November 1974: Concept art – With “Autobahn”, Kraftwerk succeeds in a reference work that is still valid today
The producer Conny Plank was surprised when a journalist from the “Record Mirror” told him in 1975 that power plant had reached eleventh place in the single charts in England. “Because I didn’t even know that ‘Autobahn’ was released as a single,” stammered the grand master of German studio electronics, who died in 1987. In the United States, too, the three -minute edit of the 22 -minute album track reached the charts.
Amazing, because the mixture of melancholic minimal music, fridge atmosphere and concept art contradict everything that was considered in the mid-seventies than consensus. “We try to put the noises of everyday life into music. For ‘Autobahn’ we drove over motorways for weeks. The driving noises took off. And they processed into music, ”Florian Schneider even explained the“ Bravo ”. “Autobahn” was the first of the style-forming concept albums from Kraftwerk.
Metaphor for freedom and aesthetic progress
The previous plates were still recorded with conventional instruments. Now the band made a mini-moog synthesizer. There was still little singing. But the experimental music of the early days had given way to a completely new, minimalist pop music. Bowie, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, Giorgio Moroder. They all learned from the Düsseldorfers, who then consisted of Florian Schneider, Ralf Hütter, Wolfgang Flür and Klaus Röder (the latter was soon replaced by Karl Bartos). What makes “motorway” so attractive is also the examination of specific German culture. The future seems to have passed here. A strange melancholy and romance sounds.
“The war had robbed people of their culture and put on an American head to them,” explains Ralf Hütter in an interview with the music magazine “Creem”. “We are the first German group to design a Central European identity for themselves.” Such thematizations of Germanism were not for everyone. Especially in connection with the Nazi invention. But the title of the next album, “Radio activity”, showed that power plant played intelligently with prejudices and expectations.
And so the primeval German “Autobahn” is ultimately nothing more than a metaphor for freedom and aesthetic progress. Monotonia of everyday life included.