Klaus Dinger - Neu! -- 1971-1973

Neu! -- 1971-1973

Having broken off from Kraftwerk, Rother and Dinger quickly began the recording sessions for what would become Neu!. The band was christened "Neu!" by Dinger (Rother had been against the name, preferring a more "organic" title) and a pop-art style logo created, featuring italic capitals: NEU! Dinger recalls about Neu!'s logo:

"...it was a protest against the consumer society but also against our "colleagues" on the Krautrock scene who had totally different taste/styling if any. I was very well informed about Warhol, Pop Art, Contemporary Art. I had always been very visual in my thinking. Also, during that time, I lived in a commune and in order to get the space that we lived in, I set up an advertising agency which existed mainly on paper. Most of the people that I lived with were trying to break into advertising so I was somehow surrounded by this Neu! all the time."

The pair recorded in Star Studios in Hamburg, with the up-and-coming Krautrock producer Konrad Plank, as Dinger had with Kraftwerk. Dinger describes Conny's abilities as a "mediator" between the often disagreeing factions within the band. The band were booked in to the studio for four days in late 1971, according to Dinger, the first two days were unproductive, until Dinger brought his Japanese Banjo to the sessions, a heavily treated version of which can be heard on "Negativland", the first of the album's six tracks to be recorded.

It was during these sessions that Dinger first played his famous "motorik" beat. Motorik is a repeated 4/4 drumbeat with only occasional interruptions, perhaps best showcased on "Hallogallo". Dinger claims never to have called the beat "motorik" himself, preferring either "lange gerade" ("long straight") or "endlose gerade" ("endless straight"). He later changed the beat's "name" to the "Apache beat" to coincide with his 1985 solo album Neondian.

Neu! sold well for an underground album at the time, according to Dinger approximately 30,000 copies were sold. In order to promote the release the record label, Brain Records, organised a tour. Ex-Pissoff frontman Eberhard Kranemann was brought in to play bass, the trio recording a "practice" jam in preparation. The recording of this would later be released as Neu! '72 Live in Dusseldorf. Only some of the tour dates allotted were ever fulfilled, Rother later saying that he felt Neu! were not a touring band and that he and Dinger were at loggerheads over performance style.

"At some shows blood splashed, when Klaus hurt himself with a broken cymbal. The audience was very much impressed by this radical and ecstatic performance. I never felt the need for this kind of performance and always tried to come across with just the music. So I sat behind my few effect devices and pedals and focused on the developing music and not so much on the audience."

In summer 1972 Dinger and Rother went to Conny Plank's studios in Cologne to record a single. Dinger later said that the record company had tried to dissuade them from making it as it was not commercially viable. Nevertheless, the single Super/Neuschnee was released. The A-Side, Super, showcased the proto-punk style that Dinger would later adopt for his band La Düsseldorf.

The following January, Neu! again entered the studio to record their second album: Neu! 2. Far more heavily produced than their debut, the first side was recorded relatively slowly in the first and second months of 1973, and was aimed more specifically at foreign markets—the opening track "Fũr Immer" was subtitled "Forever", an English translation. Brain's parent label Metronome Records began releasing the Neu! albums and single in the United Kingdom around this time, with alternative covers, hoping to mirror the success of other German bands, such as Faust and Tangerine Dream, but unfortunately sales failed to match their German counterparts.

The second side of Neu! 2 has become notorious in the music press since its release. It features various tape manipulated versions of the two tracks from the Super/Neuschnee single released the previous summer. There have been several conflicting explanations as to why this was done, the most quoted being Dinger's assertion that:

"When the money ran out, I got the idea of taking the single, play around with it and put the results on side 2 of the album."

However, this has recently been refuted by Michael Rother, who claims that the second side was made to aggravate their record label, who they felt had insufficiently promoted the original release of the Super/Neuschnee single, and not as a result of financial problems. Either way, the second side of the album was ill-met by fans who thought, according to Rother, that "we were making fun of them." This issue contibuted to the widening gap between Dinger and Rother, both creatively and personally. Dinger later said of the issue:

" was absolutely my idea. I came from that world, Pop Art thinking. Michael did not like the idea. These days he claims that everything in NEU! was 50/50. Financially: yes. Creatively: no. He was always very conventional."