Michael Rother - Beyond the Waves of Time

We reach Michael Rother by phone, an absolute protagonist in the history of electronic music and kraut-rock, and a pioneer of a musical language that paved the way for new wave and that continues, to this day, to profoundly influence scenes and musicians. Co-founder, with the unforgettable Klaus Dinger, of the seminal Neu!, Rother returns to Italy after many years for three unmissable live dates: 27 November in Rome (Auditorium Parco della Musica), 28 November in Rezzato, Brescia (Teatro CTM), and 29 November in Genoa (Teatro Verdi). From his first steps in Kraftwerk to his decision to form Neu! and Harmonia – the latter created together with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster – right up to his meeting with Brian Eno and the collaboration with David Bowie that never quite happened, even though Bowie had called on the German multi-instrumentalist for the recording sessions of his Berlin trilogy, Rother tells us anecdotes and secrets from a journey full of surprises and rediscoveries. The live show will touch on every phase of his career, including tracks from Neu!, Harmonia and his solo work. Joining him on stage will be Hans Lampe (La Düsseldorf) on drums, Franz Bargmann (ex-Camera) on guitar, and Vittoria Maccabruni on electronics and vocals.

What was the first instrument you played, and when did you realize music would be a fundamental part of your life?

I think it was in Karachi, around 1963, when I was living with my parents in Pakistan. That's where I played guitar for the first time. My brother played me a single that was very famous in Germany at the time, "Apache" by the Shadows. Back then I also had a local Pakistani instrument that I wanted to turn into a guitar, but without success. Later, when my family and I moved to Düsseldorf, I bought a guitar of my own. It was very basic. And of terrible quality. We didn't have much money at home, but I loved playing guitar too much, so I managed to trade an accordion — which I'd received as a gift from some relatives — for an electric guitar at a music shop. That was 1964, and from then on the guitar became the instrument closest to my heart. Although, of course, later on in the Seventies I discovered keyboards, and even later computers and all the creative sound tools available on this earth. Still, after all these years, the guitar remains the instrument I'm most familiar with.

What kind of music did you dream of in the days of Neu!?

Oh, you know, we never talked much about music. I mean, that wasn't how we worked. We simply picked up our instruments and started playing. Each of us, I imagine, had his own precise vision of music, or a particular musical dream, in his head. Everything we played in those early days became, in 1972, the music of Neu!. But it wasn't the result of some written or discussed plan. Together we wanted to create a certain mood. So it was very intuitive, spontaneous music. And it all took shape within each of our hearts. In short, I had my own heart and my own feelings about music, and Klaus had his. But we never had to discuss anything, because we had a kind of blind understanding of how we could connect and, time after time, bring our respective strengths together.

Whose idea was it to include the sound of a sea wave in "Leb' Wohl"?

Oh, that was a Klaus composition. I played the melodic instruments. I remember Klaus sitting at the piano in Conny Plank's studio, playing and singing and muttering, or whatever you want to call what he was doing. It was a truly unique way of using his voice. But I'm not quite sure who came up with the idea of the water — maybe it was mine, since I've lived near water my whole life. I was born in Hamburg, on the North Sea, on the river Elbe. Later we lived near the river Isar in Munich. In England too there was a small river I always used to look at and where I even used to swim. And in Pakistan we lived by the Indian Ocean, so I think the sound of waves felt natural to both of us, as well as being very pleasant and stimulating. The rain and thunder you hear in "Zeeland", for instance, or the water of Lake Boer, were sounds we considered complementary, and a great addition to the musical structure. Klaus Dinger wrote "Leb' Wohl" because he was unhappy over a relationship that had ended badly, and so I played the melodies in a very spontaneous way. All our albums were made in very little time. We didn't have much money to invest, and Conny Plank could only give us a limited amount of time to compose. I think that was typical of the era. We had to play, to create music while running forward, not sit around reflecting on what we'd already recorded. It was the result of fast movement, a forward-looking gaze that you can obviously sense in the music too.

What will the tour be like?

I'd like to start from the basic concept, which is actually spelled out clearly in the concert title and in the announcements. It's my approach to the music of bands like Neu! and Harmonia, and to my solo catalogue, which I take and reflect on live today, and the result is very different from that of the Seventies. We probably don't have time to talk about the limits of live music back in that memorable period, but I like to take the original ideas and transform them into what I'd like to express with the possibilities of 2025.

And the band that will be with you on stage?

Hans Lampe was already in "Neu! 75", playing drums alongside Klaus Dinger's brother on the second side of that album, and later he was a member of La Düsseldorf with Klaus and Thomas Dinger. We got back together in early 2010, after he contacted me. He wanted to start making music again, and I immediately invited him to join me on a tour in Australia, for which I also brought in Dieter Möbius, who had been with me in Harmonia. Last year Hans and I celebrated our hundredth concert together. I didn't even realize it, but at some point Hans said: "Michael, this is our hundredth birthday." We've been very active over the past fifteen years, playing all over the world: China, Australia, Japan, America, Mexico, Europe. Even Russia, back when it was still possible. Then there's Franz Bargmann, a former member of a Berlin band called Camera. I met Franz when I played in Hamburg at a festival with my project Hallo Gallo in 2010, which also included Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Aaron Mullan of Tall Firs. After the concert I noticed there were some people on stage who obviously weren't part of the technical crew. They looked at me and didn't seem dangerous, so I asked that they not be sent away. Among them, it turned out, was Franz. So we started talking, and later I joined him for a few concerts, and so he and his group became my backing band for a while. Franz has been my rhythm guitarist for live shows for thirteen years now. I'm very happy with my band, it's an excellent combination of talents. Everyone contributes just the right amount of energy and quality to the performances. Three years ago Vittoria Maccabruni also joined the group. I recorded an album with her too, "As Long As The Light", released three years ago on Gronland Records. Vittoria not only has a wonderful voice, but she's also able to create special sounds with various synthesizers on stage, adding a layer that was perhaps missing in previous years, and the sum of all these sounds creates a truly thrilling mix. Our recent tours have been fantastic, and I probably shouldn't be the one to say so, but you can read it in the reviews online, which tell of our success. People are very happy at the shows — even in China it was fantastic to see the audience smiling, dancing and moving. A few weeks ago we played in Dublin and then in London. I feel very lucky to have this group of musicians with me on tour. I can't wait to perform with them in Italy too.

Many musicians have been inspired by your music, including David Bowie, Brian Eno, Stereolab, and I could go on. What kind of influence do you think you've had on them?

That's a tough question.

Why?

What happened is strange. When we released the music of Neu! and Harmonia, we certainly didn't think we'd be influencing anyone. The world was very different, there was no Internet, there was no way to discover what musicians in other countries were doing. So many years passed before I even heard the music of Stereolab or Sonic Youth. It was the '90s when I read that some important bands like these had been influenced, precisely, by my music. Of course, I already knew from conversations with Brian Eno in the '70s that he listened to our music, and how much he loved talking to David Bowie about all our albums. Both David and Brian seemed to know everything about us — it was a huge surprise.

So, as they often say: it was all down to Eno.

Brian, whom we'd never met before, suddenly turned up sitting in the front row at a Harmonia concert in Hamburg in 1974. He was introduced to us by a journalist who was with him. We liked him a lot, since he was a gentleman and a very intelligent, distinguished person, as well as extremely friendly. In short, quite the opposite of the shallow madman you might have expected. So after the concert we invited him to come listen to us in the studio, since he was very interested in our music. Two years later he came to our place in the countryside and stayed with us — with Harmonia — for at least ten days. We recorded a lot of music, which was later released as "Tracks And Traces" credited to Harmonia and Eno, again on Gronland. It's a great document of an exchange that was never originally meant to be released as an album. Really, we just enjoyed swapping ideas, so much so that we recorded it on my four-track T.a.c. Luckily, at the time I made sketches of everything on the typewriter, which is why we still have intact records of our collaboration.

And with Bowie?

David invited me to go with him to Berlin, but things didn't turn out the way either of us wanted.

Why was that?

I talked to him about this unpleasant matter many years later; in 1977 I couldn't tell him why our collaboration fell through, since there were certain people involved.

Who were they?

People around David who kept talking to me about contracts. My best guess is that the people around David Bowie were a bit scared.

Of what?

Of having had too much influence on him during some of the recordings. There were ideas that were too experimental to have been popular at the time. David Bowie's so-called Berlin trilogy wasn't an immediate success back then — of course, today fans consider those three albums the most interesting phase of Bowie's career. But perhaps the management around him at the time thought it would be a disaster to let him be influenced by me, by ideas even crazier than his own. They were afraid the fans would run away. When I first heard what Bowie wrote during those years, I immediately understood how much he'd been influenced, in some way, not only by my music but also by Kraftwerk, Cluster and Harmonia. But I'll leave further conclusions on that to journalists or other people more qualified than me to explain these things.

And what about Sonic Youth?

Thurston Moore came to one of my concerts in New York last March, and we even played together. I'd already met him in London a few years back. It's always great to meet Thurston Moore, he's a really interesting character, a formidable musician and also great fun. I remember the first time we met. He told me: we'll always come back to "Hallo Gallo". He's been very generous, as of course has Steve Shelley, who did some beautiful drumming on the Hallo Gallo project.

And what about Stereolab?

We played together a couple of years ago in Hamburg. It's pretty obvious that they took some inspiration from my music of the '70s, with the addition of vocals that made everything even more interesting - I like them a lot. And sometimes I wish journalists would find the connections and join up all these dots, since a lot of the people I meet at my shows tell me how much they enjoy listening to my music, which I find incredible. In the '70s, but also the 80s, my music wasn't known at all. Luckily today, but actually already starting from the early 2000s, a lot more people have access to my ideas from that era than in the past, and that's amazing.

Tell us how the guitar parts in "Sterntaler" came about.

The music you create obviously reflects your personality, your feelings about life, and therefore the love you have for things. In "Sterntaler" there's all of this basic approach of mine. I give myself the freedom to do whatever I want with the guitar, and I love playing, expressing all my emotions. Mine is perhaps too sentimental an approach at times. But it's the only way I know how to play guitar, I can't help it. Ever since my first bands, I've always been a guitarist focused on melodies. I remember when I started out with the band Spirits of Sound in 1965. Well, even with them it was me writing the melodies - I've always been, in some way, a vehicle for expressing the emotions of the group, not just my own.

What does the photo on the cover of "Dreaming" mean to you?

Oh, in that photo I'm with my mother and my brother. It's a very personal memory. My brother passed away a few years ago, and he was always my hero. The photo was taken by my father in Pakistan. My brother was just ten years older than me. He always helped me a lot, he was very present in my life, he had fun with me just as he did with all my friends. He taught gymnastics and was also a fine gymnast himself. It's a beautiful photo and it has always been very close to my heart. When I chose it for the album cover, I was sitting with the graphic designer Walter Schönauer, who had come to see me to discuss the artwork for that album. I laid out all the photos I was considering, and the moment I put that photo on the table he said: "Yes, that's it." And I immediately said the exact same thing.

(9 novembre 2025)

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