"Without Kraftwerk, my life would be boring!" Ralf Hütter looks back on the journey of the visionary group and remains active in music.

“The music never ends.”

Ralf Hütter, born on August 20, 1946, shaped international pop music with Kraftwerk like few other Germans. Here he tells his story.

Interview: Christoph Amend, ZEIT Magazine, February 20, 2026

DIE ZEIT: Mr. Hütter, you were born on August 20, 1946. What is your first conscious memory?

Ralf Hütter: When we were children, we used to collect cigarette butts from the gutter for the white St. Martin’s pipes that came with the Weckmänner, the sweets distributed to children. When we had enough tobacco, we smoked the St. Martin’s pipes until we felt sick. (laughs)

ZEIT: You grew up in Krefeld and attended a Waldorf school—something unusual in the 1950s.

Hütter: It happened by chance. Boys and girls in the same class; at that time they were usually strictly separated. There were open subjects at school: painting, drawing, crafts, sewing and knitting, eurythmy, games, performances, rhetoric, and music.

ZEIT: Did you also make music from an early age?

Hütter: I took piano lessons, but I couldn’t learn the music that truly interested me there. You could only hear it on the radio or on records: pop, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, rhythm and blues. We lived in the British sector and were therefore able to listen to BFBS, the radio station. As an exchange student, I spoke English and, as best I could, wrote down the lyrics of the songs I heard on the radio. That’s how I entered that world.

ZEIT: What was your favorite music?

Hütter: Above all, rhythm and blues—John Lee Hooker, for example. I saw him live later. The Lippmann & Rau agency organized the American Folk Blues Festival in the early sixties and brought the American musicians we heard on the radio to Europe.

ZEIT: Did you already want to become a professional musician as a teenager?

Hütter: I hadn’t thought about it; for a long time I had no career ambitions. I later studied architecture and even completed the preparatory course, but the more important music became, the more my studies faded into the background.

ZEIT: Your first performance was at Creamcheese, a club in Düsseldorf.

Hütter: Creamcheese opened in 1967, and we played there for the first time at its anniversary in 1968. Florian Schneider and I had already met at the academy in Remscheid; we immediately got along well and improvised a lot together, which was always our strength.

ZEIT: Do you remember the performance?

Hütter: Hardly. A strobe light stayed on for hours, as it did every night. The performance went well and, from then on, word about our music spread. We even received some praise that evening, which was good.

ZEIT: Creamcheese was closely connected to the art scene…

Hütter: Yes, at the entrance there was a nail sculpture by Günther Uecker, a mural by Gerhard Richter, and an installation with black-and-white TV monitors by Nam June Paik. In the evening, you would see Joseph Beuys in the old town playing table football. We stood near the pinball machine. Sigmar Polke was there; he was my friend. He had a transcendental sense of humor that I appreciated—never obvious, more subtle.

ZEIT: That kind of subtle humor can also be felt in Kraftwerk: later you replaced yourselves with robots on stage.

Hütter: Florian and I felt it was important that art have multiple layers. By the way, many years later, Nam June Paik created a huge screen in New York featuring our robot figures and the computerized video of our track “Musique Nonstop.” “And suddenly we saw ourselves in the electronic garden.” Kraftwerk exhibition in Düsseldorf—art clang-clang…

ZEIT: In 1981, an interview with you was published in the pop culture magazine Elaste. The interviewer asked in surprise: “In Tokyo, London, or the United States, Kraftwerk concerts sell out months in advance. Here at Rotation Hannover today, the venue was only half full.” And you replied: “We can’t explain it either.” Were you initially misunderstood in Germany?

Hütter: Yes, indeed, but the circle was smaller; that only changed later. Our first German tour was in 1975, after our American tour—that is, after the release of “Autobahn”…

ZEIT: …your first major success…

Hütter: …Fritz Rau, the concert promoter, planned everything with me. We chose the cities and printed the posters. Then the tour had to be canceled due to lack of public interest. I still have the posters.

ZEIT: Many German radio stations didn’t play Kraftwerk, apparently also because of the band’s name, which was irritating at the time.

Hütter: The only one who played our music back then was Winfrid Trenkler from WDR radio, a legend of electronic music in Cologne. He supported Kraftwerk and electronic music from the beginning. He also played our more experimental tracks long before “Autobahn.”

ZEIT: In the early years, you mainly performed in clubs and galleries, correct?

Hütter: In underground jazz houses, youth clubs, and cultural centers throughout the Ruhr region and in Düsseldorf’s old town. Burkhard Hennen from Moers was important; he often invited us to his studio. Later, he founded the Moers Jazz Festival. On the other hand, galleries and museums such as Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Galerie Hans Mayer in Krefeld booked us. Today, we are represented by gallerist Monika Sprüth and Galerie Sprüth Magers, who, among other things, supported our 2012 shows at MoMA in New York.

ZEIT: In the early years, it is said that you sometimes stepped onto the dance floor yourself during performances.

Hütter: That happened during a performance at the Abteiberg Museum in Mönchengladbach, directed by Johannes Cladders. In 1970, I had a rhythm machine for my electric organ, which I could play live with small keys or use with programmed rhythms. The art world supported us in these experiments from the beginning; there was an incredible sense of optimism, an interest in new things. That was from 1968 until the early seventies.

ZEIT: And suddenly there were no more live performances by Kraftwerk.

Hütter: From early 1977, after Trans-Europe Express, we did not perform live for four years. In 1978, we released the album The Man-Machine, but we couldn’t perform the songs live. The technology only worked in the studio. But we developed a performance for television programs, for Musikladen in Germany, or for shows in Italy, France, and Belgium. It was playback, and our robots at that time were still mannequins, which we placed in the front row of the audience.

ZEIT: That was performance art.

Hütter: For “The Robots” I wrote these lines in 1978: “We are charging our battery / And now we’re full of energy / We are programmed just to do / Anything you want us to / We are the robots.” And everything also in English.

ZEIT: You indeed began mixing languages early on, which was unusual in pop music at the time.

Hütter: We realized that it worked during our American tour in the mid-seventies. I speak French and English, and at school I also had two years of Russian: “Ja tovi sluga / Ja tovi rabotnik.”

ZEIT: The Russian line in “The Robots.”

Hütter: A tribute to the robotic art of Futurism, which also came from Russia. I wrote “Showroom Dummies” a year before “Robots”: “We stand here exposed / And we are showroom dummies.”

ZEIT: Mannequins, robots: how did you actually arrive at that?

Hütter: Through what I experienced; I always transformed everyday situations into lyrics. For the inside cover of the first Kraftwerk album in 1970, Bernd and Hilla Becher gave me their photograph of a transformer. Mrs. Becher presented me with the photo.

ZEIT: On the cover of the first Kraftwerk album there was another everyday object, an orange-and-white traffic cone.

Hütter: Florian had borrowed it from a highway construction site. (laughs) In the small clubs, our electronic instruments and loudspeakers stood very close to the audience. So that people wouldn’t knock them over, we placed the traffic cones there. Like an electronic construction site. From that, I developed the first Kraftwerk logo.

ZEIT: We need to talk again about your song “Autobahn” from 1974. Through its success on American college radio, you made it to the U.S. at that time. Is the story true that many Americans thought you were singing “Fun, Fun, Fun on the Autobahn”?

Hütter: It’s possible. (smiles) Our line is not a direct quotation of the Beach Boys; it’s more phonetic poetry, a nursery rhyme. But to American ears, of course, it sounds similar: “The roadway is a gray band / White stripes, green border / Now we turn on the radio / From the loudspeaker it then sounds / Driving, driving, driving on the Autobahn.” For the recording, we had to stop after just 20 minutes because the vinyl ran out. Live, it sometimes lasted 40 minutes. Autobahn is basically endless music.

Florian and I performed it throughout Kraftwerk’s history with many studio technicians and live musicians.

ZEIT: Regarding the musicians that Florian Schneider and you hired for Kraftwerk, and their contribution to the band’s sound, there were discussions in the past, also led by former musicians themselves. You refrained from commenting publicly.

Hütter: Yes. There are many fairy tales.

ZEIT: You always managed to let that pass by you—like on a motorway journey?

Hütter: One probably has to. We have to focus on our work and continue.

ZEIT: Your childhood and youth took place in the early years of the young Federal Republic. People spoke of the so-called “zero hour,” a historically controversial term. But for your music, that forward-looking direction was defining: it was oriented toward the future.

Hütter: Absolutely. Of course we knew about the exciting 1920s, and we also knew what had been destroyed in the twelve years that followed. Florian and I grew up as Europeans; in the fifties we were constantly on summer exchange visits with host families in France and England. At twelve, I could initially only speak French; I learned to write later. I also composed poetry in French, “Les Mannequins,” and all the lyrics for the album Tour de France. I also sang “Pocket Calculator” in English, French, Italian, Polish, Russian, Japanese. For concerts, I learned the lyrics phonetically by heart. As young people, Florian and I learned to set signals for understanding between peoples. That sometimes seems to be forgotten today.

ZEIT: Your 1977 song “Trans-Europe Express” also speaks of that; it is a tribute to Europe.

Hütter: We actually traveled on that train! Our French record label rented a TEE carriage for the album presentation, with which we went from Paris to Reims in Champagne to visit the champagne cellars there. The return journey was similar—something unimaginable today. By the way, I don’t drink champagne; I probably had apple juice.

ZEIT: In 1977, you were also in New York for the release of Trans-Europe Express and went to nightclubs…

Hütter: One night, Florian and I were at Studio 54. Afterwards, an employee of our record label took us to an after-hours club in the Bronx. Florian and I were on the dance floor when suddenly we heard the DJ playing “Trans-Europe Express” and “Metal on Metal,” which lasted 15 to 20 minutes, much longer than on our record. He mixed and scratched with two records on two turntables. The DJ was Afrika Bambaataa.

ZEIT: The zero hour of hip-hop.

Hütter: It took another five years until “Planet Rock” was released.

ZEIT: …which, as is well known, is based on “Trans-Europe Express” and “Numbers.” Five years—something unimaginable today.

Hütter: Today everything happens in the blink of an eye; back then, things could develop. Now there are so many digital images; experiences also pass quickly.

ZEIT: Nevertheless, with Kraftwerk you anticipated the digital future in which we live today, in 1981—with your album Computer World.

Hütter: For us, that was the present at the time.

ZEIT: Even though you yourselves did not yet have a computer?

Hütter: For the 1981 tour, we had our first Atari, but the beginning was already apparent before that. The Federal Criminal Police Office worked with pattern searches…

ZEIT: …also called “Computer Commissioner.” Those were the years of the Red Army Faction, the radical left-wing terrorist group.

Hütter: At night in the car, we were often stopped by the police in Düsseldorf. “Good evening,” I would then say, “I’m a musician, I’m coming back from work.” Then we could continue. Once they also came to the Kling-Klang Studio because a neighbor called them, even though we had everything well insulated. At Florian’s apartment, armed special forces once climbed up the façade via the balcony. Then we had to calm the situation: “We’re making music, we’re composing, drawing, and writing lyrics.”

ZEIT: The computer world was already present for you at the end of the seventies, but you only used computers to make music later?

Hütter: I had an analog sequencer in 1976 to control my Minimoog synthesizer. This analog Synthanorma sequencer was built for me by friends from the Matten & Wiechers Synthesizer Studio in Bonn. With it, I programmed rhythms and melodies. Automated music always interested me: music that plays itself. Sometimes I let the endless loops continue while we went out to get pizza. When we came back, the sound had changed. It was possible to work very creatively with that. We performed “Computer World” live in 1981. But many other tracks from that era we have only been able to play live since the beginning of the twenty-first century; before that, the technology simply wasn’t as advanced as the compositions. That’s why nowadays we enjoy giving live concerts all over the world so much. Only now can our music truly come alive.

ZEIT: In a previous interview, you answered my question as to why Kraftwerk is still on tour with: “But this is my life.”

Hütter: It’s true. Music is an art that develops over time. You can’t hang it on the wall. A track is not a finished work like a sculpture. Music is never finished.

ZEIT: I saw you live for the first time in 1997 at the techno festival Tribal Gathering in England.

Hütter: It was freezing there, with frost on the ground. During soundcheck, I played wearing gloves.

ZEIT: Before your performance, the other tents were closed because all the DJs wanted to see and hear you.

Hütter: Juan Atkins and Jeff Mills later told me they wanted to be there. That was a great honor for me.

ZEIT: The two Detroit musicians are considered co-creators of techno and have often said that Kraftwerk was an important influence on them. But let’s talk once more about Florian Schneider. Mr. Kling and Mr. Klang—that’s what you two were called for a long time. At the beginning of 2007, he left Kraftwerk.

Hütter: Yes, at the end of 2006 Florian played with us for the last time, in Zaragoza, Spain. And one day in 2007, his instruments disappeared from our studio. He removed them secretly.

ZEIT: Without explanation?

Hütter: Without comment, yes. He withdrew spontaneously. He had not been feeling well health-wise for some time, so I accepted it.

ZEIT: But after 39 years together, not a word?

Hütter: Of course at the time I would have liked to hear a few words. Everyone does things in their own way.

ZEIT: Florian Schneider passed away in 2020. You saw each other again shortly before his death, after a long time, and reconciled. Is that correct?

Hütter: Shortly before his death, yes. That was important. He wrote to me, and his daughter called. I went to see him immediately, and we reconciled.

ZEIT: What do you say in such a moment?

Hütter: Not much. We created Kraftwerk together, from nothing; not many words are necessary.

ZEIT: It is said that he wished the news of his death to be published by Kraftwerk—that is, through you.

Hütter: Yes.

ZEIT: Was Kraftwerk close to ending after his departure?

Hütter: No… in retrospect, one never knows for sure. In 2007 we were already building the new Kling-Klang Studio and booked for the 2008 Coachella festival in America. We then decided to continue with our team.

ZEIT: The fact that you are still on a world tour today—also in Germany last year—do you think that contributes to Kraftwerk still being present?

Hütter: It is unusual, in any case.

ZEIT: Why do you persist to this day?

Hütter: There are no good phrases for it. Should I say: I never learned anything else? (laughs) So much nonsense has been spread about us—for example, that we asked our wealthy parents for a whole battery of synthesizers for Christmas and received them…

ZEIT: …and that only because of that you were able to be so successful.

Hütter: When Florian and I, in 1970, just over 20 years old, announced to our parents that we would drop out of our studies and found our Kling-Klang Studio to focus on music, the monthly check of perhaps 200 or 300 marks was cut off for both of us.

ZEIT: How did you finance yourselves then?

Hütter: With gigs in small clubs. We saved up for the synthesizers. My first Minimoog cost as much as my Volkswagen.

ZEIT: When did your parents understand what you were doing?

Hütter: 1981.

ZEIT: That late?

Hütter: Yes. There was a concert at the Philipshalle in Düsseldorf, and they were able to bring friends. They were so happy: Look, that’s our boy! The same happened with Florian: he was supposed to become an architect and take over his father’s office. But we lived in a completely different world. In the clubs and the art scene, we met no one from the bourgeois world we knew.

ZEIT: You have been making music for almost sixty years. In 2014, you received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. What would your life have been like without Kraftwerk?

Hütter: Boring!

Fonte: Die Zeit