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[German 60s / 70s Index]
When I speak of 'German' music in this book I mean West German music. East German music is also interesting, but something quite different and not the subject of this book!
Just like the UK or the USA there were many regional rock scenes in West Germany in the seventies, exploring very different musical directions. The Berlin rock scene with Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Kluster, Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel and Mythos represented a revolution in electronic music. Many people viewed their early and exploratory works as «cosmic music». No one that has wandered along the Berlin wall and felt the political paranoia, melancholia and persecution mania it created will ever wonder why the bands urged people to be free. Their music was reasonably free of previously accepted rules. Berlin also had vital political rock bands like Ton Steine Scherben and Lokomotive Kreuzberg.
The Dusseldorf rock scene with Kraftwerk and Neu also explored electronic music, but in a completely different way. Their trade mark was «kling klang music» - a sort of minimalistic, repetitive music I can easily associate with the heavily mechanised industry of the Ruhr surroundings. Due to Kraftwerk's international success, this was a brand of German music which influenced pop and rock bands world-wide for decades to come.
The Munich rock scene was a melting pot of psychedelia, jazz and ethnic influences. The most important bands were Embryo, Popol Vuh, Amon Duul II, Guru Guru, Gila and Out Of Focus. Each of them added unique new facets to progressive rock. These bands never gained the international recognition they deserved, although their cult status has remained huge for more than two decades.
Cologne's prime exponent of progressive rock in the seventies was the very influential Can. Floh De Cologne were arguably Germany's greatest political rock band, merging Mother Of Invention-like weirdness with communism.
Hannover's most famous bands, Jane and Eloy, had a more traditional symphonic heavy rock approach. Their success was overshadowed at the end of the seventies by a plain heavy rock band (also from Hannover) named Scorpions.
The Hamburg rock scene was dominated by bands heavily influenced by Anglo-American progressive rock, such as Epitaph, Frumpy, Virus, Weed and Blackwater Park.
Aachen's prime exponents of progressive rock, Necronomicon and Ruphus Zuphall, were also influenced by the British bands, but certainly added their own distinctive German flavour to their music.
I also have to mention Germany's two superb engineers and producers: Konrad Plank and Dieter
Dierks. They were midwives for virtually half of the German rock productions in the seventies.
Germany had no real musical capital, like London was in the UK. The largely independent rock
scenes in most of the largest cities is what makes seventies German rock so exciting.
Beat music grew up in Germany. I'm sure most of you know about the Liverpool bands that
played the Hamburg night clubs. However, there were few original and inventive German beat bands.
There were no equivalents to Beatles, Kinks or Rolling Stones in Germany. The most famous beat
bands were The Rattles, German Bonds, The Lords, The Blizzards and
The Phantoms. Except for The Rattles, none of these groups had any
major impact on the German home market. They were even quite insignificant as inspirational
sources for the forthcoming German rock scene. This rather boring situation changed abruptly
from 1968 to 1970 when several German bands developed their own, distinctive musical identity as
a protest against the dominance of the Anglo-American artists. It was the awakening of a new
era - one of exploring and experimenting, both with drugs and music. The first wave of German
bands included Guru Guru, Amon Duul,
Can, Tangerine Dream,
Agitation Free, Embryo and
Xhol Caravan. The aforementioned bands (and many others to come) had a
musical style unlike any other artist outside of Germany at the time. It was a conglomerate of
the German national spirit and humour, free jazz, political involvement, Timothy Leary, Sigmund
Freud, Prank Zappa, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Cream and Stockhausen. Timothy Leary,
then situated in Switzerland, even made a recording with the Berlin group
Ash Ra Tempel. The German underground sound was usually experimental,
instrumental, free, exciting, weird, monotonous, psychedelic, though not necessarily all this at
the same time. The musicians were often university students. The best educated and most creative
and courageous people of their generation. They lived in communes and dreamed of a better world
under the influence of assorted drugs. Today the majority of them are probably farting along on
the daily nine to five routine commanding their subordinate employers from a mobile telephone
in their BMW or Mercedes. Sad but true!
The German market for progressive, experimental or symphonic rock was large. Many British
artists sold better in Germany than at home. There are plenty of great British progressive
artists who never got an album released at home, but who did quite well with their German
releases. German record buyers were more anarchic and open minded than their Anglo-American
colleagues. People voted albums like Kraftwerk's debut into the Top
Ten poll of 1971 albums. The narrow-minded, overcool music journalism hadn't rooted yet, and the
big record companies didn't fully control the media. Sadly over the years much of the knowledge
about the German rock scene between 1968 and 1975 has disappeared. When international rock
journalists bother to write about German rock they usually trace the career of
Kraftwerk, as this group was a major influence on the British
'indie' synth pop scene. Or else, they might write about Can and accuse
them of being Velvet Underground clones! Detailed information about German rock in English is
quite rare. For example, in the series "History of Rock" about 10 of a total 2,500 pages mention
German music, 7 of them being devoted to Kraftwerk. Only 0,0012% of
the series was devoted to all other German bands. Do you think the world's third largest music
market really had such an insignificant home music scene? My answer is of course a loud NO!, and
I hope this book brings German rock to a much wider audience.
From the late seventies onwards progressive rock became unfashionable and received gradually
less attention in the media, as punk and new wave music rose to prominence. Germany had a large
share of exciting new wave bands, often referred to as «Die Neue Deutsche Welle». This book
doesn't cover these bands, which could be the subject of an equally large hook. German new wave
was often inspired by the electronic pop rock of Kraftwerk and
Neu, aka the Dusseldorf scene. Important names were Ideal, Trio, Nina
Hagen, D.A.F., Extrabreit, Fehlfarben, Steinwolke, Der Plan, Rheingold, Nena, Die Arzte, etc.
Very few of the old bands survived this period, only those who already had firm sales before the
market changed. New bands playing progressive or symphonic rock weren't in demand, had problems
getting live engagements and recording contracts and few survived for long. Recent re-issues
actually sell better than the original issues did.
The main purpose of this book is to provide comprehensive information about the German progressive and electronic rock scene of the seventies. This is not a complete guide. It would be an impossible task to document all relevant albums, as there were a huge number of largely unknown private pressings made in Germany, mainly from about 1975 and onwards. I have attempted to focus my work on reviews and descriptions of albums. Please do not view my comments as written law. I've tried to avoid making comments that are too subjective. Collectors will also find relevant information about original albums and subsequent re-issues. Sometimes I mention their values on the collector's market. This may not reflect their true value, but the value that at least some people are willing pay to grab original artefacts from the early seventies. I strongly recommend the readers to buy the re-issues instead of risking financial ruin. I have tried to be as accurate as possible, but not all of the information is easily verified. Different sources may also be contradictory. I hope this book will bring to more of you the great pleasure of listening to great music. This is my main purpose in writing it. If you spot errors or know about major omissions please write to me c/o Borderline Productions, P.O. Box 93, Telford, Shropshire, TFI IUE, UK. with the details.