A hero to modern rock bands ranging from Stereolab to the Strokes, and from Sonic Youth to Tortoise, Klaus Dinger, a founding member of ’70s German art-rockers Kraftwerk and the driving force behind cult legends Neu!, died late last month of heart failure. He was 61 years old.
I offer the following excerpt from my book, Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock, as an overdue homage to one of my favorite drummers ever, the mastermind behind the minimal but undeniable rhythm the Germans called “motorik.”
(If you’ve never heard the genius that was Neu!, here is a live version of “Hero” from 1974, and here are D.I.Y. videos for “Negativland” and “Hallogallo.”)
In Germany, there is no speed limit. The most culturally myopic American knows this but tends to envision futuristic superhighways criss-crossing the country. In fact, the autobahns were built by Hitler to provide a system for quick and easy troop transport, and they have only two lanes running in either direction. They are simple but efficient blacktops cutting through the countryside, unobtrusive intrusions of modernity in the rolling green hillsides. Neu! is the sound of driving late at night on these quiet, empty roads. The white lines move toward the headlights with mechanical regularity, in time to the steady speed of the car. They are the only thing you see, but the Fatherland is out there in the darkness. You can feel it.
Although Ralf Htter and Florian Schneider would prefer people to think that they surfaced in 1974 as fully formed electronic-pop pioneers, the two founders of Kraftwerk actually met at the Dsseldorf Conservatory in the late 60s. In 1968 the two formed a group called Organisation to play improvised music with organ, flute, and electronics at art galleries and happenings, but their first album, 1970s Tone Float, was a flop. The two regrouped under the name Kraftwerk, and recorded their self-titled debut with help from drummers Andreas Hohman and Klaus Dinger. The album received favorable reviews, but the groups progress was soon interrupted by a series of personnel shifts. At one point, Htter quit, and the lineup of Schneider, Dinger, and guitarist Michael Rother recorded thirty-five minutes of music at Conrad Planks studio, including an eleven-minute piece called Truckstop Gondolero.
Before Truckstop Gondolero could be released, Htter rejoined and Dinger and Rother left due to what Rother told biographer Pascal Bussy was a question of temperament, of character. Dinger and Rother started a new project called, quite literally, Neu!, and Htter and Schneider released the quickly-produced Kraftwerk 2.
Rother and Dinger emerged from Kraftwerk frustrated and unfulfilled. One suspects that they had been too rock for Htter, or Htter had been too staid for them. In any event, they were determined to make improvised electronic music that retained the rhythmic drive and harsh edge of the best rock n roll. They recorded with Plank, who had just moved his studio to a farmhouse near Hamburg. The recording room was in the old pigsty, and the mixing desk was in a former stable. The trio finished Neu!s self-titled debut in just four days. Dinger handled drums, synthesizers, some guitar, and the albums one vocal, while Rother was responsible for the majority of guitar, piano, bass, and tape manipulations. The two played with a rare empathy, and their improvisations were uncommonly structured and immediate.
The key track on Neu!s first album is the psychedelic opener, Hallogallo (Hullabaloo). The long, hypnotic instrumental is built around Rothers backwards, echoplexed, or heavily reverbed guitars; simple five- or six-note keyboard patterns, and Dingers metronomic drumming. The 4/4 rhythm is Neu!s secret. Dubbed motorik, the beat is unrelenting, straightforward, and entrancingthe sound of the white line. Even the fills are dedicated to propelling the song rather than decorating the spartan beat. When I spoke to Rother in 1998, he recalled that the recording had been dominated by a spirit of carefree experimentation. Its hard to look back twenty-five years, but I think we werent so very worried about history and the future and being recognized a hundred years after our death, he said. It was that you did the work you felt like doing and you enjoyed yourself. Basically, when Im recording, when Im happy with it, I always expect other people to like it as well.
The rest of the first albumand, indeed, of Neu!s careeroffers subtle variations on the same basic, entrancing hullabaloo. Released in late 1971 on Brain, Neu! was a respectable hit in Germany, selling more than thirty-five thousand copies. It was issued in the U.S. on the Chicago label Billingsgate, but aside from influencing a few pockets of freaky music fansincluding a fellow in Cleveland named David Thomasits impact was minimal. The record is only the beginning, Dinger said in the liner notes. We are looking for a third member of the group to dig deeper into the trends we introduced in our first album. Neu! recruited Uli Trepte of Guru Guru on bass and played a handful of unsatisfying gigs. The groups true home, it seemed, was the recording studio.
The band returned to Planks barn, but this time, the musicians spent way too much time obsessing over the characteristically Neu! instrumentals on side one. Fr Immer, Spitzenqualitt, and the other songs on the first half of the album are as strong as anything on the debut, but with the budget exhausted, Dinger and Rother simply took both sides of their earlier single, Super b/w Neuschnee, and filled side two with versions at 33, 45, and 78 r.p.m. (With a similarly perverse sense of humor, the covers and titles of all three albums were identical, featuring the word Neu! scrawled against different colored backgrounds.)
A few months later, the band was temporarily shelved as Rother joined Moebius and Roedelius of Cluster to record as Harmonia, while Dinger worked with his brother, Thomas, and Hans Lampe. Only Harmonia produced vinyl. The debut, Musik Von Harmonia, and a followup, Deluxe, were both released on Brain. Harmonias music is more expansive and much less direct than Neu!s, and it lacks the driving beat. The group disbanded in 1975 because of poor album sales, and Rother rejoined Dinger in Neu!. The pair recorded the first half of their third and final album as a duo, while side two was done as a quartet featuring Lampe and Thomas Dinger.
Neu! 75 predated the punk explosion by a year, but its most exciting tracks have the raw, primal power of the Sex Pistols or Ramones. Hero features the basic Neu! instrumental augmented by Klaus Dingers frantic shouted vocals. Obscured by the mix, bad diction, or both, the words and even the language are unintelligible, though the English phrase riding through the night seems to jump out. Given the intensity of Hero and After Eight, you might assume that Dinger intended the stoned moaning on the lulling Leb Wohl as a joke. Pictured on the albums inner sleeve wearing black clothes, white boots, sunglasses, spiked hair, and a sneer, he could pass for Sid Vicious. In sharp contrast, the bearded, pony-tailed Rother is depicted against a fluffy white background, the model of hippie tranquility.
Perhaps the clash in styles finally proved to be too much. Neu! broke up for good shortly after the release of its third album; the two key members remain estranged, and Dinger has built a reputation as something of a derailed genius along the lines of Arthur Lee. Hes very distant from reality sometimes, Rother told me. I hesitate to give too much intimate detail about Klaus Dinger, although hes really treated me very badly. After Neu!, the Dinger brothers and Lampe formed La Dsseldorf, and Rother went the solo route, frequently working with Can drummer Jaki Liebezeit; these days, he is more interested in electronics than in playing the guitar. Both mens post-Neu! efforts have moments of inspiration, but the further you get from their collaboration, the less you hear of the rock-n-roll edge. The distinctive beat is overpowered by more formal European harmonies and melodies, the guitars and synthesizers grow more symphonic, and the grit of the highway is replaced by the gentle sounds of the idyllic countryside.
Late at night on the empty highway, they dont hold a candle to Neu! But then not much does.
