FLORIAN SCHNEIDER (Kraftwerk) :: 1947—2020

The width and breadth of Schneider’s and Kraftwerk‘s influence on music for the past 50 years is almost impossible to imagine. It’s safe to say that anything you’ve heard with a synthesizer post-1975 was due to someone hearing Kraftwerk and it changing their lives.

Anything you’ve heard with a synthesizer post-1975 was due to someone hearing Kraftwerk

Florian Schneider, founding member of German electronic band Kraftwerk has died following a battle with cancer.

The width and breadth of Schneider’s and Kraftwerk‘s influence on music for the past 50 years is almost impossible to imagine. It’s safe to say that anything you’ve heard with a synthesizer post-1975 was due to someone hearing Kraftwerk and it changing their lives. Everyone from David Bowie, Meat Beat Manifesto, System of A Down, Aphex Twin, Devo, Afrika Bambaata, Drexciya, Derrick May, Kenny Larkin, and Autechre (to name but a few) wouldn’t be who they are (or were) musically without hearing the boys from Dusseldorf and their supposedly cold robotic tones. It’s safe to say Kraftwerk are as important to modern music in all its forms as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and The Velvet Underground.

Schneider was the perfect foil to the often chilly and stoic Rolf Hutter. Through this time in the band, Schneider showed a humorous side, at times appearing almost unable to keep the stiff, robotic image up on stage, in videos or photographs.

Nowhere was this more evident than their live shows. On their tour for Computer World they introduced handheld synthesizers which they would play during the extended version of the eponymous title song from that album. During one performance Florian flubbed a note or line in the song—anathema to the note perfect rendering of the band’s songs live—and the crowd loved it. Schneider did as well, cracking a broad, wry smile despite the usually impassive expressions the rest of the band wore as they played. This bit was soon worked into the show, becoming a crowd favorite for the rest of Florian’s time with the band. And Florian smiled every time.

Kraftwerk meant everything to me, personally. Growing up as a weird kid in suburban Connecticut and hearing “Autobahn” at a young age was like being told a secret too big for my young mind to handle; that there was another world beyond mine, one of new sounds, songs and words. A few years later I was dragged along to a dinner party by my parents at their friend’s home in New York City. Another kid around my age was there with a child’s Fisher-Price cassette player. I remember nothing about them except that among the many tapes they played me, one was Computer World. When they tried to play something else I wouldn’t let them and forced them to play it again and again.

In those moments my brain was reprogrammed as irrevocably as an acid trip with the best possible flashbacks. The effect on my life and music is incalculable except to say that without Kraftwerk and Florian Schneider I don’t know what my life would be like.

I devoured every shred of their music I could get my hands on but Computer World remains my favorite album of theirs without a doubt. It’s the culmination of their work and their last album to be so far ahead of its time that nothing else from 1981 sounds quite like it.

I had the singularly amazing experience of seeing them perform Computer World in 2013 at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City. The performance was incredible of course and almost identical to the time I’d seen them in 1998. One doesn’t go see Kraftwerk live to see improvised jams bookending their hits; you go see Kraftwerk live because it will be as close to perfect as a performance by master musicians can be.

Schneider left the band in 2008 but remained a figure in Kraftwerk—literally. His likeness and robotic counterpart are still used in live shows to this day. His body may be gone, but his spirit and his influence will never ever be forgotten.

www.kraftwerk.com