Michael Rother has spent the last 40 years trying to set a ridiculous myth straight. No, he did not turn down an offer to collaborate with David Bowie.
There’s truth in the story’s bones. David Bowie was a professed superfan of Neu!, Michael Rother’s first band. During Bowie’s time in Berlin, where he produced Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger, Bowie made a sincere attempt to work with Rother. Though Bowie initially reached out with an offer for Rother to work on the trilogy, Rother thought the invitation was rescinded. In turn, Bowie believed Rother turned it down. The admiration maintained, and Bowie went as far as to cite the band on ““Heroes”,” which draws its namesake and iconic guitar wail from Neu!’s “Hero.”
“My guess at what happened is that people in his team were a bit anxious – sales were going down because his experimental approach to music wasn’t commercial enough,” Rother said in an interview with The Quietus.
Rother and Neu!’s influence stretch beyond a handful of David Bowie records. Neu! was made up of the robot-like drummer Klaus Dinger and guitar god Michael Rother and their legacy has ballooned as the most canonized “Krautrock” band not named Kraftwerk or Can. Critics have long credited Rother, Neu!, and the wider German experimental rock movement with influencing wide swaths of rock and electronic music, whether post-rock, ambient, or techno, though Rother is hesitant to accept distinction as a progenitor.
During their lifespan as a band, Rother and Dinger struggled to translate the first two Neu! albums for the stage, which are wrought with overdubs and early studio techniques. Rother traveled to the rural German village Forst in hopes of recruiting proto-ambient Komische duo Cluster, made up of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, as Neu!’s backing band. Instead, Rother found kinship with the duo and started the super-trio Harmonia instead, which released two records in 1974 and 1975 (Musik von Harmonia and Deluxe). Combining Cluster’s ambient sensibilities with Rother’s soaring guitar embellishments, the supertrio’s music felt like a dazed sibling to Neu!’s neurotic rhythms. The band found a fan in Brian Eno, who recorded the band in 1977, before his collaboration with Bowie in Berlin. The sessions were thought to be lost, but later found and released as Tracks and Traces in 1997 (Roedelius and Moebius continued their collaboration with Eno on Cluster & Eno and After the Heat in the midst of Eno’s initial foyer in ambient music).
A quiet 80’s for Neu! and Harmonia bore a fruitful solo career for Rother, which saw him release eight records between ‘77 and ‘87. The 90’s saw Neu!’s legacy bloom, as bands like Sonic Youth and Stereolab professed adoration for the band, both verbally and sonically. Following a period of difficulty with his Neu! partner Klaus Dinger, Michael Rother was finally able to reap the benefits of his innovation as the initial Neu! trilogy finally saw reissues in the early 00’s. Though the duo never found it within themselves to tour their revived success, Rother has been on the road preaching the gospel of Neu! and Harmonia since, a luxury he was never bestowed during the bands’ initial runs.
On the last Sunday of March, Micahel Rother headlined the latest iteration of Outline Fest, Knockdown Center’s concert series that has featured a broad set of experimentalists and innovators like Yaeji, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and Chat Pile. Rother played alongside an intergenerational cast of experimentalists that have each made a previous definition of contemporary moot, including Japan’s modern polyglot Eiko Ishibashi, Australian cold wave duo HTRK, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
Ishibashi opened the night solo just before dusk, weaving her mesmerizing classical work prominent on soundtracks like Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist with field recordings and ambient electronics. HTRK continued with a minimal performance of a guitar, drum machines, and vocals that was met by a chattering crowd. Moore, accompanied by percussionists Tom Surgal and William Winant, seemed rather intent on reminding the room of his background as an experimentalist. In the course of his set, Moore jammed a drumstick into his guitar, scraped the instrument across the floor, and yanked his strings like a younger brother pulling his sister’s hair. Surgal and Winant were no less ambitious; everything from the sound of a balloon deflating, a cymbal scraping along a timpani, and a marimba manipulated with Winant’s mouth were fair game. Several people in the crowd plugged their ears for some duration of the set. It was, likely, the most unpleasant performance in New York City staged that night and a brilliant showing from one of modern music’s most renowned experimentalists.
Moore later sat in with Michael Rother for “E-Muzik,” the last song on Rother’s setlist exclusively composed of Neu! and Harmonia classics. Finally equipped with the proper backing band and technological capabilities, Rother made half-century old material feel fresh and inspired. Performances of “Hallogallo” and “Isi” felt comparable to the strength of the original studio material. The crowd, a homogenous sea of early-middle-aged white husbands, celebrated as Michael Rother’s searing guitar and Klaus Dinger’s unrelenting beat, performed by Hans Lampe, pummeled the room for the last hour of the night.
Before leaving for his tour, Michael Rother talked to me from his home in Germany. The following conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
I think the lineup in New York is so fun and fascinating, especially playing with Thurston Moore. I know you consider Steve Shelley a good friend of yours. Can you tell me your first time encountering Sonic Youth? Were you familiar with them at all?
That’s a good question. I think it’s impossible for a younger generation to imagine how disconnected we felt- I felt- from the world back in the 70’s, 80’s, and even the early 90’s. At some point in the 90’s. I heard of a New York band, Sonic Youth, and they had a track called “Two Cool [Rock] Chicks Listening to Neu” on their Ciccone Youth album. You hear two women talking, and in the background it’s one of our tracks, I think, “Für Immer” [Correction: he track playing is actually “Negativland”].
After a long period of not knowing what was happening in the world, and not knowing who was picking up our ideas, then suddenly more and more bands popped up, like Stereolab, for instance. Sonic Youth, for quite a while, was the only connection I had. I met Thurston in 2010. They were playing at a free festival in Brooklyn. That was the year in which Steve Shelley, Aaron Mullan, and I performed as Hallogallo 2010, and we played at the Lincoln Center in New York. Unforgettable experience. It was very special. It was a funny encounter. I mean, Thurston is not only huge, hahaha. How’s the weather up there? Sorry. He was very friendly. All of these people were so humble in a way I maybe had not expected. They were saying things like, “we always come back to ‘Hallogallo.’” That was very special, the whole year with the concerts Steve Shelley, Aaron, and I did.
Thurston joined us at a club show in London a few years ago [in 2019]. I invited him to join us for two tracks, “Negativland” and “E-Muzik”, and that was fun. We’ve been in touch ever since and I look forward to seeing him play again. The club was called Under the Bridge. It was in a football stadium. It was very strange, in the Chelsea Football club. One moment you were inside a football stadium and felt the atmosphere. Then someone opened the door and you were inside a club.
Are you playing with the same same lineup, the whole throughout the whole U.S.
Yeah, that’s my live lineup. Hans Lampe, the drummer who also worked on La Düsseldorf, and the third Neu! album. Franz Bargmann on guitar, who was formerly in Camera. He’s been with me, like Hans, for many years, and Vittoria Maccabruni since 2022. She contributes electronic sounds, and also some vocals, but especially electronics.
For much of your life you didn’t really tour. I was reading an interview of yours where you talk about really enjoying the silence of Forst, and the first time you came to Manhattan, you were almost driven insane by hearing all the noise and stuff-
Did I say that? Okay, I see. Continue alright.
When you began touring, especially when you first began coming to New York, how long did it take to get used to being out of your element like that?
That actually brings me to a memory back in 1998, because, after having not played live for more than 20 years after the breakup of Harmonia, Dieter Moebius and I were invited to do a tour to the States, and our first stop was in New York. I have vivid memories of being in a hotel very high up and hearing, all night long, the sirens of ambulances and police cars, all the buzz. Do you perhaps by any chance know the club, The Cooler?
The Cooler! I don’t think it does. [The space in the Meatpacking District, known for experimental and avant-garde performances, closed in 2001].
Yeah, I would be surprised. It was a very strange location in a former slaughterhouse, second floor underneath the earth.
It’s also quite funny that you mentioned or reflect on New York. In 1977, I released my first solo album, which was called Flammende Herzen and a film director from Germany [Walter Bockmayer and Rolf Bührmann] took my whole album and combined it with his ideas about film, and went to New York to film the experiences. It was hilarious in a way, a bit tragic also. This rather naive person comes to New York and experiences all kinds of misunderstandings. In a shop he’s asked “would you like this as a gift?” The word gift in German means poison. Of course, the cinema audience laughs and he says, “No, I don’t need gift.”
That was a film that also helped promote my second album Sterntaler in 1978. Of course, I already had quite a clear idea of New York from Woody Allen films and from many, many documentaries. But it’s different if you stand in the streets with the skyscrapers and the high rises. Also 9/11- I followed that very closely. Back at that time, the Neu! albums were released through a company in America [Astralwerks]. I went over to do promotion, and I met the people, got friendly with them, so when 9/11 hit the town, I was in very close exchange.
It’s nice that you mentioned the reissues, because I’m really interested in this period of time in the 90’s. This really strange book, Krautrocksampler, comes out and a lot of the records around that era begin to be reissued on CD. Back then, how did you react to this wave of interest in that era? Was it weird to finally have these stories solidify a little bit?
It was, in a way, surprising, because the late 70’s and 80’s were a period in which my solo works were celebrated in Germany and I was very successful. I was able to buy all the professional studio gear, and have my dream of an electric railway station in the studio come true. But then things started fading. Neu! was out of the record shops. Harmonia never made it and there was a big silence. In the 90’s, you suddenly had stacks of bootlegs. I was in New York, also in Sydney, and I thought, “Wow! What’s this?” Next to the counter next to the cashier were stacks of Neu! bootlegs from Russia, or I don’t know where they came from. Germanophone was the name stated, but they never paid a penny, of course.
In the 90’s. I also had a lot of struggles with my Neu! partner, Klaus Dinger, who was a bit…how should I say…in a polite way, he was difficult. He had propelled himself out of the normal orbit and he had many problems. One of them was on the financial side, and he was never happy with the offers we received from several companies, including Daniel Miller of Mute Records. My partner, Klaus, said, “No, they are all gangsters.”
I was very frustrated in the 90’s to know that all these bootlegs were available in major cities around the world, and somebody was making a ton of money. Of course, there was tension. On one side, I was happy that there was certainly an audience paying attention. There were even German journalists paid to write about us, especially because they could convince the editor with Julian Cope’s book [Krautrocksampler]. “See these guys? They love our music. We should also write something.” But it was a slow development. The fortunate ending for me, for Neu! and the fans [came from] the very famous German musician/actor, Herbert Grönemeyer, who started his own record label [Grönland Records], and he decided to present Neu! to the world, to make possible what no one else managed to get done. He spent one and a half years talking to us individually: Klaus, then me, and then back to Klaus, like coalition discussions. He was stubborn, and he was willing to invest a lot of money and energy, most of all. So my partner agreed to sign, and that was the start of a whole new life for Neu! music. Then also, Harmonia was released on Grönland, my records found a home. My album [with Vittoria Maccabruni] was released there recently.
I met Julian Cope when I played with Dieter Moebius in Bristol. It must have been 2007 or ‘08, or something. He was a weirdo, I must say. He had some kind of bulletproof jacket on. One of his friends, who was a very straightforward thinking guy, told us he was always armed. I guess it was a severe case of paranoia, I would think. It was also funny, because, of course, I have this book, and I read through it quickly. I found so many mistakes; his assumptions about what we did and who did what, and so on. I spoke to him and he apologized. [He said] “I wrote that as a fan without the Internet and the ability to fact check anything. That was the best I could come up with.” I could sort of accept that. It opened a few doors. The 90’s were the transition period, and from 2001 onwards, I played so many concerts. I’m playing around the world. It’s a life in the 80’s, I may not have wanted. I guess in the course of your years, priorities change. You also focus on different things. In the 80’s, I was happy to work in the studio on music you know without any clock ticking away the dollars or the euros. That was wonderful for quite a long time. I also spend time in the studio working on new music- these days with Vittoria- but playing live is a special experience. To see the people reacting to the music firsthand without having to read messages or comments, and to see them smile. I’m very privileged with my music. It seems that the generation that followed, several generations maybe since the 70’s, are much more open to the sounds we created and the structures we deliver with music.
You’ve spoken a lot about how you never figured out how to get Neu! to sound good live with all of the layers or how audiences didn’t really get it. When you play the Neu! material now, is that what you pictured it to be like when you were first trying to put it on stage? Or are you coming at it from a different kind of angle?
That’s a very good question. I think I’ve never been asked that before. It’s difficult, really. We’re talking about 50-plus years [ago]. Back then, we came out of the studio and happily had a record. I was not sure that we would succeed. It was a very close shave. There were some fortunate elements, and Conny Plank’s genius at the mixing desk. Suddenly, I thought, “wow, this “Hallogallo,” “Weissensee,” and “Negativland,” sound great.” Of course, when Klaus and I then tried to play live, we had a problem. In the studio with the multi-track technology, I could play several guitars. Klaus could overdub vocals or something else. Live, with only one guitar and one drummer, or one bass player and one drummer, that didn’t work. It was impossible. The main problem was that we looked around to see whether there were any other musicians who could have helped us, but there weren’t any. Now, looking back, I understand, of course, it had to be that way, otherwise we would not have been the outsiders. There were the Kraftwerk people, and then Can in Cologne, a bit further away, with some other aspects in music which I respected but didn’t really fully understand as part of my world, they were something different. [Can drummer] Jaki Liebezeit played on my albums; such an amazing, wonderful drummer. I don’t know. It’s crazy how great he was, I can’t put it into words enough.
Klaus and I played, I think, two concerts as a duo, one at a festival, and the people booed. I had a cassette recorder on which I had recorded some water sounds, or a bowed bass like on “Weissensee.” Nowadays, this is probably hard to believe, but back then people said, “that’s not really music. We don’t want that.” We tried 2 musicians. They were not on our wavelength, to put it in a nutshell.
Into the 2000’s, there was this idea that you and Klaus could tour again as Neu!, but you seemed pretty resistant to all that. You said you’re just being cautious, and in an interview, you said that you maybe regret that caution a little bit. Now, when you’re performing with the music of Neu! and Harmonia, is this you being less cautious?
Again, I cannot totally confirm that that was my feeling, what you just quoted. I think my main reservations concerned my partner, Klaus. At the time he was, again, sooooo difficult. It’s impossible to make someone understand how- he said no a hundred times to suggestions by the record company. I called him Dr. No. I’d talk to friends, I said “Dr. No, said no again.”
It was really quite funny. I think two days before the records were supposed to be released, Klaus demanded a stop to the release. Herbert Grönemeyer, the owner, then told his company people, “close your ears. Do not look, do not hear, just go ahead and do it.” [With Klaus], I would think, psychologically, a case of fear of losing control. Klaus was very precise about his artwork…a small comma and then “Oh, nooooo.” Maybe you have to respect artists for being very narrow minded when it concerns their work. But there were more elements, so the idea of going with Klaus on a world tour for Neu!, which probably would have been possible, didn’t sound appealing to me at all, so I said no.
There was also the idea to book a studio in London and record 4th or 5th Neu! album, however, you count them. I’m sorry if this feels like I’m bashing him. Forever. I will have gratitude and a lot of respect for his contributions, so that’s the bottom line. He was big headed in a way. He said, “Let’s go book the studio for one weekend, and then we’ll have an album.”
Back in the 70’s we had four nights, because we didn’t have more money. We had Connie Planck, and we were very fortunate. Nowadays, with all the experience we have and the higher expectations of what to create, it’s impossible. So I said, “No, I’m not going to do that.” I think I never regretted that. Maybe from a commercial standpoint, it was a pity that we didn’t tour the world. But I always wanted the music that I play to the audience to be truthful in the way it is serious. It has my heart and total conviction that this is worthy of being presented, and not just taking the money and running. That’s the story of the 2000’s.
Klaus [and I] we tried to work together also in the late eighties-
[An alarm set by Michael goes off]
See, he’s not giving pardons, haha.
Graphic by Shannon McMahon