Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpms20 Download by: [University of Glasgow], [Dr Pertti Gronholm] Date: 10 November 2016, At: 03:22 Popular Music and Society ISSN: 0300-7766 (Print) 1740-1712 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpms20 When Tomorrow Began Yesterday: Kraftwerk's Nostalgia for the Past Futures Pertti Grönholm To cite this article: Pertti Grönholm (2015) When Tomorrow Began Yesterday: Kraftwerk's Nostalgia for the Past Futures, Popular Music and Society, 38:3, 372-388, DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2014.969034 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2014.969034 Published online: 27 Oct 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 287 View related articles View Crossmark data
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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rpms20
Download by: [University of Glasgow], [Dr Pertti Gronholm] Date: 10 November 2016, At: 03:22
When Tomorrow Began Yesterday: Kraftwerk'sNostalgia for the Past Futures
Pertti Grönholm
To cite this article: Pertti Grönholm (2015) When Tomorrow Began Yesterday:Kraftwerk's Nostalgia for the Past Futures, Popular Music and Society, 38:3, 372-388, DOI:10.1080/03007766.2014.969034
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2014.969034
When Tomorrow Began Yesterday:Kraftwerk’s Nostalgia for thePast FuturesPertti Gronholm
The Kraftwerkian rediscovery and revival of the “past futures” of the early 20th centurywas not primarily in order to predict or envision the future. Rather, Kraftwerk constructeda cultural and historical space that worked as an imaginary utopian/nostalgic refuge in
the cultural situation of 1970s West Germany. This article demonstrates that Kraftwerk’snostalgic reflections were neither superficially imposed nor understandable within the
narrow scope of “simple nostalgia.” Kraftwerk’s futuristic nostalgia is a special way ofcreating historical narratives and images; it excludes sentimentality and rejects the idea
of a Golden Age but, instead, re-imagines the past as a continuum of progressivedevelopment and as a source of inspiration and ideas. The imagined past becomes a
nostalgic refuge, a space that has both restorative and reflective potential. Kraftwerk’sretro-futurism and technological utopianism had a strong undercurrent that effectively
employed nostalgic recollections from the adolescent years of the band members andrevived some poignant experiences that were shared by an entire generation.Furthermore, Kraftwerk purposefully attempted to visualize and point out times and
places in German history that could be identified without feelings of guilt, shame, andremorse. This article employs the concepts of restorative (utopian) nostalgia and reflective
(ironic) nostalgia, both elaborated by Svetlana Boym. The primary material consists offour Kraftwerk albums released in 1974–78 and a selection of the published interviews of
the band members.
In the late 1970s, Kraftwerk were introduced to the public as a band that associated
itself with the ethos of 20th-century modernism and its futuristic visions. Since then
Kraftwerk have promoted a society reduced to a seamless functionalism by modern
technology, manifesting the power of human creativeness and predicting a future that
would be saved by the symbiosis of man and technology. The band reconstructed the
sounds of iconic 20th-century technological achievements and sang unassumingly
about motorways, nuclear power, railways, and radio. However, as early as in the
q 2014 Taylor & Francis
Popular Music and Society, 2015Vol. 38, No. 3, 372–388, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2014.969034
mid-1970s their unusual way of mixing the past, the present, and the future confused
audiences. Kraftwerk’s choices of imagery, public identity and appearance, along with
musical themes, provided more links and associations with previous decades than
with the future. This mixture of old and new, with a selection of the iconic images of
modern technology and mass culture, was fully employed in Kraftwerk’s classic
albums, starting from Autobahn (1974) and Radio-Activity (1975) and culminating in
Trans-Europe Express (1977) and The Man Machine (1978) (Bussy 69).Some journalists, chroniclers, and scholars have observed Kraftwerk’s constant
interplay between nostalgic, ironic, and progressive approaches to the ideas and
imagery of the past futures, but there have been no serious attempts to examine the
quality of Kraftwerk’s modernism from the viewpoints of nostalgic remembering and
imagining of the past. For example, Pascal Bussy recognizes the nostalgic undertones
but does not address questions such as why the (German) past is presented the way it
is and what that tells about the band’s historical and cultural context. Surprisingly,
even the most recent Kraftwerk biographer David Buckley does not adequately
consider the nostalgic elements in Kraftwerk’s retro-futurism (118, 177–78).
Hardly any scholarly authors consider nostalgia as an important concept for
understanding Kraftwerk. For example, Ulrich Adelt and John T. Littlejohn do not
include nostalgia or retro-futurism in their conceptual toolbox. Even David
Cunningham, who interestingly addresses the question of Kraftwerk’s relation to
modernism, retreats from discussing the quality and importance of the nostalgic
elements in Kraftwerk’s retro-futurism by stating that the way Kraftwerk has used the
images and sounds of the past is “far from reflecting any simple nostalgia for the
bygone; nor does it provide the basis for ‘postmodern’ pastiche” (53). Cunningham
correctly notes that Kraftwerk’s relation to the past may not be primarily revivalist in
the purest sense of the word, but aims rather at retrieving those “initially utopian and
progressive tendencies” contained within technology (53). True enough, Kraftwerk’s
relation to the past is far from “simple nostalgia,” which, according to Cunningham,
seems to equal a cheap sentimentality that exploits the emotions of loss and hope.
My main argument, which substantially broadens Cunningham’s view, is that the
Kraftwerkian rediscovery and revival of the past futures of the early 20th century was
not primarily in order to predict or envision the future. Rather, Kraftwerk constructed
a cultural and historical space that worked as an imaginary, both utopian and
nostalgic refuge in culturally stagnated West Germany. Kraftwerk’s imagery and
concept cannot be understood without the concept of nostalgia in its various modes.
In contrast to Cunningham, I see nostalgia as a complex concept since it resonates
with numerous ways of relating to the past, ranging from personal melancholy and
home-sickness to a wide variety of forms of identity-making, retro-culture,
entertainment, and the politics of memory. In Kraftwerk’s case the band struggled
against the hegemony of presentism that tended to judge German identity and culture
only from the perspective of the Nazis, the Second World War and the Holocaust.
Kraftwerk’s nostalgic futurism was an attempt to bridge the gap, to reconnect
Popular Music and Society 373
progressive German culture of the post-war years to the long continuum of German
culture, especially the positive legacy of the avant-garde of the 1920s and early 1930s.For many cultural theorists of Western postmodern culture (such as Fredric
Jameson, Eric Hobsbawm, David Lowenthal) nostalgia has appeared as a“conservative,” “sentimental,” “invented,” “falsifying,” and “escapist” approach tothe past. However, according to Susannah Radstone (112–16), nostalgia is not an
antithesis of modernism and progress as it is often understood. Rather, nostalgia,especially in its “creative mode,” appears to be an alternative future, built in to the core
of modernity and modernism itself. Nostalgia brings to the surface alternativenarratives and images from the past to which we feel attracted and in that way it helps
us adapt to ongoing changes. For Svetlana Boym (Future 351–54) and LindaHutcheon nostalgia brings to the surface not only discontent with the present but also
“contemporary fantasies” that can carry hope, utopian aspirations, and the seeds ofchange.
Kraftwerk’s concept, music, and images have been filled with nostalgic elements,such as a strong sense of discontent with the West German society of the 1970s and a
somewhat unconscious or hidden longing for both the personally experienced past ofthe post-war reconstruction era and the re-imagined progressive past of pre-Nazi
Germany. I argue that Kraftwerk’s passionate and serious but simultaneously alsoplayful and ironic rediscovery of German and European avant-garde culture of theinterwar period was a crucial element in Kraftwerk’s modernist ethos. From this
perspective the nostalgia for the past indicates dissatisfaction and disappointment,but also hope and optimism.
I am focusing on Kraftwerk’s reflections of the personal history of the bandmembers, especially those of the founding figures Ralf Hutter (b. 1947) and Florian
Schneider (b. 1948): their memories of childhood and youth, aural flashbacks andrecollections of life in post-war West Germany, a society that attempted to cope with
the burdened past by collective shame and amnesia, a conservative culture, and hardwork for Wirtschaftswunder, a rapidly recovering and economically advancing West
Germany. My question is: what kind of references did Kraftwerk make to the history ofthe post-war baby-boom generation and what did these references aim to express both
intellectually and emotionally?This article demonstrates that Hutter’s and Schneider’s, as well as other band
members’ and collaborators’ nostalgic reflections were neither superficially imposednor meaningless. Nor are they understandable within the narrow scope ofsentimentalism and “simple nostalgia.” I see Kraftwerk’s recollections, partly based
on their personal experiences and re-evaluations of post-war Germany, in synchronywith the band’s retro-futurist concept. Also Kraftwerk’s position in the long
continuum of European avant-garde is connected with a nostalgic approach tohistory. Kraftwerk is a quite exceptional kind of pop band because it has adopted both
nostalgia and utopia into its audiovisual and conceptual repertoire. As somecommentators have noted, the deliberately created suspense between the elements
that refer both to the past and the future is one of the most original features of
374 P. Gronholm
Kraftwerk’s concept (Bussy 69; Reynolds 373). Even before the term itself was coined
the band introduced the idea of retro-futurism into pop music in the mid-1970s.Retro-futurism as a term became widely used only from the mid-1980s onwards.
However, Kraftwerk were not alone in their initial efforts to save and revive thepositive aspects of German modernism, avant-garde, and futurism. Some of theirfellow kosmische (cosmic) “krautrockers” of the early 1970s, such as Can and Faust,
had firm roots in the post-war art scene and early electronic music. All these bandssought inspiration from artists and composers such as Joseph Beuys and Karlheinz
Stockhausen, but only Kraftwerk was to wrap the nostalgic revivalism and utopianaspirations up in a manifest and a programmatic approach to modern pop music.
Furthermore, Kraftwerk’s influence onWest German punk andNeue Deutsche Welle, apost-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, was noteworthy. Bands such
as Einsturzende Neubauten, Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft and Die Kruppscontinued to challenge and reflect the German identity in their own approach, often
inspired by Dada and the Futurist movements of the 1920s (Shryane 14, 34–35, 38–41; Shahan 371–73).
I shall employ the concepts of ironic (reflective) nostalgia and utopian (restorative)nostalgia, both elaborated by Svetlana Boym. These concepts provide a theoretical
ground for exploring the different layers in Kraftwerk’s highly self-reflectivecontemplation of the legacy of German and European modernism and their ownmemories of the past. The focus of this article is on the years 1974–78 which were
crucial in the transformation of the band from an almost unknown experimentalgroup into a world-famous electronic pop act. During these years Kraftwerk also faced
the question of modern Germanness as the Anglo-American pop media still seemedto observe German bands and especially Kraftwerk through a riflescope, which meant
that, especially in the British popular music press, Kraftwerk became framed withattributes and slogans that referred to the Second World War (Gronholm 73).
Svetlana Boym divides nostalgic experiences into two main categories: utopian andironic. According to her, utopian nostalgia derives from personal sensations of loss
and longing towards a certain place or time. The object of nostalgic desire may be thechildhood home, the motherland or a period of time that is impregnated with positive
experiences and memories. Utopian nostalgia expresses an endeavor in which theexperience of return is central; it can be motivated by both emotional (recreation and
pleasure) and cognitive (self-understanding) needs. Boym holds that the meaning andsignificance of the utopian type of nostalgia lies in its powerful restorative potential;
nostalgia can reconstruct self-image and identity. Furthermore, utopian nostalgiadoes not limit itself to the individual sensations of yearning, familiarity, andidentification but also covers the projections of the unrealized aspirations and shared
hopes of the collective. As Boym writes, restorative and utopian nostalgia isconstructed upon absolute truths and underlines the timelessness of its subject
(“Estrangement”; Future xviii).In contrast to that, ironic nostalgia is not bound to any time or place. According to
Boym, the subject of ironic nostalgia is the sense of the distance itself; ironic nostalgia
Popular Music and Society 375
does not build on identification but on the experience of liberation and detachment.
Ironic nostalgia is reflective, singular, and personal; a strong collectively sharedidentity cannot be constructed upon that. However, the experience of alienation canbe a source of artistic creativity and a foundation for a way of living. Apart from
utopian nostalgia, ironic nostalgia contests all absolute truths and it does notmaintain hope for the betterment of the world (“Estrangement” 512; Future xviii).
Thus, ironic nostalgia can be understood as an extreme self-criticism thatacknowledges the fragmented and subjective nature of the (post)modern narrative
identity and avoids attachment to any places and times.
First Excursions into the Avant-garde
Kraftwerk’s audiovisual and conceptual repertoire was saturated with references to the
20th-century history of Germany and Europe. This was a distinctive feature in musicvideos, live back projections, album covers, the band’s appearance, and outfits that all
started to take a new shape after Autobahn (1974). Numerous references to theWeimar era, National Socialist years, and post-war reconstruction seem to indicate
Kraftwerk’s attempt to build bridges over Nazi-era traumas and fractures and a seriousattempt to rehabilitate and revive German culture and its progressive elements, whichhad been wiped out by the Nazis and which remained largely forgotten in conservative
post-war Germany until the early 1960s (Albiez and Lindvig 19–20). Along with Canand some other new German rock bands Kraftwerk were looking for such a cultural
continuum, which could be built upon and shown as an example of the positivelegacy. In an interview in 1998 Hutter declared, “To be able to feel any bonds at all, we
had to go back to the Bauhaus school. It sounds strange, but to continue into thefuture, we had to take a step back forty years” (Barr 74).
In their pre-Autobahn era Hutter and Schneider had already referred many times toGerman history. Their debut album Kraftwerk (1970) had an electro-acousticreconstruction of a wartime air raid entitled “Vom Himmel Hoch,” which reanimated
the horrors of bombings with a minimal repertoire of percussive and electronicsounds. In some other early tracks such as “Megaherz” (Kraftwerk, 1970), the third
section of “Klingklang” and “Strom” (Kraftwerk 2, 1972) “Tongebirge,” “Heimatk-lange,” and parts of “Ananas-Symphonie” (Ralf & Florian, 1973), we find echoes of a
pastoral romanticism that was probably inspired by 19th-century imaginings of anAlpine atmosphere and Hutter’s and Schneider’s own Heimat, the Rhineland area.
However, at this point they treated nostalgic themes with a considerable amount ofironic detachment. Partly this relates to an undefined discontent with West German
popular culture, and especially with the culture of their parents’ generations thatconsumed romantic sentimentalism provided by the mechanisms of massentertainment (Albiez and Lindvig 26–29).
On the other hand, as Hutter and Schneider played their attractive but stripped-down melodies mostly with classical instruments, such as flute and piano (for
instance, in tracks “Tongebirge” and “Heimatklange”), they seem to reach further into
376 P. Gronholm
19th-century German Romanticism, the golden age of Beethoven, Schubert,
Schumann, and other composers who drew their inspiration from Central Europeanlandscapes.
Sonic Translations on Autobahn
Autobahn, carefully contextualized by Albiez and Lindvig, linked Kraftwerk for thefirst time with the late 1920s and early 1930s, a time when Germany adopted atransport policy that introduced a network of motorways that was supposed to
connect industrial areas and the largest cities with rural and natural environmentsthroughout the country. At the same time, Kraftwerk made a caricature of both the
Schlager tradition and the West German type of modernization and rationalizationthat had been initiated by Chancellor Adenauer in the 1950s (Albiez and Lindvig 26–
31). The album itself was a narrative-like musical, conceptual, and visual endeavor;the album resembled a sonic road movie that took the listener into a tour aroundWest
Germany. The most notable symbol of the album was the blue and white motorwaysign that filled the whole front cover of the album’s British release. The front cover of
the German release pictured an idealization of the German landscape in the shape ofEmil Schult’s painting where power lines and motorways crossed a verdant rurallandscape. Images of two iconic German automobiles, the Volkswagen Beetle (also
known as KdF Wagen and VW Kafer) and the luxurious Mercedes-Benz W112 300SEfrom the early 1970s were layered on Schult’s painting by collage technique. However,
the album was not so much about cars, as about roads, roadsides, and spaces betweenthem. As Florian Schneider later recalled, the band’s idea of the German motorways
was already somewhat idealized and nostalgic in the early 1970s (Bussy 52).In this album Kraftwerk’s pseudo-romantic undercurrent took a new turn.
Straightforward but seductive melodies became mixed with electronic rhythms,synthesized sounds and themes of the urbanized industrial age. Still, especially insome parts of the title song “Autobahn,” “Kometenmelodie 2,” and “Morgenspa-
ziergang,” the music was romantic in a folksy way in its melodic content and overallmood. For example, “Morgenspaziergang” envisioned a morning walk in undisturbed
nature in which the air is saturated by the sounds of trickling water of a brook,whispering winds, and chirping birds. The timbres soon reveal that all the “natural
sounds” are actually electronic and, in contrast to the melodic theme and chordaccompaniment which are played with acoustic instruments, recorder, flute,
mandolin, grand piano and electric piano. “Morgenspaziergang” is also an ironicallynostalgic track in which Hutter and Schneider bid farewell to their acoustic
instruments, first and foremost to the piano and flute, which they had studied inDusseldorf Music Academy in the late 1960s. In Kraftwerk’s future studio recordingsall sounds, apart from the human voice and occasional recorded percussion, would be
electronic.The title track “Autobahn,” depicting an endless journey through industrial cities
and the rural landscape, introduces another wistful reference to the modernist roots
Popular Music and Society 377
of Kraftwerk. The long sequence that is filled by speeding up and overtaking
automobiles, car horns, and other noises was composed by applying the principles of
the early pioneers of musique concrete: the band drove around recording real traffic
noises. Then they translated the motorway ambience into synthetic sound by using
recorded sounds as templates for electronic approximations (Gill; Albiez and Lindvig
34–35). This sequence clearly resonates with Hutter’s and Schneider’s memories of
the musique concrete of the 1950s. However, the synthetic version of traffic noise is
very polished, well-organized, and aesthetically attractive. The final sound and
structure appeared distant from the dissonant and unexpected noise collages of the
avant-garde composers. Similarly familiarized, nostalgic homage was built into the
middle section (“Metal on Metal”) of the title track in Kraftwerk’s album Trans-
Europe Express (1977).
By translating concrete sounds into electronic, Kraftwerk did not aim only at
associating the ethos of the early avant-garde with contemporary progressive rock
and pop. In resonance with compositional and sonic levels both “Autobahn” and
“Morgenspaziergang” also refer to the long continuum of German-speaking
composers who had translated natural sounds and visions into musical structures,
starting from the era of 19th-century Romanticism. However, for Kraftwerk nature
translates into a 20th-century natural environment, which coexists with the rural and
urban environments, which makes their approach metaphorically ambivalent and
playful. The nostalgic element here stands not only in reference to modernist
composers who influenced the band founders in their youth, but also in Kraftwerk’s
elaboration of the harmonic coexistence of mankind, technology, and nature.It appears that Kraftwerk’s nostalgic aspirations for harmony and reconciliation
with the traumatic past have been an inherent element within the concept of
Kraftwerk even in the early phases of the band. Interpreted in Boym’s terms this kind
of intellectual and self-conscious approach to the past would be close to ironic, self-
reflective nostalgia that is not subscribing to any specific time or space but wishes to
maintain the sense of detachment as the primary object of the yearning. However,
already in their early years Kraftwerk seemed obsessed with German history and with
pointing out the positive continuities of German culture. All this was manifest in ways
which lead one to conclude that Kraftwerk’s nostalgia was not sentimental, but
intellectual and ironic; in the mid-1970s the band had obviously discovered its
intellectual roots but continued in search of a history that could be identified also
emotionally.
The German interwar ideal of combining industrial progress with well-preserved
countryside and virgin nature was a utopian effort in itself. Kraftwerk did not mock
the idealism although a certain mild irony towards past ideals is pervasive throughout
the album. In Autobahn, Kraftwerk already sought to restore, much in the spirit of
the 1920s modernists, a balance between technology and nature (Buckley 66). Still,
Kraftwerk’s ironic and reflective nostalgia is far from eulogizing either inter-war or
post-war Germany.
378 P. Gronholm
One reason for Hutter’s and Schneider’s later denial of any connotations of
nostalgia in interviews conducted by foreign media may relate to the fact that in thecontext of post-’68 West Germany Nostalgie was considered a very suspicious wordsince it was easily associated with nationalistic and National-Socialist concepts of
German history, such as Volk and Vaterland. In West German popular music, movieand television nostalgia was also associated with the concept of Heimat that not only
translates as “home” and “homeland,” but also refers to supranational and regionalidentity. It entails an attitude that is loaded with positive emotions, such as a hopeful
yearning and identification. Heimat was meant to be a synonym for an apparentlyneutral remembering of the past but it also seemed to subscribe to the traditional
order of things (Bullivant and Rice 225). However, Kraftwerk’s Heimat was the highlyindustrialized and modern Ruhr/Rhineland area and Autobahn as its extension, not
the Urwald of Teutonic mythology (Albiez and Lindvig 22–26, 38–39).
Revisiting the Dreamland of Childhood
Kraftwerk’s deliberate contemplation of history has also evoked some personal, evennostalgic recollections, especially around the mid-1970s. In interviews, Hutter and
Schneider revealed that their first contacts with electronic music date back to the midand late 1950s. In particular, the experiences of the late-night concerts of electronic
music, entitled Musikalische Nachtprogramme and broadcast by the North-WestGerman Broadcasting Company (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, NWDR) seem to
remain forever imprinted in theminds of Hutter and Schneider. These broadcasts werestarted in 1948 byHerbert Eimert (1897–1972) andhis colleagueswho later established
the NWDR Electronic Music Studio in Cologne. These nightly concerts consisted ofcompositions and tape collages produced by avant-garde composers such as Werner
Meyer-Eppler, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaffer andGyorgy Ligeti. In interviews,Hutter and Schneider have revived their impressions of music that seemed to pave theway to a world of science fiction and elevate the listener high above the post-war
reconstruction under the Allied occupation and cultural conservatism. Hutter andSchneider have stated that their musical roots are firmly in the modernist music of the
1950s and 1960s (Lynner and Robbley 11–12, 25; Schober 12–13; Radio WSKU).
[W]e were in the Dusseldorf area, which is near Cologne, where the electronicstudio used by Stockhausen was, and not so far from the French studios wherePierre Boulez was working. It was a common practice here, at a fairly young age, togo and hear Stockhausen. The art scene and the music scene, specially electronicmusic, were quite accessible, there were several radio shows of strange electronicmusic. So we had access to all of that, it was part of our upbringing, our education.We always considered ourselves the second generation of electronic explorers, afterStockhausen. (Hutter qtd in Dery)
Conclusions of this kind reveal that the members of Kraftwerk have clearly felt itnecessary not only to recognize their forefathers, but also to introduce their own work
into the continuum of the European electronic avant-garde.
Popular Music and Society 379
Hutter’s and Schneider’s personal memories are probably employed most explicitly
in their fifth album which was construed on the themes of audio and broadcast
technology and nuclear power. The album was entitled Radio-Activity (Radio-
Aktivitat) and it differed remarkably from Autobahn both musically and conceptually.
The instrumentation was now totally electronic and the human voice was often
heavily altered. The lyrics were mostly sung (or spoken) in both German and English.
Radio-Activity was the first Kraftwerk album where Hutter and Schneider, in
collaboration with Emil Schult, succeeded in creating a coherent, all-embracing
musical and visual concept, Gesamtkunstwerk (Gronholm 71–72).In addition to the apparently lucid but controversial theme of nuclear energy, the
emergence of Elektronische Musik was another of the two central themes of the album.
According to Hutter and Schneider, the whole concept paid homage to a broadcasting
studio, the first electronic music studio. Many of the album tracks reflect the
pioneering era of electronic music and broadcasting technology with a nostalgic but
simultaneously humorous overtone. In an interview, Florian Schneider explained,
“This is a homage to the radio, the first existing electronic studio. Back then, people
like Stockhausen always played music directly on the radio” (qtd in Schober 12–13).
Probably the most illuminating example of Kraftwerk’s evoked nostalgia is a track
entitled “Radioland,” an electronic lullaby, which echoes the impact that Nachtmusik
had on the West German schoolboys in the state between being awake and falling
asleep. The lyrics of the track picture a short-wave radio operator who, while surfing
the airwaves, comes across various electronic sounds such as Morse codes, sudden
tone bursts, ethereal modulations, radio interference, other noises, and cracks.
According to the lyrics, the sounds come straight from Radio Land, a distant realm of
futuristic sound, an apparent dreamland of electronic engineering where the wildest
technological utopias can be realized.
We always listened to this in earlier times, the programme was called “Nachtmusik.”This is our background, this is how we were inspired to form a purely electronicgroup....When it was dark and we had to go to bed, we would hear it under thepillow on a transistor radio. We are interested in the “radio consciousness.” (Hutterqtd in Schober)
Could it be that, for the youngsters of post-war Germany, the potential of rapidly
evolving technology, especially electronics, was in itself a futuristic refuge, a utopian
dreamland where the day-to-day conformism, conservatism, and cultural stagnation
could be avoided? “Radioland” recreates an affective and mysterious atmosphere from
the mixture of anticipation for ethereal beauty, joyful discoveries in a universe of
airwaves (another track illustrating this is “Transistor”), and a melancholic sense of
loss and oblivion. Perhaps the radio broadcast and electronic music were not only
metaphors of the future but also substitutes for the real lullabies that should have been
sung by the parents who were burdened by both war-time memories and a heavy
workload during the early stage of the West GermanWirtschaftswunder (Buckley 26–
28). Either way, Kraftwerk’s nostalgic recollections of post-war Germany are not
380 P. Gronholm
purely utopian, but are built on a substantial amount of ironic detachment. With a
little speculation one could hear the final track “Ohm Sweet Ohm” as an ironic
statement that questions the childhood home as the fundamental object of longing
and, instead, presents the electronic music studio as the real intellectual and spiritual
home of the founding members of Kraftwerk. As seen from the larger perspective of
Kraftwerk’s combination of nostalgia and retro-futurism it could be concluded that
rapid scientific and technical development, which had its reflections in post-war art
music too, appeared as a world of limitless possibilities, capable of rising above the
mundane and even of changing societal and cultural values. This was something that
Kraftwerk wanted to revive and make audible.
The most obvious homage paid to the generation of pioneers in Radio-Activity is a
track entitled “The Voice of Energy” (“Die Stimme der Energie”), where a text written
by German physicist, acoustician and phoneticist Werner Meyer-Eppler (1913–60) is
spoken through a voice coder (vocoder), an American invention that had been
introduced into Germany by Meyer-Eppler himself in 1949 (Brocker 106). The lyrics
that Kraftwerk slightly modified also provide a bridge that connects the apparently
separate themes of the album. However, some dystopian overtones are present too,
especially in tracks such as “Radioactivity” and “The Voice of Energy” in which
Kraftwerk reminded us that technology must be well-guarded in order to be able to
serve mankind. This utopian-dystopian ambivalence has also permeated the overall
concept of radio broadcasting: the cover of the album, which depicted the German
short-wave receiver (Deutscher Kleinempfanger, DKE38) that was mass-produced in
the late 1930s, hinted that technology could be used to control and manipulate entire
nations. However, in order to avoid controversial connotations the original swastika
was not included in the picture (Bussy 69–70).Another type of nostalgia, more utopian and more widely shared is present in
Radio-Activity. Schneider and especially Hutter, who, prior to Kraftwerk, had played
keyboards in several beat combos in his hometown Krefeld, such as the Phantoms
(Van Uem 94), were seemingly happy to cherish their memories of the mid-1960s.
In Radio-Activity there are at least three tracks that are clearly inspired by the Beach
Boys. “Antenna” (“Antenne”), “Airwaves” (“Atherwellen”), and “Ohm Sweet Ohm”
are all simple-structure pop songs, but they also carry explicit references to the Beach
Boys’ songs, in particular “Good Vibrations” (Littlejohn 644–45; Adelt 368).
During the production of Autobahn, Kraftwerk had already been inspired by the
rhythms, melodies, and harmonies crafted by Brian Wilson and his band. Also in
Radio-Activity the Californian influences were again mixed with modernistic and
futuristic themes. Hutter and Schneider were deeply impressed by Wilson’s ability to
concentrate on fundamental musical ideas and to translate an entire Californian way
of life into catchy musical elements and squeeze all this into a three-minute song
(Bussy 56; Littlejohn 643–44; Albiez and Lindvig 35; Buckley 55). In the mid-1970s,
Hutter and Schneider hoped that some day Kraftwerk would win a similar renown;
hoped that when, in the remote future, someone would like to know what it was like
Popular Music and Society 381
in West Germany in the 1970s, he or she would only have to listen to Kraftwerk’s
recordings (Alessandrini).“Airwaves” and “Antenna” are driven by a moderate or up-tempo beat that
resembles the rhythms of 1960s pop. “Airwaves,” propelled by machine-driven rhythm
and bass line, took up from where “Autobahn” had left off. Despite the inspiration bythe Beach Boys, “Airwaves” is not about surfing on a sunny beach but about surfing
radio frequencies. The track has a clever reference both to pop music and theevolution of electronic music. The song has a continuous synthesizer theme that
gradually evolves into a free form solo and, in the middle of the song, breaks into twoseparate solo lines panned to left and right respectively. In the end, a third melody line
played with the same sound appears in the center of the mix. The synthesized sounditself is an obvious approximation to the sound of the theremin, an electronic
instrument invented by Russian scientist and inventor Leon Theremin (1896–1993)in the 1920s.
As it was well-known that the Beach Boys used an electro-theremin in their hitsingle “Good Vibrations” (1966), it is precisely here that Kraftwerk’s retro-futurist
references appear at their most intriguing. The theremin, originally known as theetherphone (Atherphone), is an instrument on which the sounds are created bymanual interference in the relation of slightly differing radio frequencies that produce
the instrument’s pitch. Another pair of radio frequencies affects the volume. Playingtheremin is about “swinging” these radio frequencies manually. In the laconic lyrics of
their song Kraftwerk refer to the actual playing of the theremin: “When airwavesswing, distant voices sing” (“Wenn Wellen schwingen, Ferne Stimmen singen”).
Resonating with Kraftwerk’s utopian nostalgia the band celebrates historicalelectronic instruments that had been deployed in modern pop music. The song
pays homage both to Kraftwerk’s Californian soul mates and to the futuristicvisionaries of the past such as Leon Theremin, but it also builds on a restorative
nostalgia through the rediscovery and re-animation of the technology of the past.To summarize, Radio-Activity represents Kraftwerk as a band that had identified
itself more openly and more consciously with a restorative utopian nostalgia.Kraftwerk’s longing for past utopias, such as the communities and studios ofEuropean avant-garde composers and artists (Darmstadt School, Bauhaus, etc.),
reveals that Hutter, Schneider et al. needed positive historical figures, images, andnarratives. The founders of Kraftwerk yearned for ideals and inspiration in order to
rediscover themselves as the avant-gardists of the West German post-war generation,a generation that had opposed the Anglo-American hegemony in culture and had
experienced the Holocaust debate of the 1960s and the revolutions of 1968. Accordingto Kraftwerk, not only the ideas and tools of the pioneers should be used, but also the
utopian thinking and modernist ethos; the forward-driving energy itself should berevived. And here lies the importance of the hope that Kraftwerk attempted to
maintain. The Kraftwerkian idea of progress that resonates strongly with WalterBenjamin’s thoughts on social progress, freedom, and democracy powered by
technological progress is transformed in Radio-Activity into a nostalgic excursion into
382 P. Gronholm
the history of radio technology, tape recorders, and electronic music studios.
However, the album still employs a lot of ironic self-reflective nostalgia that ismaintained by personal recollections from the 1950s and 1960s.
Longing for a Transnational Europe
Kraftwerk’s next two albums Trans-Europe Express (Trans-Europa Express, 1977) andThe Man-Machine (Die Mensch-Maschine, 1978) took Hutter’s and Schneider’s retro-
futurism to new heights. Trans-Europe Express linked danceable electronic music toGerman and European history and especially to modernist culture of the late 1920s
and early 1930s. Kraftwerk aimed to revive the early interwar hope for a peaceful,transnational, technologically advanced and socially progressive future.
In the 30s, all the intellectuals of Central Europe went to the United States or France,or they were eliminated. We take back that culture of the 30s at the point where itwas left, and this is on a spiritual level. (Hutter qtd in Alessandrini)1
The album treats nostalgically of “endless” Europe as an eternal and limitless space of
“avenues and postcard views” filled with imagery and sounds that evoked nostalgia byreferring both to the performing arts of the 1920s (“ShowroomDummies”) and to thecontinuum of German art music (“Franz Schubert”, “Endless Endless”). Kraftwerk
were inspired by European cultural heritage, into which the band wished toincorporate 20th-century modernist architecture, art, music, urban planning, and
technical innovations (“Trans-Europe Express,” “Europe Endless”). The concept ofthe album mixed elements from various modernist ideals, including cultural
nationalism, but, while exploiting some nationalistic stereotypes of Germans,Kraftwerk seemed to suggest that contemporary Germans, especially the baby
boomers, are true Europeans: open-minded, educated, civilized, and well-behaved.Here Kraftwerk were portraying and selling a new type of Germanness (Littlejohn648–49). At the same time the album reflected the band and the entire nation under
surveillance and therefore constantly contemplated their identity and self-image(“Hall of Mirrors,” “Showroom Dummies”). In addition, besides the critique of
(male) rock performer stereotypes, Kraftwerk’s attempt to “break the glass” alsoresonates with Hutter’s and Schneider’s idea of releasing the Germans from the Anglo-
American stereotypes which were inherited from wartime but were still cultivated inthe pop music media of the 1970s (Albiez 141; Gronholm 73; Buckley 72–73).
The album Trans-Europe Express did not capitalize on the band members’restorative recollections to the same extent and manner as Radio-Activity. Besides the
train, no references to personal encounters with “big technology” were present.However, the Trans-Europe Express (TEE) as a train was an important symbol of itstime as it seemed to embody the integration of Western Europe. TEE had an extra
symbolic value since the line had been opened in 1957, the year of the very forward-looking World Fair in Brussels and the Treaty of Rome that led to the foundation of
the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1958. But, as early as in the 1970s, TEE
Popular Music and Society 383
was gathering a nostalgic, even melancholic aura of bygone idealism. TEE trains
operated truly transnationally only for a short period: from 1957 till 1965.Furthermore, they never became very popular due to their high costs, ticket prices,and first-class status. Coincidence or not, Kraftwerk’s track “Trans-Europe Express”
itself has a rather melancholic and even sinister mood due to its minor chords, chordprogression, and descending melodies. Kraftwerk’s European train sounds as if it is
progressing endlessly without a destination, constantly chased by something, maybethe haunting past of Europe.
Nevertheless, in interviews Hutter and Schneider declared themselves the biggestfans of railways along with Iggy Pop and David Bowie (Alessandrini). Kraftwerk
elaborated the sounds of a train and thus connected their band to the modernisttradition of presenting the railways as a symbol of technological utopia, possibly best
exemplified by Arthur Honegger’s orchestral composition “Pacific 231” (1923) andWalter Ruttman’s documentary film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927). It is alsointeresting that Kraftwerk’s music video on “Trans-Europe Express” showed the band
members dressed like the movie stars of the 1930s and the late 1940s but relaxed andchatting in the passenger car (Bussy 87, 90). This appeared as a nostalgic reunion of
the men and the machine; perhaps Kraftwerk members wished to share their youthfulexperiences of modernism and progress with their Western European contemporaries.
The rhythms and sounds of the train that Kraftwerk imitated were a source ofnostalgic memories themselves: the noises were easy to recognize, familiar and
mundane. Furthermore, the sounds of train, like the sounds of the motorways andradio broadcast before, linked the band to the composers of musique concrete (Bussy91–92).
It is also interesting that Kraftwerk draws an ambivalent picture of Europe in“Europe Endless,” in which “real life” and “postcard views” and “elegance and
decadence” are contrasted. Hutter and Schneider, who wrote the lyrics, not only createassociations to classical qualities of the Central European landscape and architecture
but also connect the imagery to a modern Europe that is driven by industries of mass-culture.
Suspicious Images and Nostalgic Reunions
The album The Man-Machine completed Kraftwerk’s quest for the past futures byrediscovering and recycling the designs, images, and manifestos of the futurists and
constructivists of the 1920s. The symbiosis of man and machine was adopted as themost important metaphor of Kraftwerk and it was fully employed in the band’s
concept in which the musicians and their instruments were depicted merely as aperforming incarnation of the Kling Klang studio. Kling Klang was presented as an“electronic garden” in which Kraftwerk worked as a seamless collective of “musical
workers” and their machines (Gronholm 67–68, 73–75). This idea echoed nostalgiafor the idealism of the German Bauhaus school and the Soviet Higher Art and
Technical Studios Vkhutemas2 in Moscow both of which tried to combine the roles of
384 P. Gronholm
artist, artisan and engineer. The entire man-machine concept with its visual, textual,
and audible repertoire, especially on tracks such as “The Robots,” “Metropolis,” and“The Man-Machine” toyed with well-known ambivalences and controversial
references to both National Socialism and Communism (Bussy 100–01; Buckley142–44). Nevertheless, behind its exterior Kraftwerk seemed to be yearning more forthe universalist utopian mentality, progressive energy, and hopeful optimism than any
historical object or place.This kind of futuristic nostalgia was both restorative (utopian) and reflective
(ironic). It was restorative, since it pointed to identifiable people in a certain time andplace and aimed to create an intellectual connection with them. The pioneers—figures
such as Lang, Theremin and Meyer-Eppler—became not only sources of inspiration,but iconic representatives of their time and culture. For Kraftwerk these forefathers
embodied the experimental spirit and creativeness itself. However, nostalgia was alsoreflective because the past futures, at least their most optimistic versions, were only
imaginary since the possibilities for carrying them out were destroyed bytotalitarianism and war. Ultimately, the freedom of fantasy, artistic independence,
and ironic detachment from any past objects outweighed the commitment to culturalor political manifestations. Furthermore, there always remained an ironic twist whenHutter and Schneider name-checked or quoted their intellectual forefathers. While
still embracing the idea of a robotized work, leisure, and society, Kraftwerk sought topreserve an ironic distance and detachment from the political implications of the
machine utopias.From the point of view of personal and restorative (utopian) nostalgia there are two
musical pieces that are even more interesting than the iconic robot songs. “TheModel” and “Neon Lights” positioned Kraftwerk members in the world of celebrity,
fashion, design, and marketing that had all played a visible role in the cityscape ofDusseldorf for decades, also during years of their youth. “Neon Lights” is a
shamelessly nostalgic love song, a flashback to the streets of Dusseldorf which in themid-1970s were still illuminated by many commercial neon lights, some of them
dating back to the 1920s. Kraftwerk’s video on “Neon Lights” showed the bandmembers enjoying the promenade under the superimposed neon lights and the(silent) chat that may well have been about sharing their memories. Watching the
flickering lights seemingly triggers some restorative recollections that are expressed onthe band members’ happy faces (Buckley 145). “The Model,” which later became a hit
single in Britain and elsewhere, was another way of presenting the human side of the“musical workers.” The story about a female model who remains unattainable to the
main character refers to the fashion magazine illustrations and other media imageryof the late 1950s and early 1960s. This piece signaled a strong nostalgic sensation that
is evoked by a hope of a future rendezvous. Still, the track has a quite melancholicundercurrent that is audible in its descending main theme which may express the
feeling of an irreversible loss. Thus this track also builds heavily on nostalgicmemories of the past. Both songs and their associated videos sought to tone down
Kraftwerk’s robotic band image with a personal type of restorative nostalgia.
Popular Music and Society 385
From Personal Recollections to Revived Utopia
Svetlana Boym has noted that the 20th century started with utopias but ended with
nostalgia (Future xiv). Boym refers to a cultural turning point that took place
somewhere in the 1960s when future, progress, and utopias lost their position as the
main points of orientation in Western societies. Kraftwerk’s longing for the futures
that were never realized can be interpreted as a nostalgia that cultivates the hope of
reanimation of the spirits and intellectual potential of the past. This kind of futurist
nostalgia is a special way of creating historical narratives and images; it excludes
sentimentalism and the idea of the past as the Golden Age but instead re-imagines the
past as a continuum of progressive development and a source of inspiration and ideas.
The imagined past becomes a nostalgic refuge, a space that has both restorative and
reflective potential.
Nostalgia both in its utopian (restorative) and ironic (reflective) modes is very
tangible in the albums of Kraftwerk in the 1970s. However, the shape and function of
nostalgic reflections vary greatly from one concept to another; their subject, meaning,
and ways of expression seem to evolve throughout the decade. During the mid-1970s
and the latter half of the decade, the emphasis in nostalgia shifts from personal
recollections towards a cultural and collective remembering that elaborated nostalgia
in order to revive utopian energy and intellectual potential of modernism, not only
for the benefit of Germany and Europe but also globally. Kraftwerk’s retro-futurism
and technological utopianism had a strong undercurrent that effectively employed
nostalgic recollections from the adolescent years of the band members and revived
some poignant experiences that were shared by an entire generation. Furthermore,
Kraftwerk purposefully attempted to visualize and point out times and places in
German history that could be identified without feelings of guilt, shame, and remorse.
From this perspective Kraftwerk’s approach was also one possible answer to the
question as to how the baby boomer generation could cope with the traumatic past
that kept shadowing the future.
Futuristic nostalgia, attached to Central European historical epochs and fashion,
was embraced by many British New Romantic and synth pop bands, such as Visage,
Ultravox, O.M.D., and Classix Nouveaux in the early 1980s (Bussy 107). At the same
time, Kraftwerk moved on towards more “up to date” technological themes, such as
the home computers and digital information and communication (Computer World,
1981). However, they retained a special taste for nostalgic revivals of modern
technology, as was the case with the “Tour de France” single in 1983.Today, it appears that the importance of Kraftwerk is even more anchored in their
unusual ability to present simultaneity, the continuum of ideas, visions and
mentalities through time by carefully applied media convergence. Current Kraftwerk,
led by its only remaining founder Ralf Hutter, has become a retro-futurist act itself
which shamelessly builds on nostalgia and collective remembering. This seems only to
underline the fact that Kraftwerk have always had a thing about history. For example,
Fergus Linehan, Festival Director at Sydney Opera House, who invited Kraftwerk to
386 P. Gronholm
perform their series of retrospective concerts in the spring of 2013 argued, “They are a
sonic echo of the moment when futurismwas caught in the transition from utopian toapocalyptic” (Linehan qtd in Miller).
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully thanks Professor Bruce Johnson at University of Turku, Macquarie (Sydney),and Glasgow (Scotland) and New South Wales for his comments and support. Thanks also for IsmoVirta for his comments.
Notes
[1] Original: “Dans les annees 30, tous les intellectuels d’Europe centrale sont alles aux Etats-Unisou en France, ou alors ils ont ete elimines. Nous reprenons donc cette culture des annees 30 aupoint ou elle a ete laissee, et cela spirituellement/” Translated from the French by the author.
[2] In Russian: Вхутемас, Высшие художественно-технические мастерские.
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Pertti Gronholm, DPhil., is a collegium researcher at Turku Institute of AdvancedStudies and an Adjunct Professor (Docent) in history at the University of Turku,
Finland. His research is into the politics of history and collective remembering,especially in the Baltic states and Russia, communist and nationalistic historiography,
utopias and dystopias and electronic pop music. He has lectured and written scholarlyand popular articles on Kraftwerk, the German rock music of the 1970s, and thehistory of electronic music.
