Kraftwerk, The Early Years '71

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Kraftwerk, The Early Years '71 - '73

1971 With a successful album, KRAFTWERK, the band's confidence had grown and they played more live concerts in Germany than before. The concerts were often advertised with a poster featuring the red and white traffic cone with a naked woman superimposed on it.
These concerts featured the line-up from the LP and after a short while Andreas Hohman left. They continued as a trio with Klaus Dinger and then the band were joined by Michael Rother (guitar) and Eberhardt Krahnemann (bass), a five piece line-up which was to only last for one session. When Krahnemann left the band he was amazingly followed by Ralf Hütter himself. This was a moment that could have been the end of the band as we know it today. For six months Florian, Rother and Dinger played music that bore a closer remembrance to Rother and Dinger's later work with Neu!. The trio recorded a 35 minute session at Conrad Plank's studio which was never released. However they made a performance on German TV in 1971 for "The Beatclub" and that recording is available on the Anonymous Tone Float bootleg. This first TV performance by Kraftwerk shows Florian with his flute and electronic equipment, Rother on guitar and Dinger on drums. Soon after this recording Dinger and Rother formed Neu! and establishing themselves alongside Kraftwerk as the second definitive Düsseldorf cult group.

Ralf and Florian reunion

"Kraftwerk 2"

Ralf and Florian rejoined and released the "Kraftwerk 2" album. The LP was produced in just seven days between 26th September and 1st October 1971.

The album was released on the Philips label and is a musical extension of the first KRAFTWERK LP. The cover concept is a direct continuation and it's so similar that people might have assuming that it was the first album slightly re-packaged. The first album achieved sales of around 60 000 in Germany and the second LP fared slightly less well, possibly due to the ambiguous cover and title.

Ralf Hütter:
"The culture of Central Europe was cut off in the thirties, and many of the intellectuals went to the USA or France, or they were eliminated. We are picking it up again where it left off, continuing this culture of the thirties, and we are doing this spiritually"

1972 In this year the interest in UK for German music had grown enough for the two first LPs to appear as double LP on Philips progressive Vertigo label. The LP appeared with a new sleeve depicting an oscillating blue electronic wave signal. The first two LPs were also re-released in Germany in 1975. At that time it was obvious that Kraftwerk's success wasn't going to be an overnight affair. With the first two albums they had created a sound that were far outside traditional parameters of pop and rock music. They were more revered by other musicians than by the general public and it was clear that Kraftwerk were very much musician's musicians.

German music evolves The first two Kraftwerk LPs had still failed to make any great international impact for the group. By 1972, Tangerine Dream and Can were producing some of their best works and although Kraftwerk were equally creative, they still were considered a secondary division with a cult following. One obvious reason for this is of course that the public outside Germany had no performances by which to judge them. They had taken the decision very early on not to involve themselves in normal rock tours or accept support slots. This was totally different from Can, who had already toured England, or even Tangerine Dream who, despite huge banks of equipment, were also touring regularly. Kraftwerk hadn't decided how to present their music live to a bigger audience.
On the financial side they made enough money to be self-sufficient and expand their studio. It is now quite clear that Kraftwerk were beginning to build up considerable reputation for themselves. Although not yet reflected in world-wide sales, they were also gaining a notoriety further afield for avoiding the norms of rock music that were now being adopted by some of the other German groups. They were on the way to harness some of the elements that would later lay any comparisons with their improvising compatriots to rest and firmly establish them as the creators of industrial and electronic pop music.

Hervé Picart
"Kraftwerk are an avant-garde group who transform the electronic into beautiful." They were conscious of trying to present something that was more of a multi-media event, being visually as well as musically out of the ordinary. In this context, the light show, was an early version of the video screens that the group would later use. This concert was also the first to utilize the newly built drum machines which they operated themselves. They may well have been the first ever group to use such machines live. However, their obvious success of their first concert in Paris, couldn't hide the fact that they were still seen as a curiosity group in Germany, Britain and France."

1973
First concert outside Germany In February 1973, Kraftwerk accepted an invitation to play their first concert outside of Germany. They took part in a two day festival of German music held at the Théatre de L'Ouest Parisien in the Boulogne-Billancourt suburb of Paris. The first night featured Kraftwerk and Guru Guru, the second spotlighted Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and Klaus Schulze. The festival was organized by the French magazine Actuel and parts of the concerts were filmed and broadcast by French TV music program Pop 2.

The festival was reviewed by Hervé Picart in the French magazine Best.
"The group is made up of two contemplative intellectuals, Ralf Hütter (keyboards, electronics) and Florian Schneider-Esleben (flute, violin, keyboards, electronics), coming from Düsseldorf. Their music is very smooth, very slack, a kind of long bewitchment, similar to Terry Riley, made by the prolonging and superimposing of multiple rythms and circular melodies. The public was surprised at first, by the music alone, then when the lights went off and a screen appeared with luminous arabesques projected onto them, the spell was complete."

Emil Schult, the man behind the image
It was at this time that Florian meet Emil Schult, an electric-violinist, who became a close friend of the group, encouraging them to adopt the imagery and identity that they so far lacked. Emil was born in Düsseldorf, but had spent some time at school in the States. After returning to Germany he became an art student at the Düsseldorf Academy studying under artists Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter. His masters degree covered many aspects of the visual media including painting, photography and film, but also brought him into contact with some of the more revolutionary political student movements of the time, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit known as Rote Dany (Red Danny). Bendit had been a spokesman for the student riots in Paris "May Revolution" in 1968.
In the beginning Schult's involvement was just a musical one, becoming a regular visitor to their studio, contributing to various jam sessions by playing guitar, flute and his home made electronic violin that had so intrigued Florian.
In the early summer of 1973, the group embarked on a German tour, again traveling around in a Volkswagen van. They played a set of mostly improvised music, with Ralf on keyboards, Florian on flute, hawaiian guitar and violin, Emil on guitar and electric violin and a friend of Ralf's, Plato Kostic, on bass. Plato was also an artist working under the pseudonym Plato Riviera, and is today an architect in Greece. They played various concerts and festivals often to audiences of 2000 people or more, such was the appetite for spontaneous and improvised music at the time.

Ralf Hütter:
"In 1971 Kraftwerk was still without a drummer, so I bought a cheap drum machine giving some preset dance rythms. By changing the basic sounds with tape echo and filtering we made the rythm tracks our second album. Our instrumental sounds came from home-made oscillators and an old Hammond Organ that gave us various tonal harmonies with its drawbars. We manipulated the tapes at different at different speeds for further effects."

New recording, "Ralf und Florian"

This LP was released in November of that year, the situation regarding their rather anonymous image was on the way to being rectified. "Ralf und Florian" by it's very title put the group on first name familiarity with the record buying public, and to this day is almost synonymous with a nickname for the duo.

"Ralf und Florian"

Both musically, and perhaps more importantly conceptually, they were beginning to hone down their ideas to a few basic concepts and display the clear-signed approach that would be so prevalent on later LPs.
As well as in their yet-to-be named studio (Kling Klang) in Düsseldorf, the LP was recorded at the Cornet and Rhenus studios in Cologne and the now defunct but then fashionable Studio 70 in Munich. It was once again co-produced by Conrad Plank who helped to organize the recording sessions in the two Cologne studios where he had arrangements with the owners to use them at night.

Due to Schult's influence, the original German cover positively brimmed with humor, as if trying to shrug off the serious experimental image that had surrounded the first two LPs.

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Updated: 2 July 1997

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