KARL BARTOS
BEING HUMAN
CLASSICALLY TRAINED MUSICIAN KARL BARTOS WAS A MEMBER OF KRAFTWERK ON A STAGGERING RUN OF ALBUMS FROM RADIO-ACTIVITY TO ELECTRIC CAFÉ. HAVING PREVIOUSLY STAYED SILENT ABOUT HIS FORMER BAND, HIS POWERFUL NEW AUTOBIOGRAPHY OFFERS A WHOLLY NEW PERSPECTIVE OF LIFE INSIDE THE MAN-MACHINE. HE GIVES HIS FIRST BRITISH INTERVIEW ABOUT KRAFTWERK AND BEYOND EXCLUSIVELY TO CLASSIC POP…
JOHN EARLS
Karl Bartos has released an autobiography that lifts the lid on his time in Kraftwerk
While Kraftwerk have justly been lauded for their pioneering adventures in electronic music, it shouldn’t be dismissed just how fantastic they looked, too. Fixed in many people’s minds as the classic line-up of Ralf Hütter, Karl Bartos, Florian Schneider and Wolfgang Flür on the cover of 1978’s The Man-Machine in red shirts and black ties, Bartos has a brilliant theory on why Kraftwerk could pass themselves off as robots: they were all the same height, a uniform 6ft. “We were all alike,” notes Karl. “No one was very short, no one was a giant. It never happened, but we could all have exchanged clothes. Everywhere we went, we received a very strong reaction and knew that a certain identity was coming across.”
In his remarkable new autobiography The Sound Of The Machine, Karl describes how he needed to be a musician from the moment he first heard The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. He feels there was a connection in the two bands’ image. “It was never ‘John Lennon And The Beatles’ or ‘Paul McCartney And The Beatles’,” Bartos points out. “The Beatles were always ‘The Fab Four’, a proper band. Kraftwerk had that equality, too, in how we looked. We were the perfect band, as we had no one star dominating our appearance. People like that equality.”
It’s a typical perfectly formed theory from a musician who – like his former bandmates – has very rarely spoken about life inside Kraftwerk. Karl is literally better qualified than most to theorise about pop music. He studied percussion at the Rhineland State Conservatory Of Music from 1970, combined much of his time in Kraftwerk with teaching music and, in 2004, he founded a masters program for Berlin’s University Of The Arts, in acoustic communication. Inside the shiny robot of Kraftwerk lore beats the heart of a man who lives for music. A reticence to discuss his tenure in Kraftwerk – “I’ve always felt uncomfortable talking about our time together” – means Karl’s views on music are barely known. But they really should be. Hearing his insight is a delight.
The mystique that grew up around Kraftwerk in the 70s means they are frozen in time as those robots. In reality, over Zoom from his home in Hamburg, Karl couldn’t be more humane. His study is far more lecturer than electronic pioneer: a wall of filing cabinets, small pot plant, a planner stuffed with Post-It notes. Bartos, neat silver hair side-parted and cosily dressed in a navy zip-up fleece, is disarmingly friendly. Kraftwerk clichés and decades of silence mean you might expect icy detachment, not someone alight with mischief and a gentle, ready smile. Karl’s English is near faultless: the only word he struggles with is “ephemeral”, which would even be understandable in native English speakers.