German guitar great Michael Rother brings rare tour to San Francisco
Iconic German guitar master Michael Rother -- a member of such influential groups as Kraftwerk, Neu!, Harmonia and La Dusseldorf -- brings his current tour playing classic songs from the '70s to Gray Area in San Francisco Monday evening.
Developing an early interest in music, by 1965 Rother had joined the band Spirits of Sound as a teen, collaborating with keyboardist Wolfgang Riechmann (who later was in the prog rock group Streetmark before releasing his unsung solo album Wunderbar under his surname in 1977) and future Kraftwerk drummer Wolfgang Flür. The group would split up when Rother left to join a short-lived line-up of Kraftwerk.
Part of the monolithic German band's pre-Autobahn era that the principles Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider refused to acknowledge in the modern era, the trio version of the band led by Schneider with Rother on guitar and effects and drummer Klaus Dinger did not release any studio recordings (Dinger appears on one tune from Kraftwerk's debut). However, their output was documented in at least one German television appearance in 1971 that is closer to the minimalist experimental rock of the band's first two albums than their later synthesizer-dominated sound.
Rother and Dinger split from Kraftwerk that same year to form their own group Neu! -- the German word for "new" -- recording their first effort with another important figure in German music, producer and engineer Conny Plank, who had already worked with the avant-garde electronic group Kluster featuring Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius and Kraftwerk.
The band's groundbreaking minimalist sound built around Dinger's propulsive 4/4 beat that would later be called the "motorik" rhythm and Rother's layered, pulsing guitar and synthesizer atmospheres did not have the major commercial success Kraftwerk found with the title hit to Autobahn a few years later, but their self-titled 1972 debut would prove enormously influential. The album was later cited by David Bowie, Brian Eno and Iggy Pop as an important inspiration to their recordings later in the decade and is a cornerstone of the German rock underground that was a guiding star for early new wave and electronic artists as well as later bands including Stereolab, Tortoise and Broadcast who were heavily indebted to the Neu! aesthetic.
While making their second album Neu! 2 the following year, the duo found themselves short on money to fund the recording of more than half of the new songs needed for the effort. Neu! ended up pioneering the concept of the remix, filling out the album with sped up, slowed down and otherwise manipulated versions of tunes they had already completed. Rother also branched out by working with Roedelius and Moebius from their now rechristened duo Cluster to record the first album by Harmonia. Though he had initially approached the pair to see if they would be interested in being part of the live line-up for Neu!, the chemistry they found while playing together over primitive drum-machine beats led to the new collaboration. The resultant 1974 album Musik Von Harmonia would become a landmark of the hypnotic style of German "kosmische musik."
Rother toured with Harmonia, but eventually rejoined Dinger to work on the next Neu! album. The fact that Neu! '75 would essentially be made up of solo songs by each member -- Rother continuing his exploration of more ambient sounds while Dinger took a more aggressive, experimental rock approach, particularly on the proto-punk tune "Hero" -- illustrated the diverging interests of the two musicians. Dinger's side saw the drummer switching to guitar and vocals with the beat provided by dueling drummers, Klaus's brother Thomas Dinger and Hans Lampe. The shifting musical focus along with some personal friction led Neu! to split after the album came out.
Rother would rejoin Harmonia for the follow-up recording Deluxe that featured Guru Guru drummer Mani Neumeier on several songs, while Dinger would found the equally influential and far more commercially successful group La Düsseldorf with his brother and Lampe, releasing three well-regarded albums between 1976 and 1980. Rother, Roedelius and Moebius also held sessions with Brian Eno -- who had joined the players live onstage on one occasion -- intended for a third Harmonia record, but that music would not see official release for over two decades.
Rother released his first proper solo album in 1977, the more pastoral Flammende Herzen that featured the musician playing all the instruments save for drums performed by Can's Jaki Liebzeit (who would serve as Rother's drummer on recordings well into the '80s). The instrumental tracks would also provide the soundtrack for the German movie of the same name, marking the guitarist's first foray into film music.
While Rother and Dinger attempted a Neu! reunion in the mid-1980s to put a modern spin on the band's metronomic pulse, personal and professional tensions resurfaced that derailed the project. The recordings they made saw release as Neu! 4 a decade later and were eventually revised and reissued as Neu '86 in 2010. The guitarist remained productive into the late '80s and sporadically issued new music in the decades since, recording albums where he produced and played all the instruments as well as embracing electronic music with a variety of remix projects.
The 1999 compilation A Homage to Neu! featured interpretations of songs by electronic artists including Autechre, the Legendary Pink Dots and System 7 in addition to a new song from Rother, presaging a new era of cooperation between the guitarist and Dinger to remaster and reissue the band's classic catalog through the Grönland Records legitimately for the first time in decades.
While the two musicians never reteam to make new music before Dinger died from heart failure in 2008, the reissues sparked a new round of interest in their band, leading to the new tribute compilation Brand Neu! in 2009 including covers and Neu!-inspired songs by Oasis, Primal Scream, LCD Soundsystem, Cornelius and Sonic Youth in their Ciccone Youth guise as well as tours by Rother performing both his solo material and the music of Neu! and Harmonia.
Rother's tours have mostly focused on Europe, but his current visit to the U.S. to play both the Big Ears Festival in Knoxville, TN, and the Intuition Festival in Los Angeles brings the musician back to the States for the first time since his Hallogallo 2010 project with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley and Tall Firs bassist Aaron Mullan toured here 15 years ago. For this evening of solo songs and music from his influential groups, the guitarist will be joined by '70s collaborator Lampe on drums, Franz Bargmann on guitar and Vittoria Maccabruni on electronics and vocals. Opening this show presented by (((folkYEAH!))) at Gray Area in San Francisco's Mission District Monday night will be acclaimed guitar phenom Isaiah Mitchell -- best known for his psych power trio Earthless, who has also played with Nebula, Howlin' Rain and Golden Void -- who performs with his ambient duo featuring keyboardist Adam MacDougall (Circles Around the Sun, the Black Crowes).
Michael Rother plays Neu!, Harmonia and solo works
Monday, March 24, 7 p.m. $54.24
Gray Area
