beatles could ever be | 0:02:25 | 0:02:27 | |
is becoming less and less odd | 0:02:27 | 0:02:29 | |
and more and more exactly what we always thought it would be - | 0:02:29 | 0:02:32 | |
the truth. | 0:02:32 | 0:02:33 | |
In the late '60s and early '70s, | 0:02:38 | 0:02:39 | |
when Kraftwerk were striving to find a new artistic voice | 0:02:39 | 0:02:43 | |
in the pop-cultural vacuum of post-war Germany, | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
few would have predicted that these reclusive Rhineland experimentalists | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
would become one of the most influential pop groups of all time. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
But that is exactly what happened. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:56 | |
Painting on a refreshingly blank canvas, they created | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
emotional electronic music that fused commercial pop | 0:02:59 | 0:03:02 | |
with the Avant Garde, an industrial folk music | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
with global appeal that predicted what music would sound like | 0:03:05 | 0:03:08 | |
and the world would look like in the Digital Age. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
Kraftwerk's influence has grown with every passing year and now, | 0:03:34 | 0:03:38 | |
45 years later, they've been embraced by the art world, | 0:03:38 | 0:03:42 | |
their Gesamtkunstwerk celebrated in elaborate 3D concert seasons | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
at iconic art spaces in New York, Dusseldorf, London, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
Sydney and Tokyo. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
The most apt of these events took place in the former | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
power station at London's Tate Modern. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:56 | |
Eight nights sold out in minutes, | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
with ticket demand crashing the servers, and the public | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
and critical hysteria confirming their status as a work of art. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
With over 100,000 disappointed fans stuck outside in the cold, | 0:04:05 | 0:04:09 | |
our cameras were invited in by the group to capture world-exclusive | 0:04:09 | 0:04:13 | |
impressions of their sensational show for this film - | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
Kraftwerk - Pop Art. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:17 | |
Putting them in a gallery or a museum is utterly appropriate, | 0:04:19 | 0:04:23 | |
because they are, in a way, living sculptures, they are an installation. | 0:04:23 | 0:04:28 | |
They are an installation that involves a commentary on pop music, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
a commentary on show business. | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
But that's not all that it is. What it is mostly | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
is a fascinating comment on reproduction, on what | 0:04:36 | 0:04:41 | |
happens to a work of art when it becomes a mass-produced object. | 0:04:41 | 0:04:46 | |
It's got all those elements in it. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:48 | |
Just the whole aesthetic completely fits, not only the space - | 0:04:48 | 0:04:52 | |
the power station, turbine hall of Tate Modern - but they've | 0:04:52 | 0:04:56 | |
influenced so many visual artists that we've worked with. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
It's sort of a consecration to actually be allowed in | 0:04:59 | 0:05:04 | |
the inner sanctum of curated art, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:08 | |
because it's an admission that what they do is actually timeless | 0:05:08 | 0:05:13 | |
enough and representative enough of our culture that it | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
should really merge with, say, visual works, for the most part. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:22 | |
The next thing that comes in to the Tate Modern is Roy Lichtenstein | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
and that's the world where they belong. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:27 | |
They've had that much an impact on cultural thought, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:31 | |
on people making art, on musicians making art. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:35 | |
They are beyond just playing a venue. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
Marc Camille Chaimowicz, | 0:05:38 | 0:05:39 | |
an artist who is in our Bigger Splash exhibition | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
at the moment, has used their music and been inspired by them. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
Mark Leckey, who won the Turner Prize a few years ago, | 0:05:45 | 0:05:47 | |
also cites them as an influence. | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
Michael Clark, the choreographer, | 0:05:49 | 0:05:51 | |
who has always worked across disciplines, loves their music. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:55 | |
There are many. I mean, so many artists wanted tickets | 0:05:55 | 0:05:58 | |
to come and see them here. | 0:05:58 | 0:05:59 | |
# Interpol and Deutsche Bank | 0:06:28 | 0:06:32 | |
# FBI and Scotland Yard | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
# CIA and KGB | 0:06:36 | 0:06:39 | |
# Control the data memory | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
# Business | 0:06:43 | 0:06:45 | |
# Numbers | 0:06:45 | 0:06:47 | |
# Money | 0:06:47 | 0:06:49 | |
# People | 0:06:49 | 0:06:51 | |
# Business | 0:06:51 | 0:06:52 | |
# Numbers | 0:06:52 | 0:06:54 | |
# Money | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
# People | 0:06:56 | 0:06:57 | |
# Interpol and Deutsche Bank | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
# FBI and Scotland Yard | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
# CIA and KGB | 0:07:35 | 0:07:39 | |
# Control the data memory | 0:07:39 | 0:07:42 | |
# Communication. # | 0:07:42 | 0:07:45 | |
Kraftwerk's show actually is a real show, | 0:07:45 | 0:07:47 | |
but it doesn't rely on the cliches. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:49 | |
There's something about the standing still that's very | 0:07:49 | 0:07:51 | |
fascinating as well, as a distillation of performance, | 0:07:51 | 0:07:54 | |
because the corny movements in rock, the holding of the guitar | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
that way, the thrusting of the groin that way, the shaking of the head | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
and the swirling of the microphone is ultimately ridiculous and | 0:08:02 | 0:08:07 | |
monotonous and pointless, that I'd rather think, I think, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:10 | |
in the end, see the distillation to the stillness, | 0:08:10 | 0:08:12 | |
with all that going on around them. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:14 | |
But it is performance, you know, and it is transfixing. | 0:08:14 | 0:08:18 | |
That was a really important thing for us, | 0:08:18 | 0:08:19 | |
was the visual aspect of what they're doing, | 0:08:19 | 0:08:21 | |
which is becoming more and more important for them. | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
And they've put so much work into the visual 3D show as part of this. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:30 | |
It took years to make it work properly, | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
to make the robots work, to make all those things work. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:34 | |
The technology has come to the point where it can get better and better. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:38 | |
So it's a show, it's a concept that can continue to develop. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
I think that's what drives them, I think the fascination of how | 0:08:41 | 0:08:43 | |
far they can go with that technology. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:46 | |
Kraftwerk came into being when Ralf Hutter met Florian Schneider | 0:08:47 | 0:08:51 | |
on an improvised-music course at Dusseldorf Conservatory in 1968. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:55 | |
Early incarnations of the band included a live drummer | 0:08:55 | 0:08:58 | |
and a guitarist who went on to form Neu! | 0:08:58 | 0:09:00 | |
But in the flourishing | 0:09:00 | 0:09:01 | |
German music scene of the day, the band with which they had most | 0:09:01 | 0:09:05 | |
in common were classically-inspired electro experimentalists, CAN. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
The two acts jammed together at an art gallery, | 0:09:09 | 0:09:12 | |
and their first official concert together was a freeform, | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
televised youth show from a youth club in Unna in 1970, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:19 | |
before Kraftwerk had released a single album. | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
SHE SCREAMS | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
The influential British rock press lumped together the many and various | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
German bands of that era under a quirky title that gave no hint | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
of how revered and influential many of them would be in decades to come. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:01 | |
There's this whole movement of, you know, | 0:12:03 | 0:12:07 | |
the Krautrock, or whatever they used to call it, | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
between Guru Guru, Ash Ra Tempel, Neu!, Faust, CAN and all that. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:13 | |
And I was into all that back in those days. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
It was a very different view of that German music. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
For various reasons it was given a slightly affectionate, | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
patronising name, the Krautrock thing. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
RAW ROCK MUSIC | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
They still seemed to come out of the | 0:13:47 | 0:13:48 | |
Interstellar Overdrive end of Pink Floyd. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:50 | |
They still seemed hippy. They still seemed not what they became. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:54 | |
We obviously filter the whole idea of Kraftwerk now | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
through what they've become. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:06 | |
But there were a few years where they were not yet that | 0:14:06 | 0:14:09 | |
and they were becoming it. They were always "becoming". | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
ENGINE REVS | 0:14:22 | 0:14:24 | |
# Autobahn... # | 0:14:24 | 0:14:31 | |
The first impact with Kraftwerk was I guess, for me, seeing the sleeve | 0:14:31 | 0:14:35 | |
to Autobahn, because that was a revelation, in a way. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
Because then they'd distilled lots of things down to just | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
a kind of impression of something | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
and seemed, suddenly, very modern. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:49 | |
# Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn | 0:15:00 | 0:15:03 | |
# Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn. # | 0:15:03 | 0:15:06 | |
Kraftwerk finally crystallised conceptually in 1974 on Autobahn, | 0:15:10 | 0:15:14 | |
their fourth album. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:15 | |
The majestic 22-minute title track, featuring lyrics for the first time, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:19 | |
was a disco hit in America, and the sleeve's simple modernist graphics | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
signalled a clear visual identity that Ralf and Florian | 0:15:23 | 0:15:26 | |
were developing with art school collaborator Emil Schult. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:30 | |
Design guru Neville Brody, now a lecturer at the Royal College of Art | 0:15:34 | 0:15:38 | |
in London, was the most influential graphic designer of the 1980s. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
His role as art director of style bible The Face magazine, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:46 | |
began with his 1982 layout of a Kraftwerk interview. | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
He remembers the impact of their visuals most clearly. | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
Autobahn is an interesting example where the record cover | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
becomes something far more semiotic, | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
it's a sign that's being transposed from one purpose to another. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:08 | |
And it's sort of saying that pop music doesn't necessarily have to be | 0:16:08 | 0:16:11 | |
self-referential any more. | 0:16:11 | 0:16:13 | |
It can look at other ideas in society. | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
Most of their work on covers | 0:16:15 | 0:16:17 | |
revolved around using themselves as part of their own brand image | 0:16:17 | 0:16:23 | |
and not taking it too seriously. | 0:16:23 | 0:16:25 | |
The cover of Trans Europe Express | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
was a subversive slap in the face of rock chic. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:38 | |
In the year of punk, Hollywood black-and-white glamour | 0:16:38 | 0:16:41 | |
photos show the group in pseudo-period settings | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
and poses, while Emil Schult's affectionately kitschy colour | 0:16:43 | 0:16:47 | |
poster has them looking like city gents out for Sunday lunch | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
in a country restaurant, a diamante music-note brooch on Florian's lapel | 0:16:50 | 0:16:55 | |
the only indication that they are not, in fact, chartered accountants. | 0:16:55 | 0:16:58 | |
# We are showroom dummies... # | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
They started to build a connection between Dadaism, | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
constructivism and modern music. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
The Man Machine sleeve that Kraftwerk did was very much | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
influenced by the look and feel of Russian constructivism | 0:17:24 | 0:17:28 | |
and it was born out of the idea that the future would be | 0:17:28 | 0:17:33 | |
built by engineers and scientists, and that, in fact, our faith | 0:17:33 | 0:17:38 | |
in engineering was what was going to bring us to Utopia. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
So, it was a kind of Utopian idea. | 0:17:42 | 0:17:44 | |
It was extremely experimental. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
It was a lot of angles, | 0:17:46 | 0:17:49 | |
very strong typography, which eventually ended up | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
in a kind of a Bauhaus space, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:54 | |
which then influenced everything we do. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
Constructivism was very engaging, it was very powerful. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
And the prime influence within constructivism | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
was a man called Alexander Rodchenko. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
And the Kraftwerk covers, at the early stages, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:23 | |
very much related to a kind of Rodchenko way of looking. | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
So there was a kind of heroic workers' ethic. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
The workers were also going to help build the future, the strong use | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
of red and black which were, of course, the Communist colours... | 0:18:35 | 0:18:38 | |
Red and black were also the colours of a lot of | 0:18:38 | 0:18:41 | |
fascistic movements within the 20th century. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:44 | |
So Kraftwerk were playing on that middle ground, to be honest - | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
you know, where does heroics become self-defeating? | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
So something that's democratic becomes dictatorial. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:54 | |
The scope of the way of thinking that Kraftwerk had within | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
record covers was quite radical. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
It actually lead, I think, | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
to a lot of, certainly the early punk covers | 0:19:20 | 0:19:22 | |
and the early New Wave covers. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:24 | |
Factory Records were clearly influenced by this, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:27 | |
as was the early work of Malcolm Garrett. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
So you have Autobahn as this very simplistic statement. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:34 | |
Autobahn was radical at the time. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:37 | |
There was no other record covers like this. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:39 | |
Autobahn won Kraftwerk new fans, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
and David Bowie, the latter touring Europe in a vintage Mercedes | 0:19:49 | 0:19:53 | |
playing Autobahn non-stop | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
and telling everyone that Kraftwerk were his favourite band, an act | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
of patronage that forever changed their status with the rock press. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
David Bowie, in the '70s, was like your Google search at the time. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
Whatever David Bowie mentioned was therefore where you went. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
Bowie had altered his trajectory | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
explicitly because of Kraftwerk, | 0:20:13 | 0:20:15 | |
and that was an incredible, almost | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
an advertising campaign for Kraftwerk, if you like. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
A commercial endorsement | 0:20:20 | 0:20:22 | |
and a sense that we now all | 0:20:22 | 0:20:24 | |
wanted to find out the history | 0:20:24 | 0:20:26 | |
of this incredible group that had | 0:20:26 | 0:20:28 | |
influenced the most extraordinary | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
period of David Bowie's life. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
# ..Radiophone... # | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
RADIO STATIC | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
To leave the daytime free for cycling, | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
Kraftwerk worked night shifts, clocking in at their legendary | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
Dusseldorf Kling Klang Studio like workers at a sound factory. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:06 | |
The albums they produced there sounded like nobody else, | 0:21:06 | 0:21:09 | |
partly because they had challenged technicians to develop new | 0:21:09 | 0:21:11 | |
instruments for them, equipment not available to anyone else. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
And the yearning, romantic beauty of the music | 0:21:32 | 0:21:34 | |
they created with that equipment shattered the strongly held | 0:21:34 | 0:21:37 | |
misconception of electronic music as emotionally frigid. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
Ideologically, the wood of the blues | 0:21:46 | 0:21:49 | |
and therefore rock was where authenticity lay. | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
And somehow, there was still, which is weird, | 0:21:52 | 0:21:56 | |
a troubled response to machines. | 0:21:56 | 0:22:00 | |
There was somehow soul in holding a wooden piece of instrument | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
and somehow soullessness in having a machine. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:07 | |
But I always felt that it was almost the opposite, that it emphasised | 0:22:07 | 0:22:11 | |
and framed and illuminated the soul that was in Kraftwerk. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
That tenderness, that real humanity. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:17 | |
Because they were prepared to deal with machines | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
and use machines to distribute their ideas and information. | 0:22:19 | 0:22:22 | |
They were extraordinary geniuses at melody | 0:22:22 | 0:22:26 | |
and it was the melody that ultimately carried through the soul. | 0:22:26 | 0:22:29 | |
Kraftwerk weren't the first, but we consider them to be the first, | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
to understand the potential of electronic machines | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
and the studio itself and the combination of the two things, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
to really create popular music. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
And of course, everything that happened | 0:22:47 | 0:22:49 | |
since Kraftwerk has been a continuation of that. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:51 | |
You take, say, their closest rivals in terms of iconic presence, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
we would say the Beatles. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:55 | |
Well, the Beatles don't really influence anyone. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
They influence Elton John and George Michael and | 0:22:58 | 0:23:00 | |
Take That and maybe ELO, at a pinch. | 0:23:00 | 0:23:01 | |
But they don't really influence anything. | 0:23:01 | 0:23:03 | |
It's almost like that was a juddering halt already, to an extent. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
Whereas Kraftwerk constantly release information. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:09 | |
They influence the Avant-Garde end, | 0:23:09 | 0:23:11 | |
the area that went way out | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
and even all the way up to glitch and it all started to disintegrate | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
and even the harder, stranger areas of dubstep. | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
But you also hear it in Kylie Minogue and the popular mainstream. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:25 | |
You hear the ghost of Kraftwerk everywhere. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:28 | |
And that's another wonderful element of Kraftwerk, | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
they haunt the imagination, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
they haunt the world. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:34 | |
As the light goes out now and you look out, you kind of see | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
a visual representation of the sound of Kraftwerk. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
You know, for me, the soundtrack you would use to represent this | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
is going to be Kraftwerk. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
# Neon lights | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
# Shimmering neon lights | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
# And at the fall of night | 0:23:54 | 0:23:59 | |
# This city's made of light | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
# Neon lights | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
# Shimmering neon lights | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
# And at the fall of night | 0:24:12 | 0:24:16 | |
# This city's made of light. # | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
Kraftwerk's nerdy commitment to freshness meant they'd | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
produced some wonderful sounds. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:28 | |
Kraftwerk were the poets of that, in a way. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
Exquisite novelty in what sound could do and be | 0:24:31 | 0:24:36 | |
and how seductive it could be. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:38 | |
Kraftwerk's genius, in a way, was not just giving it the rhythm | 0:24:47 | 0:24:51 | |
that then consoled people, and they understood that it was | 0:24:51 | 0:24:55 | |
attractive because there was this wonderful rhythm - | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
but they also applied beautiful melodic sense, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
that wasn't just an understanding of melody within popular music | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
or rock music but an understanding of melody that went back centuries. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:10 | |
And in that sense, I always felt that they were classical musicians | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
whose genius was to understand that popular music | 0:25:13 | 0:25:17 | |
and the way it used the studio was actually where | 0:25:17 | 0:25:20 | |
the new developments were taking place in music. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:23 | |
Kraftwerk understood that the studio was as important an instrument | 0:25:23 | 0:25:28 | |
and an arrival of an instrument as the piano was in Mozart's time. | 0:25:28 | 0:25:32 | |
We're not only looking at one of the seminal acts in the history | 0:25:34 | 0:25:38 | |
of electronic music, but, you could say, | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
arguably one of the most powerful, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:43 | |
inspiring ones and therefore probably one of the most likely | 0:25:43 | 0:25:48 | |
to become as legendary | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
as Mozart and Bach, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
some of those composers | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
whose work and music we still revere hundreds of years later. | 0:25:56 | 0:26:01 | |
I see that now. Undoubtedly. | 0:26:01 | 0:26:05 | |
Without any reservation. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:06 | |
# Trans Europa Express. # | 0:26:20 | 0:26:23 | |
Trans Europe Express, | 0:26:47 | 0:26:48 | |
a mighty groove that emerged from a jam session like a train | 0:26:48 | 0:26:51 | |
crashing through the studio, saw the percussive hardening | 0:26:51 | 0:26:54 | |
of their sound, and became a pivotal record in the birth of DJ culture. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:59 | |
Trans Europe Express was the only record that Grandmaster Flash | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
would play uninterrupted and, visiting a loft club in New York, | 0:27:02 | 0:27:06 | |
Kraftwerk were amazed and pleased to hear the DJ playing | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
an extended loop of Metal On Metal, exactly as they would in the studio. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
# Rendezvous auf den Champs Elysees | 0:27:19 | 0:27:23 | |
# Verlass Paris am Morgen mit dem TEE | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
# Trans Europa Express | 0:27:28 | 0:27:32 | |
# Trans Europa Express. # | 0:27:33 | 0:27:36 | |
Soon, their unique sounds began to resurface, | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
dismembered and out of context, all over the place, forming a recurrent | 0:27:40 | 0:27:44 | |
theme in every regional black American dance scene from DC Go-Go | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
to Detroit techno, until eventually these stiff Germans became the | 0:27:47 | 0:27:52 | |
most improbably influential white act in the history of dance music. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:56 | |
What was fantastic about that is, first of all, | 0:28:05 | 0:28:07 | |
all the white music that borrowed | 0:28:07 | 0:28:08 | |
so liberally from black music didn't give anything back. | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
Kraftwerk sort of...have basically, on behalf of the entire white world, | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 | |
handed back some of the debt that is owed to black music. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:21 | |
Giving so much that white music nicked - | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
rock and roll and everything that came | 0:28:23 | 0:28:25 | |
nicked so much, and it was a dreadful form of cultural colonisation, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:30 | |
and Kraftwerk in a sort of rather sweet, liberal way, have given back. | 0:28:30 | 0:28:35 | |
BOOGIE MUSIC PLAYS | 0:28:35 | 0:28:37 | |
Having spent his teen years listening to | 0:28:51 | 0:28:53 | |
Krautrock in Strasbourg, Francois Kevorkian moved to New York | 0:28:53 | 0:28:57 | |
in the mid-'70s, where he got a job drumming alongside DJs in a bar. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
He went on to become one of the most popular underground DJs in America, | 0:29:01 | 0:29:04 | |
and one of the busiest remixers of the 1980s, | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
working with everyone from cult dance legends like D Train | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
and Dinosaur L to chart titans U2 and Depeche Mode. | 0:29:11 | 0:29:14 | |
Francois K was the first creative outsider to penetrate | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
Kraftwerk's inner circle, becoming their house mixer. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
Years earlier, he had witnessed their extraordinary impact | 0:29:22 | 0:29:25 | |
on dance culture first-hand. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:26 | |
I think the amazing thing about Kraftwerk is how multicultural | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
they are, how easily all that music translated to black audiences. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:40 | |
They just got it, like that. | 0:29:40 | 0:29:42 | |
Those in New York that started to hear these strange records | 0:29:42 | 0:29:45 | |
coming over from Germany in the mid-'70s | 0:29:45 | 0:29:49 | |
probably saw their city and heard their city in this music | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
as much as any other music they were listening to. | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
Because it was so beautifully rigid and repetitive, | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
therefore it was so wonderfully rhythmic. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
And the idea that you could replace the drummer with a machine, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:07 | |
but the machine would give you this incredible | 0:30:07 | 0:30:10 | |
insight into the mobility of funk... | 0:30:10 | 0:30:13 | |
It was that stiff that it was funky. It was like a linear. | 0:30:13 | 0:30:18 | |
It was almost like an EKG for the hospital. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:22 | |
It was like... | 0:30:22 | 0:30:23 | |
HE IMITATES AN EKG MACHINE | 0:30:23 | 0:30:25 | |
And it was like, "That shit is cool." | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
It was so clean, it was so exact | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
and so perfect that it had to be funky. | 0:30:35 | 0:30:39 | |
And to see these dudes, these straight-laced white dudes, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:44 | |
wearing these ties and these green shirts and green pants | 0:30:44 | 0:30:48 | |
and this whole androgynous look. | 0:30:48 | 0:30:50 | |
It was stiff, but it was funky. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
It was just enough of this in the middle of THIS to make it work. | 0:30:54 | 0:31:01 | |
Trans Europe Express was so funky! | 0:31:01 | 0:31:03 | |
Just like in a big sound system and all that | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
and that metal sounds and all. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
It was just, like, bugged out! | 0:31:14 | 0:31:15 | |
People were like, "Yo, man, I'm tripping! What's this?!" | 0:31:15 | 0:31:20 | |
MUSIC: Trans Europe Express | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
All these crowds grooving to Trans Europe Express in the summer of | 0:31:38 | 0:31:41 | |
1977, right next to Barry White and Marvin Gaye and Salsoul Orchestra. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:47 | |
You know, and to these people, to that crowd, | 0:31:48 | 0:31:52 | |
no-one ever questioned it. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:54 | |
I mean, people were like, "Wow, that thing you're playing, that's weird, | 0:31:54 | 0:31:58 | |
"man, what's that?" | 0:31:58 | 0:31:59 | |
But they loved it. | 0:31:59 | 0:32:01 | |
And I think even more so with Computer World. | 0:32:01 | 0:32:06 | |
Where, you know, obviously, Numbers was just like... | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
When Numbers came out, it was just like, forget it. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:12 | |
I mean, like, wow! | 0:32:12 | 0:32:14 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:32:14 | 0:32:21 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:32:21 | 0:32:25 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:32:25 | 0:32:29 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:32:32 | 0:32:36 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs | 0:33:06 | 0:33:10 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs | 0:33:10 | 0:33:13 | |
# One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight | 0:33:13 | 0:33:17 | |
# One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight | 0:33:17 | 0:33:21 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs | 0:33:21 | 0:33:24 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs | 0:33:24 | 0:33:28 | |
# One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight | 0:33:28 | 0:33:32 | |
# One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight | 0:33:32 | 0:33:36 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
# Vier, drei, zwei, eins | 0:34:09 | 0:34:13 | |
# Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht | 0:34:13 | 0:34:17 | |
# Vier, drei, zwei, eins | 0:34:17 | 0:34:21 | |
# Un, dos, trois, cuatro | 0:34:21 | 0:34:25 | |
# Uno, due, tre, quattro | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
# Un, dos, trois, cuatro | 0:34:28 | 0:34:31 | |
# Uno, due, tres, cuatro | 0:34:31 | 0:34:35 | |
# Ichi, ni, san, shi | 0:34:35 | 0:34:37 | |
# One, two, three | 0:34:39 | 0:34:41 | |
# Ichi, ni, san, shi | 0:34:43 | 0:34:45 | |
# One, two, three | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
# Uno, two, zwei, four | 0:34:50 | 0:34:52 | |
# Uno, two, vier, four | 0:34:52 | 0:34:54 | |
# Uno, two, zwei, four | 0:34:54 | 0:34:56 | |
# Uno, two, vier, four | 0:34:56 | 0:34:58 | |
# Uno, two, zwei, four | 0:34:58 | 0:35:00 | |
# Uno, deux, vier, four... # | 0:35:00 | 0:35:01 | |
When we talk about hip-hop, there are different kinds. | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
I mean, obviously, there's the down-tempo part, | 0:35:04 | 0:35:06 | |
the real funky beats and all that, | 0:35:06 | 0:35:08 | |
but Planet Rock was more like... | 0:35:08 | 0:35:10 | |
Almost like proto-techno, in a way. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:15 | |
MUSIC: Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
On his ground-breaking hip-hop hits | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
Planet Rock, Looking For The Perfect Beat and Renegades Of Funk, | 0:35:32 | 0:35:35 | |
Afrika Bambaataa fused beats from Trans Europe Express and Numbers | 0:35:35 | 0:35:40 | |
so prominently that Kraftwerk ended up receiving royalties. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
That was obviously something Arthur Baker | 0:35:45 | 0:35:48 | |
and John Robie did as a production team. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:50 | |
I think that was a bit of a genius move on their part | 0:35:50 | 0:35:53 | |
because they took these two very strong elements | 0:35:53 | 0:35:58 | |
and made it into something that was just so irresistible. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:02 | |
I guess history validated that particular record as being one that | 0:36:06 | 0:36:12 | |
sort of helped start the whole electro movement. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
The Computer World album and tour | 0:36:23 | 0:36:25 | |
saw Kraftwerk entering the '80s on an all-time high that 1986's | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
Electric Cafe album failed to match, which was ironic, as the next year | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
their influence was about to explode anew, in Detroit, of all places. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
A cadre of Kraftwerk-crazy producers known as the Belleville Three, | 0:36:37 | 0:36:41 | |
Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, were busy perfecting | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
a new world-beating genre that would soon become known as techno. | 0:36:45 | 0:36:49 | |
I have only met Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider once. | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
That was in Detroit, that was 15 years ago, for sure. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:11 | |
There was a huge concert for them, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:12 | |
it was almost like a restart of their career. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
And they were very happy to come there | 0:37:15 | 0:37:16 | |
and they sold out a venue that holds 7,000 people. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:20 | |
It was an amazing show, it was an amazing moment, | 0:37:20 | 0:37:23 | |
the energy was incredible. | 0:37:23 | 0:37:25 | |
It wasn't just intellectual heads that were there to hear them play. | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
It was kids. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:29 | |
This was incredible for them because they were playing to, like, fans! | 0:37:29 | 0:37:33 | |
People that were just loving | 0:37:33 | 0:37:34 | |
the music and they were screaming and making noise | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
and this was, I think, a very important show for them. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
It really sort of sent a chill up the spine of all | 0:37:39 | 0:37:44 | |
the guys from Kraftwerk, to make | 0:37:44 | 0:37:45 | |
them realise that they had a second life | 0:37:45 | 0:37:48 | |
and Detroit was the place where it started. It wasn't just us, | 0:37:48 | 0:37:51 | |
it was the whole of Detroit, Michigan, the whole of Cleveland, | 0:37:51 | 0:37:56 | |
the whole of Chicago. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:57 | |
Black people, man, were locked into this music. | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
On regular radio, on daytime radio in America, you could hear | 0:38:01 | 0:38:04 | |
Pocket Calculator, on the Computer World album, Janet Jackson, | 0:38:04 | 0:38:09 | |
Rick James and a Prince song, all in less than 30 minutes. | 0:38:09 | 0:38:15 | |
MUSIC: Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk | 0:38:15 | 0:38:17 | |
# ..Spielt er ein kleines Musikstuck | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
# Und wenn ich diese Taste druck' Spielt er ein kleines Musikstuck | 0:38:23 | 0:38:26 | |
# Ich bin der Musikant mit Taschenrechner in der Hand... # | 0:39:41 | 0:39:46 | |
They were truly enjoying the fact that black people | 0:39:48 | 0:39:51 | |
were down with this music. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:52 | |
Even George Clinton was digging it. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
You know, I mean, come on, man. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:57 | |
You've got the blackest of black men loving this shit | 0:39:57 | 0:40:01 | |
in the middle of Detroit, Michigan. | 0:40:01 | 0:40:02 | |
This was incredible. They're more than techno music. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
They are creators of a genre that had no name up until we came along. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:10 | |
Up until then it was just amazing electronic music from these guys. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:16 | |
And I really wish they were not part of techno music, really, for them. | 0:40:16 | 0:40:19 | |
I wish they didn't have to be part of that, | 0:40:19 | 0:40:21 | |
cos a lot of techno music is shitty. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:24 | |
A lot of the guys making it don't deserve | 0:40:24 | 0:40:25 | |
to have their names attached to Kraftwerk. | 0:40:25 | 0:40:28 | |
Look at the cover to We Are The Robots. | 0:40:36 | 0:40:38 | |
They played on this, kind of, sexuality thing a little bit. | 0:40:38 | 0:40:42 | |
They kind of enjoyed it. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:43 | |
We Are The Robots was definitely their, sort of, | 0:40:43 | 0:40:47 | |
stepping out moment as a creative, androgynous group. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:51 | |
Nobody knew for sure if these guys were gay or straight. | 0:40:51 | 0:40:54 | |
And I think they really enjoyed that. | 0:40:54 | 0:40:56 | |
"We are the robots," hell yeah! | 0:41:04 | 0:41:06 | |
MUSIC: The Robots by Kraftwerk | 0:41:06 | 0:41:08 | |
# We are the robots | 0:41:14 | 0:41:17 | |
# We are the robots | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
# We are the robots | 0:41:23 | 0:41:25 | |
# We are the robots | 0:41:27 | 0:41:29 | |
# Ya tvoi sluga | 0:41:35 | 0:41:37 | |
# Ya tvoi rabotnik | 0:41:37 | 0:41:40 | |
# Ya tvoi sluga | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
# Ya tvoi rabotnik. # | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
It was so funky without being funky. | 0:41:56 | 0:42:00 | |
It was like, as if, it was... Wow! | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
It's hard to explain it. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:05 | |
I mean, the bass line to Computer World, you know, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:09 | |
that was incredible, man. It's More Fun To Compute... | 0:42:09 | 0:42:12 | |
These songs, man, it was just like, "Fuck! This shit was on fire!" | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
# It's more fun to compute | 0:42:25 | 0:42:27 | |
# It's more fun to compute | 0:42:29 | 0:42:31 | |
# It's more fun to compute | 0:42:48 | 0:42:50 | |
# It's more fun to compute. # | 0:42:52 | 0:42:54 | |
Computer World was the album | 0:43:05 | 0:43:06 | |
when they knew they could do everything they wanted to do. | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
Everything they dreamed of doing, | 0:43:09 | 0:43:11 | |
they finally could do it, and they knew it. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
That was the album that they could break the wall. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
And they did it. | 0:43:16 | 0:43:17 | |
The compositional aspect of how some of that Kraftwerk music is | 0:43:17 | 0:43:22 | |
structured never ceases to amaze me. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:26 | |
I think the melodies are very timeless. | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
And a good example of that is obviously | 0:43:29 | 0:43:32 | |
the tip of the hat from Coldplay. | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
MUSIC: Talk by Coldplay | 0:43:35 | 0:43:38 | |
# Oh, brother, I can't, I can't get through... # | 0:43:51 | 0:43:55 | |
They were very big fans of the band's melodies | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
and when they did that song, it was definitely a tribute, | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
a tip of the hat or a way of saying, "Wow, we love you so much." | 0:44:02 | 0:44:06 | |
Everybody, OK? | 0:44:06 | 0:44:08 | |
# And take a picture of something you see | 0:44:11 | 0:44:15 | |
# In the future where will I be? | 0:44:19 | 0:44:23 | |
# You could climb a ladder up to the sun | 0:44:26 | 0:44:31 | |
# Or you could write a song nobody had sung | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
# Or do something that's never been done... # | 0:44:38 | 0:44:42 | |
For a band like that it's probably the ultimate way | 0:44:43 | 0:44:46 | |
to show appreciation. | 0:44:46 | 0:44:48 | |
# Another lonely night | 0:45:14 | 0:45:16 | |
# Lonely night | 0:45:16 | 0:45:18 | |
# Stare at the TV screen | 0:45:21 | 0:45:23 | |
# The TV screen | 0:45:23 | 0:45:25 | |
# I don't know what to do | 0:45:28 | 0:45:31 | |
# What to do | 0:45:31 | 0:45:32 | |
# I need a rendezvous | 0:45:36 | 0:45:38 | |
# Rendezvous | 0:45:38 | 0:45:40 | |
# I call this number | 0:45:59 | 0:46:00 | |
# I call this number | 0:46:00 | 0:46:02 | |
# For a data date | 0:46:06 | 0:46:08 | |
# Data date | 0:46:08 | 0:46:10 | |
# I don't know what to do | 0:46:13 | 0:46:15 | |
# What to do | 0:46:15 | 0:46:17 | |
# I need a rendezvous | 0:46:20 | 0:46:22 | |
# Rendezvous | 0:46:22 | 0:46:24 | |
# Computer love | 0:46:40 | 0:46:41 | |
# Computer love | 0:46:47 | 0:46:49 | |
# Computer love | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
# Computer love... # | 0:48:16 | 0:48:18 | |
KRAFTWERK MERGES WITH COLDPLAY | 0:48:37 | 0:48:39 | |
MUSIC: Talk by Coldplay | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
# Cos you feel like you're going where you've been before | 0:48:42 | 0:48:46 | |
# You'll tell anyone who'll listen but you feel ignored | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
# Nothing's really making any sense at all | 0:48:57 | 0:49:01 | |
# Let's talk, oh, let's talk | 0:49:01 | 0:49:05 | |
# My love | 0:49:05 | 0:49:06 | |
# Oh, do you want to talk? # | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
I think it opened their music up to a whole new age group and audience | 0:49:14 | 0:49:18 | |
that might not, otherwise, really have been aware of them. | 0:49:18 | 0:49:21 | |
TECHNO MUSIC PLAYS | 0:49:22 | 0:49:24 | |
Being aware of Kraftwerk does not mean, however, that this new | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
generation of fans had it any easier getting tickets to the | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
Tate Modern concerts. | 0:49:40 | 0:49:41 | |
With nine out of ten applicants disappointed, | 0:49:41 | 0:49:43 | |
young devotees organised a midweek Kraftwerk party in | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
fashionable Bethnal Green to coincide with the group's shows. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:50 | |
Tonight was born out of a frustration that myself, | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
personally, having stayed on the phone for nine hours and trying to | 0:49:58 | 0:50:02 | |
get a ticket to see Kraftwerk perform live at the Tate... | 0:50:02 | 0:50:06 | |
We felt we wanted to do a night that was exploring the music | 0:50:06 | 0:50:08 | |
and the visuals. | 0:50:08 | 0:50:10 | |
We just wanted to do something for those people, including us, | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
that didn't get tickets, basically. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:14 | |
My boyfriend, who's DJing right now, he DJs a lot of techno | 0:50:14 | 0:50:17 | |
and a lot of minimal house and dance music | 0:50:17 | 0:50:20 | |
and I'm coming at Kraftwerk from a Krautrock angle | 0:50:20 | 0:50:23 | |
and so that was one of the things that we could connect about. | 0:50:23 | 0:50:26 | |
I'm really into Detroit techno so that's the kind of stuff that | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
I play and I kind of rediscovered Kraftwerk. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:32 | |
They're used on a lot of influential tracks that people will find | 0:50:32 | 0:50:36 | |
again and again, no matter how old they are or what sort of music | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
they're listening to. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:41 | |
So they're constantly going to be rediscovered, | 0:50:41 | 0:50:43 | |
and they still feel new, even though they've been around for 40 years. | 0:50:43 | 0:50:47 | |
The difficulty of getting Kraftwerk tickets pales in comparison | 0:50:54 | 0:50:58 | |
with the difficulty of getting close to the band. | 0:50:58 | 0:51:00 | |
Regarding themselves as simple workers in the sound factory, | 0:51:00 | 0:51:03 | |
they rejected the cult of personality from day one | 0:51:03 | 0:51:07 | |
and are mystified by the public's fascination | 0:51:07 | 0:51:09 | |
with their private lives. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:11 | |
They turned down all superstar collaborations, | 0:51:11 | 0:51:14 | |
including an offer from Michael Jackson, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:15 | |
and the greater their fame became, the further | 0:51:15 | 0:51:17 | |
they withdrew from the public gaze, the impenetrable shroud of | 0:51:17 | 0:51:21 | |
media silence only fuelling the aura of mystique that surrounds them. | 0:51:21 | 0:51:26 | |
Nobody knows this better than Peter Boettcher, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
who has been Kraftwerk's favourite photographer since the late 1980s. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:32 | |
As they themselves won't pose for photographs, | 0:51:32 | 0:51:34 | |
he mainly photographs their robots. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:36 | |
They were careful enough never to put themselves in a position | 0:51:52 | 0:51:56 | |
where they were being held prisoner by the media. | 0:51:56 | 0:52:00 | |
They decided when they wanted the media...to be their prisoner. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:03 | |
They decided when they wanted to make the industry bow to them. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
It's a really important thing, | 0:52:07 | 0:52:09 | |
especially in today's age of everybody being on Twitter | 0:52:09 | 0:52:12 | |
and Facebook and sharing every detail of their private life. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:18 | |
"I went to the toilet two minutes ago | 0:52:18 | 0:52:19 | |
"and now I'm going to go wash my feet. | 0:52:19 | 0:52:21 | |
"I think I'll go eat some spaghetti next | 0:52:21 | 0:52:23 | |
"and maybe I'll go to the movies." | 0:52:23 | 0:52:25 | |
As if that's really important. As if your life is really | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
so important other people just need to know every move about it. | 0:52:27 | 0:52:30 | |
When you look at the timeline of people like Mozart | 0:52:30 | 0:52:34 | |
and classical composers and all that, what's left of them | 0:52:34 | 0:52:37 | |
is that, the music, their compositions, | 0:52:37 | 0:52:40 | |
the things that they created, and the rest is just trivial. | 0:52:40 | 0:52:44 | |
MUSIC: Tour De France by Kraftwerk | 0:53:23 | 0:53:25 | |
# Tour de France | 0:53:34 | 0:53:36 | |
# Radio-Tour information | 0:53:36 | 0:53:39 | |
# Transmission, television... # | 0:53:39 | 0:53:42 | |
The themes that inform all of Kraftwerk's music, | 0:53:44 | 0:53:47 | |
travel, communication and the harmonious coexistence of man, | 0:53:47 | 0:53:51 | |
nature and technology are driven by the dynamic of forward motion. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:54 | |
Nothing embodies this better than their passion for cycling, | 0:53:54 | 0:53:58 | |
which produced both the massive 1983 hit Tour De France, | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
and their latest studio album. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:03 | |
'They were the embodiment of the emotion | 0:54:15 | 0:54:17 | |
'and motion of the 20th century.' | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
Distilling it into these wonderful little almost electronic haikus. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
I always think of them as historians, in a way. | 0:54:23 | 0:54:25 | |
The tracking of what happened in the 20th century, in terms of it | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
being about speed, movement, technology, the relationship between | 0:54:28 | 0:54:34 | |
humans and machines, which was becoming more and more of a problem. | 0:54:34 | 0:54:37 | |
In that sense, they were also cultural commentators, they were | 0:54:37 | 0:54:40 | |
like great, kind of, you know... | 0:54:40 | 0:54:42 | |
They were like Roland Barthes or Walter Benjamin, diagnosing what was | 0:54:42 | 0:54:45 | |
going on around us and compressing it into this very brief, tender poetry. | 0:54:45 | 0:54:52 | |
# Radioactivity | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
# Is in the air for you and me. # | 0:55:03 | 0:55:07 | |
Launching in the age of glam rock and hippies, with short hair, | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
suits, German vocals and industrial chic, Kraftwerk's styling was | 0:55:10 | 0:55:15 | |
always provocatively radical, but nothing ruffled | 0:55:15 | 0:55:17 | |
feathers in left-wing Europe like the Computer World album which, when | 0:55:17 | 0:55:21 | |
home computers were unheard of, made the tools of state oppression sing. | 0:55:21 | 0:55:26 | |
Long before there were mobile phones, | 0:55:26 | 0:55:28 | |
and with lyrics that anticipated the curt language of texting, | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
they announced that the computer would soon connect us to the | 0:55:31 | 0:55:34 | |
world, and we would perceive everything through a ghostly glow | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
of pixels to a soundtrack of regulated, machine-generated noise. | 0:55:36 | 0:55:41 | |
Kraftwerk were aware, in a way, of a future that has led us | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
to Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:53 | |
But also, because of their understanding of the art world, were | 0:55:53 | 0:55:55 | |
also very appreciative that if there was too much of the technological | 0:55:55 | 0:55:59 | |
side, there would also be a loss of the soul, the human side. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
Kraftwerk had a really interesting view of the future, | 0:56:02 | 0:56:05 | |
which was a nostalgic one. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:07 | |
And they always used the past expressions of hope, | 0:56:07 | 0:56:12 | |
which had become defunct, as their main language. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
We're now embedded in a sort of future that they appeared to predict. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
They weren't specifically right about the details, | 0:56:20 | 0:56:22 | |
and to some extent, they were imagining the 1950s or | 0:56:22 | 0:56:25 | |
the 1920s as much as anything else, | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
but they were the closest of anybody to understand | 0:56:27 | 0:56:29 | |
what was going to happen. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:31 | |
Kraftwerk's approach, whilst extremely gentle and nurturing | 0:56:31 | 0:56:36 | |
and continual and careful, | 0:56:36 | 0:56:39 | |
is a revolutionary approach. | 0:56:39 | 0:56:41 | |
So what they're doing is they're not bringing short, sharp shocks, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
they're bringing a global revolution to the way they work. | 0:56:45 | 0:56:49 | |
And it's a never-ending story. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:51 | |
# Boing, boom, tschak, zong | 0:57:04 | 0:57:06 | |
# Boing, boing, boom, tschak, peng. # | 0:57:06 | 0:57:08 | |
It's funny, the rock critics bemoan, in such an old-fashioned way, | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
that there's only one member of Kraftwerk left, | 0:57:12 | 0:57:14 | |
like it's the Dave Clarke Five or Sweet or The Tremolos or something. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:18 | |
But of course, it doesn't matter who is in Kraftwerk. | 0:57:18 | 0:57:21 | |
Kraftwerk itself is the work of art. | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
It's a bit like moaning that when you see a Picasso, | 0:57:24 | 0:57:26 | |
there's no Pablo Picasso. | 0:57:26 | 0:57:27 | |
Well, no, he's dead. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:28 | |
When all members of Kraftwerk have died, | 0:57:28 | 0:57:30 | |
Kraftwerk will still exist as a work of art. | 0:57:30 | 0:57:32 | |
You're looking at a living, | 0:57:32 | 0:57:34 | |
breathing exhibition of historic electronic art. | 0:57:34 | 0:57:39 | |
The sound quality, the production, that's the future. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:42 | |
Just to listen to it and archive it, | 0:57:42 | 0:57:46 | |
make it part of a history lesson. | 0:57:46 | 0:57:48 | |
Put it in... | 0:57:48 | 0:57:50 | |
You have Duke Ellington and Miles Davis songs, | 0:57:50 | 0:57:54 | |
put it right next to that. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:55 | |
Disco and Kraftwerk, put them together | 0:57:55 | 0:57:57 | |
and you've got the whole history of music ever since the mid-'70s. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
I still remember the first time I heard Trans Europe Express, | 0:58:01 | 0:58:04 | |
the first time I heard I Feel Love, Donna Summer. | 0:58:04 | 0:58:07 | |
There was no turning back. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:08 | |
I mean, once you've heard this | 0:58:08 | 0:58:11 | |
and you compare it to all the other stuff, you just go, | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
"OK, party over. It's done. They won." | 0:58:14 | 0:58:16 | |
For those of us who were fans, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:18 | |
who attached ourselves loyally to the colours of Kraftwerk | 0:58:18 | 0:58:21 | |
in the '70s and '80s...have also been proved right in our taste. | 0:58:21 | 0:58:25 | |
We were right! | 0:58:25 | 0:58:26 | |
Myself, I'd like to say thank you very much to Kraftwerk. | 0:58:26 | 0:58:29 | |
That's my words. | 0:58:29 | 0:58:31 | |
Thank you for the opportunity to grow up with your music. | 0:58:31 | 0:58:34 | |
When I want to relax, when I want to watch the sunset, | 0:58:34 | 0:58:37 | |
when I just want to drive my car for a long, straight distance | 0:58:37 | 0:58:41 | |
really fast, that's my music that I need to rejuvenate | 0:58:41 | 0:58:45 | |
myself from all the bullshit out here in the world. | 0:58:45 | 0:58:47 | |
I need to remind myself of the level of quality there once was. | 0:58:47 | 0:58:52 | |
And I would say, for any young people today, | 0:58:52 | 0:58:55 | |
you really need to turn off the computer and the TV | 0:58:55 | 0:58:57 | |
for a little while and just close your eyes and see what you see. | 0:58:57 | 0:59:01 | |
Because you just might see yourself. | 0:59:01 | 0:59:03 | |
# Music | 0:59:48 | 0:59:50 | |
# Non-stop. # | 0:59:50 | 0:59:51 |