Music Reissues Weekly: Kraftwerk - Autobahn at 50

“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode attractive in the US.” That, in full, in its 1 March 1975 issue, was US music business paper Billboard’s review of the single of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn.”

Three weeks later, with the single at 75 on its charts, Billboard went into it a little more. “With all the German avant-garde groups knocking vainly at US doors for the past five years, Kraftwerk is the first to make it. The extra ingredient appears to be the hypnotic prettiness of its synthesizer excursions. ‘Autobahn’ single is a 3:27 excerpt from a piece that takes up all of side one of its debut album [in the US, that is] which sold an outstanding 100,000 in Europe. The piece is a fantasy on the sensations of a drive along Germany's freeway system. Incidentally, Kraftwerk translates to electric power plant.”

The edit of the just-short of 23-minute album track heard on the single wasn’t Kraftwerk’s idea. "It was the Chicago boss of Phonogram who cut the track down to three minutes," the band’s engineer Conny Plank told the UK’s Record Mirror in May 1975. "It was purely meant for radio promotion in the States but we were rather pleased when we heard it, that's exactly how we would have done it." (pictured right, the 1975 US promotional single of "Autobahn")

Before Billboard’s single review, Kraftwerk had already made waves in the US. The paper's 15 February 1975 issue ran a full-page ad declaring “Kraftwerk’s Autobahn on a collision course to the top of the charts.” This was the album. Ultimately, it climbed to five on the national charts while “Autobahn” the single peaked at 25. Consequently, a US tour was undertaken from April 1975 onwards: foreshadowing the title of their 1978 album, the tour was billed (in German in US ads) as Die Mensch Maschine.

In the UK, the trajectory was similar. The single and the album – issued in a different sleeve to the German and US releases – entered the charts in May 1975, hitting four and 11 respectively. A tour was booked but follow-up single “Kometenmelodie 2,” also drawn from the album, did not chart.

Thus, the fluid markers denoting the 50th anniversary of Autobahn: the album was first issued in Germany in November 1974. The anniversary is marked by a smart picture disc version of the album: the image is the blue-and-white representation of an autobahn and a bridge used for the 1975 UK sleeve. As any reissues are band sanctioned, this, rather than the original German sleeve, is how Kraftwerk prefer the album. Like the US “Autobahn” single edit, the UK sleeve was not the band’s idea yet it has been adopted by them. The audio on the picture disc is as per the 2019 digital master used on a reissue then. It’s Kraftwerk’s first non-bootleg picture disc. Also out is a seven-inch “Autobahn” single. Additionally, a Blu-ray edition of the album features a new Dolby Atmos surround-sound mix, undertaken at Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang Studio using the original 16-track tapes. The band’s Ralf Hütter and their engineer Fritz Hilpert are behind this. (pictured left, the original 1974 German release of the Autobahn LP)

The new remix won’t be for everyone as only so many potential purchasers have a Blu-ray set up with surround sound (there is a streaming option too), and opinions about the legitimacy of such post-fact reworking will put off others. However, the result here is illuminating. Listening in the right setting places the listener within the music: as if the instrumentation is in front, behind, beside. There are no whizzy left-to-right, front-to-back pans but an approach focusing on creating this live ambience. There is also an extraordinary clarity. It is alive, organic. Well worth hearing.  

While these new releases are in line with the status conferred on Kraftwerk nowadays, attitudes to the band in 1975 were often less-than admiring. The PR material accompanying the picture disc, single and Blu-ray describes the album as “a sublime symphony of electronic sound paintings and cinematic landscapes, experimental noises and serenely beautiful melodies...Kraftwerk's Autobahn album rewired the pop rulebook and changed music forever.” Unquestionably, but back in 1975 other – less favourable – perspectives were conspicuous. (pictured right, the new picture disc Autobahn LP)

NME’s May 1975 review of the album said Kraftwerk were “fumbling for approachability” and that they “blow the few avant-garde credentials fans of their earlier work mysteriously awarded them.” For fellow UK music weekly Melody Maker that May, the album comprised “odd noises from percussion and synthesiser [which] drift out of the speakers without any comprehensible order while a few words are muttered from time to time in a strange tongue.” A German band employing German-language vocals was bewildering.

Over in the US, the shows subsequent to the chart entry induced comment. According to the San Francisco Examiner, the performance “dehumanized its participants to the point of being robots. Never a smile, never an acknowledgement, never a foot tapping — in fact, they call themselves ‘Die Mensch Maschine,’ meaning ‘the human machine.’" The Los Angeles Times said “it's difficult to envision this sort of thing catching on significantly with the young audience (even the bellows of ‘rock 'n' roll!’ from the crowd were half-hearted, as if the shouters realized their efforts wouldn't cause a drum kit to materialize on the stage).” (pictured left, the 1975 UK release of the Autobahn LP)

The British music press got into gear when Kraftwerk played the UK in September 1975. Sounds’ Geoff Barton saw them in Newcastle. “I'm unable to fathom Kraftwerk or, for that matter, come to grips with their deadpan seriousness,” he wrote in his live review. “But, at the same time, I'd not try to dissuade anyone from seeing them on this tour.” Barton also interviewed them. He noted the “the atmosphere is abominably tense, like that of a dentist's waiting room.”

An extract of what followed in Barton’s article: “The concert a few hours ago at the Mayfair had attracted a remarkably well-behaved and attentive Geordie crowd. Had Kraftwerk somehow tried to brainwash them and managed to subdue their notorious rowdiness?” ‘We not only try to brainwash people,’ says [Florian] Schneider. ‘We succeed. We see the audience out there staring at us, we find we can control their minds to some extent for the hour during which we are on stage.’ So you can manipulate people?’ ‘Partly. Not manipulate them into actual physical action, just to keep them quiet to enable them to receive our music very deeply.’ Could you go a step further and inflict injury? ‘Well, yes, we could,’ murmurs [Ralf] Hütter. Matter-of-factly. ‘When you are aware of the fact that music is a process of brainwashing and manipulation, you realise that it can also go in the direction of damage. We have the power to push the knobs on our machines this way or that and cause damage.’ ‘It can be like doctors with patients,’ claims Schneider, as I try to banish a look of horror from my face. ‘They have the same sort of power. Their patients are very much in their hands, as our audience is in our hands.’ I expect to hear a fiendish cackle, but it doesn't come." (pictured right, Kraftwerk, as NME of 6 September 1975 saw them)

Also that September, NME reprinted a Kraftwerk article which had first appeared in the US magazine Creem. Written by Lester Bangs, it also went for the evil doctor/scientist angle and posited that if Kraftwerk were able to deliver their music to listeners through “electrodes in the brain” it would be "the final solution to the music problem." NME created a graphic to accompany the piece. Part of it is reproduced above. No comment here is necessary. At this point, the October 1975 release of Autobahn’s follow-up album Radio-Aktivität was a month off. The band were moving on and were with a new record label but, by then, assorted viewpoints on Kraftwerk were committed to print.

The anniversary of Autobahn is absolutely worth marking, but it’s also worth bearing in mind that back in 1975 Kraftwerk were not necessarily seen the way they are today.

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