Record Mirror interview with Ralf Hütter, conduced by Mark Cooper (1982)
I mean, let's start with the obvious, and perhaps the funniest thing about this interview. The photo on the first page is of Florian and they spelled 'Ralf' as 'Ralph' underneath it, despite the fact it's spelled correctly everywhere else. Some poor editor wasn't too interested, it seems... anyway!
"Ralf Hütter is the voice of Kraftwerk. He writes the words and gives the interviews, talking in the kind of perfect English which no English person can manage... Ralf is small and precise, giving an overwhelming impression of neatness. Like Kraftwerk, he likes a joke. Bad puns are his favorite and he underlines them with his eyebrows as if to explain, "I make joke" ... Polite and shy, Ralf is extremely reasonable and pleasantly ponderous -- like German bread."
Mark Cooper gives a strange first impression of Ralf, which I suppose isn't all that strange in itself for a Kraftwerk interview. First considering the header ("I'm not nuts," is he or isn't he?) which leads you to suspect Ralf is actually unusual, then being described as "ponderous" and "normal to the point of being weird," Cooper appears to have something of a grudge against him. In fact he admits to it, writing that "A part of me is convinced he's quite mad, another that he's dangerous," which... okay? I can't conceive of any reason why interviewers keep bringing up this concern of Ralf (and Florian) being dangerous somehow, whether that's in reference to the way they use their instruments or in their own persons, besides being a bit sensationalist. Kraftwerk was something new, something unlike anything else, and the members presented themselves in a very manicured and un-sensational way... so you have to make something up. Being clinically precise and intimidating fit right into both the German stereotype and idea of being robotic.
Which isn't to say it's all bad. Cooper also describes Ralf as having a sense of humor, which he acknowledges Kraftwerk incorporates into their music, and that he's polite, rather pretty, intelligent, and earnest. Ralf has nerves -- he's "Germanically human." Well, enough about the people, what about the music?
"In love with machines, Kraftwerk spends a good deal of time extolling a world in which humans would live happily and equally with machines and just about as much time portraying a world of frightening uniformity in which humans, like 'The Model,' have lost any individuality and become as machines"
Hmmm... This interview is from 1982, so through the album Computerworld. While rough, I feel, in description, it's right to say there's a split between Kraftwerk's depiction of machines as friend and foe. Computerworld especially explores the imminent use of computer technology to monitor citizens, but also revels in the possibilities of everyone having their own personal computing machine (I'm composing, I'm controlling || I beam myself into the future!). This isn't a new sentiment from them. Ich bin Ihr Deiner und Ihr Herr zugleich...
"Their music extols order to a point beyond the classical, to a point where I sometimes wonder whether the record's stuck, all the while evoking one constant emotion, loss."
I have to admit, when I first listened to Kraftwerk albums I also thought they could be repetitive. Now I hear them differently, through a lens of biased love and admiration, so.. well... anyway, I have to agree wholeheartedly with Cooper's last line there. Yes, Kraftwerk's music is uniquely melancholy. It's the best word for it, a sadness you can't really place. In hindsight, 'loss' could be a good word, the loss of a dreamed future that never came to be. Then, perhaps, the loss of a present reality which was freer and less monitored. Trans-Europe Express is so achingly romantic you can't help but let the post-card views flash through your mind, marred here and there with bombshell craters. And Radio-Activity... that needs its own post.
"I ask Ralf if he thinks he's normal. The question seems to shock him"
Well I should think so. asshole. Cooper says Ralf's being either 'clever or naive,' which is 'just like Kraftwerk.' Unfortunately I think he's right again because Ralf does admit to feeling out of place when he was a kid and I mean, he's never wanted to incorporate himself or his projects into the mainstream, really. Kraftwerk never worked with another band/artist to make music. Ralf openly explains that the aesthetics and values of Kraftwerk should remain distinctly separate from the flashiness of rock n roll, that Kraftwerk began to define their own (and Germany's own) type of music, specifically to break way from the popular anglo-American scenes.
Ralf: "I was out of touch with others... But since we made Kraftwerk and discovered our productivity by making our own music and pushing off the old classics, we found our normalcy. We closed ourselves in and started the Kling Klang studio and asked, 'Where are we? What do we want to play? What is happening?' Now we're social workers, we have a holistic approach to our work."
Alright. I'll skip the armchair psychology but finding normalcy by closing yourself off from the world and doing it your own way... then there's the disregard of 'old classics' which might be a bit of arrogance coming through because I know for a fact Kraftwerk admires the work of many influential past artists, though he may just mean they were throwing off the shackles of expectation and formulae.
"Kraftwerk are more like some weirdo's notion of the normal than the scruffy, day-to-day normality that most of us endure.
Ralf: "It's very basic and so very honest. You can't call it anything else but work."
When I go to hell there'll be a Kraftwerk journalist tied to a chair and a demon will hand me a baseball bat or other blunt instrument. Or maybe that's heaven? Anyway stop being so mean. Even if you're correct. Or be more accurate -- I wouldn't say Kraftwerk is truly trying to look "normal." Their aesthetics are polished and purposeful, as much a message as any punk rock group wearing patched-up secondhand leather jackets. The people behind Kraftwerk aren't supposed to be part of the spectacle, really -- they're made almost to blend in with their machines, appear the same as each other, give the impression of mechanical perfection as much as human care to human sense of style. None of which is overwhelmingly normal to me. But yes, they look more 'normal' with their shirts and slacks than traditional bands, and yet much neater than your average person on the street.
Then there's Ralf's philosophy on work. Musikarbeiter.
Ralf: "We are suggesting that people re-think their whole working situation, co-operate with one another and become productive. This is how work should be whether you are a musician, a journalist or a dentist."
A little ironic for the guy who just said he closed himself off to work on his music. But there's three other people in the Kling Klang Studio at that time, so, point still stands? He really wants the perception that he and the other members of Kraftwerk are workers, and derides the common notion of what working is. Ralf calls it slavery, says that the promise of a holiday doesn't excuse ten months of hard and unfulfilling work. But he and the other Twerkers, if you will, go into the studio for 'eight to ten hours a day, each shift,' so what gives? Like he said earlier, they do holistic work. Kraftwerk defines its own way forward instead of 'conforming,' as Cooper writes, and it would be better for everyone if the working world allowed for human expression and creativity, the ability to experience art in a way more than superficially observing it, if people could build from the ground up instead of scaffold the crumbling foundation. Well now that's very nice, if it were feasible. Cooper writes that "In insisting that they are workers like everybody else, they only succeed in making 'work' glamorous -- their work." And I have to agree to an extent. Yes, making music is work, and yes, making music is an occupation far removed from the realities of the average working man. It's easy to say from the outside how things should be, and I don't mean to say Ralf is wrong -- capitalism is hell -- but I always that the sentiment was a little self-important. What I'm doing is ideal.
"I tell him that, in the context of pop, remaining faceless is inevitably just another ploy, a means of making people more interested in them than less. Kraftwerk are in danger of becoming a gimmick. Kraftwerk pretend to reduce their making of pop music to the level of all health jobs."
I won't speak too much to this point because I constantly chide myself for finding the members of Kraftwerk fucking fascinating, precisely because I know just enough to be curious and not enough to stop speculating.
Ralf: "We were always very rhythmical. We always hated 'electronic' music whose connotations were intellectual only. We introduced the body to electronic music."
And the heart?
"The heart is a muscle so you could say we introduced the muscle."
This is one of Ralf's jokes.
I'd like to know what electronic music he's referring to here, because I know that Karl is a big fan of Stockhausen, whose music I wouldn't necessarily dance to at the club. Also I just really like the quote about introducing the body to electronic music, because it's very close to the man-machine concept and it's kinda hot
"Unfortunately this attitude isn't reflected in Kraftwerk's own stage show in which the four figures of Kraftwerk operate their studio onstage while their audience stare on in awe and, mostly, in silence."
This is supposed to be calling out hypocrisy. It refers to how Ralf is quite comfortable in discos because there's no real ego to it and 'the spotlight is on everybody.' Then again, how on earth are you supposed to do a live show otherwise? And I think the whole 'looking so normal it's weird' thing we talked about earlier was supposed to alleviate some of the attention, too.
Ralf: "We are very anarchic, or rather, maybe we are what comes after chaos. And our machine-like state is maybe a step to being born in a new society. By bringing machines back to life again, we make them our friends. We treat them cooperatively as an equal part of the working process."
Wont lie "Maybe we are what comes after chaos" goes hard as hell. Because it's almost true, with how he's always talking about rebuilding a cultural life after it was destroyed by WW2. And then I'd like to interpret the machines as friends as almost a 'keep your enemies closer' type of thing. Computers and technology are an inevitable counterpart of human life and work, so best to get to know them now before they're too complex to comprehend. Keep them friendly, domesticated, in the interest of good.
Ralf: "Being brought up in Germany, there's not much that anyone can tell us about order. Order in Germany wasn't invented by the Nazis -- it was there before and it continues afterwards."
He said shut the hell up for once about the Nazis I'm tired of hearing the same question over again
"And yet there is something dubious about this new world, something cynical and overarranged, something altogether too healthy..
Ralf: "We're not interested in alcohol and other forms of darkening your mind... otherwise you're just abusing yourself. We have done this but now we have more confidence in the things we do."
"An order beyond the older order, a simple and productive world of clean humans and clean machines."
I can tell you right goddam now that Ralf is being pretentious because Karl definitely wrote about getting quite drunk and wondering how Ralf could maintain such self-control. So the 'we' in his quote or more of a 'me.' On what Cooper writes: again, it's that melancholia just now mixed with his own reservations. Ralf is presenting a very orderly picture (which isn't quite reality) and I can imagine it may be disconcerting to hear in conjunction with music which, when first released, sounded beyond computerized, although after his mention of Nazis I feel his description is getting a little too referential.
Ralf: "In Germany there is a saying, 'If your morals are ruined, you can live quite easily.' The word 'morality' implies a certain codex from Hollywood and we work outside that. In German music we are observers, more concerned with mechanics and realism."
Kraftwerk's music never paints a clear picture (except for the condemnation of nuclear energy, although after the original release of Radio-activity which had no such decision) of the subjects it discusses. It leaves you guessing, it leaves you thinking, it makes you do the work. American media hates that. American media wants a good guy and a bad guy, demands a clear moral picture (Hays Code, anybody?) and as such limits what the public consumes, because artists can get blocked at the door. Of course, it's not just American media, but we're naming Hollywood here, and I'm thinking of modern Disney too.
Ralf: "We are not macho or anything, we are more androgynous."
Very swag ☑️ Electronic waves are an androgynous medium, after all... and to be real, this is an important part of Kraftwerk's aesthetic. The humans aren't supposed to be important, so who cares what they are? Kraftwerk separates itself as much as possible from anglo-American music scenes, so the forceful masculinity that's often perpetrated is thrown out the window. Androgyny and ambiguous messages in their music go hand-in-hand.
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