Guitarist and keyboarder Michael Rother has written music history with bands like Neu! and Harmonia. But it was only with his solo albums that success on a broad scale began in 1976. In the five-CD-box "Solo" Grönland Records summarizes the first four albums of Rother and adds two soundtracks to them; the vinyl version contains an additional LP with remixes and live recordings. In an interview with eclipsed, Rother reviews the work on the box.
eclipsed: The four solo albums without the soundtracks result in a very homogeneous composition.
Michael Rother: The soundtracks were about building a bridge to the recent past. In the beginning there were various considerations, for example a curated selection of individual pieces. I threw that away. Somehow it was logical to proceed chronologically. The first four records belong together insofar as they were made with Jaki Liebezeit, the first three together with Conny Plank. I am very happy with the box, it was a long way.
eclipsed: How was it for you to be confronted with an earlier version of yourself?
Rother: So far away from my present self the things are not at all. I've never broken with continuity. Of course, I was always anxious to develop myself further and to move upwards spirally around an imaginary centre. My solo stuff was much better known in Germany than new! The situation was different abroad. I don't know why that was. My relationship to Neu! and Harmonia was no different than that to my solo albums. The only difference was that, in the absence of a band, I played all the instruments except the drums myself. But there was no contradiction in ideological terms.
eclipsed: Aren't the Neu! albums very constructivist, while your solo works repeatedly negotiate between a structural and a romantic side?
Rother: I have never seen myself as a romantic. Surely one side of me is very devoted to nature and the opposite of mathematical precision. And maybe every time I look for a balance between logic and feeling. The three albums of Neu! were my first steps. When I went into the studio with Klaus Dinger and Conny Plank in 1971, I had no experience with the creation of music. I had just wiped off my past, which was marked by the worship of British rock music up to Jimi Hendrix. As I began to detach myself from it, I carefully developed my own structures. The result was new! After working with [Dieter] Moebius and [Hans-Joachim] Roedelius, I had much clearer ideas about my music. It was about breaking out of the bombast of rock clichés and removing it without replacement. In the first years it was a slow approach to this new terrain. "Flaming Hearts" came five years later. In my music there was always a component of intellectual building, of structure and order, but also of emotionality. Both together give a picture of my personality.
