Tangerine Dream: The Power of Cosmic Sounds

Edgar Froese, born on June 6, 1944 in Tilsit, East Prussia, who never knew his father after he was murdered by the Nazis, came to Berlin with his mother after the war. The musical talent of Edgar (pictured here at 16 on the guitar) was very clear early on. At 18 he became a gifted student at the Academy of Arts where he studied painting, sculpture, and graphic arts. He was not happy about this, however. "I cut stone and painted and suddenly realized: 'I'll never get anywhere by doing this.' I needed something ethereal, something subtle. And that was music."

In 1963 he formed his first band called The Ones. Musically the formation followed the current trendy British beat sound to start. However, he was soon inspired by psychedelic wave from the US which washed over him and Europe throughout the 1960s. During those years, Froese was also fascinated by people's ventures into space. "When Yuri Gagarin discovered outer space, people stopped just staring down at the ground. I also wanted to see the world from a different perspective."

Through an old friend and classmate who was currently studying under Salvador Dali (third from left), Froese (second from left) came into contact with the great master of surrealism. In the summer of 1967, he traveled with his band to Portlligat on the Catalan coast, where Dali had lived with his wife Gala from 1948, where frequent jet-setters came and went, and where Froese and The Ones later played at his notorious garden parties. "In Dali's villa someone must have stopped time," Froese later recalled. "It was like a hyperrealistic dream. I was about to open the gates of perception. Dali helped me understand that music is made up of arranged sounds."

Back in Berlin, Froese formed a new band in September 1967, Tangerine Dream, named after the lyric Tangerine trees and marmalade skies from Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. It was a time for insurgency and escape. A time of unrest and student rebellion. Anything was possible. People experimented with music, drugs, and life itself. "Anything Goes was more than a cannabis metaphor," writes Froese in his autobiography Tangerine Dream—Force Majeur. "It was a loud welcome to a new era."

Experimentation, playing and blowing off steam were especially common in the Zodiak Club on Hallesches Ufer—an experimental workshop which anyone who wanted to could visit. "They really lived it up there," recalls club founder Hans-Joachim Roedelius in the documentary Revolution of Sound: Tangerine Dream. "It wasn't originally electronic music. It was pure activism which caused a racket." Today, the Zodiac is one of the of melting pots of the Berliner Schule.

Yet the trio Edgar Froese, Christoph Franke, and Peter Baumann (the two musicians who replaced Conrad Schnitzler and Klaus Schulze) remained unfazed. In Dieter Dirk's Cologne studio they recorded additional records: Alpha Centauri, Zeit, and Atem. They continued to experiment with noise generators and synthesizers like the analog EMS VCS 3. The band also used the instrument developed by Peter Zinovieff in London later on in many of their album productions and live performances.

Probably the most significant synthesizer which shaped the band's sound was the granddaddy of all synthesizers, the Moog IIIp, discovered by Froese, Baumann, and Franke in the Berlin Hansa Studios which was apparently actually intended for the Rolling Stones.

The handheld Minimoog was also used from 1975.

Froese was once asked what he wanted to achieve with his music and these spherical, cosmic sounds which were so typical of the band's sound, which brought to mind images of the universe—stars, galaxies, and infinite journeys. "We sense a great gravity within us which we try to overcome," states Froese. "We do this in a musical way that carries us and should also carry other people when listening to our music so they become detached from reality."

…Richard Branson, who had just published his first album Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield on his new Virgin label. In Brandon's small record shop, Virgin Records in Notting Hill, Froese signed a record contract in a stairwell in September 1973 which would fundamentally change the band's history.

Their first tour around the United Kingdom was followed by possibly their most famous and also controversial performance at the end of 1974: their live concert in Reims Cathedral.

6,000 visitors squeezed into this significant holy church where the King of France had once been crowned. Froese later recalled "a mix of marijuana and incense." With this considered, it's no wonder there was outrage and disgust over the scandalous blasphemy of such a concert within these holy walls. A headline the next day stated, "6,000 hippies and deadbeats have desecrated the coronation site of the French king and ruler."

A little while later, the Vatican issued a letter banning them from performing in Catholic institutions in France. In Munich, however, they soon played in a church again in fall 1975—at St. Benno in the Maxvorstadt district. The invite for the event is pictured here.

…this was also followed by live concerts in England at the cathedrals in Coventry and Liverpool. That same year, the Spiegel newspaper named bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, and Amon Düül the shamans on the synthesizer in an article.

…David Bowie.

The 1980s began with another very unique experience for the band. On January 31, 1980, during the emerging climax of the Cold War, Tangerine Dream performed in the East Berlin Palace of the Republic at two live concerts in front of 5,800 attendees each. Reinhard Lakomy, an old friend of Froese's, had made connections with the Ministry of Culture of the German Democratic Republic. There were tumultuous scenes in front of Erich Honecker's lamp shop—as the seat of the Volkskammer was also called—since only very few tickets were being sold to the public…

Most tickets had been secured by functionaries of the politburo. It was only following an intervention by Froese after his first performance that fans standing at the door also went into the hall for the second concert. Two years later, Tangerine Dream began a much celebrated tour around the German Democratic Republic. As in their Volkspalast appearance, only Johannes Schmoeling was at the keyboard after the conclusive departure of Peter Baumann.

Things changed for the band in the 1980s when Tangerine Dream turned toward movies, and not just because Edgar Froese acted in the trashy science-fiction flick How the UFOS Pinched Our Salad (Wie die Ufos unseren Salat klauen) alongside Curd Jürgens. The band played numerous soundtracks for films and series, debuting in thriller Thief.

However, Froese, Franke, and Schmoeling also composed the film music for comedy Risky Business in 1983. The lead role was taken up by a very young Tom Cruise in one of his first-ever acting parts.

Their Hollywood excursions and collaborations with various record labels ultimately led to them breaking it off with Richard Branson. The band signed up with the Jive Electro label and produced many more records in Berlin. 1985's Le Parc was the last studio album trio Froese, Franke, and Schmoeling ever worked on together. The latter left the band that very same year, and Franke bid farewell in 1988. The turning point era in Germany with the fall of the Berlin Wall was also a turning point for Tangerine Dream.

Froese gathered new musicians: his son Jerome and saxophonist Linda Spa, pictured here next to Froese on a trip to Milan in 2012. In the 1990s, the band became somewhat more rock-orientated. This era was also called the Seattle years after the home of the current grunge sound. The phase even gained Tangerine Dream seven Grammy nominations. However, the band was never able to win the musical award. The Seattle years were followed by the millennial years around the turn of the 21st century, when Edgar Froese had to deal with the death of his wife Monika who passed away in 2000 at only 53 after many years of illness.

Edgar Froese suffered major injuries after a severe fall in 2013 from which he would never recover. On January 20, 2015 the founder of Tangerine Dream and a great pioneer of electronic music died from a pulmonary embolism in a Viennese hospital. He was not afraid of death. "There is no such thing as death," Froese once said. "Just a change of cosmic address." An even greater quote from the legendary musician: "The plan is to close the circle. When your life ends, you only need to go back to your origins in a higher octave."

The current Tangerine Dream formation consists of Thorsten Quaeschning, Ulrich Schnauss, Hoshiko Yamane, and Paul Frick.