Michael Rother says he’s not enough of a sociologist to explain the explosion of creativity in German underground music during the early ‘70s, when a host of innovative bands emerged: Kraftwerk, Faust, Amon Duul, Cluster, Can, and Neu!, the duo Rother formed with Klaus Dinger.
“I’m just a musician, but this push to create a new personal identity was everywhere in Germany – in art, cinema, music,” Rother says. “Change was the virus of the times, and it was set loose by the huge disaster of World War II. I don’t want to sound cynical, but there is nothing like a disaster for creating art. The end of Nazi Germany, the reconstruction, the conservative structures that came into place as a reaction to the Nazis, it all came to a head during that time. I was born in 1950, and by the time I was 19 my focus was the future. The elder generation, our parents and teachers and government officials, were still in shock from what came before. We wanted a new start, to wipe away everything and start over.”
Little wonder that Neu! tracks such as “Hallogallo,” “Fur Immer,” “Negativland” and the proto-punk “Hero” still sound so immediate, pulsing down an “expressway to your skull,” as Sonic Youth would say, with Dinger’s drums clipping along like cars on the Autobahn while Rother’s guitars darted in and out.