“WE HAVE NO BODY TO LISTEN TO”

PART I

“ART is not a ‘profession’. There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. In rare moments of inspiration, moments beyond the control of his will, the grace of Heaven may cause his work to blossom into art. But proficiency to his craft is essential to every artist. Therein lies a source of creative imagination.” (From the first proclamation of the Weimar Bauhaus, 1919)

SPAIN might currently be in turmoil, what with its armed forces’ flexing of musclebound strength posing a threat to its still unsettled democracy, but there are no ripples of unrest to disturb the afternoon siesta of a dozing Barcelona. Only the foolhardy tourists who flood the city every summer brave the unrelenting heat and dust of the streets.

Many of them are from Britain and Germany, and it’s easy to see what attracts them: the city’s proximity to the sea, its odd, indigenous architecture and, of course, a good exchange rate. For the Germans its location also fulfils a romantic northern longing for the warmth and promise of the south and the Mediterranean.

Kraftwerk, too, feel the urge. Their main motivating force, Ralf Hütter, wandered through Spain a decade ago – so he reveals later to a Spanish record company executive from the back of a taxi careering through the night – but he was put off by the hippies clogging islands and resorts like Ibiza. Besides, he doesn’t enjoy the tourist role, preferring instead a more constructive purpose for travelling, like work.

Consequently Kraftwerk’s European tour satisfies both their wanderlust and their need for communication/feedback. Despite their modernity, a fear of flying means they are driving themselves across the Continent – so far down from Düsseldorf through Bavaria and the Alps to Italy, across to the South of France and down again, through the Pyrenees, to Barcelona. From city to city, concert to concert, disco to disco.

Yet there’s none of the whining rock “road goes on forever” aura about their tour. It’s more a dignified, inquisitive jaunt across countries, its moods, pleasures and languors so beautifully evoked already by their seven-year-old hit “Autobahn”. That great, compellingly endless tune was Kraftwerk’s stunning entrance into a gleaming chromium world. They had made earlier records that fiddled about with more extreme noises which they later smoothed out into sweet melodies, like the “Pineapple Symphony”.

“Autobahn” was, however, the first real stirring of their innovative pop sensibility – a witty synthetic delight concocted from mock traffic noises and a wide, open-spaced tune, motored by then-intriguing new electronic percussion and a mechanical rhythm. It suggested a harmony between the aggressive, awe-inspiring autobahn network crisscrossing Germany and the lush landscapes it traverses. And ever since, Kraftwerk have reconciled the spirit of Mother Nature with modern technology, recognising that real progress must embrace them both.

Acknowledging the futility of simply retreating to the country, they have instead