Kraftwerk, despite being arguably the most influential pop band to emerge after rock 'n' roll's Golden Age, has never been inclined to showboating, public exposure, or, um, talking all that much (compared to Daft Punk, they're practically mute). So when a lengthy interview with a member of the seminal Düsseldorf hits the web, you have to listen. Ralf Hütter, singer/ keyboardist/ de facto leader of Kraftwerk, has given a handful of interviews over the band's lifetime. When The Guardian's John Harris got a hold of Hütter, he immedately got the kind of response that takes any journalist aback: when the subject, not the reporter, asks the questions:
"Hello, it's me," he says, enthusiastically. I then try a bit of night-school German. How are you? Wie geht's?
"Oh, you speak German."
A little, I tell him. Ein bisschen
"But you understand the lyrics in German?"
Some of them, I think, which really doesn't seem good enough, so I tell him that even if a lot of Kraftwerk's lyrics enter my head as sound rather than words, I definitely prefer listening to his group's music in its original language (take, for example, their 1981 UK No 1 The Model: in its English translation, rather clunky; in Hütter's mother tongue, both elegant and precise). There's then a quick exchange about the fact that he translates his own lyrics, before a pause.
"Have we talked before?"
No.
"How come you are into this type of music without meeting Kraftwerk?"
Well, here's the thing: you really don't do many interviews. At all.
In case you got lost, that's Hütter, not Harris, doing the interviews. Hutter's inclination to ask questions rather than provide answers, and his terse responses to Harris' own questions ("How yodo you spend your day?" "I wake up in the morning, I brush my teeth, I go to the studio, I work, I go back home, I eat, I sleep," aren't just fascinating, but they read like a Kraftwork album sounds. Even down to the mix of English and German.
It's a rather fascinating read, where all we get from Hutter is confusion, disillusionment, and allusions to future work. In other words, exactly what you'd expect.
