I remember an interview with Derrick May from about a decade ago in which the topic of Kraftwerk came up. The interviewer asked what May thought about the common complaint that Kraftwerk had, many years previously, build their own expensive, supposedly state-of-the-art studio yet had failed to issue any new music in the years since. May rolled his eyes and replied, "What, are people starving?"
But yeah, as Simon recently pointed out, they've been something of "heritage act" for some time now.
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Ralf Hutter far preferred cycling to making music, though. I remember reading an interview with him when he went on and on about how he'd shaved a second off his trial time here, another second there......
Think this is quite common, where people have a certain disregard for what other people regard them highly for. It's quite mind-blowing really, when someone who is considered epochal has a kind of "so what?" attitude to their epochal-ness.
> shaved a second off his trial time ...
:D That sounds familiar. Can't recall where I read that, tho'.
> a certain disregard for what other people ...
Right. Did I sound dismissive? If so, didn't mean to. I'm inclined to side with what Paul Morley's thesis in Words and Music: That everything we've listened to in the pop universe since owes them the deepest debt. And sure, they haven't handed in anything new in literal ages. But do you really need a Francois Kevorkian remix of "Tour de France" to make up for that fact? No, why bother?
No, I meant Hutter himself had a certain disregard for his own oeuvre, not your good self having a disregard for it.
The impression I got was that Kraftwerk for him was a mildly tiresome cash cow that kept him in racing bikes.
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