Albums: Moondawn, Timewind, X

Klaus Schulze (born August 4, 1947 in Berlin) is a German electronic art music composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried. He was a member of the electronic band Tangerine Dream as well as cofounding Ash Ra Tempel before a pioneering and prolific solo career of 40+ albums (totalling 110+ CDs) in 30+ years. History In 1969, Klaus Schulze was the drummer of one of the early incarnations of Tangerine Dream for their debut album Electronic Meditation. In 1970 he left this group to form Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching. In 1971, he chose again to leave a newly-formed group after only one album, this time to mount a solo career. In 1972, Schulze released his debut album Irrlicht with organ and a recording of an orchestra filtered almost beyond recognition. Despite the lack of synthesizers, this proto-ambient work is regarded as a milestone in electronic music. The follow up, Cyborg, was similar but added the EMS Synthi A synthesizer. He has had a prolific career, with more than 40 original albums to his name since Irrlicht, some highlights being 1976's Moondawn, 1979's Dune, and 1995's double-album In Blue (featuring one long track with electric guitar by his pal Manuel Göttsching of Ash Ra Tempel). He often takes German events as a starting point in his compositions, particularly on his album "X" (the title signifying it was his tenth album) in 1978 which was subtitled 'Six Musical Biographies,' including such notables as Ludwig II of Bavaria, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. His use of the pseudonym Richard Wahnfried indicates his interest in Richard Wagner, which also informs other albums of his music, notably Timewind. Throughout the 1970s he worked mostly in the musical vein of the above-mentioned Tangerine Dream, albeit with far lighter sequencer lines and a more reflective, dreamy edge, not unlike the ambient music of contemporary Brian Eno. Some of his lighter albums are appreciated by new age music fans, but Schulze has always denied connections to this genre. Klaus Schulze had a more organic sound than other electronic artists of the time. Often he would throw in decidedly non-electronic sounds such as acoustic guitar and a male operatic voice in Blackdance, or a cello in Dune and Trancefer. Schulze developed a Minimoog technique that sounds uncannily like an electric guitar, which is quite impressive in concert. In the 1980s Schulze moved from analog to digital instruments, and his work accordingly became less experimental and more accessible. A highlight of this era was En=Trance with the dreamy cut 'FM Delight.' The album Miditerranean Pads marked the beginning of very complex percussion arrangements that continued into the next two decades. Starting with Beyond Recall, the first half of the 1990s was the notorious "sample" period, when Schulze used a variety of pre-recorded sounds of screeching birds and sensuous female moans in his studio albums and live performances. Sampling was such an unpopular diversion that when In Blue was released in 1995 without samples it was hailed as a return to form. The decade also saw the release of copious amounts of previously unreleased material, of varying quality, in several limited-edition boxed sets. Some live recordings were discovered on pristine but forgotten reels of tape which had been used to provide "echo" in concerts. Recently Schulze began incorporating elements of jazz and classical music, working with more contemporary techno dance music such as trance, and creating an opera. Also, he began re-releasing his classic solo albums with bonus tracks of unreleased material recorded at roughly the same time as the original works. * A huge KS Story (by kdm , until 1997) The following from 1997 is a revised, updated, completed and much longer version of my part in the German book about Klaus Schulze: "Eine musikalische Gratwanderung", from 1986. It is in English now, and hopefully it is without the many printing errors that the German book had.) In the early years we were almost alone with our crazy music and ideas. Besides Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream... - if not Klaus Schulze with his driving musical and personal energy, together with a persistent workaholic who cares: me :-) ... if we both wouldn't have struggled for this crazy music for more than twenty (meanwhile over 30) years, there would be no "Electronic Music", as we know it today. The hundreds of successors would have had no chance to hear TIMEWIND etc., and all of them would have another hobby today. The year was 1974 when I began to work regularly for Klaus Schulze. From 1970 to 1974 I was hired as tour and stage manager for various music groups and artist, I toured all over Europe with the great Duke Ellington Orchestra (Duke's last tour), with the moody but wonderful guitar player from Brazil: Baden Powell, with British art rocker Van der Graaf Generator, with the Lionel Hampton Band, and many others, even with the comedian Marty Feldman who was also a true hippie as all my friends and I were ...during this era. Accidentally my very first tour and my first job in the music business was for the "Paul Bley Synthesizer(!) Show featuring Annette Peacock" in 1970. I had no idea what effect these new (and heavy) instruments would have in the coming decade, for me, and for the whole music scene, worldwide. What I heard from the ARPs (or was it MOOG? I forgot which of the two were used) during these "shows" didn't impress me; neither Annette Peacock's singing-thru-the-synths, nor Paul's electronic keyboard efforts - Paul Bley's acoustic piano playing however was then and still is grand. His interpretation of Carla Bley's "Ida" is still today a kind of intelligent hit. I copied "Ida" from my old ESP-LP to many of my friends' cassettes. Between these bigger jobs I was the helpful hand for various rock groups in my home town Berlin. In Germany, the word and profession "roadie" came much later, but this was exactly my job. I had a liking for Berlin avant-garde rock groups: Agitation Free, Os Mundi, Tangerine Dream, and Ash Ra Tempel. The work and the friendship with the members of the latter group changed my whole life. Agitation Free did plenty of concerts in France, and I was their roadie - getting more money than every musician: 50, later 70 DM a day, which is close to nothing, anyway. It was a wonderful time. Money was not the main thing then, for all of us. Not just ("Free" and other) Jazz and Rock'n'Roll were my private musical interest, but I was also a regular visitor at the serious concerts that the late Walter Bachauer organized at Berlin's "Akademie der Künste", and I heard in reality and not just from the radio or LP the music of people like Peter Michael Hamel, Morton Feldman, David Tudor, Steve Reich & Musicians, John Cage, and many similar others, including much music from Asia and Africa that only twenty years later got the label "Ethno" and "world music". But where's Klaus Schulze? Hartmut, the bass player (and head) of Ash Ra Tempel, took me in early 1972 to pick up the Revox tape-machine at a place in Berlin Steglitz, where their former drummer was living with his wife. We needed this first-class tape recorder for our preparations of the coming recordings with Timothy Leary, which later got the LP heading "Seven Up". But this was not the first time I met KS, 'cause he wasn't at home. His friendly wife Rita handed us the machine. Finally I saw KS in the offices of the OHR company. We (still: Ash Ra Tempel) begged there for some cash to make the trip to Switzerland to meet Timothy Leary and to do the "Seven Up" recording. Klaus also came into the office and he had his home-made cover for IRRLICHT, a 30 x 30 cm piece of cardboard with blue velvet on it (and with the wasted hope that OHR will use this textile for the actual covers). Also, he showed one of his first promotion photos, a dreadful pic of his head full of dirt, mud, and water: very "progressive" at this time. It was in summer '72. Then our paths crossed again, when I did a removal for him (I made my living with this rather hard job. I also did removals for Ax Genrich and Steve Reich!), and I visited him a few times when he lived together with a resolute lady in Berlin Wilmersdorf (Meanwhile he was divorced from his first wife Rita). KS then moved into a small former shop in Berlin's Schwäbische Straße. From now on this was his studio. The huge shop windows we pasted over with sticky blue plastic: "d-c-fix", and the front door we made almost burglarproof. From now on KS lived there, in the adjoining two small rooms. KS doesn't like - or is even able - to do such work as soldering, or similar non musical necessities. I like to try out these small mechanical things, although I never learned to do it in a proper or correct way (Ten years later the all-round genius Claus Cordes showed me what I've been doing wrong all these years. But even so, my 'wrong' doings did work all these years!). After a while I noticed that soldering isn't the only work KS won't do. I started to fix up what can be described as Klaus' office: put on files, answered on letters, wrote letters and filed the blueprints, did the whole postage for him. From under his bed I pulled various documents, contracts, clippings, put them into order, filed them, and this was the beginning of my (today:) huge KS archives. This nearly full-time job started in late '73 or in '74. Before, there was an important event: KS' record company OHR took the offer of the French magazine ACTUEL to do concerts in Paris with other exotic new German groups. Therefore, on two days in February 1973 at the "Theatre de l'Ouest Parisien" the sold out auditorium saw and listened to Guru Guru and Kraftwerk on the first day, and to Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel (with KS) and Klaus Schulze as soloist, on the second day. This was the first appearance of Klaus Schulze as soloist. On the way to Paris we visited the "Farfisa" company near Cologne to talk them out of a new electric organ. When we reached Paris we had a serious breakdown of our little truck, but the friendly Tangerine Dream people gave us their own truck, we reloaded the instruments and could bring them in time to the concert hall. In the meantime some friendly Frenchmen took our Ford Transit for repair, and the next day we could use it again. The concert was a triumph, and marked the beginning of the specific French success of the three "cosmic" groups Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and KS. Kraftwerk got only known one year later and just because of their (deserved) American success with "Autobahn". Still today KS and Manuel Göttsching like to tell the story about the brand-new original packed Farfisa organ, which was unpacked the first time on stage in Paris. Klaus didn't even know how to switch it on. During his performance as final "cosmic" attraction, Klaus managed the new tool very well. In addition he used an echo (the Revox tape machine), and a prerecorded tape with his own drumming "Totemfeuer". The 2000 Frenchmen were enraptured. The next day we all drove towards the Dierks studio, near Cologne, to one of the various "Cosmic Jokers" sessions. KS and I missed each other in Paris, so I went a few hours later with Manuel and Rosi in their tiny British Leyland "Mini", KS drove alone in the Ford Transit. While we were in the midst of Belgium, the road disappeared because of massive snowfall. We had to stop, waited for a heavy truck, and followed this pathfinder's rear lights. Klaus Schulze, who started some hours earlier, missed this awful snowfall, but in return he had a puncture: two flat tyres (...he told us) One result from the time at the Dierks studio was another Ash Ra Tempel disc, "Join Inn", a spontaneous session work of the original Ash Ra Tempel, and the final work of Klaus with his old trio. Soon after, Hartmut the bass player stopped completely doing music, and Manuel and Klaus went different directions. ... The dissolution of OHR, the dispute between some musicians and Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser, the boss of OHR, should be mentioned here. Edgar Froese and KS were the only two who took the load and went to court against Kaiser, to free themselves. All other OHR musicians waited what will happen. Edgar and KS won all cases and were free to sign with other companies. The main reason for leaving OHR was the exaggerated promotion, which was in parts embarrassing, then (even the judge mentioned that in its verdict). Today this somewhat ludicrous promotion is daily routine in rock and other showbiz. In addition, Kaiser and especially his girlfriend (she had more and more the saying!) drifted away into fields beyond the normal. They believed what they were talking about, all that "cosmic" and drug nonsense... Still in 1993 Kaiser's lady sent around ludicrous papers as a fortune teller (!) under the pseudonym "Star's maiden". Absurd. She should move to where she belongs: California. After he was freed from OHR, Schulze signed for the German market with METRONOME, who had distributed already the OHR records. The first new LP was BLACKDANCE in 1974, after that came PICTURE MUSIC, which was recorded before "Blackdance". Other bigger or smaller things happened then: Delta-Acustic, Michael Hoenig, 8-track, Virgin, and a removal. One after another: 1974: Scientists of the Technical University in Berlin invented the dummy head (microphone) technology: "Kunstkopf". The two brothers Schunke wanted to make use of it in a new studio, and asked Klaus Schulze if he is interested. Of course! Rooms were rented and a studio was built. Even Klaus who never put a nail into a wall, he suddenly carried stuff, sawed wood, glued and nailed... In the final Delta Acustic Studio in Berlin, KS took the chair of the sound engineer behind the recording and mixing desk. (I don't know if the writing of "acustic" was intentionally chosen or if they just didn't know how to write it correctly?) After four pop and one classic LP as well as one sampler, the whole business was finished. The Schunkes moved away from Berlin, founded another studio in the north of Germany, and "Dummy head stereo" was almost forgotten. The former Berlin studios were used up to the late eighties (and probably still) as rehearsal rooms for Berlin rock groups; the first Nina Hagen band had its base in these rooms until they hit it big. Aside: Already the first Tangerine Dream LP was recorded in these rooms, five years before the "delta acustic" venture. (Postscript in 1998: The whole buildings are now renovated and sold to wealthy yuppies as "Lofts"). Together with the Berlin keyboard player Michael Hoenig, who came from the just disbanded Berlin rock band "Agitation Free", KS had the plan to do a duo called "Timewind". The trouble was that Michael was a perfectionist in small things: Each cable, plug and socket must be labelled with small coloured tape, which took some boring hours. And, even worse, he was not willing to enter a stage without weeks of careful rehearsals. An evident violation of Klaus' amusing and lax rule: Rehearsal is an attack in the buddy's rear. As "Timewind" duo Klaus and Michael had contacted Virgin Records in London, where Tangerine Dream had signed worldwide in the preceding year, in November 1973 (accidentally I was their roadie and present there, too). Two or three concerts by KS with Hoenig were given, then Michael vanished without telling us why, and without any goodbye (!) ... and was found as replacement for the vanished Peter Baumann in Tangerine Dream's first Australian tour (shortly after, Hoenig left also T.D.). Therefore, Klaus signed in 1974 as soloist with Virgin, for all countries outside Germany/Austria/ Switzerland, and the first release was his BLACKDANCE LP. The following LP then got the name TIMEWIND. In the course of time it proved to be difficult to work with Virgin. Our naïve but instinctive impression then was that Tangerine Dream was Virgin's main act (behind Oldfield of course), and that they only signed Klaus Schulze to keep him off the market, to have control over an otherwise uncomfortable competitor (These things indeed do happen in the music business). Therefore, Klaus terminated the Virgin contract in early 1976. Fifteen years later, when KS was again signed to Virgin, their top manager confirmed openly that our earlier suspicion was justified (!) We had good noses then. During one of our flights to London in 1975, we spoke about the future of this Electronic Music, still not taken seriously, if not even unknown to most (Regular question to Klaus, by the press: What is a synthesizer?). Apart from KS there was TD, and essentially this was it. Period. No J.-M. Jarre in sight, no Kitaro, say nothing of all the hundreds of E.M. players that are known today. We were sure in '75 that the breakthrough must come, not least because of all the investments of the hardware manufacturers. What really happened soon, we had not even dreamed of. For instance, the English studio cracks at the time of "GO" in early '76 couldn't even produce a simple "echo/repeat", which is a necessary tool in E.M. That these British engineers and the British music industry would jump 100% onto the Kraftwerk and Electronic wagon a few years later, and that they brought out hundreds of synth pop groups, a few of them successfully ruling the international charts in the eighties... this we could not imagine in 1975. KS was of superstar statue in France during 1975, '76, '77, '78, '79. The two biggest pop/rock magazines were full of articles, interviews and great reviews of and about KS, his albums and concerts, as well as long series to explain this new technology, made from long KS interviews. Klaus' records during these years reached the French charts, KS' French concerts were on the same level and in the same venues as all the other rock heroes' concerts. All of a sudden there was a French guy, coming out of musical nowhere (from the advertising scene), doing the same as KS did very successfully, but with a bit more calculated pop approach, with hook-lines and other formula that a hit needs, and: in a flash, a home-brewed French superstar was born: Jean Michel Jarre. (A friend who teaches at a French school told me recently (in 1995) that he always has to explain to his kids that "Electronic Music" was not invented by Monsieur Jarre). What else in 1974? Klaus ordered from London a very expensive 8-track tape recorder. Until this time he did everything on just two tracks. We paid a fortune for custom fee when the tool finally arrived in Berlin, because the custome officers and their books didn't know what it was. It never worked to Klaus' satisfaction, because it was one of these early prototypes of multitrack for the home studio. Only "Wahnfried 1883" of TIMEWIND was recorded with it. Later it was given as present to Harald Grosskopf. KS and his lady moved from the little ex-shop studio into a larger apartment, and I joined them. The shop/studio was given to Edgar Froese, who still uses it in 1995 as office and studio, and the blue "d-c-fix" is still glued against the front windows (and still in June 2004!). In autumn 1974 I took a 30 days job at the first Berlin "Meta Musik Festival", together with Michael Hoenig. We were responsible for the technique, the sound, mixer, stage, and all other what came to hand. Again I had the chance to hear and to work for people like Terry Riley, Steve Reich & Musicians, Phil Glass Ensemble, Nico/Eno/John Cale, Tangerine Dream, Tibetan, Arabic, African, Indian, Indonesian musicians, and many more... This festival was the brainchild of that wonderful person Walter Bachauer. He repeated it two years later, with similar exotic and avantgarde music, and again I got this temporary one month job, because I loved this exciting new music at this time, and I needed the cash (Until the end of 1978 I got no payment from Klaus for my work for him. This was not because of some evil motive of KS, but because I didn't saw my doings as "work" - it was fun. When I needed something, I got it. We were a team, and friends). During one of Klaus Schulze's usual visits at the Metronome record company in Hamburg, he was introduced to the Japanese group FAR EAST FAMILY BAND and to their gentle manager. Klaus accepted the offer to produce the group for Polygram (Metronome's parent company). In August 1975 Klaus flew to Tokyo to do the first international LP with the F.E.F.B. - a remix of their just finished and released second LP. Japan! Centre of technology! ...but what Klaus found in the Japanese studio was irritating: The studio contained everything one can dream of, but nobody of the natives was able to work rational, wise, not to mention artistically with it. What happened then was like in a Beckett play: All movements and sayings of Klaus were noticed and written down by some agile Japanese technicians. For instance, the simple fact that the Dolbys have to be adjusted before use(!), and then switched on(!), or, that electric keyboards should be connected directly to the mixer... What later became the famous "Kitaro", was then just one of the two friendly keyboard players in this space rock band. Klaus had to record his parts anew because his playing was actually recorded with microphones in front of his Marshall speakers, which - of course - sounded awful. Klaus showed this keyboard player a few more tricks... When Klaus came back from that wonderful work in Tokyo at the end of August 1975, his/our apartment was already emptied, except for a few instruments that we needed for an earlier arranged photo session. We moved to the countryside of Germany. One reason was private: KS' parents were now pensioners and had moved to the countryside. KS found a house close to his parents. And nothing and no one kept me in Berlin. Two days before Xmas '75, "The Big Moog" was bought by Klaus from a Munich musician. In very positive remembrance are the many tours of Klaus through France, and through Belgium and the Netherlands. We did them annually since 1975, the first three years in the very pleasant months of April/May. During these first years we both drove alone in our Ford Transit. The instruments and the small but loud Farfisa P.A. system were set up and connected by me, and during the course of time I learned a lot about the necessary technique, and about the synthesizers. During an earlier job with Tangerine Dream, I was impressed by the fact that they used only one blue electric lamp on stage, so I took the prime idea and built for KS our own little "light show" made of just 4 x 100 watt bulbs in dark blue. Later I added another 4 in red, all connected to two simple dimmers you may have at home for your reading lamp ...and that was it. I hate kitsch as much as gigantism (often it's the same); it is just embarrassing and expensive. KS liked it to have one of those lamps beaming directly into his eyes during some emotional parts of his playing. MOONDAWN did not come out on Virgin anymore, because KS had terminated the contract. In view of our great French concerts we got to know a person who wanted to start a new French label with Klaus' next album MOONDAWN. We said okay, and soon after, MOONDAWN became a hit in France. KS is still waiting for his contractual percentages for some hundred thousand sold copies! Regardless what some critical journalists say, it's not the "evil" Big Brother but (as well) the small independents who cheat the artists. When KS tried to bring the case before the (French) court, we found out that our French manager was meanwhile (without telling us!) working for the other side - for that cheating label "Isadora". From this moment on we stopped all contact to that disloyal man. Later, he was for some years Ashra's manager, and after ten years of disappearance he founded in the early nineties the SPALAX label for re-releases. Because of the MOONDAWN success some things did happen. For the preceding LP TIMEWIND Klaus was honoured with the "Grand Prix International du Disque", and the concert halls became larger. For the French tour in April '76 we got from the promoter a car full of body guards, who looked frightening, filled their car up to the limit, were very amiable, but unnecessary: We never had use for them (because of their sheer presence?). But we had some additional fun (and that for we did the concert tours). The English label ISLAND showed some interest in Klaus Schulze, but also an English Manager. First came the GO project. During the production of another LP with the FAR EAST FAMILY BAND, this time in the English "Manor" studios, Klaus became friend with a Japanese woman, a very good photographer. She introduced him to Stomu Yamash'ta. This Far East wunderkind had his GO project in mind and was searching for musicians from all over the world, to join his ideas. A synthesizer player doesn't exist in England. What is more, Stomu and Klaus spoke the same language, musically and humanely. The same was true of Michael Shrieve, the drummer for this project. The bass player Rosko Gee was an amiable human being. The shy Steve Winwood was mostly locked away by his American wife, and the fast Al DiMeola we only saw once during his swift rattle off his part. His rapidity was really sensational, but artistically meaningless. To show him this, one evening Klaus just speeded up his sequencer more and more, and DiMeola had to give up at a certain point, wondering how KS - who sat with his equipment in another room - could play so fast. Klaus showed him, that it's just a machine, and that it's not the trained speed that makes good music. Did he understand? I suppose, because he felt a little bit displeased. All people involved in that project had no experience with synths or synth players, and the studio people were programmed only to rock and pop. Different music such as Schulze's they could not handle. Of course they liked the ostensible show when Klaus' EMS did the typical and cheap SciFi effects. I remember nights in the London hotel when Klaus was actually crying because of the ignorance of these innocent engineers. The finished product, the first GO LP, shows all this, if the German fool is being heard at all. However, the prime idea was not alone one of artistic reasons, but plain business: Out of every important country one "star" was used; for Germany this was the synth "star" Klaus Schulze. There was much talking about a world tour with GO. What came out were two great concerts. First with an additional orchestra in London's Royal Albert Hall in May 1976, the second one two weeks later in Paris. I was eyewitness on stage in Paris. It was like home-coming for Klaus. He received a frantic greeting from the thousands of French. Even before the concert a tape was played with Schulze music (!) - it seems as if the responsible British roadies liked him, too. I was very proud of Klaus. Some American gigs of GO at later dates were made by partially different musicians. For the London concert of GO Klaus took Harald Grosskopf with him, as roadie and mental support. Harald was from 1971 till '75 the drummer of the German rock group "Wallenstein" and Klaus knew him from the "cosmic" sessions in the Dierks studios. In summer 1975, Harald was suddenly present at our place. He wanted to learn a bit about electronic instruments and music, he was keen to know everything about it. He had the futuristic idea to do his fine drumming with electronic devices - which only a few years later became reality, even: normality. Harald stayed with us for about half a year and during this time as well as on later dates he played the drumkit to some of Schulze's recordings. Harald was and still is an open and honest partner and a great human being. His speciality was his loud and endless laughing, and his ability to get asleep instantly, but being on the spot when needed again. Later he joined Manuel's ASHRA from time to time, also he did some electronic percussive solo recordings, and played percussion with various other German and Dutch electronic and other musicians. The famous English ISLAND label: Klaus was enthusiastic about it. Some of his teenage heroes were on it. Now, in late 1976, ISLAND was interested to have Klaus as solo star. Most unfortunately, since the Beatles, England is not only the centre of modern pop music, but as well the creator of the longest and most complicated record contracts one can imagine. For non Englishmen and non lawyers they are a complete mystery. But there was an English manager ready to help. A friendly man, as so often. We engaged him. He invited us all the time for dinner, he picked us up from the airport, drove us around, paid our cigarettes, did everything for us outside Germany. After a while I realized that he not only got his 20% of all of Klaus' income, but that in addition we paid all these meals, cigarettes, his gasoline and his travels, and all the expenses this manager had, regardless if he travelled to the "Midem" festival for us or for any other of his artists. We couldn't even control if he not charged the same expenses each and every of his few artists... To make this an end, Klaus paid a small fortune to get rid of him. This was our first experience with the everyday occurrence in international showbiz. We didn't like it. Together with this manager we also wanted to terminate the record contract with ISLAND, because our spokesman had left the company. Two LPs were out on that label. The first one was MIRAGE. It was never said, but MIRAGE wasn't exactly what ISLAND expected: a second "Moondawn". MIRAGE was and is a difficult piece of music, not made to sell fast in huge quantities. We value Island's service highly. They released it worldwide with considerable energy and expense. Like MOONDAWN it reached number 10 in the French LP charts. The genuine bestseller with typical music à la Schulze was made during the same time by an unknown but clever Frenchman, the son of the Hollywood kitsch composer Maurice Jarre. This brought "our" music to the general public's attention, on a vast level. Even today there are many who believe that J.-M. Jarre "invented" the Electronic Music. The seriousness and perplexity of MIRAGE has a reason. Klaus had an older brother, who was a kind of stimulation if not idol for Klaus in his early years. Because of him Klaus learned to play drums. This brother, Hans-Dieter, died of cancer in the winter when MIRAGE was recorded. This music is dedicated to his brother. MIRAGE is still an outstanding and timeless disc. I did not join the "Mirage" tournee in April and May 1977. At this time I had a break from Klaus Schulze for about half a year. I was doing the French tour with Manuel Göttsching in November 1976, I worked again for the wonderful 30 days event, the second Berlin "Meta Musik Festival", where also KS was performing (listen to "Sense" on his ...LIVE... album), and I promoted many rock and pop concerts in Berlin with international artists such as Jerry Lee Lewis, the Supremes, Bob Marley... During one of those concerts I met again Rosko Gee from the GO days. He was now a member of the German group "Can". (Postscript in 1997/'98: Rosko is now member of a TV show band in the German "Die Harald Schmidt Show". In 2007 he still was). When I returned to Klaus in early summer '77, I found an English truck in the garden of Klaus' house. It was bought before especially for the "Mirage" tour, 'cause this was cheaper than to rent one. Now, it wasn't needed anymore, but: nobody could move it - the English roadie had placed it in the garden, had switched on the automatic alarm-horn(!), left direction England and took the keys with him. If someone would touch now the automobile's door or any other dangerous part, the alarm horn would start to make its horrible noise. KS didn't know where the turn-off switch is. I forgot the end of that story, but I suppose that we waited until the truck's battery was empty and dead and then we sold the vehicle. Film makers realized very soon that music à la KS or T.D. is great for movies. Already in 1976 Klaus did plenty of music for some avantgarde films, without ever asking to get paid! At the end of '76 a film producer from Dusseldorf contacted Klaus and he made the music to one of the better porno movies, BODY LOVE. The second film of the same producer with a soundtrack by KS was the thriller BARRACUDA. To get the right inspiration, the film producer invited Klaus to flight with him to Florida. No problem for Klaus! The producer realized that the Americans tried to cheat him, but he could avoid the worst; Klaus enjoyed the good life in sunny Fort Lauderdale... The salary for Klaus' work was: He could choose one of those pompous American cars from Germany's most exclusive car dealer in Dusseldorf. The BODY LOVE longplay sold surprisingly well. In fact, it sold in the first run twice as much copies as any Brain LP of Klaus before. A reason for this was maybe that the LP was also sold at the cash-boxes in the special red light cinemas. And maybe because the original cover had some pictures of nude ladies on it... and nude ladies on covers always sell (= an old journalistic rule). Besides, fans told me, "Music by Klaus Schulze" was announced in some cinemas in larger letters than the title of the film. Next came "X" and "Dune". In February 1979 Klaus Schulze signed now a worldwide deal with the German METRONOME company, for a really huge sum. With this money Klaus built the -IC- label, the synthesizer school, the studio, the video studio... to help young musicians. It was really big money that we got from Metronome. It seems as if Metronome had no money left to exploit their artist and his records outside their home country...?!? All those years not much happened outside Germany with record releases of Klaus' Brain albums. I wonder why they paid so much, when they are not able (or interested?) to sell the discs or the rights on them in other countries, in USA, Japan, whole Europe, Australia.... (This situation has not much changed since. Metronome's American parent company PolyGram even asked an American CD dealer who wanted to order some Brain records in 1992: What is "Brain"? They had never heard of this, their own label). "People in the record companies have very, very narrow views", Peter Jenner once said. The deceased manager of Johannes Schmölling, Peter Wirths, told me in 1990: It seems as if all the idiots in the record business get the chairs of "A+R Managers". My experience is, if one speaks sensible or rational with these people, they normally do their best. Trouble is that 'their best' is often very humble. Again, here with Metronome/Brain: friendly people, much mutual fun. With these people we had not much trouble from 1974 till 1980. Oh, those glorious old days... During the course of time, we saw five different A+R managers at Metronome. Today... there are a many ignorant people around. Period. The 15th of December 1976 saw a concert that is of interest because of the typical German circumstances. For some reason Klaus Schulze counts as "pop" musician. On the other side there exists a so-called "serious" contemporary music scene in Germany. Rarely anyone cares much about it, or listens and enjoys it, because the aim of this type of music seems to be: to avoid any similarities to enjoyable music. This species exists exclusively in the feuilletons of some old-fashioned newspapers. For compensation, this dead music was and is supported by much tax monies, by some radio stations, and by the German Performance Rights Society: the GEMA. Is it forgotten today that this "E-Music" status was used and sponsored during the Nazis era to support heavily the "German" music against the "Jewish" Mendelssohns, Cole Porters and Benny Goodmans!? For example with speeches like this: "Nur in ihr [Ernste Musik] lebt unsere Seele ganz und eine Seligkeit, die sich nicht in Zahlen fassen läßt. Unmeßbar ist ihr Wert für unser Volk, ihre Bedeutung für die Weltgeltung der deutschen Kunst. Nationalsozialismus heißt, die edelsten Kräfte der Nation am liebevollsten pflegen. Darum heißt Nationalsozialismus auch, diejenigen besonders fördern, die am Dom der hohen Meister weiterschaffen" (see: Fred K. Prieberg, "Musik im NS-Staat", 1982). However it may be, this kind of government supported, contemporary "serious" music had no audience then and has none today. Back to the 1976 story: The Berlin radio station is preparing a concert with the music of two "serious" contemporary composers, plus Klaus Schulze. The following is a totally invented story, of course. The responsible radio man: Ouch, "serious" music again. Shit! Empty chairs again, although it's free. Culture? Damned! What can we do? ... (Idea! ) ... I got it! There is this Schulz, or Schult, Klaus Schultze or whatever his name is. My daughter is wild about him, and his concerts are always sold out. This guy's not doing simple pop or rock (baa!), He's a bit serious. This is it! He brings us the audience. But what about the two other composers? ... Tricky solution, and the following did really happen: KS was asked to play in the following manner. First, as a starter. Second, in the middle of two empty neopathological pseudomodernists or whatever explanation with words they have, and 3) for the finale, so that the audience stays until the end. It's a very good description of Klaus Schulze's situation: His music falls between two stools. We have 1978. Together with Harald Grosskopf, Klaus went again into the Panne/Paulsen studio in Frankfurt. They came back with the tapes for a double LP. No titles yet, no heading for the album. KS' enthusiasm about it is great, as always after a recording. As so often, the idea for titles came after a few days. "Six musical biographies" and the names of five already gone personalities and one still among us (at this time). There is a liking to all six of them; Klaus read their works, or read a lot about them, studied them. The title for the album was my idea, because this was Klaus' tenth solo LP, therefore "X" (Roman: ten). I started to draw a cover, and in addition I did a booklet with some rare photos from the last 10 years. Also, we reproduced a small part of the notation that Klaus had to do for the string orchestra, for the "Ludwig" track. The orchestra really needed these notations, even it was mostly just one phrase they had to repeat and repeat and repeat and... like in trance. One example may show how different the feeling can be while listening to Klaus' music. During a concert in Fürth, near Nuremberg, the music was so beautiful, peaceful, that I felt asleep backstage. Klaus took it as a compliment, and it was one. There is an inner truthfulness, a sincerity in his music, one cannot prove. Yet every one (who can hear) distinguishes at once the sincere from the arty. My experience tells me -much to my regret- that too many people are only able to put on a disc and switch on the player, without being ever able to understand the full beauty of the music. Many people use music just like audible wallpaper (therefore, the success of "New Age Music"?) The double LP "X" was in the official German sales charts for two or three weeks at number 75, but in spite of everything, of this unconventional music, this was a little sensation. Probably, this was the moment when synthesizers and Electronic Music became finally commonly known. A small German trade paper published then the figures of selling and income of a few German rock groups, including some overstated Klaus Schulze figures. During the same period it began, that every rock or pop band uses its own synthesizer, and all the usual things happened, as they do happen every time when the majority jumps upon and buys a new invention... until the next fashion comes. By the way, these instruments were much cheaper now then two or three years earlier. And they were easily available now in every music shop. Towards the end of 1978 KS was really in business. He won various pop polls, received enormous press, was invited and shown around. We both were even invited to the annual "Kanzlerfest", the German Federal Chancellor's party, and met there all the famous names from the German showbusiness. During the tour in September/October '78 we only saw huge concert halls; 3000 to 5000 spectators were no rarity. In relation to the non-popular kind of music that Klaus was creating, this was not just a success but a miracle. This caused others to try the same. At the end of the seventies many amateurs started at home, with cheap synthesizers and an own tape recorder, to do "Electronic Music" at the weekend. These many amateurs forgot: What they tried to find was already found and invented by KS, or Tangerine Dream, one decade earlier. But as a hobby, it's fine. It's like Dixieland. For the German concerts during this long European tour in autumn 1978 we invited the cello player Wolfgang Tiepold to join KS on stage. He's a classical musician with some jazz traces, and without any of the usual moodiness of many artists. He already had an important part in the recording of "X", and he conducted the orchestra during a Schulze concert in Oostende, Belgium, where "Ludwig II" was performed. Wolfgang Tiepold invited us during the tour to his house near Frankfurt, and I will never forget the background music he put on during dinner: Mendelsson's well-known E-minor violin concerto; for Wolfgang certainly a customary music, but it profoundly turned me on (again) to classical music, which still lasts until this day. Most of this kind of (old) music has more power and emotion than any furious rock music has today (i.e. the seventies, eighties and nineties), to say nothing of most of the Electronic Music. Electronic sounds remain just uncomfortable and cold noise, unless emotion is added. Klaus Schulze found out and understood this very early. More precisely: First are Klaus' emotions, then he uses Electronics to express them. In fan letters from all over the world people asked now for advice how to create this or that effect, which instruments are the better ones, from company X or Y? I doubt if they will understand that it's not any instrument that creates a "Klaus Schulze" but the man himself. Nevertheless, we gave many recommendations how to do this, or take your hands better off that... Some of these writers of fan letters and second-generation-"Schulzes" still do their records today, without much of a success. I do hope that they are at least happy in one way or another. (The very first of these followers should be named: Adelbert Kraak, who changed to A. van Deyen, and who not only copied Klaus' music, but the covers, even our letterhead, envelopes (!) etc...) (Postscript in 1997: Van Deyen even copied three minutes of the track "Dymagic" from Schulze's ...LIVE.. album and sold it as his own! Meanwhile he stopped completely to make music and concentrate on painting - in which he was not better.) One little incident comes to my mind that was not mentioned before. During one of our concert tours at the end of the seventies, we had a dinner in Hamburg with some invited people from the press. One guy from the BILD newspaper asked our technician, "how many volts" our P.A. system has. The astonished roadie realized that it was no slip of the tongue, but a seriously meant question, when he asked smilingly back "volts?" - "Yes, how many volts?". I shudder to think of how much power these ignorant people from the infamous BILD newspaper have. The first Herculean company who recognized the existence and the potency of "Electronic Music", was German WEA (Warner Brothers). They offered Klaus to produce for them -on his own label- some music in this new direction. KS hired a certain Michael Haentjes as partner, who was a writing journalist for a German musician's magazine. He and KS draw up an outline for such a record company, which was named INNOVATIVE COMMUNICATION, or short: IC, to be spoken as "I see", which was common saying by Michael Shrieve (and by millions of other Americans, if they suppose that they understood something). KS delivered instruments from his studio, and the IC Studio as well as the IC Synthesizer School was born. Shortly after, the IC Video Studio was set up, so that video clips could be made with and for the own IC artists. This was pretty new and sensational in 1979. KS was probably the first if not the only one in Germany who not only had the idea for video clips but realized it! Because TV wasn't ready yet for video clips, rarely one of our clips was actually used on TV. Some years later when IC stopped its video activities, video clips became a big fashion. The only IC video that was broadcast in German TV was the one with IDEAL, and, to top it: The broadcast date was exactly the evening, when we had the big release party for our first four independent LPs, including the mentioned IDEAL. ... Of this, later. For all these IC activities Klaus found another house, not far from his private house and studio. Here, Michael Haentjes could live and work, and here the school was lodged. When video came and needed plenty of space, they found in the next village, in Winsen, a tavern that had a huge festivities' hall and some not used hotel rooms, perfect for studios and offices. We redecorated and converted the whole, and soon after we had room enough for the video and a second audio studio, for offices, for artists' rest-rooms, and two private rooms for me. It was all paid from the huge sums that KS got for his solo LPs from Metronome, and from the advances that WEA paid to IC. During this era I had not much to do with IC. In truth, I didn't like the idea at all, 'cause I knew Schulze. He's no office man, he has no sense for organisation. Also, my enthusiasm isn't as easy to lure out as Schulze's. I have eyes and ears. Then: rehearsing musicians at full loudness isn't my kind of taste, especially Arthur Brown and the guitar player from Popol Vuh went on my nerves. The latter certainly had personal problems, or was he rather deaf? He played his electric guitar in the middle of the night over our many thousand watt heavy concert P.A.-system! (By the way, he's the son of an old friend of mine, the legendary -in the fifties- Berlin jazz and blues singer Toby Fichelscher. This saves him probably from me beating him up!). In 1979, the first four IC longplays were released and distributed by WEA. The expenditure of energy in preparations, productions, promotion and advertising was immense. These four were: Mickie D.'s Unicorn, Baffo Banfi "Ma, Dolce Vita", Robert Schröder "Harmonic Ascendant", and Richard Wahnfried "Time Actor". I knew Mickie Duwe from the times we were with Ash Ra Tempel in Switzerland for the recording of "Seven Up". Some time in 1978 he played to me some demo recordings. Because I liked what I heard, I told him to play it to Klaus Schulze, what he did. Unfortunately, Mickie was arrested in Greece, shortly after release of his first solo LP. He was forced to live the next four years in jail in sunny Greece. Which was a shame, because the WEA officials had great expectations in him, and were prepared and willing to support him, simply because it was "Unicorn" they liked most. It was musically the closest to what they normally know and like. Less amusing they found Klaus Schulze's Richard Wahnfried opus "Time Actor" with singer Arthur Brown. It's funny to see that these people are not even able to learn from former errors. It is always the unknown, the new music, which makes waves and history, and not the same top 20 songs that already exist. These people in record companies are mostly so narrow minded: no imagination, no courage, no visions. Just sales and business (I had offers to join them. I refused. I couldn't work like that). Baffo Banfi is an Italian keyboard player whom we got to know in 1974, when KS and I tried to do our first own record label "Berliner Weltklang". Baffo was member of the Italian rock group "Biglietto per l'inferno" (Ticket to Hell) which we intended to produce (it never realized). In November '75 Baffo helped us during our Italian & Switzerland tour, as a lighthearted, yes: humorous guide. We loved him. After two LPs for IC he vanished, as if he never had lived. We never heard from him again, we didn't even know where to send the accounts. (P.S.: In 1999 I heard from him again, and from then on I received his annual Xmas greetings.) Robert Schröder we got to know as fan of Klaus Schulze, who was visiting his hero and bringing him little presents, for instance some blinking lights in the shape of a star, flickering in rhythm. During a video recording with him, I realized that his usual hair into his eyes looks terrible; it looks much better if he combs his hair backwards and one can see his forehead. I have no idea if he's doing it in the meantime. Since those old IC days he produced a few additional recordings on his own, without much of a success. For a rerelease he even remixed the old albums that Schulze once had masterly mixed. Alongside our IC productions, WEA released two discs on IC we had nothing to do with, we only agreed to their release: One by the British Francis Monkman, and an old, historic album by Popol Vuh. During the long rehearsals for GO in the British ISLAND studios Klaus got to know some musicians who brought back memories of his teenager days. Among others, this was Arthur Brown ("Fire" in 1968). For Klaus' first "Richard Wahnfried" recording, Klaus invited this hell of a singer. Besides, Arthur made an LP for IC with his old buddy Vincent Crane of "Atomic Rooster" fame. For Klaus' two month tour all over Europe in autumn '79, Klaus invited Arthur to join him on stage. Audience's reactions were mixed. I had nothing against his knowledge of and love for old English literature, but what I didn't like was, that he was always late. I hate that. Up to this moment he's teaching English literature in Austin, Texas, USA. Someone told me (in April '93) that there will be soon a new "Crazy World of Arthur Brown" record out ... (After many years of silence, he did 1995 a solo tour in England, so I suppose that the new album is out). (P.S.: On 15 Nov. '96 I got a friendly letter from Arthur, he's interested to work with KS again). (P.P.S.: Until 2007 this did not realize, but we are still in loose contact.) It was exhausting work in the IC video studios: we did all by ourselves. Although we asked each musician for useful ideas or even a script for their clip, the only one who had both was Klaus Krüger. In all other cases we had to improvise. We had no MTV pictures stored in our head, simply this wasn't existing yet on German TV. We also improvised with the technique. This is exactly the right place to mention another one with the "Klaus" name, our technician Claus Cordes. As a professional photographer he studied the "video" technique by himself, over night. The same goes for his knowledge of our audio studio! The other Klaus, Schulze, was used to outwit the technology if necessary. With video in these early days this was not possible. Either it worked or it did not. There was nothing in the middle, nothing as "about correct" - the TV stations' meters (and ours) wouldn't accept it. To explain all this to Klaus Schulze and to the musicians, was more often than not Claus Cordes' job. He did it with endless patience. And he was very reliable, which I wasn't used from my musicians. Another visitor from the days of GO was the drummer Michael Shrieve. Klaus' and Michael's liking was mutually, musically as well as privately. Both learned of each other. Because KS started his career as a drummer, there was a fundamental understanding to build up from. Michael had an immense interest in electronic instruments. In January 1979 he visited us, lived with us,, even had a "companionship" with a young woman from the next village. He revisited us in the following year. Everyone said of course "Mike" to him, but in print it's "Michael" - he told me seriously. But it was too late. I had already and innocently put "Mike" Shrieve on a record cover - and since then everybody reprints this wrong "Mike". I learned the lesson, and never did that mistake again. My illegitimate problem child was now IC. I didn't get a fee or any other salary for my IC work from IC, or from Klaus. I am just the publisher of Klaus' compositions since 1978, and I live just from that GEMA income. But of course I help Klaus if I can, for his other projects too. IC was existing, built up by Klaus, contracts were to fulfil, he (we) were obliged to go on. All we needed was a working record distribution. We took the smallest of the nationwide distributors, Deutsche Austrophon, a sleepy company not well known for special hits, or any other speciality, except some polkas and their old-fashioned annual Christmas platters. Advanced music such as (some of) IC's wasn't really existing in their politics and heads. Until we entered. One advantage was that this "Deutsche Austrophon" was not far away from our place, and it was not connected to any of the huge multinational companies. All exports we did ourselves, because "d.a." had no foreign partners. Also, the promotion and advertising we did - and paid - ourselves. Now we could start to complete the productions, to prepare covers and promotion, to make plans and to realize them. It was some kind of work! Of course the "Deutsche Austrophon" only paid for sold copies of records, they didn't pay any advances or any penny for a production, or advertising, as WEA did before. But our freedom to do what we wanted was worth this financial risk if not loss. We had crazy new ideas and we could realize them! Without being bothered by bureaucratics at WEA. One of these ideas was to cut our LPs with the speed of 45 instead of the normal 33 RPM. Experts told us this would gain the quality of the sound, and the loss of playing time was small. KS and I, we love those crazy things no one else has the fantasy for, or dares to do. So we did it. Regardless if the sound on the LP was really better, it brought a lot of promotion to the IC albums. All papers wrote about it, and all German radio disc jockeys must say a few words about the IC discs after they were forced to stop their turntable with the usual but wrong speed, and they had to start again with 45 RPM. These radio people had to play at least one LP of our first set of releases: IDEAL. (In a German regular TV programme about new movies, the famous IDEAL track "Berlin" was played in full length, with the wrong 33 speed! Nobody noticed that during the TV production!? There are many idiots around. Period). IDEAL was in our first set of four really "independent" IC releases. I found the group in Berlin. At Manuel Göttsching's place I listened to a demo tape of a rock group, that played some weeks before on a benefit concert for "our" imprisoned Mickie Duwe. What puzzled and inspired me was the female singer. Because, only after a while I noticed that she sings in plain German, which was an impossibility in pop or rock music at this time. Rock music + German texts = Kraut. Horrible krautrock. But not here, from this group with the name X-PECTORS. The singer was a certain Annette Humpe, who wrote those great German lyrics, which in addition were very realistic and funny, or in short: excellent. The music was fast rock in the New Wave fashion of the day. Not bad, either. Some time later at the same place of my friends Manuel & Rosi, I met the head of this group, a certain F.J. Krüger. Apparently we knew each other from more penniless times. We both were and still are jazz freaks, and years ago during our long-haired hippie days I sold him my Ford Transit truck, which he 'forgot' to register and I had some trouble because of that... Meanwhile he grew to one of the best German jazz & rock guitar players, and he had a very special sense of humour, with his very own kind of speech. And he had style, not only in music. He's an expert on old cars, on old household goods, on old clothes, and much more. Besides music, he owns, collects and he deals with these things. (PS for Germans: F.J. ist derjenige, der Loriot anspricht und ihn nach der Schillerstrasse fragt, ...während der Vorspann des "Ödipussi"-Filmes noch läuft. Leider ein zweites PS: mein Freund F.J. verstarb im April 2007.) I made a deal with Frank (F.J.) and he remodelled the group, threw out the sax, searched for tighter bass and drums, and offered me then IDEAL, with plenty of songs by the group's singer Annette, and music by him or by the whole quartet. KS could not understand my enthusiasm, but generously gave his okay, and half the advance money for the group. I produced them in our IC studio. Instantly we all at IC spoke the same funny language as F.J. did, as long as he and IDEAL stayed with us, and some months after. During the time of production and before the LP came out, the IDEAL boom already started. There were many sold out IDEAL concerts, cover stories in magazines, even some TV appearances (which was a rarity for unknown rock bands on German TV then), a huge "supporting act" gig in front of 100 thousand in Berlin, where IDEAL had more success than the old-fashioned main act, a certain "Barcley James Harvest" group. The official TV evening news of the day reported about the event and showed just IDEAL (I knew this before, because Ideal played when there was still enough daylight for filming the event! ...and of course there was the problem of time: The main act was just playing too late for the evening news!). When the LP came out, simply called "Ideal", the group was already a successful working unit. That they were hot, everyone with eyes and ears could see and hear. Except our distributor. Their plan for a first pressing was: 300 (yes: three hundred) copies. I told them that 300 I need just alone for my promotion, to serve all the German music journalists... and I explained to them the booming activities of IDEAL, and my own visionary plans. They still didn't understand but they manufactured 1000 copies(!) In the following weeks and months they only pressed the number of copies that they had orders for - not one copy more; although a normal human being & business man would say: Okay, let's do some thousand for coming orders, so that we can deliver fast... Not so the gemütliche "Deutsche Austrophon". Actually we sold in the first year 250 thousand copies. After 16 months we had a platinum disc for 500 thousand LPs sold in Germany. In the meantime it's about 800 thousand copies... Anyway. This IDEAL production saved IC from a sure bankruptcy. All other artists on IC got some profit out of that, too. We could place each month advertising for some 20 to 30 thousand DM. We had (therefore) much press covering. There was this synthesizer hero, there was this whirling independent label with funny ideas (e.g.: 45 RPM), and there was this smash hit with IDEAL. Regardless of all the many articles and advertisements about and for all our artists: Klaus Krüger, Clara Mondshine, Robert Schröder, Din A Testbild, Baffo Banfi, Dieter Schütz... all of those sold badly. Very badly. The release of IDEAL and the three other first independent IC discs took place on 31st of October 1980 during a huge IC party in our studios. This was at a time when "record release party" was not yet fashionable (!). All important people from the German music press were present, some friends from Berlin, and people from both companies, "Deutsche Austrophon" as well as "Metronome", which was still Schulze's record company. Metronome was invited because at the same day KS' new LP was presented: DIG IT, Klaus' first digitally produced disc. It was exactly during our party when the German TV presented in its famous "Beatclub" two(!) of our(!!) IDEAL videos (!!!). Of course we showed this broadcast in real time on a special huge screen during the party. Later this evening everybody was drunk. The only two who kept to my detailed schedule for this evening was, who else?: Claus Cordes and myself. By the way: to produce an own video for a German (newcomer) band was also not normal in 1980. Not even huge labels did this, at this time, in Germany. Here, we were also the first. Eight week before, KS delivered a "serious" concert without my help at an art festival in Linz, Austria. A puffy happening. Let it sink into oblivion. ... Then, Klaus had a TV appearance in Spain, and one concert in Brussels with Manuel Göttsching on guitar as his guest. This was the first year without a real tour, because of the immense work for the IC company, for both of us. The long-term contract with Metronome was finished officially in April 1981, and I wanted Klaus on IC. Last but not least IC was founded by him as a label for Electronic Music, and this initial part of IC needed some support by the leading force of this genre. It looked funny that the owner of the label releases his own records somewhere else. Klaus' first disc for IC was TRANCEFER. Of course Metronome tried hard (and offered a lot) to get Klaus sign again with them, but we refused. So, at the same time we released TRANCEFER, Metronome delivered a Klaus Schulze sampler to the dealers, with a cover that copied 100% our own special IC covers (!) No comment necessary. We changed our scheduled cover: TRANCEFER got a black (instead of white) background. Also in 1980, Klaus did another "Richard Wahnfried" LP for IC: "Tonwelle". This time with the help of Manuel Göttsching, the old pal of ASH RA TEMPEL days, and with another well-known international guitar hero. Manuel was also invited to join Klaus during our tour in autumn '81 through Germany, Switzerland, France, and Benelux. What I recall of this otherwise exquisite tour is that each morning (or better: noon) in the hotel, Manuel was one hour late, and Klaus two hours (or vice versa), what not only drove me mad, but several waiting journalists as well. Klaus irritated a few people in the course of time, because he is a handsome man, good natured, one who cannot say "no", and one who has his own morale: one of an artist. Since the business is full of small people who need bigger ones to lean on, Schulze is a perfect post for those. Klaus is also friendly to them, sometimes innocently and kindly offers help he isn't obliged or even able to give. These people fall flat on their faces when Klaus moves away, and they are of course angry on him then. They expected the most from Klaus, but he was just friendly. This happens regularly, if these people think they are very clever and contact KS directly, avoiding the necessary checkpoint "Klaus D. Mueller". Be warned. If you are okay, if you have really good ideas, if you are honest, you will succeed; regardless if you contact KS, or me, or anybody else, or nobody else. Back to history. In 1981 IC produced 12 new LPs, nine of them "Electronic", which became the same flops as the two rock recordings. The one left is TRANCEFER by Klaus. Because of personal reasons I left IC at the end of 1981 to return to my home town Berlin. At least I left them without their 60 thousand DM debit, the contrary was more the truth. My IDEAL product made IC a prosperous company. In the year 1982 no new Schulze LP was made or released. The reason was that Klaus tried to manage IC himself, and as I know of own experience, this is an exhausting 24 hours' job, and that's no exaggeration: During night I prepared all the things I needed for the daytime routine, and on weekends I wrote and sent out or telexed all the promotion. Most of our artists did just nothing much to gain their fame; they waited for the company to make them famous. Of course, this will not work, and it didn't. 1982 saw the first LP of Rainer Bloss on IC. In opposition to Klaus, Rainer is a studied musician. He is trained in the normal musical tradition, he knows the usual forms, changes, harmonies, and what is more. A most normal man. Klaus to the contrary is a primitive, original artist, based on feeling, instinct, courage, and craziness; his school was Rock'n'Roll and his lessons were trial and error. But Klaus also learned a few things from Rainer. Head and soul fitted perfectly, when the two played together, from 1983 until 1987. Hardcore fans of KS want the lone musical star, but if Klaus likes to play with a partner, why not? For some time this seemed to work. The amount of KS-concerts was small: One open air gig in Gent, Belgium, for the TV, a huge concert in Budapest, Hungary, and a concert at London's "Venue". All three gigs were made with Rainer Bloss as second keyboard player on stage. The concert in Budapest was scheduled as one in a row of concerts all over West but also East-Europe, as part of a so-called "Chip Festival", with, beside Klaus Schulze: Tangerine Dream, Rick Wakeman, and Thomas Dolby with Classix Noveau. Why just this one concert for KS did happen, I don't know. During this period, Thomas Dolby visited KS in his studio, and I think Klaus didn't even know the name of that man. It was not clear then and not today, what he wanted. Another visitor was Steve Jolliffe. Klaus liked him very much, and wanted to produce an LP with him. I thought that his music was too much hippie-like for 1981, so we dropped this flute playing album idea. Steve later continued to do and to release similar music on other labels, it seemed to fit perfectly to the American "new age" taste. After Klaus realized that the work for IC isn't his kind of bread, and, after all, the work was really too much, he hired a certain 'Katia' for a short time - a disaster. She was followed by a certain Mark Sakautzky, whom Klaus had met in Australia, where Mister Sak tried to establish (without success but with plenty of Klaus' cash) Australian IC. Klaus is so kind-hearted ...but naïve sometimes... At the same time when the double LP AUDENTITY was released, he went on tour again. From beginning of February until end of April, and then again for ten days in July 1983, Klaus was on tour in whole of western Europe plus in Poland. Especially the 9 concerts in Poland moved Klaus' heart. Although Klaus did promise on ...LIVE... that this would be the only "live" album he'll ever make, he did another one, a second "live" double LP, put together from the digital concert recordings of this overwhelming Poland tour. He just had to do it, because the Polish reception was really great, in quantity and in quality. The handicap of "live" albums, the not so clean sound, was eliminated, because the music was digitally recorded directly from Klaus' mixer. That's the reason that there is no audience noise on the disc, except on the short odd track "Dziekuje" (which means: "Hello"). After that, Klaus did a few more clean live albums, with the same direct digital technique. During these months where Klaus was on the road with Rainer, his company IC - under the lead of Mr. Sak - produced disc after disc, which later were offered as: "Exponents of new Australian rock music", "the Maxi single with the digital super sound", "has chartbuster potential", "could be the big hit in discos", "the absolute number for the use in radio and TV", and similar cheap ballyhoo, that Klaus and I had never and would never use. Beside this bragging nonsense for mediocre Middle-of-the-Road products, whose productions swallowed huge sums of money, and which were produced while KS was away, there were other shocking, unspeakable happenings at IC. When Klaus came back after that long tour he was forced to think all this over and also to think about Mark Sakautzky, who even had the nerves to ask Klaus for another quarter of a million DM, because he - Sak - did spend all of IC's money. Klaus' initial intention for doing IC was a label for the music he did, he loved, and that he nearly single-handed invented: Electronic Music; a kind of music that otherwise would have no chance to reach the listeners, and the whole should be "small but beautiful" (I borrowed this phrase for one of our first IC ads from the famous book "Small is Beautiful" by E.F. Schumacher). Schulze's wise decision in summer 1983: He gave the whole company away. His IC solo records were given to Metronome. From then on he had nothing to do anymore with the politics of that company, of what the American magazine e/i many years later wrote: "...it turned into shit". On 26th of August 1983 he visited me in Berlin and told me about this "selling" of IC. Moreover, he will do a new record company, this time "only" for pure Electronic Music. In the following weeks I was not able to convince him to keep his hands off that business, by giving him simple accounts of uncertain expected income, and definite costs. The first was low, the second was high, of course. I assume he didn't read or understand these simple calculations, which told him that his new company will go bankrupt in about six months. At least, for my part I refused to join the party. INTEAM was a straight Schulze-Bloss enterprise. In spring 1984, the first four INTEAM LPs were released. At this time Klaus got back the two employees of former IC days, the rock-singing bookkeeper and the reliable Claus Cordes. I helped also, from Berlin, mostly with promotion; together with the loyal bookkeeper I could avoid the worst of KS' & Bloss' sometimes strange ongoing. To raise some cash to keep INTEAM going, I supported the idea that Klaus signs again with Metronome, what he did. But the contract was made by Rainer Bloss, and it shows. I suppose he either has never read it, was completely drunk, or he didn't understand one word of it. Later I took over this contract. That a company offers such deals should be called a crime. That an artist and businessman signs it without trying to change the worst of it, should bring him into a madhouse. The whole tells a lot about Klaus' (and Rainer's) state of mind during the era from 1984 until April 1987. This was the most dreadful time during my work for and with my friend Klaus Schulze. For sure, there are various reasons a man starts with drugs, here, the worst of all ('cause it is accepted and therefore has a harmless image): alcohol. I know now that this is a disease, and no fun at all. It comes not over night so that everybody can see and do something against it. The reason that alcohol is more or less accepted in this society, makes it hard for somebody who wants to help. Too easily the helper looks like a fool (which happened to me ten years later again with another heavy alcoholic musicians and friend). It was awful. Klaus was out of reach. He listened sometimes, but seemed not to understand. He did everything wrong, if he did anything at all. He was lying to me. He had no interest in his brainchild INTEAM. He didn't respond on tips or offers to help. Invoices were generally not paid but thrown away. Ditto with important letters from lawyers or from the court. Guilty were always the others. No contracts were made with artists that KS and Rainer wanted to produce, or even did produce (e.g. Ernst Fuchs). Promises were given but broken. The "office" was chaos. Apathy, resignation, irresolution, sleeping intellect is what I saw and observed. The two employees had left in anger, they felt cheated, and they surely were, because the company's income was nil. For a short time a most dubious character from the Frankfurt red-light scene was engaged as manager of INTEAM. Rainer Bloss supervised the finances of their joint company INTEAM (At least, he and his family lived a good life during these years). Schulze ran into debt. More and more. Shortly before the whole company finally collapsed, I visited Klaus. Because he was still in bed and not willing to leave his warm surrounding until the evening, I spoke (again) very long with his girlfriend Elfie about the few possibilities to help. I detected in Schulze's office - at most impossible places - unpaid bills to INTEAM for 30 thousand DM, and another 30 thousand DM unpaid bills to KS personally. By accident, the same moment Bloss phoned from Berlin and tried to tell KS in his usual happy manner that INTEAM has no obligations, that the account is balanced ... and he talked about some more castles in the air, juggling with non-existent millions (!) of Deutschmarks. And I'm neither joking nor exaggerating here! After a Schulze concert in a Berlin church in 1985, it was agreed that Andreas Grosser and I take Klaus for dinner. When the concert was over, and most of the audience had left the church, Klaus came to the front stage. A half-emptied bottle of whisky in his hand, and, oh my God, his eyes... I looked into his eyes, saw what I hope never to see again in my life, and we turned around and went for dinner without a very sick Klaus Schulze. Before the concert, I already saw and I spoke backstage with Claus Cordes, who did part of the technique. He knew, and he just shook his head in despair. Then I saw the tour manager who would suit in any heavy metal combo with his black leather dress, and so was his talking and probably his consciousness. I sympathized with Claus Cordes. In April 1987 INTEAM was officially declared bankrupt. At last! Bloss was finally sent home, to earn his money now with real and with his own work, and Klaus went into a Swiss hospital. Since then the curve is going uphill, since 1990 until today (1996) Klaus reached a new musical and business zenith. Bloss' face today is the face of an old man, and Schulze got some weight. This is left from that era. Also, we have some KS records; not his best, but surprisingly good in regard of his shape then. "Oh Demon Alcohol" (The Kinks). A few years later, Schulze spoke very openly with an American journalist about these sick years, and the whole was broadcast and printed, so I feel free to write about it too. Besides, this greatly affected me, certainly I was hit more than this American journalist. In addition, I showed Klaus in December '95 the page above, and he gave his okay. Klaus did his first "clean" recording in autumn 1987: EN=TRANCE, a double LP, suitable for one single CD. The best track on it (that year's Number One in a German radio poll!) was recorded at one go, quasi "live" in the night after the house party for his 40th birthday. In the autumn of that year - 1987 - I invited Klaus to travel together to Amsterdam, not just because I wanted to pick up some 60 jazz LPs from a special second-hand dealer, but to see a performance of the Elisa Monte Dance Company from New York, who danced to the music of a Klaus Schulze piece, and who wanted to have some more music, especially composed and recorded by Klaus. Amsterdam was wonderful, the dealer sold me my long wanted 60 LPs, and the E. Monte Dance Company could speak with Klaus. Klaus even was invited to visit the ballet in their hometown New York, what Klaus did with pleasure, in early February 1988. I arranged some American interviews, and the short trip to New York was fine and successful. Klaus told me a very long and human story about an accidental meeting in the lobby of New York's Chelsea Hotel and of the following discussion with an older colleague, Richie Havens. Yes, the one who once had opened "Woodstock". Later, Klaus did indeed some special music for the ballet, but it wasn't exactly what the Americans needed, or it was sent too late by KS, or whatever it was... It was not used, and the contact died out. I believe anyway that of all the arts the ballet is the most strange. I only regret I couldn't be eye and earwitness in the Chelsea hotel lobby... n the summer of '87 Klaus had started to produce the famous German pop group ALPHAVILLE. This happened by accident. Our friend Andreas Grosser who was a helping hand in every Berlin studio, took Klaus to Alphaville's studio, and it was revealed that the members are old fans of Klaus. One of them was disc jockey in a club in western Germany when Klaus gave a concert there, back in 1975. Alphaville was in the midst of mixing a single track, and Klaus showed them some things. He was asked if he has time to help a bit more, and finally he became co-producer and worked sporadically in Alphaville's studio during the next 18 months. What came out was the LP "The Breathtaking Blue" with a great overall sound and mark, but with no single hit, which is a necessity in this pop music market. Anyway, I doubt if all synth players' combined CDs sell as much as this pop CD did, even it wasn't as successful as it should. After many years of fruitless trying, in summer 1988 my contact to the media and radio of the other part of Germany finally looked rosy. Therefore, KS and I visited East Berlin - KS for the very first time in his life! - and Klaus gave a long interview to a friendly and serious radio man, who had his own little Electronic program. This interview was broadcast in many parts, until the state and the radio vanished for reasons beyond any music. The next solo LP for Metronome, MIDITERRANEAN PADS, was delivered by Klaus in September 1989, but released only five months later, without an explanation for the delay from the company. Because of my contact to the East German radio we were invited to do a concert at a wonderful open air place, built like a Greek amphitheatre, in the town of Dresden, in August 1989. The usual notorious custom problems behind (it was not allowed to carry computers to the East, said the West at this time! ...and the East feared everything that came from the evil West, except their money), we drove to Dresden, one day before the actual gig. The hotel in Dresden was more expensive than any comparable western hotel, but it was paid for us by the promoter (who, by the way, deducted several hundreds of Mark for the 'performance rights' society. Four years later I still asked for it, in vain. They are obliged to give it to the composer KS and to the publisher, me, but we both never saw a penny. Those gangsters!). In the early morning of the concert day I heard from my hotel bed the depressing sound of rain! Oh, shit. The day and the open-air concert is spoilt. So I thought. When I got up, and looked out of the window, I saw no rain?! Instead, it was a huge fountain in front of the hotel, that made this rainy noise. The whole day was wonderful, warm and sunny. We set up, we made friends, we had a wonderful time. Before KS' performance, three supporting groups played, including two East German groups. One of the acts played "à la KS", and I saw and heard the frenetic audience's reaction, then I knew: This is Schulze-audience. The East German trio POND did an announcement which included some moving words about the chance to be on the same stage with their hero, Klaus Schulze. This nearly made my cry. It's a pity that Klaus couldn't hear it; he was still in his hotel. Thanks, Wolfgang of POND. Klaus as the main act begun very late, after 10 o'clock in the evening. He did a short announcement, and he even surprised me with that. He dedicated the two long pieces not only to the town of Dresden by calling them "Dresden 1" and "Dresden 2", but he will play these two pieces in the memory of two of his friends, he said, who both died quite recently under bad circumstances: Bernd Meyer (no musician), and Walter Bachauer. I'm still moved while I type that, some years later. Useless to mention that the attentive audience loved and enjoyed what Klaus played. All 6800 of them. Because Klaus started so late, it was already close to midnight when "Dresden 2" was concluded. Some equipment stood backstage, and everybody who leaned on it, realized that the top surface was already pretty wet. The theatre was located in the midst of a huge park, and the moisture, as well as the nocturnal coolness became uncomfortable. Therefore: No encore. The audience hurried after this second piece of Klaus, to get off the cold and wet. In addition, and that was probably most people's main problem: they had to catch the last busses and trains (!), because they had come from all over the country. Later, someone from British Virgin Records who has never seen Dresden, wrote something about "police restrictions" which "imposed" KS to stop the concert. Nonsense! I wonder, again and again, why people in the record industry must say and write bullshit, when the plain truth is sensational enough. There were no restrictions, and I have not seen one policeman or any other official during our two days in Dresden. Back in the hotel we met a handful of fans who came from all over Europe to see Klaus Schulze play at this wonderful place, after 4½ years of no concerts. One of the fans I took by surprise. When he introduced himself with his first name, I could tell immediately his second name and where he comes from. He wrote quite a few time before, and I did answer so often, I knew his name and address by heart. The East German journalists in Dresden were more professional, more informed, more polite, and more civilized than the species we are used to know in the West. The East German writers see their job as their profession, the Westerners take their profession as just a job. One silly story from a concert, ages ago in (West-Germany's) Hamburg, comes to my mind. After the concert, the record company invited us and the press to a restaurant (most certainly a pizzeria). The blockhead from the notorious German BILD Zeitung asked us (yes, he really did!): How many Volts has your equipment? (I told the story already somewhere above.) Or, if I think of all the silly and wrong information in a February '93 article in the British magazine 'Sound On Sound'... Or the concert announcement in a Cologne newspaper, that "Klaus Schulze sings meditative songs at 8 p.m... including a small picture with the words, again: "Klaus Schulze sings...". Or the reviewer who mentions a "Wurlitzer" he had heard during KS' playing, which was the same who grumbles about "the strange look" of the "young" (!) audience. Or the review about a concert which didn't happen (indeed!). Or, in May 1993, a German radio man - for 25 years he writes about the German rock scene - who got all KS info from me, in addition he interviewed KS in length, but then on the program he announced Klaus as an artist who performed his "extravagant rock operas in all big churches all over Australia and USA." Seriously! I have the tape! The DRESDEN concert recordings were later released on two CDs, with some additional studio recordings. After DRESDEN I got one of these many inquiries which ask us for help. This time it was a Californian musician and label owner, Walter Holland, who had the idea to do a sampler CD dedicated to Dalí. What he wrote to us, made sense, was respectful, and sounded honestly. This were three reasons to agree. By accident KS was without a binding record contract for some weeks, so he could do what became the track THE FACE OF MAE WEST on the sampler DALI: THE ENDLESS ENIGMA. A propos California. I receive regularly many letters from fans and journalists. And from artists. Because I read them very consciously, answer to them, sometimes discuss matters, and this for over 20 years (meanwhile: over 30 years), I found out the following: Every country or area, and every type of person they all have their specialities. Everytime one such letter is written and sent by a Californian, it supports my image of the people living in that sunny American state: They seem to be all lunatics, with just one or two exceptions. As a result, I use the term "Californians" as a running gag, as a synonym for loonies. Not much to my surprise, many Americans from the other United States agree with me. The RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS even made a hit record "Californication". June 1991 saw the release of Klaus Schulze's next CD: BEYOND RECALL. A suitable heading for this production, although KS didn't know when he chose this title, that it will be the last disc which also was available on vinyl, beyond recall (but who knows...) At the beginning of 1991 we got the offer to give an open air concert outside the huge Cathedral in Cologne, as part of a kind of cultural festival; the same day saw two other "electronic" groups, among them ASHRA with old pals Manuel Goettsching and Harald Grosskopf. It was not easy to deal with the promoter of that concert, he seemed to be not very interested in this event, in the artists, or their music. I found that so irritating, that I phoned another promoter whom I knew for a long time, and asked him about that man. He is "an asshole" - was the information that I got, and that fitted perfectly to my very own impression. I went with ASHRA to Cologne, KS came independently. I helped both, ASHRA as well as Klaus. During the last (main) act, which was KS, suddenly the Cologne stage people started to do a poor "Disco light show", flickering lights, on and off... - although I told them before not to do anything with the light. The promoter even asked some weeks before, what kind of light show we want, and I explained to him: No light "show" at all ! We want it simple, discreet, the way we do it for many many years, just two colours, and maybe one change during the whole concert. And now, during the concert, they tried to disturb KS and his music with this unnecessary and childish playing with the light. I rushed to the responsible guy, told him to stop that, and it stopped. Until... until a boss from the local radio (who recorded the act) cropped up from nowhere, and found maybe the atmosphere too inactive, who knows?... anyway, he told the poor stage crew to do something with the light. This flickering "show" started again. I had to shout that radio boss off the stage... Only later I had to learn (from reviews in the local newspaper who had missed a good light show) that the whole event was indeed & long ago announced as "Sound and Light" event! Nobody had cared to tell us! And I even asked him before! What was my friend's specification for that promoter: ..."asshole"? Yes, he was one. This concert was not only recorded and partly broadcast by the local radio, but it was also recorded by Klaus directly from the mixer onto his digital recorder. This over one hour long piece was later released under the title THE DOME EVENT as the third of a CD trilogy of concert recordings by Klaus Schulze. The other two CDs contain recordings from his solo concert in London, four month after the Cathedral gig. For that London concert at the serious Royal Festival Hall we first wanted a supporting act, and I was thinking about the solo piano player Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who would fit musically perfectly. And I like him personally. But Roedelius had no support from any big record company, so we would have to pay Roedelius' fee and his other costs, which was finally too much, and I had to phone Hans-Joachim at his holidays' place to tell him: Sorry, good idea, but: no chance. One month after our smooth London concert we went to Spain to do five concerts, that were very good paid, we travelled from town to town always by plane... I wonder why the promoter did it? Had he to get rid of some (black) money? In addition, he gave us what he called a "tour manager", who also got airplane tickets from town to town (which are not cheap). Because I used to be a tour manager myself (see the first part of this story), I can say, that this "tour manager" was everything, especially a well dressed man with some dainty pair of sunglasses, but he was no tour manager. We only saw him at the airports, anyway. He was no help at all - and we urgently needed help: No Spaniard speaks another language than Spanish (!) Not even French. Not even the employees at the wonderful and huge international concert halls where we played, speak one word of English, French, Italian, German. I wonder what they do when they have the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and every second musician ask for the toilet, the dressing rooms, the next phone, for some money change, for the way to the bar, for the promoter, for the light, and many many other technical necessities. Probably they are more clever than we and travel with their own interpreter? One of our own German roadies used to travel with theater groups, he said: He never experienced such non-professionalism with stage people as in Spain. KS said at the end of the last concert (where he was nearly killed by a falling light traverse, and I nearly killed the responsible drunk Spanish stagehand): "Russia can't be worse." (Izviníte -sorry- to all Russians. -kdm) The good side: The weather, the halls, 4 of the 5 local promoters, and last but not least: the audience, all were extraordinary. One after another of the three "live" CDs were released by VIRGIN, more or less worldwide, and all three got great response. The reviews from all over the world, and the private letters from fans, were more than positive. Just one review was negative. Very rudely negative, so that -for the first time!- I didn't find it necessary to react. Around this time, I stopped generally to react, trying to help, and writing letters to journalists or editors, to the same extent as before. I did that for many many years, I reacted on every article about Klaus, trying to correct and help, but - I fear - without much of a success. Most writer's interest in the music, their thinking and writing about it, is not as large as it should be. The same goes for the language and layout that they use sometimes, as well as for their knowledge or ideas about cultural things in general, not to mention their knowledge about the music business, the musical history, or any other music than their own beloved T.D., or KS, or Jarre, or whatever. I do excuse all this, if the journalist is 17 years of age, but I cannot tolerate this when he's a grown man. I stopped to write and offer help, to explain things... (There are exceptions!) While the trilogy of ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 1 & 2 and THE DOME EVENT made headlines, KS did not ate the bread of idleness. He cannot help, but his studio and his music are his daily life. He did some soundtrack music for the TV, and althought he was asked just for a few seconds, he did hours and hours of various music. In addition, he did some so-called classical music, he played no interpretation but the original compositions of people like Bach, Brahms, Bartók, Schubert, Smetana, Beethoven, Mozart, and others, completely synthetical with the computer. Further, he did the soundtrack for a French movie, LE MOULIN DE DAUDET, and he did film music for a German film, but the director couldn't pay the agreed sum, and KS got back his soundtrack tapes. Finally, Klaus did plenty of music without asking for a fee, for a therapy house to help alcoholics. The contract with Virgin Records, although still valid for some more albums, was terminated by E.M.I. KS was not the only artist or employee, they had to get rid of, one way or another, when E.M.I. swallowed Richard Branson's beloved company. Most of Virgin's first class managers voluntarily left the boat, and half the Virgin employees were fired by big brother E.M.I.. KS' and other artists' contracts were probably too expensive for the mercenary spirit of E.M.I. After they got rid of that expensive but still binding contract with Klaus, they offered a new one, but for a much lower compensation. The feeling of freedom to do what we want, is great for KS as well as for me. We can realize our 10 CD set idea, we can sell a soundtrack here, another there... No pressure to "do the next CD". We enjoy the fruits of so many years of work, knowing that we will go on, setting even more points of references, trying out new ideas... 16 September 1993. Klaus is proud about what he calls his "opera", and I have heard the final version some days ago. Maybe it's too early to give a fair opinion? There's neither a similarity to Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" nor to Strauss' "Salome", or anything between (Mozart, Rossini, Wagner etc.). For Klaus, and for a first attempt in this new field it's okay. But I wonder if I'll listen to it a second time. Sorry, Klaus. I simply miss in TOTENTAG all what's positive in an oldfashioned opera: beautiful arias or duets, musical themes that come and are repeated, slowly generated characters, an identifiable form ... Instead, TOTENTAG is full with what I don't like with operas: the recitative and the parlandos. Also, I miss any stage picture, miss an image. Maybe it's not enough to do some typical Schulze music, and add to that some studied operatic voices? "Form ohne Gehalt ist Kitsch, Gehalt ohne Form ist Dilettantismus." I don't know yet, what to think about TOTENTAG's Gehalt (substance), but I certaily miss the form. Maybe it's a good first try, and next time it will be better. KS also creates these things to learn for a better next time. Indeed, he told me how much he had learned during the work on this opera and with these singers. Which is one positive thing out of that. And, I add, he should see that he gets a better "form" next time. No one forces Klaus to call a thing "ABCDE" but if he calls a thing "ABCDE" it should have the form of "ABCDE". (PS: in 2003 KS had sent me three CD-Rs with a "new" opera from him. Gladly, it was not released). November '93. Our SILVER EDITION is released. I got the 2000 sets with 20,000 CDs on the 2nd of November, and on the 4th and 5th we put the sets together and sent them out, to circa one thousand customers who kindly trusted us and sent their valuable money in advance. SILVER EDITION is a collection of 10 CDs, with ten hours of new and hitherto not released music by KS, and two hours and a half with old concert recordings from 1975 to '77. As the very last "bonus" track on disc ten I included the collectors' item LAND from 1972 in a different, which is: longer version. We kept this LAND inclusion secretly in our advance promotion. (Everybody else is doing promotion the usual way: promising everything, but finally giving just half of it. I like to work the other way around.) The overwhelming success for the set overtook me in early 1994. The reactions were fantastic (Thanks again, folks!). We had very good reviews before, and I remember the overwhelming letters and articles about the last three CDs, the ROYAL FESTIVAL HALL 1 and 2, as well as for THE DOME EVENT. But now, the ten CD set SILVER EDITION tops even this. One fan from Amsterdam whose opinion I regard normally very high, he compared KS to God "if" he "would believe in God". Thanks to the same almighty, this friend is able to express himself so good, it sounded not painful but just honest. SILVER EDITION is an artistic success. I'm proud of it. Of the idea, of my work. And I'm thankful to Klaus that he did let me do it my way, ...and, last but not least, that he did all that music! Of course there are always one or two who have to find little faults even in this wonderful set of 12½ hours of music, which musically is close to perfection. Their woeful mind, their illogical judgements, and a kind of personal fight, all this leads them to some kind of malicious innuendos about small things which they never see, hear or write about at other artists' records, but only with KS' albums. It's psychologically most interesting: They seem to see KS as a kind of private property?! As long as Klaus is doing what they want, it's okay. As soon as he's doing his own things (what KS is doing all the time. Only accidentally the two tastes meet), and it doesn't fit into one's scheme, he gets criticised. They rarely do it with a man like Vangelis or Jarre, maybe because they never had personal contact to these men. But KS "belongs" to them, they could actually touch or speak to him many times, they saw that KS is a normal human being like themselves, so they treat him like one of their buddies. They cannot imagine that KS is a friendly and polite man when he meets people, but that he lives in a different (musical) world. Doing music is his profession, with all periods of change, and he cares a lot about what he's doing musically. Music is his life, in opposition to the lifes of these writers, or part-time writers, or fans. For them it's just a nice hobby. They live mostly in the past, in their remembrances of youth, when they heard for the first time TIMEWIND or "X" or anything; but for KS only the present counts, and the future. Fans and writers have record collections, KS has his life. Of course there are some things one could criticise about the music, or the packaging of the music, if one would have some more knowledge about musical, visual, grammatical or other things. Regrettable, rarely they have... With good authority they mostly pick the wrong matters, and miss the right ones. There are a few who know, and who are able to express it, and there are others who - if they don't know something - keep quiet, because they can imagine that there is something they may not understand... I love and respect those, because they show love and respect to the care and the honest work of others. Thanks, guys. The above is not a sponataneous today's idea. I read, study, help, write for, worry and reflect about many musical (E.M. and other) magazines and fanzines for over twenty years. Since some years, since the rise of all the many musically mediocre E.M. successors, the quality of the writing gets lower. Sometimes even the "journalist" makes his own electronic music, and gets good reviews from his collegue, who also does his own E.M. - In return, the first one writes positively about the latter... And both spit on the known, "famous" names. Yes, these things do happen. You want names? Check, for instance, the French fanzine CRYSTAL INFOS, or some American radio programmers... As once said in an interview: It is most irritating for KS and for me, if a critic compares a hobby E.M. player with a master and inventor such as Klaus Schulze. This is even more the case, if open ears with some experience and knowledge can hear that the hobby music in question is badly produced, played boringly, and that he apparently copied from a copy of a copy of, say, PHAEDRA, or MOONDAWN. This copying seems to be done in most cases unconsciously, in a kind of honest naïvity. When I speak to those players, they generally uncover a non-reflection of their doings, that I am not used from talks with true artists. I asked those hobby players some simple but basic questions, musically as well as in regard of their records, and they didn't know what I was talking about ("What vision do you have?" - "Me? Vision??"). No wonder that all their records and music look and sound the same. They don't know much about the music's past, and they don't think much about a visionary future. They lack fancyful imagination and courage. They rarely know something about musical theories, they often don't even know that a variety of these things does exist. The latter goes for most of the writers in fanzines as well ... 'Nuff said! April 1995. Some months ago I produced another set, HISTORIC EDITION. It contains just old concert and studio recordings by Klaus. From the many old tapes that are stored in my sleeping room. I put those ten CDs together in November 1994. The guy that I chose as the record label for my Silver Edition, revealed to be not reliable. For the new ten CD set, HISTORIC EDITION, I asked Mario Schönwälder, if he wants to be the record label (and he said: yes, of course). Now, many months later, I can gratefully say that taking Mario was a good decision. I mustn't explain him many things. He has some brain, has some experience in life, some good own ideas. He is used to do necessary office work. He is reliable. I can finally concentrate on producing the records. All the many things that I had to do in the past because of my former partner's intolerable slowness or dullness, became void. Mario is doing much more and he's doing it more precise and at the right moment. Which leads finally to fewer work for all of us. (Postscript: We have now the year 2000 and we had some more releases exclusively with Mario ...and my good opinion about him is still the same.) The success of HISTORIC EDITION is as big as with SILVER EDITION. Even if many prefer the historic recordings to the newer titles from SILVER EDITION. The set is now nearly sold out, and until today I only got very positive reactions. Besides, it sold faster than the first set. An interesting story in regard with HISTORIC EDITION: Many fans ask since years for the recording of the 1977 concert in Brussels' St. Michael's Cathedral. Although I have a professional tape with one track from that, and I have some cassettes with the recording of this good concert, sadly I had to realize that the original tape has distortion on it, and the cassettes are just too poor in sound. Therefore, I asked the Belgium radio that recorded this concert, if they have and can give us a tape copy. Yes, they said, but they asked for a lot of money and offered a rigid contract. Okay, I did this. Literally on the last hour, during the mastering of the 10 CDs in Hamburg, we got with a courier the DAT copy from Belgium. Sadly, one track had the same distortion as my original tape. The longer track was okay, except for a disturbing 50 Hertz noise during the soft part at the end. God bless Peter Harenberg in Hamburg who was able to remove the unwished 50 Hertz sound, and I could include this long title on Disc One of our HISTORIC EDITION. For this, I had to throw out already two prepared titles: one that I didn't like as much as the others; and one that KS didn't like. (PS: I included them in our next set: The Ultimate Edition) KS was not present for the two days of mastering in Hamburg. He only was there for one or two hours, and then went back home, because his old mother had a heart attack, and he wanted to stay with her. One year later, February 1996: Klaus' friendly mother celebrated her 73rd birthday. And Klaus had just rebuilt his studio and will start to work for a new solo CD... Still in February 1996: I found a small piece of paper that says: Postscript for KS story. Hambühren: Harzer Käse in Bratpfanne + Lieblingsessen Spaghetti mit Tomatensosse. Nie abgewaschen! Means: During 1975/76, sometimes Klaus liked to fry a stinky German cheese - "Harzer" - in a pan!!! I couldn't stand it because the whole house stank for many hours. In addition, he never cleaned the dirty and sticky frying pan after this "meal". Besides this odd preference by KS, our most loved food was spaghetti with tomato souce. If I think about the way we used to do them, and the way I am doing them now... oh my God - how could we eat that stuff then? The KS story will go on...

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