Hi folks, Here it is, as promised: the interview we did with Karl Bartos a few years ago. Most of what Karl is saying is a direct quote from the tape. I suppose quite a few of you can identify the fans he's talking about... FYI, Prospective was (is?) a music magazine in English - a Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish co-production that was published between 1998 and 2001. (The last thing I did was a Fad Gadget interview, which remains unpublished because the magazine was put on hold. They're trying to restart it, but I am no longer involved.) There is a web site at <http://www.prospective.nu/>, if you're interested. But first, the boring bits. Even if the magazine (Prospective 2001:2) is sold out (although Hot Stuff may have some back issues), *please* ask me (address above) if you want to repost the interview or put it on a web site. If you want to quote it, please state the source. Quite obvious stuff, really, which I'm sure you will do anyway. --- KARL BARTOS Classics of Electropop interview by Jan Sundström and Anders Wahlbom written by Anders Wahlbom It's a beautiful July evening in Arvika, and Karl Bartos slaps me hard on the shoulder. "Mosquito", he says, scratching a crushed insect from his palm. "Sorry!" It's probably been attracted by the blood on my thumb; I managed to cut myself on the plastic case when I tried to unwrap the tape for the interview. ("Oh, hurt by technology?" Karl jokes.) But that's the kind of danger you have to face writing for Prospective... SHORTCUT Karl Bartos looks relaxed as he's sitting on a bench in the backstage area of the Arvika festival. The last time he played in Sweden was at the 1994 festival. At the time he was part of Elektric Music, along with Lothar Manteuffel, Ralf Beck (later half of Nalin & Cane) and Emil Schult, but now he is back playing under his own name. He explains: "If I use any other name, Elektric Music or anything, I have to explain it with my name. I always have to say 'Elektric Music is a band of Karl Bartos who used to be in Kraftwerk', and this is just a shortcut. I don't want to pollute people's memory with too much information. There's nothing wrong with the name, it's just that this is simpler, and I will do my further records under the name Karl Bartos." Since 1994, Karl has also stopped working with Lothar Manteuffel, whom he had known since his early days in Kraftwerk. "It didn't work out", he says. "We had been friends for many years and when I started Elektric Music I invited him and he said yes, but on a professional level it didn't work. He's not doing music anymore; he's in the publishing business." Karl's latest release is a collaboration with Wolfgang Flatz; the album, released under Flatz' name, is called _Love and Violence_ and was released on Epic in June. "I did the music and half of the lyrics. They asked me from Sony if I wanted to do the music and I said "yes, I have nothing to do", so I spent nine months last year on it. I didn't do the production, just the content." When asked if he can describe the album, Karl's answer is short and to the point: "No. You can't describe music. You listen." "ICH WAR EIN ROBOTER" Some time ago, Wolfgang Flür wrote a book called _Ich war ein Roboter_, where he tells about his time in Kraftwerk complete with intimate details. Ralf and Florian were very unhappy with the book, in fact so unhappy that they took Wolfgang to court; in the end Wolfgang won the case, and the book is now set to be published in a second German edition as well as in English and Japanese. So where does Karl stand in this question? He confesses that he doesn't really like the book: "I think it's too personal. We are good friends and we talk to each other, and as he sent me the manuscripts I told him not to publish it or just make it more abstract. It's much too personal for my kind of like. But for him it's a kind of therapy, and it's his personal point of view. If I would write a book it would be totally different. So it's just one point of view, and I think his point of view is too romantic and too full of feelings. He seems to be very hurt. But I usually don't talk about other people's work. I'm not a critic, I think everybody should read it himself or herself and judge later." Although Karl doesn't seem to hold as big a grudge as Wolfgang, their basic reasons for leaving Kraftwerk were essentially the same. "Basically, one of the main reasons was slowing down of output, so if you're working five years on one record it's a little slow. We couldn't handle this anymore so it was much better for us to leave, and looking back in retrospect it was the right thing to do. I would have been ten years still in the band without anything coming out." Instead, Karl formed a new band, dissolved it, and moved to Hamburg. "It's a really bright city. A fantastic place to be, lots of culture going on. The weather is a little rainy, like England - lots of rain, but it's still cool." He doesn't have much contact with the local music scene, though. "I thought it would be nice when I moved there, because my publisher Warner/Chappell is there and lots of media, but in the end it really doesn't matter where you live now, especially in this type of business. People are as far as the next telephone or as the next computer, and it's really good - a global village." GUITARS Naturally, we are curious about Karl's current type of music - the _Electric Music_ album had a lot of guitars. Karl explains: "After _Esperanto_ I went to Manchester to work with Johnny Marr and Bernard Sumner. I stayed there for almost two years and we had a really good time. We wrote nine songs together for _Raise the Pressure_, and then I fell in love with the guitar, because I started out playing the guitar when I was a kid. I learned to play my first songs on my bigger sister's guitar, and Johnny reminded me of this. So by 1996 I had spent 20 years with electronic music, and by that time I sort of hated it because everything was so much the same. If you're watching TV commercials everybody's using the same sounds, and I had an overload of electronic sounds. So I had to step away and use some other sounds to keep fresh and to keep my energy going towards music in general." The result was _Electric Music_, an album that was more Britpop than synthpop with its heavy use of guitars. It was less than enthusiastically received by fans - most fans I have talked to hated it - but for Karl it was a necessary step. "It was a sort of therapy for me, using sounds of the 60s, and now I'm back and I'm not afraid of using electronic sounds anymore. Tonight I'm playing "The Robots" and "Numbers" and "Computer World" so I guess it's going to be fun. I also play "TV" and "Young Urban Professional", if I play longer I play other tunes." CRAZY FANS This is the third solo concert with this concept, which Karl calls "Classics of electropop"; the first two were in Cologne at the Electronic Beat festival and in Riga, Latvia. This Arvika concert has drawn people from near and far: most Swedish synthpop celebrities are here tonight, as well as some from other countries - right after the concert I talk to Lorenz Macke [manager of De/Vision], who came all the way from Germany mainly for this concert. Still, some faces are curiously absent today, such as a well-known British fan who we can call P.; in the early to mid-90s he would travel all over Europe to see an Elektric Music or Kraftwerk concert. Karl remembers him well, but has some reservations: "I lost track of him, I think he's in London nowadays. Some of these fans in the Kraftwerk community seem to be very strange people, so it's very hard for me to stay correct there. There's a crazy guy who sends me letters and nice postcards from Bath, but he keeps distant. He's really cool and not very obsessive and says hello once in a while. That's really nice, and these are the people you keep in touch with, if they're not grabbing you and wanting attention all the time." Karl explains that all those crazy fans have crept out of the woodwork after he left Kraftwerk. "With Kraftwerk we didn't do many concerts and had no connections outwards. When I stepped outside these walls it was easy for them to come and say hello. Usually it's OK, but once in a while, if somebody knocks at your door at home, you think of John Lennon." P. is well-known for doing just that in 1989, just before Karl left Kraftwerk - after some detective work he found out where Karl lived, went there and rang on the door. Karl confirms that this was the incident he's thinking of, and he is less than amused. "It's frightening. It hasn't happened for years now." Karl has since lost touch with P.; P., however, keeps in contact with Wolfgang. Karl comments: "Good for Wolfgang if he likes it. I don't like it, it's frightening. I'm really afraid. You never know what people think. P. seems to be nice and smooth, but you don't know what happens in his mind. Tomorrow someone else might be there - and you don't know him. So in general you avoid closer contact." THE FUTURE Next, we ask about any future plans. Karl denies having any: "No, no plans, just future. I'm playing twice at the Expo 2000 in Hannover, and then I'm putting out the next record, just a single this year, and then a German tour in autumn, just the major cities to get media and promotion. Then next year I put out the album and then we will tour all over the place." Will there be a whole band on stage this time? "Now we are two people, with the keyboard player Dave, and the next time I'll put somebody on stage with a video camera and a media setup for live video animation. I've known them for five-six years." This setup isn't the kind of working collective where members are changing all the time, though. "You're lucky if you find someone you can work with, and if you find a good team you keep it. If it doesn't work of course you change it, but I'm really happy now with the people I've found. They also contribute on the record. The sound engineer tonight is also the sound engineer on the album. We're doing the vocal session next week in Hamburg. Dave is around all the time, he works in a studio." As Prospective is not a technical magazine, I assure Karl that we won't ask about the studio; if anyone wants to read about that there are other interviews in musicians' magazines. This suits Karl fine, as he's not really interested in talking about the studio. "It's good, but I'm not into technology. John Cage used to say "the funny thing about technology is that it gets smaller and smaller as it gets more and more advanced and in the end it disappears completely". I'm not very sure about the concept of technology. I don't think we should depend on it, you see?" Karl points at our microphones. "As long as we can still write with our hands it's OK, but I wonder how long young people can survive with their hands..." [short discography removed; you know all that anyway] -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Wahlbom <awahlbom@mac.com> | http://www.bahnhof.se/~awahlbom ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NOW PLAYING: Morning news on the radio