Interview: Ralf Hutter of Kraftwerk
Sep 27, 2008
By Graham Reid

Thank you for taking the time because I appreciate you are busy. You are playing in Krakow in a couple of days?

Yes, we are travelling there tomorrow and we are doing three dates and finishing a festival, we are some kind of 'highlight'. I think it will be a beautiful occasion in an old industrial complex re-functioned for cultural events. So we travel tomorrow to set up.

Does it take Kraftwerk longer to set up than most bands given the amount of technology you have?

No, faster I think. Two or three hours. But it is more like checking cables and connections and having the computers working properly. It's not so much a physical set-up.

Is it easier now to perform live than it was say 20 years ago because the technology is better?

Definitely, we've been very lucky that the technology developed in our direction. (laughs) This is what we envisaged in the late 70s when we worked with mostly analogue [equipment] of course. Then we composed the concept of [the album] Computer World coming out in 81 and we didn't even have computers at that time. So that was more like a visionary album. We only got that technology, a small PC, around the tour of that album and we used one on stage just writing letters. Just typing them in, not even in synch or anything. Just live, and a guy putting that on screen.

So we have been very lucky because you can imagine in the late 70s the travelling problems. We couldn't tour at all because all our drum tracks were recorded and were synchronised by sequencers.

Did you want to tour more? The image of Kraftwerk was that you were very reclusive, you didn't do interviews and you didn't perform live every often. Would you have preferred to have performed more back then?

Yes, because in the late 60s and the early 70s Kraftwerk was the man operating the machine and was not a museum. It was a live electronic outfit and we came from free form improvised music, classical or certain jazz. And so at one point we were stuck with all this complex analogue technology that took so long to set up we couldn't perform the music to the same level as on record.

We had multi-tracked on record so on stage we used tapes, especially for the drum tracks. So the drummers were just posing. (laughs) Then with computer programmes in the 90s it was like a restart in 91when we finally had the technology. It had developed to our standard and we could afford it, and could travel with it. It is light and very compact.

I saw you in New Zealand when you played The Big Day Out and people were very impressed. You mentioned writing letters earlier on. People thought that you could have been sending e-mails home to your friends because that is what it looked like.

Yes, that is a very funny vision. Of course there is black humour involved so whatever people have - serious thoughts or whatever - are okay. Electronics is very mind-stimulating music. It is not instruments like a violin where you admire someone playing a violin and their technique. This is more essential. It is basic frequencies and we have a wide range of audible frequencies from 20 to 20,000 hertz.

There are no limits, the limit is our creativity and we have the instruments . . . . but this time for the first time for you we will have the robots.

Last time they had to stay in Dusseldorf and they were very fat. But this time they will travel with us.

---sigue---