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| Interview with Klaus Schulze |  |
Q: Why are your classic works not available on CD? Is your music not
trendy enough? How you did The Essential sampler?
KS: Since many years my "classic works" are almost completely available, of course on CD. The recent sampler "The Essential" was originally a French Virgin release, and those guys in Paris did a very good job,
indeed. It was the first time for them that they could license a genuine
French disc to many companies in a variety of countries. Those French
really cared. Also I have to thank a friend in Paris: Assaad Debs, who
told Virgin to do what they did then. Assaad was an amateur when he
organized his first concerts in France for young turks: Agitation Free,
Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, and Klaus Schulze. This was 1972,
1973, 1974. He's now the biggest promoter for rockmusic in France, and
the manager for some well-known and more advanced French rock
groups. And he is as charming, friendly and helpful as twenty years ago.
Q: Do you know the news bands such as... [followed by names of
Techno bands] Are you influenced by them? Some say that you were
influencial to them and these young bands will carry the torch to the
future... Or is it just a retro-garde?
KS: I've never heard of "Ultramarine" and of most of the other names
you mention. If I am, or was, an influence on them, that's nice to hear.
Great. But because I don't know much about all this dance (?) or pop (?)
scene, I cannot really judge, if they carry on any torch or whatever. And
if they just sample some of my older sounds, without a deeper interest
in other of my music, I'm the last to blame them. They do their thing
(hopefully), and I do mine.
Q: Was the mythical Karlheinz Stockhausen influencial to you?
KS: I'm really tired of hearing this name: "Stockhausen". Did you ever
checked how many "electronic" compositions he did? Since over 20
years not one. This friendly, religious man does not even own a mixing
desk (No crime, of course), not to mention that he never searched
seriously for synthetic sounds. His world is totally different. What he
did in the fifties and a bit in the sixties, was not at all "electronic", in the
sense we understand it. I have nothing against Stockhausen and his
theories (that I studied) but his music was and is of no big interest to
me, not to mention: influence. When Edgar (Froese) and I started 25
years ago with our wild and weird sounds in the Berlin underground, we
listened to Pink Floyd, to some American West Coast bands, or to Jimi
Hendrix - but not to any dry "serious" German theoretic composers.
There is no "myth" behind all this. It's just that one inept writer copies
from the other the slogan "Stockhausen". An Italian friend recently told
me: There are many journalists who don't know much about a certain
new music. But they write about it. These people always mention
"Stockhausen" as kind of "code" for a music they neither understand nor
like.
Q: What are your objectives to do music?
KS: My "objectives" to do music were: I hate to do boring work. And,
musicians get much easier a lot of girls. (I borrowed this honest answer
from Peter Hammill)
Q: Your titles show that you are psychologically oriented.
KS:. My music was never "psychologically oriented". Please don't
overestimate a few words in music titles. There are hundreds (!) of other
titles.
Q: Here in America your music is sold as part of the New Age movement. Do you like that classification? What are your goals?
KS: I don't feel "sold as part of the New Age movement". If my records
are being sold along with silly meditation tapes or along with popcorn
in a dirty blue movie house, I don't care. I just wonder, but it doesn't
move me at all.
Q: Do you listen or like Techno, Ambient, Hip Hop...?
KS: I feel closer to a singer like Willie Nelson, to a guitar picker like
J.J. Cale, or to a violin player like Izak Perlman, and of course to men
like Mozart or Wagner, than to any of the genres that you mention.
Q: You did an album with cover versions of well-known classic compositions... Why?
KS: I did re-works of some Brahms, Beethoven, Smetana, Schubert,
Grieg and von Weber compositions, because it was fun to do. It brought
me joy. As simple as that. Doing music is also a handicraft. And doing
a variety of music in my profession is more fun than doing always the
same. Of course I love the music of the said composers, no doubt about
it.
Q: Has technology changed your music?
KS: Today I work mostly with computers. Technology did change in the
course of time, and certainly my music did change during the last 25
years. This is a most normal mutual relation: I change, the audience
change, the instruments change, the fashions change... even Bob Dylan
is a-changing. That's normal in live. Wouldn't it be most boring without a
change?
Q: Some people say, modern technology sounds cold and the old instruments sounded much warmer.Are there shortcomings with the new technology?
KS: The "warmths" that you can hear in my music comes from the
player, not from the tools, if I may say so, in my humble discretion. The
prime idea of music is to set some emotions free! This is of course done
by the artist, and not by his tools.
Q: Rarely you use singers on your albums. Arthur Brown was such a
rarity. How you met? Will you use singers again?
KS: For one record - Dune, in 1979 - I used Arthur Brown as a singer,
right. This came, because I was an old fan of him since the sixties. In
1976 I met him in London, inside the Island studio's cantine.
Q: I know that you did the soundtrack for the movie "The Man Who
Fell to Earth". How came this? Is your thinking visually when you do
soundtracks?
KS: You may "know" it, but it's still not true. I did not the music for
"The Man Who Fell to Earth". Sorry, here's another wrong guess: I don't
think "visually".
Q: What do you like more, studio work or being on stage with your
equipment? Why don't you play in the USA, as Tangerine do? What
country has your biggest audience, anyway?
KS: I love to play solo concerts. The feeling I cannot describe (all over
again). It was said so often, by many and all kinds of artists, and since
ages. They were and are all right. My equipment has nothing to do with
it, but the audience, the situation. Studio work is different, completely
different. In a studio I would never play the Minimoog solo that I play
during every concert.
Q: It is said that you are influenced by Japanese culture. What do you
think about KITARO?
KS: Strange things you hear. No, I'm not "influenced by Japanese culture". I had to read this error only once in the (otherwise great) British "Audion" cover story about me in May 1992. I told the otherwise competent
writer, Alan Freeman, immediately about his error.
Q: You once said that sampling is a revolution.
KS: Have I said so? Yes, the sampling technic is a radical step. And if
I think a while about it, yes, it's more radical than the step from analogue to digital sounds. Why? Because, in the change from analog to digital, just the sound quality was changed, was improved. Sampling is
completely different. It's a new way of creating a piece of structured
noise, of music. It's another step. Suddenly, the sounds are very easily
available. During the seventies we had to create them by doing it the
hard way, with heavy and expensive equipment.
Q: Isn't it disturbing to know that your very special music is being
played among completely other, cheaper music on radio and "Greatest
Synthesizer Hits" samplers?
KS: My music is (hopefully) played on a multitude of radio programmes, TV programmes, film soundtracks, at homes... It is beyond my
influence to tell people what other music they should play or listen to,
before and after mine. This sourrounding music was different in the
seventies, different in the eighties, and is different in the nineties. Who
cares?
PS: I do music with electronic instruments, but I don't do "Electronic Music".
"It's the Player not the Tools"
My main audience, my public, is not dependent on any recent trends.
But of course it's great to see that a new generation knows about my
music. I did my music when "electronics", "synthesizer", "computers",
"trance" and "techno" were not existing, or fashionable, and I will still
do my music when the recent vogue is gone.
There exists indeed, what you call perfectly "retro-garde", mainly in
Europe: All those many Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze copycats.
Forget them.
There are no "goals" in any honest emotional music. There are, for
example, goals in Muzak, and in religious music. I do music which is
different from both.
During a concert I still like to play the old Minimoog, and the audience loves to hear it. The sound of a Minimoog is like a sign, a recognition signal for my Electronic Music, like the electric guitar is for
Rock'n'Roll, the honking saxophones for R & B, the Hawaii-guitar for
Hula Hula music...
I do blend older and newer sounds into my music. The old instruments
are all in my private "museum". I sampled their sounds, and play today
with these samplers.
Shortcomings? The old analogue stuff had a lot of this: They were
very instable. Everytime a cold breeze touched them I had to tune all
those oscillators anew. These old instruments were also heavy to carry,
and they were expensive. This has drastically changed.
I seldom repeat musically what I did already. And I have no idea
what the future may bring. Another singer? I really don't know. Recently
I used opera singers. Sidenote: I find it most interesting, that fans of
electronic music generally hate singers but love the Mellotron sound,
which is just tapes, especially tapes of human voices (!)
But indeed, I do think that my music is particularly well-suited for
film. That was probably the reason I was invited to Los Angeles, some
months ago, to discuss a maybe Hollywood soundtrack. Still, no decision is made, from Hollywood... and from my side (and I'm far from
being sad about it, if it doesn't work out. Hollywood is no place for me).
Tangerine Dream's new style is perfect for the USA. My kind of music
is not. I spoke with Edgar [Froese] about America. He told me that this
country isn't made for my sensitive soul (He was right! Remember: I
was in L.A. in August). We joked a bit and decided: Edgar gets America, I
get Europe :-)
"The biggest audience" - that certainly depends not on countries but
on the event, on the efforts of record companies and promoters, and on
other non-musical things.
I do like what I hear in Kitaro's music. You certainly know that I
produced two LPs for a Japanese rock group in 1975 - one of their keyboard
players was then the unknown Kitaro. A friend of mine met him
in Quebec on the 5th of October '94, and asked him backstage if he
remembers me, Klaus Schulze. Yes, Kitaro said to my friend, he "still
thanks Klaus for his initiation to synthesizers", but he still put the year
wrong. No, it was not 1972, dear old friend. It was August 1975 in
Tokyo, and in November 1975 in the English Manor Studio.
When I have sold my music to a record company, they have the right
(and the duty!) to use it on samplers too, etc. - all kinds of samplers. If
my music do fit, or not, is based on the knowledge, the sensibility, and
the courage of the responsible person in the record company. This is
beyond my influence. I like more, if my music is not put together again
and again with similar music on just another "Greatest Synthesizer
Hits". I like if it finds its place on samplers that contain completely
different music. It's less boring.
Thanks for listening.
