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 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, 2015 Vol. 38, No. 3, 372–388, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2014.969034 When Tomorrow Began Yesterday: Kraftwerk’s Nostalgia for the Past Futures Pertti Grönholm 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 utopian/nostalgic refuge in the cultural situation of 1970s West Germany. This article demonstrates that Kraftwerk’s nostalgic reflections were neither superficially imposed nor understandable within the narrow scope of “simple nostalgia.” Kraftwerk’s futuristic nostalgia is a special way of creating 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 progressive development 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’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. This article employs the concepts of restorative (utopian) nostalgia and reflective (ironic) nostalgia, both elaborated by Svetlana Boym. The primary material consists of four 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 373 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 374 P. Grönholm 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 to the 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 alternative narratives 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 Linda Hutcheon nostalgia brings to the surface not only discontent with the present but also “contemporary fantasies” that can carry hope, utopian aspirations, and the seeds of change. 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 of the post-war reconstruction era and the re-imagined progressive past of pre-Nazi Germany. I argue that Kraftwerk’s passionate and serious but simultaneously also playful and ironic rediscovery of German and European avant-garde culture of the interwar 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 band members, especially those of the founding figures Ralf Hütter (b. 1947) and Florian Schneider (b. 1948): their memories of childhood and youth, aural flashbacks and recollections 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 hard work for Wirtschaftswunder, a rapidly recovering and economically advancing West Germany. My question is: what kind of references did Kraftwerk make to the history of the post-war baby-boom generation and what did these references aim to express both intellectually and emotionally? This article demonstrates that Hütter’s and Schneider’s, as well as other band members’ and collaborators’ nostalgic reflections were neither superficially imposed nor meaningless. Nor are they understandable within the narrow scope of sentimentalism and “simple nostalgia.” I see Kraftwerk’s recollections, partly based on their personal experiences and re-evaluations of post-war Germany, in synchrony with the band’s retro-futurist concept. Also Kraftwerk’s position in the long continuum of European avant-garde is connected with a nostalgic approach to history. Kraftwerk is a quite exceptional kind of pop band because it has adopted both nostalgia and utopia into its audiovisual and conceptual repertoire. As some commentators 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 Popular Music and Society 375 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 the positive aspects of German modernism, avant-garde, and futurism. Some of their fellow 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 bands sought inspiration from artists and composers such as Joseph Beuys and Karlheinz Stockhausen, but only Kraftwerk was to wrap the nostalgic revivalism and utopian aspirations up in a manifest and a programmatic approach to modern pop music. Furthermore, Kraftwerk’s influence on West German punk and Neue Deutsche Welle, a post-punk movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, was noteworthy. Bands such as Einstürzende Neubauten, Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft and Die Krupps continued 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-reflective contemplation of the legacy of German and European modernism and their own memories 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 experimental group 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 seemed to observe German bands and especially Kraftwerk through a riflescope, which meant that, especially in the British popular music press, Kraftwerk became framed with attributes and slogans that referred to the Second World War (Grönholm 73). Svetlana Boym divides nostalgic experiences into two main categories: utopian and ironic. 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 the childhood home, the motherland or a period of time that is impregnated with positive experiences and memories. Utopian nostalgia expresses an endeavor in which the experience of return is central; it can be motivated by both emotional (recreation and pleasure) and cognitive (self-understanding) needs. Boym holds that the meaning and significance of the utopian type of nostalgia lies in its powerful restorative potential; nostalgia can reconstruct self-image and identity. Furthermore, utopian nostalgia does not limit itself to the individual sensations of yearning, familiarity, and identification but also covers the projections of the unrealized aspirations and shared hopes of the collective. As Boym writes, restorative and utopian nostalgia is constructed 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 376 P. Grönholm does not build on identification but on the experience of liberation and detachment. Ironic nostalgia is reflective, singular, and personal; a strong collectively shared identity cannot be constructed upon that. However, the experience of alienation can be 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 not maintain hope for the betterment of the world (“Estrangement” 512; Future xviii). Thus, ironic nostalgia can be understood as an extreme self-criticism that acknowledges 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 music videos, 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 the Weimar 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 serious attempt to rehabilitate and revive German culture and its progressive elements, which had 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 Can and 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 positive legacy. In an interview in 1998 Hütter 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 the future, we had to take a step back forty years” (Barr 74). In their pre-Autobahn era Hütter and Schneider had already referred many times to German history. Their debut album Kraftwerk (1970) had an electro-acoustic reconstruction of a wartime air raid entitled “Vom Himmel Hoch,” which reanimated the horrors of bombings with a minimal repertoire of percussive and electronic sounds. In some other early tracks such as “Megaherz” (Kraftwerk, 1970), the third section of “Klingklang” and “Strom” (Kraftwerk 2, 1972) “Tongebirge,” “Heimatklänge,” and parts of “Ananas-Symphonie” (Ralf & Florian, 1973), we find echoes of a pastoral romanticism that was probably inspired by 19th-century imaginings of an Alpine atmosphere and Hütter’s and Schneider’s own Heimat, the Rhineland area. However, at this point they treated nostalgic themes with a considerable amount of ironic detachment. Partly this relates to an undefined discontent with West German popular culture, and especially with the culture of their parents’ generations that consumed romantic sentimentalism provided by the mechanisms of mass entertainment (Albiez and Lindvig 26– 29). On the other hand, as Hütter and Schneider played their attractive but strippeddown melodies mostly with classical instruments, such as flute and piano (for instance, in tracks “Tongebirge” and “Heimatklänge”), they seem to reach further into Popular Music and Society 377 19th-century German Romanticism, the golden age of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and other composers who drew their inspiration from Central European landscapes. Sonic Translations on Autobahn Autobahn, carefully contextualized by Albiez and Lindvig, linked Kraftwerk for the first time with the late 1920s and early 1930s, a time when Germany adopted a transport policy that introduced a network of motorways that was supposed to connect industrial areas and the largest cities with rural and natural environments throughout the country. At the same time, Kraftwerk made a caricature of both the Schlager tradition and the West German type of modernization and rationalization that 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 around West Germany. The most notable symbol of the album was the blue and white motorway sign 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 of Emil Schult’s painting where power lines and motorways crossed a verdant rural landscape. Images of two iconic German automobiles, the Volkswagen Beetle (also known as KdF Wagen and VW Käfer) and the luxurious Mercedes-Benz W112 300SE from 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 between them. 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 in some parts of the title song “Autobahn,” “Kometenmelodie 2,” and “Morgenspaziergang,” the music was romantic in a folksy way in its melodic content and overall mood. 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 chord accompaniment which are played with acoustic instruments, recorder, flute, mandolin, grand piano and electric piano. “Morgenspaziergang” is also an ironically nostalgic track in which Hütter and Schneider bid farewell to their acoustic instruments, first and foremost to the piano and flute, which they had studied in Düsseldorf Music Academy in the late 1960s. In Kraftwerk’s future studio recordings all 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 378 P. Grönholm 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 Hütter’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 TransEurope 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, selfreflective 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. Popular Music and Society 379 One reason for Hütter’s and Schneider’s later denial of any connotations of nostalgia in interviews conducted by foreign media may relate to the fact that in the context of post-’68 West Germany Nostalgie was considered a very suspicious word since it was easily associated with nationalistic and National-Socialist concepts of German history, such as Volk and Vaterland. In West German popular music, movie and television nostalgia was also associated with the concept of Heimat that not only translates as “home” and “homeland,” but also refers to supranational and regional identity. 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 apparently neutral 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 highly industrialized 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, even nostalgic recollections, especially around the mid-1970s. In interviews, Hütter and Schneider revealed that their first contacts with electronic music date back to the mid and late 1950s. In particular, the experiences of the late-night concerts of electronic music, entitled Musikalische Nachtprogramme and broadcast by the North-West German Broadcasting Company (Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, NWDR) seem to remain forever imprinted in the minds of Hütter and Schneider. These broadcasts were started in 1948 by Herbert Eimert (1897– 1972) and his colleagues who later established the NWDR Electronic Music Studio in Cologne. These nightly concerts consisted of compositions and tape collages produced by avant-garde composers such as Werner Meyer-Eppler, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Schaffer and György Ligeti. In interviews, Hütter and Schneider have revived their impressions of music that seemed to pave the way to a world of science fiction and elevate the listener high above the post-war reconstruction under the Allied occupation and cultural conservatism. Hütter and Schneider 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 Düsseldorf area, which is near Cologne, where the electronic studio used by Stockhausen was, and not so far from the French studios where Pierre Boulez was working. It was a common practice here, at a fairly young age, to go and hear Stockhausen. The art scene and the music scene, specially electronic music, were quite accessible, there were several radio shows of strange electronic music. 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, after Stockhausen. (Hütter qtd in Dery) Conclusions of this kind reveal that the members of Kraftwerk have clearly felt it necessary not only to recognize their forefathers, but also to introduce their own work into the continuum of the European electronic avant-garde. 380 P. Grönholm Hütter’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 (RadioAktivität) 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 Hütter and Schneider, in collaboration with Emil Schult, succeeded in creating a coherent, all-embracing musical and visual concept, Gesamtkunstwerk (Grönholm 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 Hütter 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 electronic group....When it was dark and we had to go to bed, we would hear it under the pillow on a transistor radio. We are interested in the “radio consciousness.” (Hütter qtd 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 German Wirtschaftswunder (Buckley 26 – 28). Either way, Kraftwerk’s nostalgic recollections of post-war Germany are not Popular Music and Society 381 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 Kleinempfänger, 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 Hütter, 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” (“Ätherwellen”), 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. Hütter 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, Hütter 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 382 P. Grönholm 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 by the 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 the evolution 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 two separate 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 sound itself is an obvious approximation to the sound of the theremin, an electronic instrument invented by Russian scientist and inventor Léon Theremin (1896– 1993) in the 1920s. As it was well-known that the Beach Boys used an electro-theremin in their hit single “Good Vibrations” (1966), it is precisely here that Kraftwerk’s retro-futurist references appear at their most intriguing. The theremin, originally known as the etherphone (Ätherphone), is an instrument on which the sounds are created by manual interference in the relation of slightly differing radio frequencies that produce the instrument’s pitch. Another pair of radio frequencies affects the volume. Playing theremin is about “swinging” these radio frequencies manually. In the laconic lyrics of their song Kraftwerk refer to the actual playing of the theremin: “When airwaves swing, distant voices sing” (“Wenn Wellen schwingen, Ferne Stimmen singen”). Resonating with Kraftwerk’s utopian nostalgia the band celebrates historical electronic instruments that had been deployed in modern pop music. The song pays homage both to Kraftwerk’s Californian soul mates and to the futuristic visionaries of the past such as Léon 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 of European avant-garde composers and artists (Darmstadt School, Bauhaus, etc.), reveals that Hütter, Schneider et al. needed positive historical figures, images, and narratives. 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. According to 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 be revived. And here lies the importance of the hope that Kraftwerk attempted to maintain. The Kraftwerkian idea of progress that resonates strongly with Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on social progress, freedom, and democracy powered by technological progress is transformed in Radio-Activity into a nostalgic excursion into Popular Music and Society 383 the history of radio technology, tape recorders, and electronic music studios. However, the album still employs a lot of ironic self-reflective nostalgia that is maintained 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) and The Man-Machine (Die Mensch-Maschine, 1978) took Hütter’s and Schneider’s retrofuturism to new heights. Trans-Europe Express linked danceable electronic music to German 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 it was left, and this is on a spiritual level. (Hütter 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 by referring both to the performing arts of the 1920s (“Showroom Dummies”) and to the continuum of German art music (“Franz Schubert”, “Endless Endless”). Kraftwerk were inspired by European cultural heritage, into which the band wished to incorporate 20th-century modernist architecture, art, music, urban planning, and technical innovations (“Trans-Europe Express,” “Europe Endless”). The concept of the 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 (Littlejohn 648– 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” also resonates with Hütter’s and Schneider’s idea of releasing the Germans from the AngloAmerican stereotypes which were inherited from wartime but were still cultivated in the pop music media of the 1970s (Albiez 141; Grönholm 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 its time 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 forwardlooking 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 384 P. Grönholm 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, chord progression, and descending melodies. Kraftwerk’s European train sounds as if it is progressing endlessly without a destination, constantly chased by something, maybe the haunting past of Europe. Nevertheless, in interviews Hütter and Schneider declared themselves the biggest fans of railways along with Iggy Pop and David Bowie (Alessandrini). Kraftwerk elaborated the sounds of a train and thus connected their band to the modernist tradition of presenting the railways as a symbol of technological utopia, possibly best exemplified by Arthur Honegger’s orchestral composition “Pacific 231” (1923) and Walter Ruttman’s documentary film Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (1927). It is also interesting 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 and chatting 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 youthful experiences of modernism and progress with their Western European contemporaries. The rhythms and sounds of the train that Kraftwerk imitated were a source of nostalgic memories themselves: the noises were easy to recognize, familiar and mundane. Furthermore, the sounds of train, like the sounds of the motorways and radio broadcast before, linked the band to the composers of musique concrete (Bussy 91– 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. Hütter and Schneider, who wrote the lyrics, not only create associations 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 massculture. Suspicious Images and Nostalgic Reunions The album The Man-Machine completed Kraftwerk’s quest for the past futures by rediscovering and recycling the designs, images, and manifestos of the futurists and constructivists of the 1920s. The symbiosis of man and machine was adopted as the most 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 a performing 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 (Grönholm 67– 68, 73– 75). This idea echoed nostalgia for 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 Popular Music and Society 385 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; Buckley 142– 44). Nevertheless, behind its exterior Kraftwerk seemed to be yearning more for the 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 and place 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 also reflective because the past futures, at least their most optimistic versions, were only imaginary since the possibilities for carrying them out were destroyed by totalitarianism and war. Ultimately, the freedom of fantasy, artistic independence, and ironic detachment from any past objects outweighed the commitment to cultural or political manifestations. Furthermore, there always remained an ironic twist when Hütter and Schneider name-checked or quoted their intellectual forefathers. While still embracing the idea of a robotized work, leisure, and society, Kraftwerk sought to preserve 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. “The Model” 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 of Düsseldorf for decades, also during years of their youth. “Neon Lights” is a shamelessly nostalgic love song, a flashback to the streets of Düsseldorf which in the mid-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 band members 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 on the 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 imagery of 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 melancholic undercurrent that is audible in its descending main theme which may express the feeling of an irreversible loss. Thus this track also builds heavily on nostalgic memories 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. 386 P. Grönholm 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 Hütter, 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 Popular Music and Society 387 perform their series of retrospective concerts in the spring of 2013 argued, “They are a sonic echo of the moment when futurism was caught in the transition from utopian to apocalyptic” (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 Ismo Virta for his comments. Notes [1] Original: “Dans les années 30, tous les intellectuels d’Europe centrale sont allés aux Etats-Unis ou en France, ou alors ils ont été éliminés. Nous reprenons donc cette culture des années 30 au point où elle a été laissée, et cela spirituellement/” Translated from the French by the author. [2] In Russian: Вхутемас, Высшие художественно-технические мастерские. Works Cited Adelt, Ulrich. “Machines with a Heart: German Identity in the Music of Can and Kraftwerk.” Popular Music and Society 35 (2012): 359– 374. Print. Albiez, Sean. “Europe Non-Stop: West-Germany, Britain and the Rise of the Synthpop 1975 – 81.” Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. Ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie. London: Continuum, 2011. 139– 62. Print. Albiez, Sean and Kyrre Tromm Lindvig. “Autobahn and Heimatklänge: Soundtracking the FRG.” Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. Ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie. London: Continuum, 2011. 15– 43. Print. Alessandrini, Paul. Interview de Ralf Hütter & Florian Schneider. Rock and Folk, Nov. 1976. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. ,http://kraftwerkonline.pagesperso-orange.fr/interview1.html.. Barr, Tim. Kraftwerk: From Düsseldorf to the Future. London: Ebury, 1998. Print. Boym, Svetlana. “Estrangement as a Lifestyle: Shklovsky and Brodsky.” Poetics Today 17 (1996): 511– 30. Print. ———. The Future of Nostalgia. New York. Basic Books, 2001. Print. Brocker, Carsten. “Kraftwerk: Technology and Composition.” Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. Ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie. London: Continuum, 2011. 97 –118. Print. Buckley, David. Kraftwerk: Publikation. London and New York. Omnibus Press, 2012. Print. Bullivant, Keith and C. Jane Rice. “Reconstruction and Integration: The Culture of West German Stabilization 1945 to 1968.” German Cultural Studies: An Introduction. Ed. Rob Burns. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995. 209– 55. Print. Bussy, Pascal. Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music. Wembley: SAF, 1993. Print. Cunningham, David. “Kraftwerk and the Image of the Modern.” Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. Ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie. London: Continuum, 2011. 44– 62. Print. Dery, Mark. Interview with Ralf Hütter. Keyboard Magazine, Oct. 1991. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. ,http:// http://www.rocksbackpages.com.. Gill, Andy. “Do the Men Play Machines? Or the Machines Play the Men? How Four Humanoids with One Vision Revolutionised Pop?” Mojo Magazine, June 1997. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. ,http:// www.rocksbackpages.com.. Grönholm, Pertti. “Kraftwerk: The Decline of the Pop Star.” Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop. Ed. Sean Albiez and David Pattie. London: Continuum, 2011. 63 –79. Print. Hutcheon, Linda, Irony, Nostalgia, and the Postmodern. 1998. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. ,http://www. library.utoronto.ca/utel/criticism/hutchinp.html.. 388 P. Grönholm Littlejohn, J.T. “Kraftwerk: Language, Lucre, and Loss of Identity.” Popular Music and Society 32 (2009): 644– 649. Print. Lynner, Doug, and Bryce Robbley. “A Conversation with Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk.” Synapse Magazine, Sept./Oct. 1976. 10– 11, 24– 26. PDF File. Miller, Nick. “Electric Dreams of the Machine Men.” Brisbane Times. 20 Feb. 2013. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. ,http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/entertainment/music/electric-dreams-of-themachine-men-20130219-2epfh.html.. Radio WSKU (Kent, OH). “Interview with Ralf Hütter.” 19 June 1978. Transcription by M. J. Klein. Microsoft Word file. Radstone, Susannah. The Sexual Politics of Time. Confession, Nostalgia, Memory. London: Routledge, 2007. Print. Reynolds, Simon. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past. London: Faber, 2011. Print. Schober, Ingeborg. “Wir sind eine Radiostation.” Musik Express, Dec. 1976: 12 –13. Microsoft Word file. Shahan, Cyrus. “The Sounds of Terror: Punk, Post-Punk and the RAF after 1977.” Popular Music and Society 34 (2011): 369– 386. Print. Shryane, Jennifer. Blixa Bargeld and Einstürzende Neubauten: German Experimental Music. “Evading do-re-mi”. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011. Print. Van Uem, Michael. “Zum 60: Geburtstag von Ralf Hütter.” Die Heimat 77 (2006): 94– 95. PDF File. Discography Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk. Philips, 1970. LP. ———. Kraftwerk 2. Philips, 1971. LP. ———. Ralf & Florian. Philips, 1973. LP. ———. Autobahn. Philips, 1974. LP. ———. Radio-Aktivität. EMI Electrola, 1974. LP. ———. Trans-Europa Express. EMI Electrola, 1977. LP. ———. Die Mensch-Maschine. EMI Electrola, 1978. LP. ———. Computerwelt. EMI Electrola, 1981. LP. ———. “Tour de France.” EMI Electrola, 1983. Single. Videography Kraftwerk. Trans-Europa Express. Kling Klang Musikfilm, 1977. Online video clip. YouTube, 24 Jul. 2012. Web. 3 Sept. 2014. ———. Neon Lights. Kling Klang Musikfilm, 1978. Online video clip. YouTube, 3 Jun. 2006. Web. 3 Sept. 2014. Notes on Contributor Pertti Grönholm, DPhil., is a collegium researcher at Turku Institute of Advanced Studies 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 scholarly and popular articles on Kraftwerk, the German rock music of the 1970s, and the history of electronic music.