"Collecting wood came first, and then composition."

While the band Cluster was still a typical product of the wild, uninhibited culture of the sixties—with many people regarding the album Cluster 71 as the founding manifesto of the German krautrock movement—Brian Eno called their follow-on project, Harmonia, "the world's most important rock group." David Bowie and groups like The Human League also referred back to Harmonia and their sound, somewhere between krautrock, ambient, and trance.

Nowadays, Roedelius prefers to work with the tonal sounds that "happen as a result of playing around on the piano, emerging as interference between strings struck in different ways." He tries to live solely to the beat of his inner rhythm and describes his music as "painting with sound." 

"Does the wind know where it blows from?" you write in one of your lyrics (Adam). Your life story's a bit like that, too: you were a child star in UFA films, a member of the Hitler Youth, with the so-called pimps, and later you served in the People's Army of the GDR, and you spent time in GDR jails for being a dissident. "My life was a kind of running away until I was about 37 years old," you wrote in your autobiography.

My parents hired me out as a child actor for film productions by UFA and I largely had to look after myself from the age of four, because they barely ever spent more than a few hours at home every day. That was the start of an unusually eventful life that continues to this day.

Artistically speaking, after numerous solo attempts to succeed as a hippie street musician, your career really took off in 1968 with the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, a short-lived but nevertheless very successful project in West Berlin, the existence of which had a strong influence on the development of contemporary experimental live music, especially in Berlin. What was your motivation in founding this club?

It wasn't my initiative. At that time, I was friendly with Conrad Schnitzler. For a time, he offered me a degree of security with his family. To make ends meet, we used to renovate apartments together and on the side we began to make music in his tiny studio. And then he had the idea: "Let's create a platform for freelance artists of all kinds—for theater, dance, and cabaret as well."

He found a venue for it in a building on the Hallesches Ufer and signed a lease with the City of Berlin. He asked me if I wanted to join in, along with members of the group Human Being, a collection of like-minded people who were just coming together as a band at that time; It was the first and probably the only music commune in Berlin at that time, along with the free love commune of Uschi Obermaier and Rainer Langhans and the debating commune K1, a group of anarchists which included the future members of the Red Army Faction, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. Schnitzler was someone who used to set projects up and then drop out of them again quite quickly to start something different. That's how he was with the Free Arts Lab, too. 

After a short time, he left it. We kept the project going without him, including a small catering business where we used to serve bread rolls spread with butter or dripping, and we made soup and provided beer and so on. We invited everyone who was anyone in Berlin at the time, plus any artists or groups that we knew of when they were passing through.

How should we think of it? As an autonomous zone, not part of the system? A parallel universe?

At that time there was nothing, there were no venues for Berlin's underground culture. Something had to be done. Freelance artists urgently needed to make a fresh start. But it wasn't me who started the project. That was Conrad Schnitzler. 

I joined in and I was co-guarantor for a loan that enabled us to buy a sound system that was high quality for the time and ensured that we had a full house every night. I was happy to be there and be involved, because that gave me the opportunity to move away from the healing arts to musical art and art in general. Yes, before the Zodiak I had spent time as a street musician. I used to play the drum and the flute and I went around like a hippy with long hair and a beard and bells round my ankles. 

Then there were plans for a long tour that Human Being wanted to do through Europe and on to Africa …

… but that ended in a car park in Casablanca.

You once said that, at that time, you weren't trying to make serious music or do anything visionary. "We just wanted to do what we believed we had to do." 

Exactly. We wanted to experience, and react to, what happened if we tried out in public the things that we found fun, the ideas that we carried around with us. Everything was in a state of upheaval. After the Nazi madness, there was a cultural void and we, as a group appropriately named Human Being, tried to fill it in all kinds of ways. So we were role models for many others who were inspired by us at Zodiak to start to be creative themselves. Edgar Froese, for example, with his Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze's Ash Ra Tempel group with Manuel Göttsching, and so on. There were a lot of activists in Berlin who started to do some really interesting new stuff.

After going on an odyssey lasting about three years, touring European museums and art galleries as a performance artist, in 1972 you settled down with Dieter Moebius in a commune of artists based at the Alter Weserhof in Forst. You yourself have always described this as a homecoming.

Yes, but we didn't set up another commune. There were the two of us there, Moebius and I, each with our partners, and we had our own homes. A friend had taken a 99-year lease on the farm building and invited us to live there with him. When we moved there, we didn't know that radioactive radiation was leaking from a derelict nuclear power station further upstream. So we had to move away from there, with our first child. Many people in the area, especially children, fell ill with leukemia, but the contamination has never been made public in the media to this day. 

Until we finally became aware of the danger we were in, we lived there in a kind of idyll. A lot happened at that time, for example we set up the band Harmonia, and I started work on my self-portraits, trying to find my own musical language, but in what kind of environment? Nevertheless, for us and our development it was almost a good time. Our first child, Rosa Amanda, was born at home, in front of a blazing fire. But we were glad that we left that place in time, because in the end three adult residents and one child got cancer and two adults and the child died.

Do you need to retreat somewhere to make your art happen?

It was very helpful to me then and still is, yes. I need to retreat in order to reflect; to think things over, get rid of the ideas that are just ballast. Occasionally being able to climb into my ivory tower was then, and still is today, an act of self-contemplation and self-determination that I keep finding necessary. Everything that has happened to me on my journey through life has helped me to approach composition/art from a perspective that is entirely my own. The many people that I touched when I was a physiotherapist, that I have massaged, to whom I was a father confessor figure; and their stories. Everything that I have produced artistically, whether that's music, lyrics, poetry, or other projects, is to some extent an echo of what I experienced in those encounters, the things I was told, the way people turned to me and expressed themselves to me. So at the end of the day, my artistic work, music, poetry, and other projects are based on the conditio humana.

So what you're saying is that the move from being a healing therapist to being a musician was not a clean break but a continuation of the same work, just by other means?

Yes, and I'm very grateful for that. 


What was it like working in Forst?



We were using a small temporary studio. We spent a lot of time gathering old wood and fallen branches for the winter, carrying it all back to the farm, chopping it up, and stacking it in piles. After all, we had to heat the huge rooms in this old building with stoves and open fires. We made music during the times when there wasn't anything more urgent to do. We made our own bread and even ground the flour for it by hand; we made jam from the fruit on the trees and bushes around the Weserhof. 

We made everything ourselves from scratch, first of all to make the house habitable because it had been empty for a long time. We laid water pipes and drains, and essentially learnt how to get by with not much money. We didn't own anything. The money we earned with Cluster was laughable. The royalties that we got from one piece with Brian Eno kept us going virtually for years.

That was By This River. Eno, who was working at that time with David Bowie on the albums called Low and Heroes, said that when he was in Forst he suddenly felt as if he was "in a bubble."


Yes, that's what he said. But we did, too. That's how we all felt. But for him it somehow seemed to be really important that we had invited him to share in the life of our community for a time.

When he came to us, to spend a total of 11 days with us (on his way to Switzerland to finish working with David Bowie on Low and Heroes), he seemed to be at a crossroads, trying to decide if he wanted to become a producer, as he in fact did, or remain as a songwriter. Whether he made that decision during his stay with us, I don't know. In any case, he enjoyed being with us. And what's more, he really helped me and my wife, for example, Rosa, our first child, found it hard to get to sleep, and he would spend nights walking up and down with her in his arms until she had fallen asleep and could be laid down.

Your output is impressive. It would take hours just to list the people you have collaborated with. And there has not only been collaborative work but any amount of solo work, projects, and commissions.

Everything to do with music or art that was ultimately presented to the public as a product virtually fell into my hands, and it has stayed like that to this day. Whenever I had some time, a bit of leisure, if something occurred to me, I sat down at the piano or my electro equipment, jotted down the results electronically for future use, and kept on working on those and on new ideas and commissions, and I also got involved with collaborations that kept cropping up as if by chance over the years.


Let's talk about your many musical collaborations. Was there a formula for the way you went into every collaboration?

No, I just met people and colleagues, and ideally became friends with them, in order to do with them whatever it turned out could be done, and with some of them the relationship has continued to this day, because the chemistry simply works and the results were convincing and still are.

You write in your autobiography that there's no difference between composing and improvising?

I am a painter in sound. I have to let whatever wants to come out, come. I don't plan anything in advance. If something emerges, then it's as the result of a lucky moment. The popularity of my music is certainly due to the fact it comes from my heart and my gut feeling. There's nothing intentional or refined about how it is created except that I always have to be open-minded and remain that way. As I say, I have to be able to let whatever wants to come, come of its own volition.


Has that changed over time?

Certainly for studio work, to some extent: Brian taught us not to fill up every track of whatever multitrack machine we were using with any old sounds and noises. 

He taught me, or us—the people who were involved in that kind of work at that time—always to reduce things to the essentials. He has also really helped me in all my artistic work by contributing, at my request, a foreword or a commentary for certain projects and productions, and saying things about me for my autobiography.


What did Eno learn from you?

I don't exactly know. He said later that he had felt as if he was in a bubble with us, and that it was amazing to experience with us what we were doing and how we did it. I do remember that when he first went into the forest—because I had bought him an axe and a saw, so that he could help us with getting wood—he sat around looking pretty clueless. Then he got his notebook out and calculated how much money I would have to earn in order not to have to gather wood in the forest myself and carry it home. 

"If you worked harder, you could afford to pay someone to bring wood to your house," he would say. "Spend your time in the studio instead of in the forest." But I really wanted to go into the forest. I loved gathering mushrooms and berries, picking up the fallen wood that was lying around, carrying it back to the farm, chopping it up, and stacking it in piles. It was part of my/our life. As a general rule, I just wanted to work to an inner rhythm dictated by the obvious necessities of our rural lifestyle. First the essential work for survival, and then music and art.


Was that what each of you found attractive about the other?

Eno liked my early solo works that were later published as Selbstportrait. When he was working with Daniel Lanois and U2 in Canada on The Joshua Tree, he sent me a postcard where he remarked that he and his then girlfriend and Daniel were enjoying listening to my music every morning, because it was so "unintentionally simple." 

Of course, that gave me a big boost. Brian once said in connection with my aversion, in fact my inherent resistance, to letting other people intervene in my composing: "Don't worry. You don't have to have a producer. You can find your own path your way." That hugely reinforced my determination to do what I thought I ought to be doing, and above all to do it in the way I wanted to.


And working together? How did that go?

He worked with us on various productions. One of them we began with him in Forst, when he visited us there, but in terms of the technical quality, the sound, it wasn't very good. That was the material that we worked with first when new technology (Sonic Solution) later made it possible. And the result was the album called Harmonia Tracks & Traces, which, as he said himself, he found "magical."

Four musicians, each using one track on the four-track recorder that we were using. No overdubbing, wonderfully well-balanced music, the product of the moment, just like the way Cluster used to work. When we worked in Conny Plank's studio on Cluster & Eno and After The Heat, we were equally motivated,  and although the former was still entirely in Cluster style, the latter clearly bore Brian's signature and you could also definitely hear in the music that Konrad Plank had been involved as a player and super sound maestro.

In your book, you mention Lincoln and Snowden in the same breath. Lots of people might find that hard to understand.

Abraham Lincoln said, when the National Banking Act of 1863 was passed: "The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed." 

If what he said doesn't get under your skin, then you are blind and deaf, or you understand nothing of reality and so you are incapable of influencing it in any way in order to change people's lives for the better, if only a little. Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning are important role models for me.

In your autobiography you try to get to the bottom of your own life. Is it possible to get to the bottom of such a varied life?

The incentive to write the bio came from a friend who thought I should write down my recollections of the various productions that I have worked on in my life, pull together my ideas about them and publish them, and really get to grips with the illusion and the reality of what I have accomplished. That's how it began and in the end it took more than two years before the book was finished and now at last it's even available in an English version.

Your music was used in War Machine, an anti-war satire directed by David Michod and produced by Brad Pitt. 

Nick Cave was commissioned to produce, or rather put together, the entire soundtrack for that film, and to take those sections of my music that David Michod as the director had already positioned very precisely in particular passages of the film and incorporate them in the chronology of the whole sound experience.  

The film unmasks American foreign policy very convincingly. Initially I wasn't going to allow my music to be used, but then I was won over by the imagery and, above all, by the content of the dialog. This magnum opus by Brad Pitt, who topped up the production budget with $60 million out of his own pocket, should really have won an Academy Award.

You curate and organize the More Ohr Less music festival that took place for many years in Lunz, a small town in Lower Austria. Why Lunz? Somehow this idyllic place at the foot of the Ötscher, with its mountain lake, seems like a throwback to the past. When you go there, you could think you were back in the 1950s.

Tim Story and I had composed an album called Lunz that we wrote in memory of a walk that we did together from the lower to the upper lake in Lunz. The idea was to give it its first performance in Lunz, on the stage of the open-air lakeside theater designed by the Lunz artist Hans Kupelwieser. We—my wife and I—established the festival there when it proved impossible to celebrate the birth of this work appropriately in the context of another festival that takes place there. The lakeside stage in Lunz, surrounded by perfect scenery, is a feast for the eyes in itself. 

I have always been fascinated by nature, and I still am. Even as a child, I felt more at home there than in an urban environment. I even used to take our children out at night in a trailer behind my bike across the fields round our home in Blumau so that they could see the stars and hear the night-time noises.

And it didn't make them cry?

No, I know it did them a lot of good and they still dream about it today. 

Why have you withdrawn from Lunz?
When the mayor who called the festival into existence took early retirement, there was no longer the backup that there used to be.

We always used to have to do battle with bad weather, but the last time it was really touch and go. We were only able to perform on the stage for one day/evening. The rest of the program had to take place in a gym. Vikingur Olafsson was obliged to try to cope with the poor acoustics in there. This young grand master of sensitive piano playing did not deserve that. The omens were not good generally. On the first night I fell and damaged two vertebrae, and one year on, I still can't move normally.

In your autobiography you try to get to the bottom of your own life. Is it possible to get to the bottom of such a varied life?

The incentive to write the bio came from a friend who thought I should write down my recollections of the various productions that I have worked on in my life, pull together my ideas about them and publish them, and really get to grips with the illusion and the reality of what I have accomplished. That's how it began and in the end it took more than two years before the book was finished and now at last it's even available in an English version.

Illusion and reality is a good catch phrase. You have been called numerous things in the course of your career. For example, the "godfather of krautrock," even though your music has very little to do with rock. How do you handle that? Have you been called some things that you do like?

(laughing) Of course. Recently someone wrote of my work: "The voice that changed the world." The only intention behind my artistic work is, as I have said, a willingness to let that come out which to some extent wants to express itself of its own accord. If that is perceived as a voice that has changed the world, then so be it, I guess?



I was also impressed by what you said in your book about the future of music. You often hear people say that everything in music has already been said, that almost everything now is repetition. But you said: "We can all still hope for big surprises." That sounds incredibly hopeful. What makes you so sure?
As well as me and my thirst for knowledge, there are other people on the contemporary music scene who, like me, are looking at previously unexplored areas of the art of sound, who are advancing into uncharted sound terrain and working in the interest of continuously developing sound art and all its multifaceted effects.

You are shortly going to be 86 years old but your zest for life seems to be undimmed. What musical plans do you still have?

I work unswervingly to discover what I can achieve as a painter in sound. At the moment, I like working with the sounds of strings. When a string that is struck finishes vibrating, it releases a world of sounds that sound different every time it is struck. If you then strike a second string, an incredibly complex and fascinating universe of sound opens up between the sound that is dying away and the one that is beginning. I am trying to explore all the options for adventuring in the realm of hearing and listening which are of lasting psycho-acoustic value, and not only for me, the adventurer—because, to me, sound is sacred.

Do you mean that in a religious or a transcendental sense?

What's the difference?

Motörhead mastermind Lemmy Kilmister once described it well. A journalist said in an interview that Johann Sebastian Bach would be unimaginable without the church. "Absolute nonsense," retorted Lemmy. "Bach would be unimaginable without transcendence. The church made use of him. And he allowed himself to be used. That's how it was in those days. People had to live from something." 

That's what Lemmy Kilmister said? Brilliant.

(laughing) Okay, I'll take transcendence. 

It's a nice-sounding word.

Thank you very much for talking to us.