Karl Bartos - The Sound Of The Machine

2022·4.9 MB·

by  Karl Bartos

For Bettina
CONTENTS
Prologue: A Life Immersed in Sound
1Childhood in Post-War Germany
2A Chord Changes My Life
3Conservatory, Opera, Pop Music, LSD
4Listening, Feeling, Playing, Thinking
5A Year with Consequences
6With Kraftwerk to America
7Radio-Activity
8Trans-Europe Express
9The Man-Machine
10 Computer World
11 Around The World in 80 Concerts
12 Tour De France – Techno Pop – Electric Cafe
13 The Mix
14 My New Life
15 Communication
16 State of Play
Epilogue: ‘We Are Still Born in Do Re Mi’
Literature
Picture Credits
Acknowledgements
PROLOGUE:
A LIFE IMMERSED IN SOUND
Clang! – ‘It’s been a hard day’s night, and I’ve been working
like a dog …’ It was this song that changed my life – the
Beatles’ ‘A Hard Day’s Night’. Back then I was 12 years old
and in the middle of puberty, and even though I didn’t
understand much English, the music spoke to me. That was
the moment when sound took on a new meaning for me and
I knew I wanted to become a musician.
When I began to teach myself the guitar not long
afterwards, I soon couldn’t imagine how my life would be
without music. I didn’t have a plan, just a wish to get better
at it and play the music I was drawn to. That lent order and
purpose to my life.
A little later, I learned the percussionist’s craft at the Robert
Schumann Conservatory in Düsseldorf, so that I could
perform the masterpieces of classical music in an orchestra
and make them come to life. I met extraordinary people
along the way. My teachers were outstanding, passing on
not only theoretical and practical knowledge but also
dedication to music. Not by holding long lectures and
recommending reading, but by letting me join the orchestra
of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein without much ado, for
example, and allowing me insights into their lives. That was
the time when I began to think deeply about music, and I
have not stopped to this day. This book is the story of my
life, the story of my sound biography, and for that reason it
is also a book about music.
Through an enquiry to my teacher at the conservatory, I
unintentionally ended up in the music industry, which had
grown into a multi-million-dollar business over the second
half of the twentieth century. This book is therefore also
about the band Kraftwerk, placing the music we made
together in the context of its time.
I remember very well how I fell under the spell of electronic
music and became part of what’s known as Kraftwerk’s
classic line-up. To begin with, my job was playing electronic
percussion. My contributions were apparently useful enough
to make me a co-author of all our compositions from the
Man-Machine album up to the point when I left the band. It
was during this period above all that I regarded myself as a
band member. My contribution, I thought, was audible and
visible for both insiders and outsiders. After all, I brought
plenty of life and music into the Kling Klang Studio. I
remember our writing sessions and ‘sound rides’ as if they
were yesterday, and the amazing feeling of being part of a
community where the whole was more than the sum of its
parts. Or that’s how it seemed to me at the time.
Innovations and musical ideas rarely fall fully-formed from
heaven. When I read musicians’ biographies, I always find it
interesting to learn about the inspiration for their various
songs. So in this book, I’ll be taking you along inside the
Kling Klang Studio, showing you some of the sources for our
ideas, providing context and background information, and
describing how we created our music using compositional
craft, dedication, emotion and a pinch of intelligence.
Over almost sixteen years, I worked on six Kraftwerk albums
– plus one maxi-single about a French sporting event that
was to be the basis for another album. Nonetheless, for the
public I only became visible and audible when I left the
band.
After my years in the Kraftwerk cosmos, I had to start by
reinventing my life and asking myself: What does Karl
Bartos sound like? Along that path, I was fortunate enough
to meet and work with fantastic artists like Johnny Marr,
Andy McCluskey, and Bernard Sumner.
My time as a guest professor of Auditory Media Design in
the Sound Studies master’s programme at Berlin’s
University of the Arts was another source of inspiration and
development in my work.
Naturally, journalists and interviewers have always brought
up my past. But the events that took place in the Kling
Klang Studio were too complex to explain in just a few
words. A rush-job autobiography in the form of an early
evaluation seemed an inadequate response. I wanted to
take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture to form
my opinion from a distance. One day, I told myself, I would
return to the project in detail.
Over thirty years after leaving Kraftwerk, I’m now holding
the finished manuscript in my hands – The Sound of the
Machine. Happily, I neither have a drawer full of unpaid bills,
nor do I owe anyone a favour nor feel obliged not to
comment for any other reason. I am independent, which
means I can tell the whole story as I experienced it. Much of
what happened in those years has been forgotten or was
never known, due to the unusual conditions we worked
under in Kraftwerk. In this book, I write about the creation of
our music, look at our social behaviour, let you share our
communications as far as I can, and try to describe how
things developed over time. If I manage to lend a new
perspective on Kraftwerk’s music and perhaps encourage
you to think about the nature of music in general, I will have
achieved my goal. I certainly hope I do.