Sound and Industry: Kraftwerk and the Düsseldorf scene - "Kraftwerk" - "Kraftwerk 2" - Kraftwerk - Man, Machine and Music by Pascal Bussy

BY MID-1970, MUCH OF THE NEWLY BORN GERMAN ROCK MUSIC
tradition could be boiled down to two particularly German fascinations - technology and efficiency. Central to the appeal of 'Kraut Rock' was a music which, although initially anarchic and experimental, was nevertheless efficient in a minimally mesmeric way. Also intriguing was the harnessing and conquering of the latest technological breakthroughs in instrumentation. This resulted in musicians who were very technically minded, conscious of bridging the gap between musician and studio engineer. As an inevitable outcome, groups established their own recording studios or bases, which in themselves could be used as creative tools. Thus, the recording process was now perceived in a similar way to that of an artist or a sculptor approaching a painting or sculpture in his or her own studio.

This building-block approach was in stark contrast to most conventional pop and rock groups. British and US groups saw the recording process as one of writing a bunch of songs and then booking into a commercial studio for a few days or weeks to record them. Can, however, could now revel in the control afforded to them of their own recording studio - almost like having the benefits of a home industry or little factory where they could constantly work and refine their ideas. Perhaps, more importantly, the time taken in building up these ideas made it economically impractical to record in a fully commercial studio. As Hütter put it, "The studio was really born before the group. Everything came from the studio, as from a Mutterschiff (Mothership)."1
Can's somewhat eccentric bass player, Holger Czukay, became absorbed by the apparent dialogue that went on between himself and the recording machines in their Inner Space studio. Hütter and Schneider too, whilst lacking Czukay's mischievous edge, became intrigued by the notion of a new type of technological music. They started to entertain similar ideas to that of Czukay - that recording machines could assume a life of their own.

Later, of course, there was little distinction in Kraftwerk between the music and the studio. In effect, advances in recording technology would become the raison d'etre of the group's existence. Eventually, they became obsessed with producing music that almost sounded as if it had been created by machines - not just musicians who were also studio engineers, but more like sound engineers who happened to produce music. This led to the logical conclusion that the studio was a musical instrument or member of the group in its own right. As they would put it, "we play the studio". Ultimately, as the Kraftwerk sound developed, the studio became a kind of technical laboratory, claiming that they were not so much entertainers as scientists.
However, this could only have been a twinkling in their eye when Hütter and Schneider took the inevitable step early in 1970 of establishing their own makeshift studio in the centre of Düsseldorf. In the same building as it is today, it was set up in a 60 sq metre rented loft in close proximity to the main railway station. After fitting out the room with sound insulation material they started recording sounds on stereo tape machines and cassette recorders with a view to taking the tapes to a fully equipped recording studio for final mixing. It was even reported that part of this recording process involved the duo having microphones hidden in their clothing so as to capture various sounds as they moved around.

Düsseldorf being located in the industrial heartland of Germany provided Kraftwerk with the inspiration for many of these early tapes, recreating the sounds of the flat industrialized zone on the banks of the nearby Rhine. From very early on they were forging musical connections between the exterior world and their own interior idealised vision of that same world as constructed from within the confines of their studio. The studio acted like a musical filter for the sonic

snapshots that Hütter and Schneider took from the industrial reality that surrounded them.
The musical development of Kraftwerk was inextricably linked with the small but thriving city of Düsseldorf. Located in the western region of Germany, hugging the Dutch border, it was the perfect place for the birth of the Kraftwerk musical ideology, being symbolic of a new German modernity after the Second World War. Just as Frankfurt had become the symbol of financial power, so Düsseldorf was the main city of the "Ruhrgebiet", the biggest industrial concentration in Europe. As such it symbolised a new form of industrial power represented by clean, modern design. In musical terms this was reflected in the differences between Can, who produced a more traditional music from the solid cultural background of Cologne, and Kraftwerk who were to go on to adopt a more modern musical language from their base in Düsseldorf.

After disbanding Organisation, the duo had adopted the name Kraftwerk (literally Power Plant). By choosing a specifically German name rather than an anglicized one, it was a clear statement of Germanic intent, as well as possibly claiming the higher ground over other popular German groups who had adopted English names. In fact, it was common practice for rock groups in Germany to choose names that reflected the sort of music they played, rather than picking a random or arbitrary one like many English and American rock bands. Therefore the word Can, having meaning in English, Turkish and Japanese reflected the ethnic interests of the group. Likewise, the names Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream reflected the more typically "cosmic" end of the German rock scene. Needless to say, the name Kraftwerk came to speak volumes about the industrial influence and motivation that Hütter and Schneider's new group would embrace.

However, according to the group's later collaborator Karl Bartos, the name was contrived from less intellectual beginnings. Apparently, Hütter and Schneider, on a trip to East Germany, had been amused by the names of football teams like Dynamo Dresden. They all seemed to have rather grand and industrial connections. Hütter and Schneider started playing around with imaginary team names of their own with prefixes like Kraftwerk, and thus the name stuck. An added attraction to the name Kraftwerk was that they would actually gain a lot of free advertising. On German roads the power stations (kraftwerks) are indicated by road signs. So, every 100 kms or so you would come across a sign that indicates to turn off to the kraftwerk. The group were very aware of this extra angle to the appeal of their name.

Not only did they choose a German name but all the early tracks that the group worked on had German titles as well. By not conforming and anglicizing their product, they were making a conscious effort, however small, to regain some of the ground that German culture had lost in the post-war years. They were trying to reverse the 'Américanisation' that had been imposed on many aspects of German society, and most particularly popular music. By being the first of the new German groups to title pieces exclusively in the German language, they were expressing themselves with an even stronger central European identity. Ralf Hutter:
"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 [Kraftwerk] are picking it up again where it left off, continuing this culture of the thirties, and we are doing this spiritually."

Hutter and Schneider were all too aware that there was a whole generation of Germans, aged between 30 and 50, who had lost their identity, both during the war and in the immediate post-war period. Many Germans referred to this period as "die Stunde null" (the hour zero) referring not only to the economy and politics, but also to culture and music. Perhaps more than any of the other German groups, Kraftwerk expressed through their music the rebuilding and continuing of Germany's past culture. Hutter later expanded on this to Lester Bangs in 1975.
"So you see another group like Tangerine Dream, although they are German they have an English name, so they create onstage an Anglo-American identity, which we completely deny. We want the whole world to know we are from Germany, because the German mentality, which is more advanced, will always be part of our behaviour. We create out of the German language, the mother language, which is very mechanical, we use it as the basic structure of our music."
It would be all too easy to attribute right-wing overtones to this statement with its talk of an "advanced mentality" and "mother language".

In reality Kraftwerk have always appeared politically ambivalent, and such answers must be taken on an artistic and cultural level rather than in a political context. However, in expressing their national identity in such a way, they may have been reacting against the hippyish, more left-wing orientation of most of the other German groups whom Kraftwerk had largely outgrown by the time of Hütter's statement.

Back in 1970, following the mutual disappointment between the group and RCA over the lack of success of Tone Float, Hutter and Schneider started to look for a record company with German connections to release their next record. They ended up signing a deal with the newly established Philips label. The label was owned by the Hamburg-based Phonogram, itself a subsidiary of the Dutch parent company Philips, who had strong links with the large German company Siemens AG. In a rather roundabout way, it somehow seemed harmonious for the burgeoning pioneers of a modern industrial music to be connected with one of the top industrial companies in Germany. Kraftwerk were only the third signing to Philips, after the now forgotten Ihre Kinder in 1969, and Frumpy in 1970. At the time most of the other German groups were either on United Artists' subsidiary Liberty, like Can and Amon Diiul, or like most of the Berlin bands on Metronome's subsidiaries Brain, Ohr and Pilz.
The first fruit of their signing to Philips was the self-titled Kraftwerk LP. Recorded between July and August of 1970 in their new studio, it was co-produced and engineered by Conny Plank, this time with the assistance of Klaus Lohmer. Plank, by then an experienced engineer, could presumably have chosen to concentrate on more lucrative work. However, because he believed so strongly in the pioneering music of Kraftwerk, he helped with the recording process often for little or no remuneration. His was a key role, being crucial in developing Hutter and Schneider's recording abilities up to the point where they could perceive themselves more as studio engineers than musicians.
Like most good producers Plank was good at organising people within a studio environment. He felt that the best music was made when musicians and producers "play together like children play together."4 Plank was later to describe the early Kraftwerk sessions as very long, with everybody hanging around, sometimes not doing much at all. Then someone would make a few suggestions and one of the group would decide whether they liked it or not.

From Plank's description it was clear that even this early on, with limited time constraints, the Kraftwerk creative process could be a slow one. As Plank put it, "To me it is more important that the picture is right no matter what sounds are used on tape."5
When released in late 1970, as a point of continuity from the Organisation LP, Kraftwerk's double opening LP sleeve was designed by Hütter and showcased their adopted trademark - the traffic cone. Both front and back covers featured a dayglo orange and white traffic cone with the word Kraftwerk overprinted. For the uninitiated, it was not clear whether one was to assume that this was the name of the LP or the band, or both. Opening the double sleeve of the album revealed a large photo of an electric generator, another indicator of the industrial and technological image that the group was beginning to embrace.
From the very opening notes of the LP, it is evident that the duo had quickly put much of the meandering uncertainties of Tone Float behind them, arriving at a much more disciplined form of music. Kraftwerk contained a lot of the elements that would later make up the group's sound, without ever perhaps making a conclusive whole. Rhythmically it is much stronger, featuring Andreas Hohman and Klaus Dinger on drums. Initially they had difficulty in finding drummers who could embrace their more avant-garde ideas. Ralf Hütter:
"Not only were we interested in Musique Concrete but also in playing organ tone clusters and flute feedback sounds that added variety to the repeated note sequences that we recorded and mixed on tape. Then we used several acoustic drummers as we turned our attention to more rhythmic music, and soon found that amplifying drums with contact mics was desirable for us but not readily accepted by the players."6

As a result of the difficulty in getting drummers to adapt to their music, the LP also features Florian Schneider on electronic percussion. This was undoubtedly the result of Schneider's early efforts at building homemade rhythm devices on which he would later so successfully modify and expand. However, in choosing Hohman and Dinger they were obviously aware of bringing in two people who were naturally rhythmically inclined, providing a balance in the group between rhythm and experimentation. It also gave more of an impression of a working band of four members, even if all the other instrumentation and compositions were credited to Hütter and Schneider.
Side one opens with "Ruckzuck", a piece which was to become a live favourite of the group. They often started their early concerts with this track which is dominated by Schneider's breathy flute riff. Following on is the 12 minute "Stratovarius" which, although having an eery improvised feel, gives the impression that the structure of the piece is altogether more ordered. The types of sound are more subtle and the track builds with an inner momentum and logic. The title of the track is a play on words possibly alluding toward classical music as subject matter (i.e. Stradivarius). The tempo speeds up and slows down to various climaxes, ending with a plaintive violin and flute played over a minimal percussive beat. The final climax ends suddenly and abruptly like someone has turned the volume off.
Side two opens with "Megaherz" which begins with a low oscillating note slowly developing into waves of industrial sound. This finally gives way to a quiet passage which has an almost classically minimal tune, showing an early understanding of the sort of basic melody lines they were later to use to such effect.
However, some of the music on Kraftwerk still bore more than a passing similarity to their German contemporaries. "Stratovarius" has the same percussive climaxes as Can, whilst passages in "Megaherz" have a similar ambient, cathedral-like quality to the music of Tangerine Dream. But it is the LP's last track which really begins to state the group's forthcoming electronic agenda. On "Vom Himmel Hoch", noise swoops from speaker to speaker, tension building as stabs of industrial sound are joined by a tribal drum beat. Some passages sound like machines that have been left to their own devices, bleeping and twitching like radios and amplifiers feeding-back in a corner. The intensity and probable direction of the duo was now clear as the track steps out of the shadows of their contemporaries as a menacingly evocative portrayal of industrial sound.

Compared to the Organisation LP, Kraftwerk was a considerable artistic success. They had managed to mix a blend of obsessional rhythms, flute whispers, organ sighs and treated violin sounds, giving a much stronger almost hallucenogenic effect. Sounds glide in and out, monotonous and hypnotic rhythms build only to disappear. Similar to pieces by Terry Riley and Steve Reich, childish, almost nursery rhyme melodies, evolve and slightly change over the course of a track.

With a successful recording under their belts, the group's confidence had grown to such an extent that they were able to consider playing more concerts in their native Germany. These concerts were often advertised with a poster featuring the red and white traffic cone with a naked woman superimposed on it. Once again, like the concerts that Organisation had played, these were not so much tours of rock clubs, but generally in more esoteric surroundings. Ralf Hütter:
"We played concerts here and there, at Universities, parties or happenings. We travelled around in a Volkswagen van, living at various friends' houses in other cities. It was not a big organisation like it is today, with stages, container trucks arid PA systems."
However, despite these concerts which featured the line-up on the LP, the group was nonetheless to go through a period of turmoil. Hohman was the first to leave and for a short period they continued as a trio. Then, Hütter, Schneider and Dinger were joined by Michael Rother (guitar) and Eberhardt Krahnemann (bass), a five piece line-up which was to only last for one session. Krahnemann's exit was amazingly followed by Hütter himself and for a six month period the group consisted of Schneider, Rother and Dinger. Perhaps not surprisingly the music this trio played bore a closer resemblance to Rother and Dinger's later work with Neu! than it did anything by Kraftwerk.

The trio recorded a 35 minute session at Conny Plank's studio which was never released. However, a good impression of the music they made is a performance that they gave for "The Beatclub" which was filmed and broadcast on German TV in 1971. This first TV performance by Kraftwerk shows Schneider with his flute and electronic equipment, Rother on guitar, and Dinger on drums. They played an eleven minute piece entitled "Truckstop Gondolero" during which they mixed improvised repetitive melodies with the electronic noises provided by Schneider. (This film has recently become available in Japan on video laser-disc, alongside performances by Yes and Soft Machine under the title "Frontiers of Progressive Rock").

Not long after this recording, Rother and Dinger parted company with Schneider and formed Neu!, soon establishing themselves alongside Kraftwerk as the second definitive Düsseldorf cult group. Neul's music was a natural extension for Rother and Dinger, taking some of the early Kraftwerk ideas to their logical conclusion. Neul's metronomic pulses also drew parallels with Can, and it came as no surprise that Rother would use Can's Jaki Liebezeit as drummer on his later solo recordings.

In any event, when the Kraftwerk 2 LP was released, Hütter and Schneider had rejoined forces to continue Kraftwerk's electronic ideas. In fact, Rother and Dinger had been involved in early sessions for the LP, but left due to what Rother calmly describes as a "question of temperament, of character". Produced in just seven days between 26th September and 1st October 1971, the LP was recorded at their own studio and the Star Musik Studio in Hamburg. The latter was owned by Ralf Arnie who was a key figure in the Hamburg rock scene and with whom Kraftwerk subsequently signed a publishing deal. The LP is once again co-produced by Conny Plank, whose contribution is acknowledged by a picture credit on the inside sleeve. This may well have been in part a thank you to Plank who believed enough in the music to persuade people like Ralf Arnie to give Kraftwerk cheap and sometimes free access to commercial studios, often working through the night.

Kraftwerk 2, again released on the Philips label, is very much a musical extension of Kraftwerk. Certainly the cover concept is a direct continuation, being exactly the same in design, only this time the traffic cone is dayglo green and overprinted with 'Kraftwerk 2'. The idea of making the two covers so similar was probably borrowed from Warhol who would do a series of silkscreens of a particular picture, with only a small colour change between each print. However, copying this trick may have backfired on them. The cover was so similar to the first LP that people might have been forgiven for assuming it was the same record slightly re-packaged.
The double sleeve opens up to reveal mugshots of Hutter and Schneider in various profiles. With leather trousers, long hair, dark glasses and leopard skin jackets, the duo look strangely like members of an early Roxy Music line-up. The bottom row of photos is saved for pictures of the various instruments used on the LP, as if, even then, the instruments (like the studio today) were considered to be additional members of the band.

Kraftwerk 2, like its predecessor, was totally instrumental. Hutter credited with rhythmusmaschine (rhythm machine) as well as a host of other instruments such as the organ, electric piano, glockenspiel, harmonium and bass. Schneider meanwhile is credited with guitar, flute, glockenspiel, and the rather obscure sounding "geige" and "mischpult". The LP found the group developing ways of treating these conventional instruments electronically to create both a new way of playing and a new type of music. Thus piano, flute, guitar and violin are all deformed in an attempt to get away from the sounds normally attributable to them. This way of treating conventional instruments was similar in nature to the music of John Cage amongst others, and in particular his piece called "Prepared Piano".

By this time, having parted company with previous drummers, Kraftwerk 2 features no conventional drumming at all - the rhythm being produced by a rhythm machine and echo box. At the time, drum machines were very much limited to the sort of rhythm box that could be found in an electric organ and would have a few pre-programmed beats like a bossanova. Ralf Hutter:
"In 1971 Kraftwerk was still without a drummer, so I bought a cheap drum machine giving some preset dance rhythms. By changing the basic sounds with tape echo and filtering we made the rhythm tracks for 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 speeds for further effects."9

Because of this reliance on drum machines, the 17 minute "Klingklang" which dominates most of side one has an altogether softer sound than most of the first album, but it is a piece of music that people would recognise as being identifiably Kraftwerk and is undoubtedly the centrepiece of the LP.

The track's constantly shifting tempo is due to the changing beat of the drum machine, giving the impression that for the first time it is a machine that is actually driving the music forward. This in 1971 was a totally new phenomenon. To most people, the very idea that a machine could dictate the form and shape of a piece of music was an alien concept. The track confused the listener further as the tempo almost seems to speed up and slow down at random. Neu! would also use these apparently random tempo changes, only in a more exaggerated way.

"Klingklang", although driven by the rhythm machine, is still characterised by Schneider's breathy flute arpeggios and Hütter's organ playing. Gone is any pretension to improvisation, the whole piece is built with a structure similar to the repetitive patterns in Steve Reich's early music. "Klingklang" stands up today as a remarkable piece, way ahead of its time. The title Klingklang (ring sound in English), was both descriptive of the group's music and a catchy monicker. As such it was not surprising that later records were credited as a Klingklang production, and to this day the two still record in their now-named Kling Klang studio.

Relying more heavily on guitar distortion than drum machine, the second side of Kraftwerk 2 has an altogether more atmospheric feel. The minimalism of the ideas have an almost child-like simplicity, relying heavily on echo. Being totally uncluttered the tracks often sound as if they are going to peter out altogether like the fading soundtrack to some non-existent film.
So, "Strom" starts with what sounds like breathing or respirator noises, or someone snoring into a microphone. The understated "Wellenlange" is more typical of their later subtlety, but has the added irony of an almost twelve bar blues bass motif coming in toward the end. The LP concludes with "Harmonika" which features Hütter playing repeated arpeggios on the harmonium. The trick of concluding an LP with minimal, arpeggiated phrases, was one which they would use to great effect on later LPs.

On both Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2, Hütter and Schneider were beginning 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. However, although these two LPs are often quoted as very important early industrial LPs, they do not conjure up as raw a sound as one would perhaps have expected from the industrial heartland of the Ruhr. Consistent with the care taken over later LPs, the tracks have more of the mechanical touch of light industry without the roaring thunder of heavy machinery.
With the exception of a generally mechanical and Germanic feel, neither of the first two LPs could be described as having any cohesive theme and yet to surface is the group's conceptual approach to the entirety of an LP. Having said that, both LPs have the feeling that their so-called industrial sound is in someways idealised and thus conceptual to a degree. Similar to the altered vision of reality portrayed in the films of Fritz Lang, there was a real hint that there was an ever growing contrast in Kraftwerk between the real world and their idealised vision of it as represented by their music.

Today, although they admit that some of the elements of minimalism on the first two LPs were important precursors to the music they produce now, they are generally non-communicative about them. Florian Schneider:
"Maybe the idea was to try to achieve a concept, it worked better later, of course. But today we don't consider the first albums as important works, as important compositions. It was another period. Before..."10
Hütter, however, denies that they repudiate these early recordings, "No, not at all, it's just that it is an old period so we don't speak so much about it."11

Hütter claims that from the very start they made enough money from these early records to be self-sufficient and expand their studio and musical ideas. Although, with both he and Schneider having come from comfortable backgrounds, it is not inconceivable that their musical endeavours were at least in some way subsidised by their respective families. However, initial sales of the first two albums were encouraging, the first LP achieving sales of around 60,000 in Germany. The second LP fared slightly less well, possibly due to their insistence on the confusingly ambiguous cover and title.
Although both LPs were later to become influential recordings, at the time they were still in the shadow of the increasingly popular Can and Tangerine Dream. Can in particular had successfully bridged the gap between experimental and pop music. By the end of 1971 they had a top ten hit in Germany with "Spoon", a track used for the title music of a German TV thriller series, proving that their experimentation could be just as successful within a three minute single format. It would be another three years before Kraftwerk would prove the same point with their own music.

Listening to Kraftwerk's early recordings today, it is probably easier to see in retrospect how detached from the other German groups they actually were at the time. Whilst definitely fitting into the Germanic music scene, they were nonetheless in direct juxtaposition to the traditional instrumentation of Can and Amon Düül in Cologne and Munich respectively, and the Berlin bands who were exclusively infatuated with the new synthesizer. It was noticeable how the German rock scene could be divided into its component parts, the Berlin, Munich and Cologne bands, and the Düsseldorf scene that was centred around Kraftwerk and Neu!
So, whilst the Berlin scene was very "cosmic", the Düsseldorf scene had its own distinctive electronic feel. The groups from Düsseldorf were not interested in goals of musical purity or beauty, but more of creating a new musical language which used every sound source available including industrial technology. As a result, both Kraftwerk and Neu! had a strong physical and rhythmic presence that echoed everyday life.
Because of this, Kraftwerk were beginning to build up a 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. In January 1973, Jean-Pierre Lentin in an edition of the French monthly Actuel devoted to the underground in Germany, described Kraftwerk like this:
"Kraftwerk live and play at night.

Its musicians are pale, we could think that they are night creatures, vampires maybe. Ralf Hütter wears a black leather suit, white boots, his hair pulled backwards. Phlegmatic and silent, he has lived for the last month in a large empty flat which has not been furnished. It has white walls, a mattress on the floor, and a strange echo in each room.
At midnight he goes out and meets Florian Schneider-Esleben in their studio. They are the founding members of the group, together again after a few adventures. Both have studied classical music but have long since abandoned the old theories. They play flute, violin, guitar, organ -systematically distorting conventional sounds with new ways of playing electronics. Sometimes the music is completely atonal, a pure fascination with noise. To their credit, they have produced two albums which are among the more experimental of German rock, and also among its best sales."12
In England too, interest had picked up in German music enough for the first two LPs to appear in 1972 as a double LP on Philips' progressive Vertigo label. The LP appeared in a new sleeve depicting an oscillating blue electronic wave signal which the record company no doubt felt better portrayed the group's electronic music than that of a traffic cone. However, in general it lacked the starkly humorous effect achieved by the original covers.

Subsequently, following their later success, the first two LPs were also re-released in Germany in 1975, as well as selected tracks from Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2 being used as the basis of several compilations, but as yet neither LP has been released on Compact Disc, although they have at times expressed an interest in re-releasing these recordings.
It was obvious that Kraftwerk's success was not going to be an overnight affair. The first two LPs had broadly laid out their musical intentions but were too far outside the parameters of rock or pop music to be widely accepted. As such they were more revered by other musicians than by the general public. Even as far back as then, it was clear that Kraftwerk were very much musician's musicians, a situation that despite their world-wide success is still true today. However, if nothing else, the first two LPs had been successful in their attempt to redefine noise and sound as music, and were clearly an influence on a whole myriad of groups who would later include a noise or industrial element to their music.

Notes:
SOUND and INDUSTRY
1 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Pascal Bussy, Neuilly, October 3rd, 1983. (Interview published in the Dutch monthly Vinyl in 1984).
2 Ralf Hütter: Unknown source.
3 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Lester Bangs: 'Kraftwerkfeature', Creem (Sep 1975). Reproduced in Psychotic Reactions & Carburettor Dung (Minerva 1990).
4 Conny Plank: quoted in The Complete Synthesizer Handbook by Michael Norman and Ben Dickey (Zomba Books 1984).
5 Conny Plank: quoted in The Complete Synthesizer Handbook by Michael Norman and Ben Dickey (Zomba Books 1984).
6 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Mike Beecher, Electronics and Music Maker, September 1981.
7 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Pascal Bussy, Lyons, November 5th, 1991.
8 Michael Rother: Interview by Pascal Bussy, November 9th, 1992.
9 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Mike Beecher, Electronics and Music Maker, September 1981.
10 Florian Schneider: Interview by Pascal Bussy, Lyons, November 5th, 1991.
11 Ralf Hütter: Interview by Pascal Bussy, Lyons, November 5th, 1991.
12 Jean-Pierre Lentin: Actuel, January 1973.

Pascal Bussy. Man, Machine and Music. SAF Publishing Ltda. UK, 1993, p. 25-38.