Wolfgang Flur was a member of Kraftwerk from 1973 to 1987, contributing to albums such as Autobahn (1974), Radioaktivitat (1975), Trans-Europa Express (1977), Die Mensch-Maschine (1978), Computerwelt (1981) and Electric Cafe (1986). He continues to record music with his solo album Eloquence being released in 2015.
I thought the Spacemen 3 biography was bad but this makes it look like high literature. I dislike the ‘so bad it’s good’ cliché but this really is so awful in it’s hilarious, exhaustive badness that it does almost come out the other side. The trashiness is so extreme that at times I had to stop and question whether the whole thing is a massive pisstake, but after much contemplation I have to conclude the author really does believe what he writes.
Massively bitter at what he feels is his unfair sidelining by Kraftwerk mainmen Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter, the story is essentially an extended character assassination of his former employers. Some of his grievances probably are genuine, but he whines on about them at such length (the book is about 3 times as long as the average pop biog for no clear reason) that you lose all sympathy for him by about Chapter 5. He’s so desperate to convince readers of what awful people Schneider and Hutter are that he picks up on flimsy details like their obsessive love of cycling (!) and dislike of touring as evidence of their pure evil. He tries to support his case by dragging in other people who have fallen out with Kraftwerk (Conny Plank’s widow, Emil Schult who tellingly later falls out with the author and refuses to be quoted in the book) and pads out the material with extended chest-puffing about his own creative genius in his post-Kratfwerk project Yamo (no, me neither) who scaled the commercial heights of releasing one album that stiffed in the late-90s and collaborated with the singer from Pizzicato 5. Of course he’s pathetic enough to blame Yamo’s failure on a high-level conspiracy at record label EMI and proceeds to quote his own lyrics at length (imagine a 12 year old writing a meaningful poem about the dangers of environmental disaster and you’ll get an idea of the flavour).
Perhaps Flur’s greatest sin though is his dreary lumpen prose – after all, scathing indictments of former colleagues and self-aggrandisement have made for some highly entertaining memoirs, but his myriad complaints are related in such unimaginative repetitive fashion that it just makes the book incredibly boring. At times I thought maybe the translator had done him some kind of disservice as particular words turn up with almost perverse frequency – for example every hotel, chair, bed, sexual conquest, car, bar, airplane and dressing room is described as ‘comfortable’ or ‘uncomfortable’! A total car crash of a book.
Frequently hilarious in the way that it lingers on the things you don't necessarily want to know (like the long passage when Wolfgang has just met Ralf and Florian with a view to being in the band, and Florian drives them from the pub to the studio, and Wolfgang describes the exact route, street by street, and admires Florian's smooth and careful driving). Wolfgang will give you a longer chapter on a woman he nearly had sex with in New York than on the making of any of the Kraftwerk albums. So don't go in expecting a conventional rock biography. But there's loads of those, aren't there? Not of Kraftwerk, admittedly.
Look out for: -a juvenile Wolfie reaching a pleasurable pinnacle at the exact moment that Roger Daltrey stutters on The Who's 'My Generation', causing a mess on the upholstery that seems to symbolize, for Wolfie, his own generation's struggle against the prim Capitalism of older Germans. -French customs being alarmed by finding the lifelike Kraftwerk robots in coffins while inspecting the tour van.
Quoting his own lyrics and good press is a bit needy and tedious, but I couldn't help but liking Wolfgang. He is cheeky and horny and silly. It is fun to imagine how different a Ralf or Florian tell-all would read.
When I started this book, I thought I had met my new best friend! What a wonderful philosophy of life, what a wise man emerged from his experiences. However, the more time I spent with him, the less I liked this gentleman. He ultimately comes across as a rather spiteful, insecure man. His stories of sexual conquest, which he insists are just documentation come across as boasting as they accumulate (sex with a minor is nothing to boast about - it was apparently the fashion of the time, but it's coming back to bite the ass of many of these rock folks in their old age. His hostility towards his father is unpleasant and unbecoming, and he promises more than he delivers when he dishes on his ex-colleagues (or is that "employers" in Kraftwerk). He passes along some hearsay about how they supposedly took their sound and concept from Conny Planck - but it doesn't account for the wonderful music, which Uwe Schmidt (Señor Coconut) compared to Schubert Lieder. I have no doubt that Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider are not nice guys. It takes a fair bit of ruthlessness to get to the top of the heap in any field. It just seems that Wolfgang Flür can't let of of any slight, however slight. I know from personal experience good doesn't come from that. He's had his own thing going for some time now - he should keep focusing on that, its a better way to go.
You cannot expect Wolfgang to be objective in his autobiography. No one can ever write the objective truth about Kraftwerk. The first part offers an interesting insight into the daily life of the group members and some of Wolfgang's anecdotes about his own misfortunes are absolutely hilarious. It is embellished with occasional hyperboles for the sake of the story and the style. The second part, however, is bitter and extremely hard to digest for hardcore Kraftwerk fans. None of us will ever know whether Wolfgang's accusations and insights are true. It is his version of the story, written probably as a therapy for coping with all the lawsuits and "broken dreams", if you allow me to be a bit sentimental. If you like Wolfgang, read it. If you like Kraftwerk, you will like the first part.
I would like to see the whole Kraftwerk story from Karl's point of view, though.
An interesting perspective from the inside on a band that has thrown up a famously opaque facade for the last 35 years. You can't help but sense that Flur has a serious axe to grind, especially with Ralf Hutter so as entertaining as some of his recollections are, I think that factually you have to take them with a grain of salt. I'm sure it also reads a little smoother in the original German. But all the caveats aside, it still makes a fascinating read, perhaps mostly to people who are already fans of Kraftwerk used to seeing the band from the outside in.
I'm a huge Kraftwerk fan, so was fascinated by this behind-the-machines look at the robot men from former drummer Wolfgang Flur. His departure from the band came amongst much rancour towards founders Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, which in turn ended up with them suing him when this automaton-biography was first published. As such, Flur's account of life inside the Man Machine is somewhat biased and he is a fairly unreliable narrator. The translations leave a little to be desired as well - his account of masturbating on his parents' sofa is one of the strangest things I've read in a long while! There is a lot of excellent contextual history contained in this book, and some fascinating insights into the world inside the sacred Kling Klang Studios, but so much of this feels like either bitter recriminations or petty arguments, that it's hard to separate the facts from the friction. Nevertheless, this remains a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the enigmatic German electro pioneers due to its controversial place in their history.
As a Kraftwerk fan, I was most interested in reading about their music, and the (non existent) group dynamics. While it was a great insight to hear about the build-up to when Flür was accepted into the band, and the bits about their gear, studio and musicianship, I was less impressed by stories such as when the then 33-year old Wolfgang seduces a Hungarian minor. I for one enjoyed the philosophical musings which others seem to dislike, but to be honest, after 2/3 I was ready to give up the book because of the lack of music related stories. However, if you're a Kraftwerk fan, I would still recommend this book because of the snippets of highly interesting insights into the dysfynctional quartet.
A good but naive telling of a man coming to terms with life and art. Nice sections about the early days of Kraftwerk but ends rather bitter despite the words the author use.
I just saw Kraftwerk live for the first time last week and to say that was a dream come true would be an understatement. Seeing my favorite band of nearly 10 years live in my city was magical. The songs sounded amazing. The band played with, err, not as much precision as you'd imagined, actually. There's technical errors and lights lit wrong. But there's a tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto (RIP) and hearing The Model live was just... Sigh, I was over the moon. My favorite song of all time. A band that literally changed my life (literally!). I was overjoyed and so, so happy. I had to stop myself from getting spirited away by this post-concert euphoria, which is why I picked up this book.
First off, the technical details: the book is way too damn long. So much of it is just descriptions of things that don't need to be described. Several chapters could've been trimmed down if not outright cut. I don't think anybody would've missed the positive reviews of Yamo's album or the letters from adoring fans. Put them in the appendix if you must. I also noticed how many names are dropped without any explanations until later. Could I work out from the context clue that Gregor was Wolfgang's brother before it's revealed some chapters later? Sure. Should I need to do that? No.
The whole book was part Wolfgang's sexual adventures, part scorned ex-lover's ranting. I get that the intention is not to delve into the technical details so much as to write about his personal experience, which is fine and all, but I wanted the boring nerd bits goddammit! Geez, what did he think his fans are into? Certainly not the various tales of Herr Flür's erotic encounters, some of which are ground for jail time if we as a society actually give a fuck about pedophilia. Maybe it was just a different time. Yuck.
The chapters about Wolfgang's time in Kraftwerk are of course the most interesting, and when he is not bragging about his hookups, the stories are pretty interesting and insightful. I enjoyed reading about their first American tour and their terrible time in India (how did they end up performing in India to begin with is still a mystery). I wish there's more about the band, but our protagonist here wasn't allowed to be more involved in the behind-the-scene operation, which I think is just a real shitty move from Ralf and Florian... Okay, mostly Ralf, but if you are a Kraftwerk fan in 2026 you don't need to read this book to know that that man is, uh, not all right!
Speaking of which, the chapters dealing with Wolfgang's departure from Kraftwerk and his new beginning in Yamo are a lot to take in. You can feel the hurt and bitterness emanating from the pages, and every words describing Yamo as a huge success seems like an overcompensation. I suppose one could believe him, that Time Pie was an international smash hit that bridge the gap between cultures and generations, if they haven't actually listened to the album. I have. I actually have listened to (most) everything Wolfgang has put out and can tell you that Time Pie was at most a decent album. It just wasn't memorable, and I found what Wolfgang called "ironic humor" in his lyrics just downright stupid. You're better off just listening to Mouse on Mars' own albums—Autoditacker is an underrated IDM gem.
Overall, this book was a difficult read for me. The gratuitous lechery was borderline disturbing. The writing itself clunky and meandering. A lot of it has nothing to do with what I assume most people picked up this book for: Kraftwerk. With that said, I did enjoy the inside look into the human side of the robots, whenever that came through between paragraphs of creeping at women. I wonder if Wolfgang still stand by what he wrote in this book, aside from the jizz on the couch part which I've seen him posted about with pride on Facebook just a couple months ago. He seems to be back on good terms with Emil Schultz, who he collaborated with on his 2025 release Time (which, by the way, is actually a pretty good album. I liked the song featuring Peter Hook and one Thomas Vangarde). He even speak favorably of the dearly departed Florian Schneider these days. I finished this book thinking that despite Wolfgang repeatedly saying that Kraftwerk lost him, he too lost Kraftwerk, and that these four people were better together as a single unit. But alas, if my frontman were Ralf Hütter, who act like his friend and group co-founder didn't even exist, I would've quit too.
Addendum: - The streets were saying Wolfgang actually got fired, though I don't believe it myself. I suppose we'll find out in 2042 when Ralf releases his own autobiography... - Seeing Paul Wilkinson mentioned as a collaborator on Time Pie actually made me scream out loud as I have an irrational fear of that man.
Extremely thorough history of the key years of Kraftwerk coupled with the life story of the author. It was very enjoyable and well written, albeit with quite a few minor spelling and grammatical errors. Some intensely personal sexual quirks and a fantasy part based on anesthesia and its effects were lowlights. It's sad that Kraftwerk's founders, Ralf and Florian, were so self-centered and unwilling to compensate and recognize their bandmates and others when their outstanding success would seem to dictate doing so. The end seemed to get longer with each page I turned, and it seems that the author adds additional chapters with some regularity.
I was most surprised at the very last chapter when Flür described seeing a Kraftwerk concert in 2013. I saw them in 2022 at a similar "3D"' show. In my book, www.justafan.space, I wrote a chapter about that night. My comments were surprisingly similar to those of Flür, pretty hilarious to me.
The style of writing was very odd, kind of amateurish, and a little full of itself, but it was an interesting look at the history of kraftwerk and many interesting anecdotes about Wolfgang’s time with the band during the time that kraftwerk made pretty much all of their music. I had no idea about the breakup and animosity and lawsuits that all went down. It was sad, with a touch of bitterness, which is understandable because Ralf and Florian do come off as huge jerks who jealously guarded “their” band and refused to budge or bend to the point they ossified and atrophied and seemed to lose interest in making music anymore.
Didn’t expect to, but came under Wolfgang’s spell. The Kraftwerk side was central, although as a story it’s pretty unremarkable. They landed on a (musical) formula that included experimental electronic sounds, and then (crucially) honed an image that struck a chord with pop audiences. Great. In terms of significance musically it’s pretty middling. But Wolfgang’s perspective on everything, including the heyday years and his later work, is what makes it cool. He’s the perfect narrator, telling us just enough. A window into a different universe.
I love Kraftwerk and as information about the band is hard to find especially from the band and those close to the band it had to be read.
Its surprising the image of the band does not prepare you for the fact that the band especially at the beginning of the band are normal young men .
At times the language is clunky and sometimes the book loses its way but when it lands it is dynamite , if you like music read it if you are not a music fan it may be uninteresting .
So after reading this book, what can I tell you about Kraftwerk that I didn't know before?
Ralf & Florian are complete cunts who think the band revolves around them alone, they stole intellectual property from Wolfgang by patenting the drumpad he invented in the US under their name then Ralf made things worse by having Karl & Wolfgang's names removed from re-issues of old Kraftwerk albums (that's illegal, by the way Ralf you total wanker!).
Excellent book, jumps around the band's timeline a bit but an excellent read if you like music biogs.
Herr Flur's account of his time in KW was certainly insightful. It makes me less warm to the outfit's core and current members, but I appreciate the bias. Flur manages to outline the rise of KW, their tours and studio time, and later again - the acrimony. I learned a lot but at times I felt this edition was a review/critique of his own writing, which is really/usually the reader's task. However, his simple narrative style humanises his cult status. I have deferred tickets - in a small venue - to see him live and hope I can thank him for his contribution to history.
Aa Kraftwerk fan, of course it was a no-brainer must read. I love the book because it gives an insight of the not so known but suspected coldness Ralf and Florian treated their bandmates. Even I listen to Kraftwerk albums, now this parts of their history resonates into me. Would I recommend this book? I guess it is only for music nerds or hardcore Kraftwerk fans.
De två medlemmarna som styrde Kraftwerk med järnhand verkar inte ha varit de bästa arbetsgivarna för kreativa personer som vill ha lite konstnärlig frihet i sina liv.
Avslöjande och givande, och bitterheten kan man förstå. Lite väl många amorösa eskapader men de ger samtidigt mänskligt liv åt roboten.
An interesting insight into the life of original member of the pioneering German electronic / synth rock band Kraftwerk. A good read for all music fans of this type of music. Translated from the German text but very readable.
Very stiff. And goes off on a tangent every few pages. Odd text. It says it was written in German. But it feels as if the ENG version was also written in GER. Or by google translate. Or a child. Or someone so enamoured with German word order that it was felt it would be better left thus.
Makes it a little uncomfortable to read at times. But yes great info on one of the most original bands of the last 60 years; if not THE MOST original. It seems he Wolfgang had many misgivings about the 2 leaders of the band and much of the narrative here will articulate around those feelings
I have not yet read the entire bio so will return if more need be added; but it is so far a clumsy but interesting read ...
As you get past ¾ of the text W has now left Kraftwerk but let us get this right 99% of people who bought this book are interested in KW that is why they bought the book; they did not buy it for Wolfgang or Yamo which i have now listened too and was exceedingly underwhelmed by .... so the interest of this reader waned enormously .... Wolfgang and Karl were always second fiddles Karl is credited with some songwriting later but not W so far as i can tell .... these great tunes were written by Ralf & Florian; that is the crux here
I do believe R&F really did not regard the other 2 as crucial they really to them were Musikarbeiter which could be replaced .... so to me there is a blatant ego issue here and misplaced pride and arrogance in the writer .... he was a bit player seems to be the truth here
Whichever way this read has damaged my relationship with the oeuvre and for that reason only i am loathe to recommend the read although it may be the best opus Wolfgang came up with anyway you decide
Four years after it was a track on ‘The Man-Machine’ in 1978, Krafterwk’s ‘The Model’ reached No 1 in the UK singles chart. This delay occurred because Kraftwerk were ahead of their time, and the rest of the world, in the form of groups like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Human League, and Depeche Mode, trailed in their wake. Even Bowie, so often himself the musical trendsetter, acknowledged their seminal influence by labelling one of the tracks on his 1977 ‘Heroes’ album ‘V-2 Schneider’ – in tribute to Florian Schneider who, along with Ralf Hütter, co-founded Kraftwerk in 1970.
No one can deny Kraftwerk’s importance. Not only did they take electronic experimentation into the mainstream, but due in large part to Afrika Bambaata and the Soulsonic Force using the melody from ‘Trans- Europe Express’ and a beat based on ‘Numbers’ to produce ‘Planet Rock’ in 1982, they are also widely credited with being the progenitors of hip-hop.
House, techno, hip-hop, trip-hop, synthpop, trance and electroclash are all indebted to Kraftwerk, so Dr Uwe Schutte can at least plausibly claim that whilst, "The Beatles influenced Western society more than Kraftwerk … Kraftwerk … influenced the development of popular music more than the Beatles.”
Kraftwerk’s most creative and influential period dates from between 1974 and 1981 when they released the albums ‘Autobahn’ (1974), ‘Radio-Activity’ (1975), ‘Trans-Europe Express’ (1977), ‘The Man-Machine’ (1978) and ‘Computerworld’ (1981). During these years - indeed from 1973 to 1986 - the group’s percussionist (and sometime keyboard player) was Wolfgang Flür, so to have his autobiography is to have a potentially very valuable document.
In fact, the first edition of this book appeared in 2000 and would have been published even sooner had Hütter and Schneider not filed a lawsuit against Flür which was only resolved after some disputed parts of the text were amended. Nevertheless, when ‘The Observer’ listed its 10 best music memoirs in 2010, ‘I Was A Robot’ weighed in at Number 8. There have been many heavyweight contenders published since then, from the likes of Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Carly Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello but even if Flür was edged out of the top ten, which is by no means assured, it would not be by far.
After all, his book offers an insider’s account which is honest to the point of indiscretion (anyone for threesomes?), which is drolly but possibly unintentionally humorous (“I was impressed from the start by Ralf’s cautious driving”), which sheds light on the music and is a life with plenty of interest both before and after Kraftwerk. Having said that, the fact that Kraftwerk’s image is so robotic means that there’s an especial pleasure in the revelation of their feet of clay.
For some the bad blood at the time of Flür’s departure from Kraftwerk, which clearly received a fresh transfusion as a result of subsequent litigation, may colour too much of the book, skewing the narrative and giving it a bitter tang. For others it will be precisely what gives the book zest.
In his Prologue Flür wishes his reader “much pleasure with this book” and there is certainly much pleasure to be had.
Several times in the book the author has the gall to tell us that he's learnt to tell his story; not on this evidence he hasn't. A decent editor would crop a hundred pages out of this with no real effort involved, and no hardship to the book. Certainly the adverts for the one-flop-album Yamu stage of his career can go, as they're painful to read (and re-read, and re-read, as he often won't shut up about it). But what I was really here for was the life story of an ex-Kraftwerk member, and his reflections on that. And I got them in spades – with the addition of a heck of a lot more sperm and sex than I thought to expect.
You don't get a straightforward diary of his time with the band – the book is more concerned with the fall-out of the albums and the touring thereof rather than their creation (The ''Radioactivity'' album is written in about three lines). And of course you get a lot about the fact the remaining two members of KW once Wolfie and Karl had left tried to suppress the book – although from my reading of this only the barest few final pages are new, and a lot managed to get in the English translation that didn't make the original, redacted German volume.
And that will remain an issue, with the book being self-referential, and discussing the problems it made just as much as those Ralf and Florian (OK, Ralf) ever caused. Yes, the book offers implied reasons why none of the pre-''Autobahn'' albums have ever been re-released (because they stiffed Conny Plank, the producer). But Wolfie is also very snide, calling the current touring set-up Kraftwerk Mark III – er, mate, they were an acoustic-rock-hippy-shit band before you, so you joined for Mark II and have in one snide numeration belittled everyone that replaced you. Nice going. And while you're at it, try and combine your comment that sex needs a long connection before it happens with the girl that almost raped you in a Hollywood hotel shower, about which you never batted an eyelid in complaint. And that comment about still having hair is pathetic.
Don't get me wrong, this is an important document, and a great telling of how he saw his time in the band, where you can see the end coming due to his being paid a flat wage and no royalties from a mile off, even if the actual conclusion relies on push-bikes a lot more than the novitiate may have expected. But it's not a well written book at all, and really does need the red pencil dragged through it at times. Also, my netgalley had upwards of dozens of typos, which is rum for a text that's mostly twenty-ish years old; not only the usual printing errors, but dislocating both OMD and Ischia into the wrong parts of their respective countries.
A must for any Kraftwerk and electronic music fan. Straight from the horses mouth, this is Flur’s account of his life in the notoriously secretive band of ‘engineer musicians’. Wolfgang was the younger more working class member of Kraftwerk during their imperial phase and of course it is written from his perspective and rightfully so. You won’t get anything out of Ralf Hutter and Florian has sadly now died without passing comment, but his leaving did seem acrimonious unfortunately - the rotating lineup outside of Hutter are no doubt bound by legal confidentiality contracts. Karl Bartos is open about his experience but his personality is more stayed than Flurs and it seems he is bored by talking about Kraftwerk.
What comes out the boon is Flur really was passionate and excited about being part of Kraftwerk, the music the experimentation, the tours and the experience of being in such an enigmatic group clearly filled him with joy. During the first four ground breaking releases the band were totally unique and literally did things entirely as they chose, even the record label happy to leave them alone in Kling Klang studios. Which is why his frustrations when things slowed are entirely understandable and his bitterness in how he was treated by his worker-comrades, you can see how years of producing nothing drove him bonkers!
The pace of technology seemed to slow Kraftwerk, being faced with an almost unlimited choice instead of working on creative solutions of the limits of the tech of the early years. Spending years updating kling klang studios to digital and of course the endless cycling instead of production when he was in his prime would drive anyone barmy - and we are talking years and years not months! Bartos was the first to leave tired of doing nothing and when they did it would be years on a high-hat only to be thrown out. The perfectionism that had served them so well was now becoming a distraction. Tensions frayed, Hutter had a bad cycling accident and the ‘electronic cafe’ album took nearly a decade - Hutter making some last minute changes, including taking it to New York producer François Kevorkian to mix and coming back with a name change. On release this album didn’t land as well as the others, perhaps the future catching up with Kraftwerk? But it rightly is now seen as a masterful album.
Flur has had a fascinating career post kraftwerk and continues working today, he is a fascinating funny and warm individual- his book reflects this.