10 Things You Didn't Know About Kraftwerk

At four decades and running, Kraftwerk are true pioneers within electronic music... and hip-hop. Their "Trans Europe Express" was huge for the art of electronic music, but also helped show the emerging hip-hop scene the power of drum machines and synthesizers. This German outfit has had success the world over, crafting quirky anthems about German motorways, cycling, and many other seemingly-random topics. They are true auteurs in both sound manipulation and DIY machinery, and have spent countless hours creating their own equipment, selling their own merchandise, and entrancing scores of music lovers with their material. We have a feeling that, outside of knowing their worth, there are bits about their career that you might not be aware of. Here are 10 things about Kraftwerk you probably don't know.

Back before settling into their more experimental/electronic ways, Kraftwerk was placed under Germany's "krautrock" scene, with two of the members (Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger) leaving after their stint in the early 1970s to form NEU!, seen as one of the most influential groups in the krautrock scene.

While they didn't go crazy over any perceived fame, the core of the group took the funds earned from Autobahn and started purchasing more equipment, alleviating the need to lean on producers from outside of the group.

They had to cut the running time of the title track of the 1974 album from 22 minutes to about three-and-a-half, but it charted at #25 or higher in the Netherlands, the U.S., Australia, and in the UK. All of this for a track that described what it's like to travel on Germany's motorway.

It helped; they considered their previous set-up to be messy, and being that they created just but everything from their instruments to studio equipment, it cut down on their set-up time, allowing them to put their live stage show together in two hours, and quickly take it down after their performances.

The group turned a warehouse space into their headquarters, recording entire albums and manufacturing their sounds and stage shows from the Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf, Germany (although it was later relocated to Meerbusch-Osterath). Kling Klang ended up not only being their own vanity label, but has operated as both a music publishing company in the U.S. and is the organization that sells all of their merchandise through.

For his 1976 Station to Station tour, Bowie wanted to have Kraftwerk open up for him, as he'd been a big fan of their Autobahn and Radio-Activity albums. Kraftwerk declined, but technically still opened for him, as Bowie would play Radio-Activity while showing the silent film Un Chien Andalou would play on a big screen as crowds entered the arenas for his live shows.

Kraftwerk's performance style and aura can be pretty intense, and to keep up with both their image and precision of their performances, the band made rules like not being drunk or on drugs while performing in public, with group member Karl Bartos stating that "it's not easy to turn knobs on a synthesizer if you are drunk or full of drugs. ... We always tried to keep very aware of what we were doing while acting in public."

The band felt that too many people in the United Kingdom and the United States felt that, due to the Nazis having been the people being the ones who designed and built the German autobahn motorway system in the 1930s and 1940s, they were seen as being somehow associated with the Nazis. They wanted to reflect a more European identity, not a specifically German one, which is the basis of many of the lyrics and themes behind Trans Europe Express.