INTERVIEW WITH EMIL SCHULT by Steffen irlinger

Emil Schult is probably the least famous member of Kraftwerk. He is also probably the only former member who never had legal quarries with the notoriously secretive bandleaders Ralph Schneider and Florian Hütter. Schult met the two when he went to Art School in Düsseldorf where he studied Fine Arts with Dieter Roth. He was also interested in music and joined the band on their early performances. I first became aware of him when i had to type a playlist for a radio show on Kraftwerk and his name showed up as lyricist for both “Autobahn” and “The Model”. He told me that he wrote a lot more lyrics for them and also painted the picture for the cover of the german issue of Autobahn. The painting today graces the walls of kraftwerk´s Kling Klang Studio in Düsseldorf. When Emil Schult had a big exhibition of his work in 2019 he asked Hütter and Schneider if he could borrow his painting for the exhibition. They declined. But Schult still regards the late Schneider and Hütter as friends and doesn´t utter a negative word on his former bandmates. After many years living in the Bahamas, he returned to his hometown Vierssen near Cologne. His Studio is located in a rundown area of the town that has a rich history as one of the centers of the textile industry in Germany but has decades of decline etched into the urban landscape. He rented the place for next to nothing and keeps his collection of vintage racing bikes (a hobby he shares with his former bandmates) in the former bowling area of the pub. His studio also functions as a semiofficial youth club. When he is in his studio he also takes for some of the children of the neighbouring low rise buildings, feeds them and occasionally talks to their parents about problems. During our interview several of them showed up to see what Emil was up to.

Please tell me about your early days at Art School

I studied in Münster and always wanted to join the famous academy of arts the “Kunstakademie” in Düsseldorf. Because of the 1968 stúdent riots my studies in Münster were interrupted and i used the time to prepare and apply for “Kunstakademie”. I had a good time in Münster and learned a lot there. It was a good place to fool around with ideas as there was little pressure. In my preparation for Düsseldorf my work dealt a lot with the student revolution, Rudi Dutschke and the APO. 1969 i was accepted in Düsseldorf and joined the academy.

You grew up near Düsseldorf?

Yes, i grew up in Mönchengladbach, near Düsseldorf and in the Sixties my hometown was a very restrictive, culturally poor place. In 1964, after school graduation i applied for a scholarship and went to the USA. I was at the “New York World´s Fair” and there was a showroom sponsored by an automobile company – I can´t remember which one – that was called Futurama. It was supposed to show how the world would look like in 2000, you know with cities beneath the ocean and things like that. This show partly was accompanied by early electronic music. From that moment on electronic music for me was a gateway to the future. That´s what it was to me. “If we have a vision of the future, electronic music will help us to get there”. That was my belief and I kept working with it to this very day.

Originally you started visual art. How did you start working with music also?

After New York i bought a lot of records with early electronic music. I remember buying some of Henk Badings records and the stuff the Phillips released out of their studio for experimental music. A fantastic series. And whenever i drew or painted i would listen to these records. Sometimes i would listen to other, more popular music too, but mosty it was experimental electronic music. To me it had a special kind of drive and a deepness that didn´t find anywhere else. I was not an expert, i was more a fan. Then i became more interested in it´s history and in sound, filters and sound generation in general.

How was Düsseldorf like, compared to Münster.

Compared to Münster Düsseldorf was much more happening. It had much more energy and a lively music scene. There were all kinds of places from Jazz Clubs to posh places, to shady pubs where they played Schlager and traditional “Volksmusik”. At the academy back then there were small groups of students who worked with music. That was the core of the experimental music scene. I studied with Dieter Roth and worked in an experimental way with common instruments like violins. I tried to electrify them and that was my first step to make music of my own. I built my own electric violin with a pickup cartridge and a transmitter. I think the creative person builds stuff himself. This violin made amazing sounds but also disturbing sounds. At performances instead of playing the violin i would drag it around the stage and it still made sounds. At that time this was disturbing even for the art crowd. Today this is not a big thing, people have learned and if you watch old footage of Joseph Beuys or Nam HJun Paik their performances seem almost boring, but back then it was radical and it had to be done. Music and art in general has to test the borders of what is possible. Art invents the future languages of mankind. And sometimes it transcends borders of taste and what is acceptable at a given moment in time.

How did you become a member of Kraftwerk?

It started with the exchange of instruments. Florian Schneider came over to my studio and asked for a violin bow. I gave it to him and he invited me to visit him in his studio. So i went and was pretty impressed with the equipment Florian and Ralph had assembled there. They had an impressive collection of drum machines, effectboards and synthies. It was state of the art. Florian and Ralph both came from a wealthy background and had the means to buy the newest equipment whenever I turned up. And that was what they did.

Did you know the band already?

Yes, i studied in the class of Diether Roth and used their music to score experimental films i did, because i thought their music was ultramodern. Something that always excited me about early electronic music was the way they experimented with concrete music. You know people like Xenakis and the others. How can i use concrete sounds in music? Running water or the sound of a car. This is sound and also a musical entity. How can i work with that? I wanted to work in a similar way. Maybe because i´m not a trained musician i didn´t know about traditional harmonic structures and my music was always a little off. This is the case to this day and so my music is not so easily digestable.

Is it correct to say that during the late 60´s early 70´s a lot of musicians especially in Düsseldorf were on a similar path?

I think it was a way to distinguish themselves from the angloamerican music that was popular at the time. In the radio they only played angloamerican popmusic or Schlager or Volksmusic ot traditional classical music. I think there was a need for what we now call experimental music. And Joseph Beuys supported that at the academy and beyond. He would often show up at concerts or in studios and there were other people like fluxus artist Henning Christiansen who had weird instruments and slowly a small scene developed that went beyond the classical Rock and Pop Scene. And so in Düsseldorf a lot of bands worked with experimental structures and one of the places where this was executed and intensified was the Kraftwerk Studio.

Tell us about the early days of your work with Kraftwerk

In the beginning we started with small jamsessions where we still worked with guitar, bass, drums and organs and from there we went in a more experimental way. I liked that a lot because in had the opportunity to contribute without proper training. Florian gave me one of his used guitars and i attributed a trasmitter to it and manipulated the frequencies of the guitar. This was an early form of frequency- modulation. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn´t. If the transmitter was to far away it didn´t work. But we would use it on stage, even in larger halls. Because it didn´t have cables i could move around on roller skates and if i went beyond the range of the transmitter it made a loud cracking noise. I liked that a lot, but it didn´t go down well with the concert audience and so my time as an active member of the live band came to an early end. From then on i worked on the lyrics and the artwork, where I could bring in my experience and training as a visual artist.

Which lyrics did you write or co – write?

A lot. It started with “Autobahn”, then there was “Radioactivity”… actually on the “Radioactivity” album i worked on a lot of the lyrics for example on “Uranium”. Then “The Model”, “Computerworld”, “Music Non Stop” etc. i think all in all I worked on 14 or 15 songs.

Tell me about the lyrics for “The Model”

In Düsseldorf there were a lot of advertising agencies and photographers. Düsseldorf is a wealthy city and the big companies spend a lot of money for advertising campaigns. And off course this rubbed off on the nightlife infrastructure. A lot of clubs and bars opened and when we didn´t make music we went to these places. We would go out, check out the people, the nightlife, the way they dressed and the music that was played. And because of the ad agencies sand the photographers a lot of models frequented these clubs. It was obvious that we had to write a song about it. But if you listen closely to the lyrics they are quite critical of the scene: “she is looking good, for beauty we will pay, now´s she´s a big success, i want to see her again…“ It is about beauty being bought. If you asked Joseph Beuys: What is beauty? he would say, “beauty is the shine of truth”. He doesn´t say that it can be bought or should be bought.

What about „Autobahn“?

Our lyrics came out of the process of working and everyday life. With “Autobahn” for example we decided to design it as a journey, like music to a film, so that the song would also work like on a visual level. You can imagine what is going on listening to it. The song opens with the sound of a starting car. That was already unusual back then. And then we went on a journey over the Autobahn like we did in real live. We used what we experienced.

In the case of „Autobahn“, the music was there first. And i had the idea for the part „fahrn, fahrn, fahrn auf der (on the) Autobahn”…. I don´t remember where it came from but from there we told a story that ends with: “Now we are switching the radio on

From the speaker sounds: Wir fahrn fahrn fahrn auf der Autobahn“ and so it is built like a little loop within the story. Maybe that´s why the song is still popular and famous.

Kraftwerk always seemed like believers in progress and technology. How do you view the state of things regarding technology?

That is a tough question. On the one hand technology is a wonderful thing. Suddenly a deaf person can order a pizza over a keypad, people have a whole library of music on their phone and things like that. On the other hand we are in the middle of Kratftwerk´s “Computerworld” and it also means that Deutsche Bank, CIA and all these companies now have our data. How do we deal with that? I´ve been to China last year and there all the young people tell me: “We already know that we are transparent”. We are fully aware of that. And we don´t mind, because it´s only one part of our personality. Maybe in the west we also have to develop a different look on how to deal with that.

Are things like self - driving cars and AI the modern day results of the concept of the Man Machine?

I have to say i didn´t really like what came after “Man Machine”. Off course it is a consequence of their concept and therefore it is a logical endpoint. The term “Manmachine” is accurate, but i have a different view of the whole concept. What defines humans? What defines machines? We are beyond humanism. We are all modified in one way or another. How do we look at the world from this new perspective? How do we view the future? What is music´s role in that? These are all questions I ask myself and therefore I developed transhuman art critics where we try to find answers to these questions. I still think that Kraftwerks concept of man, machine and robots was revolutionary and powerful and inspired a lot of people, but it also has it´s faults and limitations and needs to be developed further. In the seventies in California people already thought about the idea of digitizing humans and transform them into computers. And old idea that is still relevant. Progress is ongoing.

Why did you leave Kraftwerk?

After “Trans Europa Express” where I did the artwork we were not so close anymore. We barely communicated and so i went to California in 1979 and tried to study and understand Artificial Intelligence. During that time we didn´t communicate at all because the band also was on a hiatus between 1979 and 1981. I went to the Carribean, got married and the rest of the band was in Germany driving around with their racing bikes. And i think it was important to take a break for them. My contribution to Krsaftwerk after Mensch Maschine were only marginal and so it ended. There was no big fight. It just came to an end. They are still my friends and i think their legacy and their body of work is exceptional.

Kraftwerk are the most popular of the german bands of the seventies. How did the other bands in Düsseldorf deal with their international and commercial success?

I think commercialication and in the arts in general is a difficult topic. If a painting by Gerhard Richter is worth 40 Million Euro even Richter himself would probably say that this is somehow wrong and should raise concerns. I don´t think art and culture should be measured like that. I think humanity has exchanged empathy, love and understanding with money. That´s what we suffer from. We need to learn to go back and ask ourselves what makes us human, what is the essence of human existence? Off course interesting things will always be visible and valued. If something is outstanding, very different and maybe disturbing then it has good chance to get recognized. That is something that is missing currently. Especially in music. With streaming a lot of music is produced that is redundant. Music used to have a different functiion in society. It brought inspiration, calm, beauty, adventure. If it´s only goal is to generate money something is wrong. Off course the developmemnt of eölectronic music is partly responsible for the overload of useless and redundant music.

Where do you see traces of Kraftwerk´s legacy?

Their traces are everywhere. HipHop, Electro, Techno and all this current music derived from the latter are all influenced in one way or another by what Kraftwerk did. They are a beacon of electronic music. You can mention Stockhausen, you can name Eliane Radigue, you can name Oskar Sala and off course also Florian Schneider and Ralph Hütter. As a visual artist for a lot of years i work on art that celebrates these Pioneers. Pay hommage to them. I paint portraits of these people and if i have an exhibtion, they hang close to each other. Recently i painted homer Dudley, the inventor of  the vocoder and so on. These people helped to invent our modernity, our modern life.

What are you currently working on?

At the moment i work on the interaction of music and visuals. This was always important to me. As i said the song „Autobahn“ was conceived as a kind of musicfilm. That´s what i´m still interested in. Music and pictures, pictures and music and their combination and crosspollinations There is something called synesthesia. It´s an important step in culture. Synesthesia started with the opera and the combination of music and visuals creates a unique third element, a feeling of romance if you will. I still think that there will be a golden era ahead of us and music will play it´s part. We just have to do it right. We have all this opportunities and technologies. This is a unique and unprecedented situation and we have to use our tools wisely.