How much do you object to the German nation today?
Well, like you object to any nation.
Completely.
I mean, what is a nation nowadays?
There are many different and also weird ways to interpret it, what is a nation?
I live in Spain, but I still want to be up to date with things happening in Germany.
That’s always a big point of discussion.
What is the German nation? What makes up a nation in general, what are nations?
Because the sense of family is not important anymore,
and the sense of nation actually originates from this sense of family.
To say, “We are family.” To say, “The Germans, they’re all my brothers and sisters, that’s my family.”
But is Europe family, too? Or what about a person from India, does he belong to my family as well?
And as long as you’re trying to convey this, nothing will change,
because there’s no sense of family anymore.
What’s your opinion on this, Robert? I know you’ve converted to Buddhism
some time ago.
This rejection of nationhood, is that something you can identify with?
No, actually I can’t really identify with it,
because I have veered away from these thoughts completely.
In my opinion,
everything has to be seen individually,
every human has to find his or her own path
and a nation or nationalistic thoughts or a culture or religion, whatever humans have to deal with in the society they live in, does not actually exist.
It’s all just an idea
and I have overcome this idea a long time ago.
That’s how I see it.
Was that an idea that felt closer to you because you had to deal with it during a time when this was recorded?
At the time both of you were already in London, but before that in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf...
We started in Düsseldorf, at the Ratinger Hof.
However, after the first concerts and rehearsals we quickly made our way to England,
because during that time it was almost impossible to perform in Germany,
it felt like there were only three bars at which you could perform.
Because the record labels said, “That’s not music, that’s more like rhythm.
Come back when you record real music.”
England at that time was simply the center of new kinds of music,
with punk, new wave and many other variations.
And you really need to be where new music is being created, you need to be in the middle of it.
And even though we were a bit weird and sang in German
and talked to the people in German, I never said boys and girls, but always jungs and mädchen,
the English were a little surprised, sure, but it quickly turned into some sort of hype in London with DAF
“There’s a strange group,
they play electronic music, they play the drums, they scream in German, we don’t understand a word of it,”
but it just had an expressionistic power.
You grew up in Remscheid, right?
No, I’m 100% Spanish.
But you moved to Remscheid?
Right. At one point my parents had to immigrate, as guest workers
and first moved to Remscheid-Lennep.
I was already eight years old at the time.
Oh, OK, yes. I was talking about that time, because...
I don’t know if it bothered you,
I don’t know if it bothered you, being co-opted, despite moving to London, by this art scene, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal…
Did you actually realize that?
Yeah, we noticed that, but the Germans are funny,
I mean, there is hardly any nation that is as jealous as the Germans,
people who think, “Man, they made it and we didn’t”. But the truth is, this will eventually reverse.
And when we were really successful,
the Germans were kind of proud.
I like to call it the Boris Becker syndrome, “Oh, there’s a German band
and they are covered in the NME and in the Melody Maker. Those are the best dressed people in the world,
our boys are in England!”
And then you get this strange adoration, which you haven’t consciously created.
Yeah, that’s the so-called Boris Becker syndrome.
“Great, our boys are rocking the house, awesome.”
So then it reverses and everybody loves you. And after some time they hate you again. You can’t take that seriously.
And especially today
it’s an illusion to think that you control the public image in any way.
Or if you want to control it, you’ll have heaps of work and stress, it’s not a lot of fun.
Did you notice what happened in the field of arts during that time? Had you heard of Beuys in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf and were you interested in them?
Well, Beuys and those people where at the Ratinger Hof as well.
There were people from the arts academy. Most of the time Beuys brought some pupils and it was actually a scene of observation.
We observed them and Beuys came over and was interested in us, to see what we’re doing, everybody wanted to check out everyone else.
For example the drummer of one of my punk bands, Mittagspause, was Albert Oehlen, the painter from the arts academy...
It was a very special mixture at the Ratinger Hof of punks, people from the arts academy in Düsseldorf and advertising people, like Schirner, GGK, Gredinge, advertising companies.
What did they contribute?
Oh well, the interest.
Like no other industry,
advertising is always trying to find new sources of inspiration, new trends...
They had just discovered this.
And many regulars at the Hof, like Philipp Tanzmann, also worked for Gredinger, thus at the GGK advertising agency. They had a look at everything, they partially documented it, they were interested...
Also in the artists. For us the art was interesting...
I was still a kid...
I quit school, didn’t want to go there anymore
and together with Monroe, one of Charley’s Girls, we started a private university, we called it a free boarding school.
Where was that?
In Düsseldorf.
Simply in a venue or...?
No, a home.
We went to the library,
and borrowed everything about Dada and constructivism and agitprop
and really learned our stuff,
who are all these people, what did they do.
We studied this for days, weeks,
the work of other people that we liked,
we also wrote Dada pamphlets ourselves, when we were kids. That inspired us.
You have a classical education in the sense that you actually went to an institution to learn.
At that time, did you reflect on this in a similar way? Did you want to teach yourself or was that just something that you would do on the side?
Well, in contrast to what Gabi’s just said, I didn’t learn from the others or borrowed things, my plan was actually to study music. When I came to Düsseldorf, my only goal was to produce my own music.
I wanted to start a band and record my own music.
That was the only thing I was interested in.
I didn’t care if Beuys entered the room or some guys from the art academy, it wasn’t that interesting to me.
OK. The friendship with the early founding members...
You’re not on the very first official DAF record.
Was that more like a party friendship or did you choose it deliberately? Someone like Kurt Dahlke, Pyrolator, who had a venue for some time, Grün Inn, a shared venue.
That’s a long story...
I studied music and then I took a break from studying
and went to London,
that was when punk music was at its peak,
and from there I just let it make an impact on me, since I came from a classical education and a jazz education.
And like I’ve just said, my plan was to go to Düsseldorf and produce my own music.
So, when I met Gabi... We first met and exchanged opinions and I thought this could work with him...
He said he wanted to sing, I told him I wanted to produce my own music, that I had just finished my academic studies.
So the story is quite long.
We weren’t really that well equipped...
For example in the Ratinger Hof there were punks who played the guitar enthusiastically, just like punk music is, simple music, but that wasn’t interesting to me.
What I like about punk is the energy, the aggression and these new elements, the vibe was what interested me. But the music itself, I thought was kind of stupid.
Yeah, we immediately agreed on this.
And that’s why we took such a long detour.
And in Düsseldorf I met people in a gallery like Kurt Dahlke, who you’ve mentioned before,
and Spelmans and Kemner.
And they had a venue in the countryside in Gevelsberg, Grün Inn, a little eco-inspired. And they also had rehearsal rooms...
We secluded ourselves there.
It surprises me that you went to some sort of hippie commune, called Grün Inn.
Yes, but we needed a place which was completely cut off from the world.
We really wanted it to be like that and try it out.
We met and said we’d start a band
and wanted to find band members, how it was commonly done... You play the bass and so on...
How was it commonly done back then? Because today you don’t need anyone anymore to start a band.
A synthesizer was way too expensive for us back then...
Because you didn’t have any money, right?
Yeah, we didn’t have any money, so we were looking for band members and then there was the possibility to use this rehearsal room, across from the Ratinger Hof, so that we could find our way not within the scene but outside of it.
Just like Robert, I thought punk was like badly played rock & roll, and I wanted to break out of these American patterns. I didn’t want to make Anglo-American music.
Robert and I both wanted to create music that didn’t have a tradition yet.
In our first concept meeting we decided to make some kind of music, that has no tradition.
No German, no American tradition, just no tradition at all. And that’s why… Everything that reminded us of music, that already existed, even if it might be good, well we got rid of it!
How much does this have to do with the history of the music of your fathers?
So, to be German in the ’50s, I mean, Spain took a similar path, politically, at least in some ways... To close the chapter and thereby start something completely new?
I didn’t really have anything to do with this, for example I didn’t have a father.
So I don’t have anything to do with fathers
and I don’t know any stories like that.
This doesn’t exist for me.
I didn’t have a father either, I grew up with my grandmother
and we moved to Germany when I was eight, that’s when I saw my father for the first time.
Because he was anti-fascist, he had to flee from Spain overnight, and that’s why he couldn’t re-enter the country, he would have been arrested.
So that’s why I only really got to know my father at the age of eight and I moved out from home when I was 15.
So both of us don’t really have a father, I’d say, if that’s of any importance.
Maybe not.
But I think it’s quite interesting to do some psychoanalytic speculations.
Not having a father is integrated into our musical originality and development...
Oh, this really hums, right?
Yeah, so, not having a father, not having a connection to your family and your father, and family structures, subjection...
If you don’t have that, like me, you go the way of complete autonomy.
I don’t even know these structures. This sense of family is very alien to me.
In all my life... When I was a teenager, before I really got into music, I tried to acquire some professional education, but nothing worked because I never learnt to subordinate.
We both have trouble with that.
The master, the teacher, the father... We’re very different, but in this case we think the same way.
Accepting authorities that don’t act out of real accomplishment or knowledge, who say, “I am the teacher, I am the master.” Both of us never really accepted that.
That’s true, that’s really difficult for us.
If someone says, “You have to do this!” No matter if its a record company or... “Hold on. Seriously?”
Someone wants something from us, we don’t decide. We’re not used to this.
We always have to be self-determined.
We can’t have someone else decide for us.
That doesn’t work for either of us.
What did you think of musicians in Düsseldorf who were well known, like Kraftwerk. Did that annoy you?
Well, they also watched us and stuff.
The punks never wanted any contact with Kraftwerk,
they were classified as white-bread band, with their ties...
They’re from Oberkassel, that’s the wrong side of the Rhine, Oberkassel is on the left side of the Rhine.
They sat in bars with their expensive cocktails and leather ties, and the punks thought, “What’s wrong with them?”
But of course, Kraftwerk were well known, but like we said, it didn’t really interest us.
Later we got to know them and they were really nice,
but Kraftwerk... So, I as a songwriter think that Kraftwerk’s lyrics are really bad,
that really bugged me about Kraftwerk.
Like, “She’s a model and she’s pretty, I’d like to take her home with me,” that’s just really white-bread.
That’s a really different way of treating bodies, in comparison to what you did.
Yeah, sure. We’ve always been a band who accentuated the body and Kraftwerk didn’t move.
But that’s their concept. They’re very calm and static, without any movement.
Later I met up with them in a different club, not the Ratinger Hof, after the scene had moved to the Checkers on the Kö, which was more like a night club and there they actually danced, but privately.
So privately they do dance. Did they dance well?
Yes, it actually was a real club, a modern one. They were really nice, but like I just said, they weren’t exactly an inspiration for us.
But we tried to create something that didn’t remind us of anything, that didn’t have a tradition. We wanted to do something that is completely self-determined.
That was easy for us. We didn’t have to try hard, it was just us.
It fit our personalities, we’ve already told you where we’re from
and what we’re like and how our partnership developed and so it’s easier to get to some sort of originality.
To create your very own thing.
For example, if you really want to make original music...
We had the feeling we could only make it if we were original, we didn’t want to copy someone... Yeah, that was what mattered to us.
During that time, was there a gay scene in Düsseldorf that noticed you and said, “You’re one of us,” or, “You’re not one of us?”
No, there wasn’t. However later in Berlin, we were in contact with Mable and all these people who sang and had a band, right, and...
That really took some time until the gay scene noticed us and honored us as icons.
That took a really long time,
because first we were punks,
then we were skinheads,
then we were some weird sort of mods, right,
we came along with our leather things and that’s when they started to realize, “Aha, those outfits are from gay clubs.”
But we didn’t live in Düsseldorf then, we only lived there during our real punk era or rockabilly...
We were only kids, kids play with identities and that’s a lot of fun! I was a skinhead, great! That was fun, we had good styles and...
It only turned gay in London, I’d say.
Yeah in London, we went to clubs in that scene and later on in Berlin we were in contact with Wieland Speck and Mabel and these people.
Yeah...
And then came “Räuber und Prinz” and that was some sort of secret weapon,
when some idiots at [Tanz den] Mussolini screamed “Sieg Heil,” we played “Räuber und Prinz.”
OK, that was a time when there were people who said “Sieg Heil” as some sort of provocation or...
Mainly because they wanted to be provocative.
And later, not at the beginning, but a little later, there were also skinheads from the right-wing scene and we talked with them.
Like I said, we play with everything, we also object to German culture, that’s all a game to us.
We only accept very little authority and that gives us the possibility to play with anything.
Even with things that might be illegal.
Let me tell you, this is really liberating. Through my parents I witnessed this, it’s good to play with everything, because they were anti-fascist and Franco was the symbol of evil.
But he was also a monument.
A negative one, but still it played a strange role, and that’s why “[Tanz den] Mussolini...” It’s about the exchange of ideologies, those were all off...
Frei.Wild says they “don’t dance the Mussolini,” which I think is even more funny.
Yes, Frei.Wild is Frei.Wild, I don’t have to add anything to that.
Let’s have a look at an old live recording of “Der Räuber und der Prinz.”
Oh that’s funny...
Nice fade out. I have often claimed that “Räuber und Prinz” for German society back then, we’re living in different times today, was actually a little more provocative than “Tanz den Mussolini” and “Tanz den Adolf Hitler” and “Tanz den Jesus Christus.”
This homo-erotic moment in some ways alienated people more than Mussolini.
This piece had a really weird effect back then. When you heard it somewhere or when we performed it.
Because they said, “That’s a really gay song.” Back then that was a real no-go... To sing an obviously gay song.
When did you realize that sort of provocation didn’t work anymore?
Homoeroticism is not a provocation that works anymore, was there a time...?
Oh well, it actually still works.
There are places in this world where being gay is still not accepted at all.
I’m talking about groups of people, but also about whole countries.
You might think that society has become free in its way of thinking, but actually no.
Society has become more permissive, it admits more, however only in those countries where a loss of power has taken place before.
When church and state lose power.
That’s just how it goes, nobody bothers about the Catholic church anymore.
They say, “That’s okay, we don’t burn people anymore,” if they had enough power, boys and girls, you could be sure that the Catholic church would still be burning people today.
That’s simply a loss of power.
If the state says, “OK, 175,” the gay paragraph back then, “fucking someone in the ass is not permitted,” and I say, “Dude, how do you want to control this? Just let it go...” That’s simply loss of power as well.
Freedom arises where authorities lose power,
then niches are created and you can provoke this loss of power.
You shouldn’t stick to the illusion that no-goes from 30 years ago aren’t still no-goes today.
So-called mega-trends need to be looked at in categories of 200 or 300 years, not from one generation to the other.
Actually, the world today is exactly the same.
Nothing has changed.
OK, we have more phones today, but that’s also not something that has changed dramatically. The world hasn’t really changed since the ’80s.
You became more explicit, at least for some time, after the albums that you produced together in the DAF period.
You sang songs like, “I’d rather fuck you later, because first I have to go dancing.”
So I thought you’d reached the limit maybe. How far do you want to go singing about sex?
Yeah, but it was 1995, you would never have said fuck on German TV.
That’s different today, in each comedy show every comedian says fuck at least five times. Kentucky screams fuck and stuff,
but that was a time when you didn’t say fuck.
We knew that, but actually it’s just a song...
“I think I’ll fuck you later, I’d rather go dancing now” is more about the overrating of sex. “I’d rather go dancing, please don’t be pissed off, I just love to dance.” And dancing is nice as well. That’s what it was about.
And I liked that we didn’t say, “I’ll fuck you later,” but, “I think I’ll fuck you later.” That’s what I liked. Linguistically.
I was a verbal fanatic somehow. I love the German language, I see it as a special way of poetry. Yeah.
This... I have the first four albums that you recorded... Conny Plank was part of the production and you had this extremely minimal equipment. What was it like with him in the studio back then?
Did you record to multi-track?
Yes, we recorded to 24-track on an old MCI machine.
A 24-track on 76 velocity, uncompressed, and we used track compression to its best.
Today you can get it as a free plug-in, you can get various track compressions. Someone texted me, “This is so music oriented,
track compression, for free.” It sounds very different, a bass drum on AGFA 74 than on an mpeg, or something.
Track compression is interesting for musicians.
Back then it was only big machines, giant studios, Plank had a gigantic studio.
Do you remember anything special he contributed to the music? Your very first album was produced by someone else and that went wrong and... It wasn’t used...
Well, sometimes things get mixed up, right, there are bands who are produced by a producer and the producer takes part in the production musically, that was not the case.
Conny Plank was not a musician, he was simply good at fiddling with sounds. We used to call him “sound coachman,” he would always stand at the mixing desk...
Coachman?
Yeah, he said that himself, “I’m your sound coachman. You write texts and you play the music, that’s not in question, I’m just your sound coachman.”
So, if you want to know what that looked like, we always went into those rehearsal rooms, worked on our songs, I started playing the synthesizer...
First there were the synths, so Plank recorded the synths. Then I played the drums, so he recorded the drums and in the end Gabi sang.
And only after that came Plank’s biggest part.
Conny was the recording guy and we created the songs in the rehearsal room, recorded one after the other, and Conny’s biggest part was only after everything had been recorded, because then the production started in the sense of mixing.
Back then, Conny really had some good stuff, for example a giant hall plate under the ground, this gave us a big room sound, it was a big thing you know, room for effects...
It’s also important to say that he recorded us really well, he was a master of microphonic effects.
He used to fiddle for days and would only stop when the bass drum microphone was at the exact right position.
What you put on your track is just as important as how you produce it later, so yeah, he was a master of microphones and our sound coachman, and he had the idea to...
To record the signals of the synthesizer, cold electronic,
via amps, guitar amps, bass amps, strange dirty speakers sitting somewhere...
To send that out again, to record that as well with his excellent microphonic knowledge, and turn all these different signals into the DAF sound.
And I get messages, like Snapchat or...
“I bought a choir, but it doesn’t sound like DAF?” So I said, “OK, get yourself a guitar amplifier,
record and mix it with a good balance and then you get this powerful sound.” Through the amplifier. That was a Plank idea.
Well, you could say that Plank inflated us, made us big, with hall effects... He was a real specialist, almost a freak so to say.
And I have to say that he was for me, apart from our contact as musicians... Except for my wife, there’s no human being who influenced me like that.
I’ve learnt so much from Conny Plank. What? Yeah I’m impressed by Jane as well. I’ve learnt a lot, but also from Conny Plank.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with music, I’ve also learnt from him about business, but also generally about life...
Maybe, as you said before about fathers, there are no fathers...
Plank, for two or three years, I saw him as some sort of virtual father, Darth Vader, no I’m just kidding.
No, but he was that kind of guy who also told me, “Gabi, no, you’re gonna have to do it this way,
it doesn’t work like that, we’ll have to do it that way.” About business he taught me a lot as well, he always said, “When you produce music, you’re 100% an artist...”
Did he watch Star Wars?
Yeah sure. “But now you also have to become 100% business man as well.”
And he brought me all those files, GVL and management and publishing and HAP and NDP and all this stuff,
he almost taught me like a teacher and I really liked that, he influenced me a lot.
And of course we watched Star Wars, but it’s difficult to say who I liked the most, but in the end I think it was R2D2.
You’ve said that Plank liked to experiment with your sound. Did you, however, insist on defined equipment?
Yes, of course! There’s no room for twirls.
Minimalism...
But on many albums you only had like three instruments.
The recordings are actually only a sequence, a beat and vocals. That’s it.
And was there never any impulse, especially from you, to say, “We have to go beyond that, we can’t…” What did you have, an MS-20 and drums?
On two or three tracks, I thought, “Oh well I wanna play the Rimba again,” or play chimes, a kid’s toy, for “Räuber und Prinz,” you know... But rarely.
Like we said, we found something that worked for us, and at some point we knew...
Like I said, to come back to the very beginning, with old instruments, when they played bass, we didn’t want all that anymore.
Our people said we threw everyone out, which was true in some ways, but we also explained to them that we didn’t want this anymore,
because when we discovered the machines, in 1978 when the Korg [synths] came from Tokyo,
we decided to take the electronic path, minimalism, it was all about sequences. We had a real concept. All the other musicians weren’t needed anymore
so to say, and like you asked before, did we want to break away from it? No, because we wanted exactly that. We didn’t want a bass and a solo, it was meant to be very minimalistic.
We wanted it to be machine music. That was clear to us.
And we never wrote anything down, it was the DAF manifest, that’s just how we did it, music with no tradition, sound oriented, it didn’t have stanzas, no chorus, no part A or B, it just flowed, and then slogan-like orders to the music.
So, then you are similar to how I imagine Kraftwerk. You dance when you’re not working, in your solo albums you did other things...
Sure, we’ve always tried different things. That’s what solo is for.
There are so many projects and DAF is just one of very many.
For most of them I don’t even use the name Gabi Delgado, because it’s so different, it doesn’t make any sense when I say Gabi Delgado is performing Miami Latin house.
I do that as Santos Leon,
nobody knows this,
now they do, sooner or later it will be discovered,
but it’s wrong to start with it, that’s what I tell people who ask me.
Nowadays you can have many different identities
and this makes the chances of success way higher.
That’s very important today.
It’s like a click machine, you increase the number of projects
to have better chances
and then it’s better to have different names for different projects.
And if we had said with DAF, “We want to do something very different from what we did before,” we wouldn’t have called it DAF anymore.
We remained true to ourselves. We worked for something, we actually really fought for it,
people had to leave, it really was a fight and when you reach your goal and the result is right, we got the confirmation that the fight was worth it. Our music was acknowledged worldwide. At this point you don’t want to do anything else.
That’s important, it really was a fight, just imagine, we came in 1979 with a piece,
that piece didn’t have a melody, there are no ups and downs, there are no verses, no melody, no guitar,
no organ. That was difficult, it really was a challenge.
And even Conny, who was so open and fair to us...
When we said everybody needs to leave, that only the two of us will remain, he really didn’t know what to think.
No bass… We really taught Conny a lot as well, no bass, no guitar. In the beginning he was really skeptical, he wasn’t sure if this would work, but yes, it did!
We knew what we wanted and once we had it we built the house...
And Conny was happy and satisfied.
When he saw how it turned out, he immediately understood why...
I mean, today 80% of the music played in clubs is produced according to DAF rules.
There’s a beat, a sequence, no A and B part, a house sequence which goes on and on, sometimes the high is part of it then you take it out again. DAF rules.
Another important momentum of the DAF music was that we didn’t care about classical harmonics.
DAF sequences always sound slightly off-tune.
That’s not because we strongly wanted to produce something disharmonious, but because the sequence sounds perfect as it is,
disharmonious,
it makes sense.
It’s not a trick, it’s the truth. That’s how it sounds good.
The way you feel it.
And due to DJs who change the pitch, and thereby the tone pitch, people are used to hearing sounds like that.
If a person who had lived a 100 years ago walked in there, they would think it sounds like cat music, it would sound very wrong.
“They need to tune their instruments.”
We also changed the listening habits, that’s what I wanted to say.
Also in the sense of vocals, it’s not rap, it’s not singing, it’s orders, statements, it’s an actor who interprets them.
Did it annoy you at a certain point... So in the middle of the ’80s, you split up for some time just to reunite several times, and split up again, as if to entertain us...
Yeah, it’s true.
Is DAF together right now or not? But didn’t it annoy you? You produced tracks for Disko B and... Did you think, damn, “The people sound like us?”
No, seriously, I was really happy about it from the very beginning.
At some point I listened to Nitzer Ebb, it was just like a DAF piece, but in English, it was DAF, and everywhere... And I was really happy because I thought...
It was important for us to shape history and culture and I thought, “Great, we really made it.”
And I was really happy when 1986 house music was popular and I got to know some of these people and they told me, “Kraftwerk and DAF, yeah...”
That feedback, you know, ten years later you get it back in a different way, I think that’s great.
I was always very happy and all those kids or people who have been influenced by us, also helped to keep DAF young and kept us going. And kept the DAF name alive, I mean, they promote us. I like that.
And I like it when they say, “Hey, I listened to DAF and I now I also want to make music,” I like that.
Only the business annoyed me a little.
OK, we separated, we got back to the ground. Since we separated at our peak,
there were many people in the business who thought we were out of our minds, Gabi and I.
They had prepared a tour of the states for us, they really wanted to make us big and that’s exactly the point we wanted to quit.
So we came back to reality, we needed to touch base again.
And during that time nothing was started up, because they closed the doors.
They were mad and we were all alone again, so to say.
I met up with Daniel Miller, like I did in the very beginning.
And what annoyed me a little, when I walked into the club and we didn’t know how we would go on, I heard music that sounded just like DAF and record companies put it on the market,
like copycats, that’s when I thought, “Fuck... Now this kind of music is popular and we quit.”
I thought that was great, because I didn’t have to promote it anymore, now there was the Belgian EBM scene, “Should they take over and make that kind of music?”
I thought it was great that this kind of music gained recognition and that we weren’t the only ones in this world.
This had many advantages and I wanted to say, our breakup was the smartest move of our career.
We were at our peak, and we saw this new wave coming, not interesting music, just cheeky German Schlager music... And if we get into this too much we will be engrossed in a weird way.
On the other hand there were also business sharks who wanted to co-opt us, so I have to say, people, there’s always the possibility, especially in the first world, with all the luxury, there’s always a way to say “no,”
and, “I don’t want to compromise, that’s just not good, bye.”
And that’s how we suddenly reached some kind of cult status, we were out of reach and that was also profitable for the business, because it was worth something,
we could make way better deals for the solo albums, more than we thought because we were really wanted, a rare product.
What I meant was just that moment, when you see that the record labels simply tag along, with loads of money to put bands similar to us on the market.
Talking about money and business, did DAF always belong to the two of you and did you manage to handle it in a way that you were both happy with?
Yes, except when we were fighting.
Then we put it on hold.
But we always managed to find a way, it always belonged to us.
But you have to be realistic, and that’s valid even for the newest, most innovative and craziest things.
You can code new waves, it doesn’t matter if it’s fashion, art or music, so that it takes a long time until the real capitalist economy understands how to copy it, but you cannot create the illusion of inventing a strong code that can’t be cracked.
Sooner or later... Capitalism is like the Borg in Enterprise. Capitalism assimilates everything
and that’s exactly what will happen sooner or later.
So if you want, you can code your work, to make sure it takes quite some time for this to happen, but don’t think it won’t be cracked at some point.
As soon as the industry cracked the formula for success, for new wave and for synthesizers, it was obviously used, because it was a good formula.
So, I wasn’t surprised and thought, “That’s just how it is.” Anything can be cracked.
Why are you laughing?
Well, in different moments you’re thinking different things.
That’s true. And that’s good.
Talking about music. That’s the advantage of a formation or a project, that has been producing music for a very long time
in comparison to a project that’s been making music for only one or two years.
That’s the big advantage, that the thoughts and views about things you do, did or will do, are changing constantly.
Those are processes that take two to three years and you really have to think in terms of a modern soccer team. They also take like 2,7 years, the team. A Christiano Ronaldo has to go and someone else has to take his place, after 2,7 years you need a twist, because otherwise it won’t work.
That happens automatically once you’ve been working together for quite some time and know each other. We’re so different from each other, but we know each other very well.
You also lived together for some time, in London, right?
Yes, but that happened only once, for one week? No, for some months...
Longer.
You see, we have different memories, Robert always thinks we lived for years on Holland Road,
in my opinion that was only three to four months!
That’s weird, I thought it was three years.
Yeah, right, but now we wrote this book you know, when people asked us, “What it was like back then?” We had so many different memories, like the apartment on Holland Road, Robert really thinks we lived there for three to four years, I think three to four months.
But that’s not important, because the past changes because of what you’re experiencing, everybody knows this.
“Oh at my grandma’s place my room was so big,” and then you walk in there and the room is really tiny, because you were little back then and now you’re grown up... Memories sometimes play strange tricks on us.
I think we probably should... There are some questions from the audience... So we’ll officially open the discussion. There should be a microphone somewhere that will be passed around for those who have questions.
Is it on?
I can hear you.
You said you didn’t take a break from your music, that this was important for you, what about Suicide?
Yeah, Suicide was a little bit earlier, actually.
When I listened to Suicide,
I was a real punk.
I wasn’t in DAF,
I was in Charley’s Girls and Mittagspause,
I was in Yuri Gagarin and the Soviet Union, I still remember that.
Suicide is most similar to DAF, I think, even though other people copied it more accurately, like Nitzer Ebb using sequencers. Suicide is closest to our spirit,
especially because of the expressionist touch in the music, Gottfried Benn-like, the expressionist element in the music.
So they’re somehow similar to us, of course the repetitive sequences sound different, they have a drum machine, so it’s different, but like I said, around that time all those albums
that we liked were thrown out, because we wanted to create something new.
But sure, the brain is big, it’s possible that...
But there weren’t other concrete things, we didn’t say Suicide is especially good or... It was the same to us, Suicide was as good as Kraftwerk, as Suzi Quatro, as T.Rex, as whatever...
I didn’t even know them.
Right, Robert didn’t know them.
I only learnt afterwards that they were part of the flow... If you see this worldwide, there are always people who do this, too... Whatever, you work on, a really crazy idea in Germany, you can be sure that someone in Africa or in the US or in Japan is working on an idea similar to yours.
It’ll always be like that, you’re never alone on this planet, there’ll always be someone who is as good or as special, there’ll be parallels and that’s how it is.
Like I said, I didn’t even know them and later when I listened to “Dream Baby Dream” I thought, “OK that’s not DAF, it’s more like an organ...”
I used to have this weird band, Yuri Gagarin, and I showed it to you and you thought it was a cover and you didn’t want to listen to it.
Yeah, Robert didn’t know Suicide.
I like Suicide, one of them passed away unfortunately. I also sang a piece for the tribute CD which was released in France.
With the music. And they were great, Suicide, but like I said,
it was like that for us, we wanted to get rid of all this shit, the good and the bad, just generally away with it...
I gotta say, especially in the beginning... It might sound egoistic but I don’t mean it that way, I wasn’t interested in any other kind of music.
Not at all.
So when somebody asked me what my opinion about a specific band was, I’d always say, “Don’t ask me that.”
But as soon as you say you’re not interested people start asking, “What’s wrong with you?”
Or... I’ve always had trouble... “Hey, can you listen to this?” I felt that as soon as I engage with others,
because other people want you to do it, I always wanted out, because it would also influence me artistically.
When your interest moves into a different direction, you let it flow to you
and work with it,
and luckily that’s not how it went for me. I simply wasn’t interested, but it was not egoistic.
When I’m in the studio, looking for something I switch off all music channels, I don’t really listen to music, I even get rid of the music
on TV, or I try to avoid shops, there is music everywhere,
and I like to just not to hear anything. Only what I’m doing.
That was an important point for our originality.
That’s our thing and later people said, “Oh right, this is DAF,
that sounds like DAF” So, when people say something like that you know you’ve created something original
and that’s the only way it works, because if someone had known Suicide,
someone might have said, “Hey, listen to them, they’re good,” and then maybe you would have bought the album, and then suddenly you might come up with a song that sounds like Suicide.
Well, I’m interested in everything, especially if it’s new,
only when I’m in a phase where I say, “OK I want to come up with something new,”
then that’s not beneficial, but other than that, I like it.
There’s so much out there, and so many new things,
and other people now produce music similar to ours, like Burroughs said,
“I hope that you keep taking these experiments further,”
and I can explore something new.
It’s good to take various waves of utilization, for economic reasons,
take on a wave multiple times is smart,
but it’s more fun to discover new waves rather than to repeat old ones.
In the beginning I asked you about art. Today, apart from music, are there any forms of art or literature that keep you occupied when you make music?
Making music, no.
What is it precisely?
So, when we’re making music it’s Tecktonik, a new musical movement from the banlieues, coming from Paris,
Arab and black people, hardcore electro, but that is taking it too far, I can’t explain it right now...
Literature is exhausting at the moment, because I’m really busy with Deleuze. And I haven’t read for a very long time and now I have to read it again,
with all those stupid comments, and the whole Deleuze devices, shit,
which is really interesting, constructivism and stuff like that interests me at the moment.
With arts it’s difficult, especially things from the video game world,
like moders, people who create their own mods, with prefabricated software,
but create their own games, their own art, moving lines,
gifs, but as form of art, I find that interesting.
And film wise I don’t know, I’ve been watching a lot of Fassbender lately. Berlin, Alexanderplatz, epic.
Any more questions from the audience?
No?
Hold on, wait for your microphone.
Back then there wasn’t so much electronic music. The less there is, the more you see a relatedness which actually doesn’t exist.
Today you could say that many projects sound like DAF Back then it was Suicide, but if you listen to Suicide, there might be two to three pieces that sound similar to DAF or is it blues or something?
Yeah, you’re right, there was Cabaret Voltaire, maybe Throbbing Gristle,
but you’re right, there really were... If there are only three panpipe groups in the world, then all of them sound similar in some way, right.
And if you said, oh, they use panpipes, they blow into them... They’re similar.
OK, if there aren’t anymore questions then... Oh yes, you see, once you say it’s over...
Making music today, how much does it differ from your earlier experiences?
Especially when you’re listening to your latest pieces which you released in a best of. It sounds similar to what you did before, but the 15 new DAF songs for example, sounded computerized, especially the drums.
Yes, we used a drum machine.
Yeah, with the 15 new DAF songs it was like... Drum machine... It was something different of course.
Do we say goodbye?
But like I said it changed dramatically, and it always depends on the project. DAF is created according to DAF rules, other projects are created according to very different rules, with other means.
OK, thanks for coming!
I herewith end the group evening and make an exit.
