[ Computerized voice droning ] [ Synthesizer punctuating ] [ Voice continues ] [ Scattered cheering and applause ] [ Voice continues, beeping ] ♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Scattered cheering and applause ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I program my home computer ♪ Beam myself into the future ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I program my home computer ♪ Beam myself into the future ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Man: The comment that Kraftwerk are more influential, more important, more beautiful than the Beatles could ever be is becoming less and less odd and more and more exactly what we always thought it would be -- the truth.

♪♪ Narrator: In the late '60s and early '70s, when Kraftwerk were striving to find a new artistic voice in the pop-cultural vacuum of post-War Germany, few would have predicted that these reclusive Rhineland experimentalists would become one of the most influential pop groups of all time.

But that is exactly what happened.

Painting on a refreshingly blank canvas, they created emotional electronic music that fused commercial pop with the Avant Garde, an industrial folk music with global appeal that predicted what music would sound like and the world would look like in the Digital Age.

♪♪ [ Speaking German ] ♪♪ Narrator: Kraftwerk's influence has grown with every passing year and now, 45 years later, they've been embraced by the art world, their Gesamtkunstwerk celebrated in elaborate 3D concert seasons at iconic art spaces in New York, Dusseldorf, London, Sydney and Tokyo.

The most apt of these events took place in the former power station at London's Tate Modern.

Eight nights sold out in minutes, with ticket demand crashing the servers, and the public and critical hysteria confirming their status as a work of art.

With over 100,000 disappointed fans stuck outside in the cold, our cameras were invited in by the group to capture world-exclusive impressions of their sensational show for this film, "Kraftwerk: Pop Art."

Putting them in a gallery or a museum is utterly appropriate, because they are, in a way, living sculptures, they are an installation.

They are an installation that involves a commentary on pop music, a commentary on show business.

But that's not all that it is.

What it is mostly is a fascinating comment on reproduction, on what happens to a work of art when it becomes a mass-produced object.

It's got all those elements in it.

Just the whole aesthetic completely fits, not only the space -- the power station, turbine hall of Tate Modern -- but they've influenced so many visual artists that we've worked with.

It's sort of a consecration to actually be allowed in the inner sanctum of curated art, because it's an admission that what they do is actually timeless enough and representative enough of our culture that it should really merge with, say, visual works, for the most part.

The next thing that comes in to the Tate Modern is Roy Lichtenstein, and that's the world where they belong.

They've had that much an impact on cultural thought, on people making art, on musicians making art.

They are beyond just playing a venue.

Marc Camille Chaimowicz, an artist who is in our Bigger Splash exhibition at the moment, has used their music and been inspired by them.

Mark Leckey, who won the Turner Prize a few years ago, also cites them as an influence.

Michael Clark, the choreographer, who has always worked across disciplines, loves their music.

There are many.

I mean, so many artists wanted tickets to come and see them here.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Interpol and Deutsche Bank ♪ FBI and Scotland Yard ♪ CIA and KGB ♪ Control the data memory ♪ Business ♪ Numbers ♪ Money ♪ People ♪ Business ♪ Numbers ♪ Money ♪ People ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Interpol and Deutsche Bank ♪ FBI and Scotland Yard ♪ CIA and KGB ♪ Control the data memory ♪ Communication Kraftwerk's show actually is a real show, but it doesn't rely on the cliches.

There's something about the standing still that's very fascinating as well, as a distillation of performance, because the corny movements in rock, the holding of the guitar that way, the thrusting of the groin that way, the shaking of the head and the swirling of the microphone is ultimately ridiculous and monotonous and pointless, that I'd rather think, I think, in the end, see the distillation to the stillness, with all that going on around them.

But it is a performance, you know, and it is transfixing.

That was a really important thing for us, was the visual aspect of what they're doing, which is becoming more and more important for them.

And they've put so much work into the visual 3D show as part of this.

It took years to make it work properly, to make the robots work, to make all those things work.

And technology has come to the point where it can get better and better and better.

So it's a show, it's a concept that can continue to develop.

I think that's what drives them, I think the fascination of how far they can go with that technology.

[ Electronic warbling ] Narrator: Kraftwerk came into being when Ralf Hutter met Florian Schneider on an improvised-music course at Dusseldorf Conservatory in 1968.

Early incarnations of the band included a live drummer and a guitarist who went on to form Neu!

But in the flourishing German music scene of the day, the band with which they had most in common were classically-inspired electro experimentalists CAN.

The two acts jammed together at an art gallery, and their first official concert together was a freeform, televised youth show from a youth club in Unna in 1970, before Kraftwerk had released a single album.

[ Man speaking German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Speaking German ] [ Screams ] ♪♪ [ German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: The influential British rock press lumped together the many and various German bands of that era under a quirky title that gave no hint of how revered and influential many of them would be in decades to come.

There's this whole movement of, you know, the Krautrock, or whatever they used to call it, between Guru Guru, Neu!, Ash Ra Tempel, CAN and all that.

And I was into all that back in those days.

[ German ] It was a very different view of that German music.

For various reasons it was given a slightly affectionate, patronizing name, the Krautrock thing.

[ German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ [ German ] ♪♪ They still seemed to come out of the "Interstellar Overdrive" end of Pink Floyd, they still seemed hippie, they still seemed not what they became.

[ German ] We obviously filter the whole idea of Kraftwerk now through what they've become.

But there were a few years where they were not yet that and they were becoming it.

They were always becoming.

[ German ] [ Engine starts ] ♪ Autobahn ♪♪ The first impact with Kraftwerk was, I guess, for me, in a way, seeing the sleeve to "Autobahn," because that was a revelation, in a way.

Because then they'd distilled lots of things down to just a kind of impression of something and seemed, suddenly, very modern.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn ♪ ♪ Fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn ♪ ♪♪ Narrator: Kraftwerk finally crystalized conceptually in 1974 on "Autobahn," their fourth album.

The majestic 22-minute title track, featuring lyrics for the first time, was a disco hit in America, and the sleeve's simple modernist graphics signaled a clear visual identity that Ralf and Florian were developing with art school collaborator Emil Schult.

♪♪ Design guru Neville Brody, now a lecturer at the Royal College of Art in London, was the most influential graphic designer of the 1980s.

His role as art director of style bible The Face magazine began with his 1982 layout of a Kraftwerk interview.

He remembers the impact of their visuals most clearly.

♪♪ Autobahn is an interesting example where the record cover becomes something far more semiotic, it's a sign that's being transposed from one purpose to another.

And it's sort of saying that pop music doesn't necessarily have to be self-referential anymore.

It can look at other ideas in society.

Most of their work on covers resolved around using themselves as part of their own brand image and not taking it too seriously.

♪♪ Narrator: The cover of "Trans-Europe Express" was a subversive slap in the face of rock chic.

In the year of punk, Hollywood black-and-white glamour photos show the group in pseudo-period settings and poses, while Emil Schult's affectionately kitschy color poster has them looking like city gents out for Sunday lunch in a country restaurant, a diamante music-note brooch on Florian's lapel the only indication that they are not, in fact, chartered accountants.

Kraftwerk: ♪ We are showroom dummies They started to build the connection between Dadaism, constructivism, and modern music.

♪♪ [ Cheering and applause ] ♪♪ "The Man Machine" sleeve that Kraftwerk did was very much influenced by the look and feel of Russian constructivism, and it was born out of the idea that the future would be built by engineers and scientists, and that, in fact, our faith in engineering was what was going to bring us to Utopia.

So, it was a kind of Utopian idea.

It was extremely experimental.

It was a lot of angles, very strong typography, which eventually ended up in a kind of a Bauhaus space, which then influenced everything we do.

[ Computerized voice ] ♪♪ Constructivism was very engaging, it was very powerful.

And the prime influence within constructivism was a man called Alexander Rodchenko.

And the Kraftwerk covers, at the early stages, very much related to a kind of Rodchenko way of looking.

So there was a kind of heroic workers' ethic.

The workers were also going to help build the future, the strong use of red and black, which were, of course, the Communist colors.

Red and black were also the colors of a lot of fascistic movements within the 20th century.

So Kraftwerk were playing on that middle ground, to be honest -- you know, where does heroics become self-defeating?

So something that's democratic becomes dictatorial.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The scope of the way of thinking that Kraftwerk had within record covers was quite radical.

It actually led, I think, to a lot of the -- certainly the early punk covers and the early New Wave covers.

Factory Records were clearly influenced by this, as was the early work of Malcolm Garrett.

So you have "Autobahn" as this very simplistic statement.

And "Autobahn" was radical at the time.

There was no other record covers like this.

♪♪ ♪ Fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der Autobahn ♪ Narrator: "Autobahn" won Kraftwerk new fans, like Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Bowie, the latter touring Europe in a vintage Mercedes playing "Autobahn" non-stop and telling everyone that Kraftwerk were his favorite band, an act of patronage that forever changed their status with the rock press.

David Bowie in the '70s was like your Google search at the time.

You know, whatever David Bowie mentioned was therefore where you went.

Bowie had altered his trajectory explicitly because of Kraftwerk, and that was an incredible, almost an advertising campaign for Kraftwerk, if you like.

You know, a commercial endorsement and a sense that we now all wanted to find out the history of this incredible group that had influenced the most extraordinary period of David Bowie's life.

[ Singing in German ] [ Radio warbling ] ♪♪ [ German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: To leave the daytime free for cycling, Kraftwerk worked night shift, clocking in at their legendary Dusseldorf Kling Klang Studio like workers at a sound factory.

The albums they produced there sounded like nobody else, partly because they had challenged technicians to develop new instruments for them, equipment not available to anyone else.

[ German ] Narrator: And the yearning, romantic beauty of the music they created with that equipment shattered the strongly held misconception of electronic music as emotionally frigid.

♪♪ Ideologically, the wood of the blues and therefore rock was where authenticity lay.

And somehow, there was still, which is weird, a troubled response to machines.

There was somehow soul in holding a wooden piece of instrument, and somehow soullessness in having a machine.

But I always felt that it was almost the opposite, that it emphasized and framed and illuminated the soul that was in Kraftwerk.

That tenderness, that real humanity.

Because they were prepared to deal with machines and use machines to distribute their ideas and information.

They were extraordinary geniuses at melody and it was the melody that ultimately carried through the soul.

♪♪ Kraftwerk weren't the first, but we consider them to be the first to understand the potential of electronic machines and the studio itself and the combination of the two things, to really create popular music.

And of course, everything that happened since Kraftwerk has been a continuation of that.

You take, say, their closest rivals in terms of iconic presence -- we would say the Beatles -- well, the Beatles don't really influence anyone.

They influence Elton John and George Michael and Take That and maybe ELO, at a pinch.

But they don't really influence anything.

It's almost like that was a juddering halt already, to an extent.

Whereas Kraftwerk constantly release information.

They influence the Avant-Garde end, the area that went way out and even all the way up to glitch and it all started to disintegrate and even the harder, stranger areas of dubstep.

But you also hear it in Kylie Minogue and the popular mainstream.

You hear the ghost of Kraftwerk everywhere.

And that's another wonderful element of Kraftwerk, they haunt the imagination, they haunt the world.

As the light goes out now and you look out, you kind of see a visual representation of the sound of Kraftwerk.

You know, for me, the soundtrack you would use to represent this is going to be Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk: ♪ Neon lights ♪ Shimmering neon lights ♪ And at the fall of night ♪ This city's made of light ♪ Neon lights ♪ Shimmering neon lights ♪ And at the fall of night ♪ This city's made of light Kraftwerk's nerdy commitment to freshness meant they'd produced some wonderful sounds.

Kraftwerk were the poets of that, in a way.

Exquisite novelty in what sound could do and be, and how seductive it could be.

♪♪ Kraftwerk's genius, in a way, was not just giving it the rhythm that then consoled people, and they understood that it was attractive because there was this wonderful rhythm -- but they also applied beautiful melodic sense, that wasn't just an understanding of melody within popular music or rock music, but an understanding of melody that went back centuries.

And in that sense, I always felt that they were classical musicians whose genius was to understand that popular music and the way it used the studio was actually where the new developments were taking place in music.

Kraftwerk understood that the studio was as important an instrument and an arrival of an instrument as the piano was in Mozart's time.

Man: We're not only looking at one of the seminal acts in the history of electronic music, but, you could say, arguably, one of the most powerful, inspiring ones, and therefore probably one of the most likely to become as legendary as Mozart and Bach, some of those composers whose work and music we still revere hundreds of years later.

I see that now.

Undoubtedly.

Without any reservation.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Trans-Europa Express ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: "Trans-Europe Express," a mighty groove that emerged from a jam session like a train crashing through the studio, saw the percussive hardening of their sound, and became a pivotal record in the birth of DJ culture.

"Trans-Europe Express" was the only record that Grandmaster Flash would play uninterrupted, and, visiting a loft club in New York, Kraftwerk were amazed and pleased to hear the DJ playing an extended loop of "Metal On Metal," exactly as they would in the studio.

♪♪ ♪ Rendezvous auf den Champs Elysees ♪ ♪ Verlass Paris am Morgen mit dem TEE ♪ ♪ Trans-Europa Express ♪ Trans-Europa Express ♪ Narrator: Soon, their unique sounds began to resurface, dismembered and out of context, all over the place, forming a recurrent theme in every regional Black American dance scene from D.C. Go-Go to Detroit techno, until eventually these stiff Germans became the most improbably influential white act in the history of dance music.

♪♪ What was fantastic about that is, first of all, all the white music that borrowed so liberally from Black music didn't give anything back.

Kraftwerk sort of... have basically, on behalf of the entire white world, handed back some of the debt that is owed to Black music.

Giving so much that white music nicked -- rock and roll and everything that came -- nicked so much, and it was a dreadful form of cultural colonization, and Kraftwerk in a sort of rather sweet, liberal way, have basically given back.

♪ Bustin' up on a cloud, shout out loud ♪ ♪ You're the one for me ♪ With your love by my side ♪ The world will be mine ♪ You're the one for me Narrator: Having spent his teen years listening to Krautrock in Strasbourg, Francois Kevorkian moved to New York in the mid-'70s, where he got a job drumming alongside DJs in a bar.

He went on to become one of the most popular underground DJs in America, and one of the busiest remixers of the 1980s, working with everyone from cult dance legends like D Train and Dinosaur L to chart titans U2 and Depeche Mode.

Francois K was the first creative outsider to penetrate Kraftwerk's inner circle, becoming their house mixer.

Years earlier, he had witnessed their extraordinary impact on dance culture first-hand.

Man: I think the amazing thing about Kraftwerk is how multicultural they are, how easily all that music translated to Black audiences.

Like, they just got it, like that.

Those in New York that started to hear these strange records coming over from Germany in the mid-'70s probably saw their city and heard their city in this music as much as any other music they were listening to.

Because it was so beautifully rigid and repetitive, it was, therefore it was so wonderfully rhythmic.

And the idea that you could replace the drummer with a machine, but the machine would give you this incredible insight into the mobility of funk...

It was that stiff that it was funky.

It was like a linear, you know, it was almost like an EKG, you know, for the hospital?

It was like... [ Imitates EKG ] And it was like, "That s * *t is cool."

It was so clean, it was so exact, and so perfect, that it had to be funky.

And to see these dudes, these straight-laced white dudes, you know, wearing these ties and these green shirts and green pants and this whole androgynous look, it was...

It was stiff, but it was funky.

It was just enough of this in the middle of this to make it work.

"Trans-Europe Express" was so funky!

Oh!

Uh -- Oh!

Just like in a big sound system and all that, and that metal sounds and all.

It was just, like, bugged out!

People were like, "Yo, man, I'm tripping!

What's this?!"

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ All these crowds grooving to "Trans-Europe Express" in the summer of 1977, right next to Barry White and Marvin Gaye and Salsoul Orchestra.

You know, and to these people, to that crowd, no one ever questioned it.

I mean, people were like, "Wow, that thing you're playing, that's weird, man, what's that?"

But they loved it!

And I think even more so with "Computer World."

Where, you know, obviously, "Numbers" was just like...

When "Numbers" came out, it was just like, forget it.

I mean, like, wow!

[Computerized voice] ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier ♪ Funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs ♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ ♪ Vier, drei, zwei, eins ♪ Eins, zwei, drei, vier, funf, sechs, sieben, acht ♪ ♪ Vier, drei, zwei, eins ♪ Un, dos, trois, cuatro ♪ Uno, due, tre, quattro ♪ Un, dos, trois, cuatro ♪ Uno, due, tres, cuatro ♪ Ichi, ni, san, shi ♪ One, two, three ♪ Ichi, ni, san, shi ♪ One, two, three ♪ Uno, two, zwei, four, uno, two, vier, four ♪ ♪ Uno, two, zwei, four, uno, two, vier, four ♪ ♪ Uno, two, zwei, four ♪ Uno, deux, vier, four When we talk about hip-hop, there are different kinds.

I mean, obviously, there's the down-tempo part, the real funky beats and all that, but "Planet Rock" was more like...

Almost like proto-techno, in a way.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: On his ground-breaking hip-hop hits "Planet Rock, Looking For The Perfect Beat," and "Renegades Of Funk," Afrika Bambaataa fused beats from "Trans-Europe Express" and "Numbers" so prominently that Kraftwerk ended up receiving royalties.

Kevorkian: That was obviously something Arthur Baker and John Robie did as a production team.

I think that was a bit of a genius move on their part because they took these two very strong elements and made it into something that was just so irresistible.

Well...

I guess history, you know, validated that particular record as being one that sort of helped start the whole electro movement.

♪♪ Narrator: The "Computer World" album and tour saw Kraftwerk entering the '80s on an all-time high that 1986's "Electric Cafe" album failed to match, which was ironic, as the next year their influence was about to explode anew -- in Detroit, of all places.

A cadre of Kraftwerk-crazy producers known as the Belleville Three -- Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, were busy perfecting a new world-beating genre that would soon become known as "techno."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Man: I have only met Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider once.

That was in Detroit, that was 15 years ago, for sure.

It was a huge concert for them, it was almost like a restart of their career.

And they were very happy to come there, and they sold out a venue that holds 7,000 people.

It was an amazing show, it was an amazing moment, it was -- the energy was incredible.

It wasn't just intellectual heads that were there to hear them play.

It was kids -- this was incredible for them because they were playing to, like, fans!

People that were just, like, loving the music and they were screaming and making noise, and this was, I think, a very important show for them.

It really sort of sent a chill up the spine of all the guys from Kraftwerk, to make them realize that they had a second life, and Detroit was the place where it started.

It wasn't just us, it was the whole of Detroit, Michigan; the whole of Cleveland, the whole of Chicago.

Black people, man, were, like, locked into this music.

You -- on regular radio, on daytime radio in America, you could hear "Pocket Calculator," on the "Computer World" album, you could hear "Pocket Calculator," Janet Jackson, Rick James, and a Prince song, all in less than 30 minutes.

[ Singing in German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ They were truly enjoying the fact that Black people were down with this music.

Even George Clinton was digging it.

You know, I mean, come on, man.

You've got the Blackest of Black men loving this s * * t in the middle of Detroit, Michigan.

This was incredible.

They're more than techno music.

They are creators of a genre that had no name up until we came along.

Up until then it was just amazing electronic music from these guys.

And I really wish they were not part of techno music, I really, for them.

I wish they didn't have to be part of that, 'cause a lot of techno music is s * * * *y.

A lot of the guys making it don't deserve to have their names attached to Kraftwerk.

♪♪ Look at the cover to "We Are the Robots."

They played on this, kind of, sexuality thing a little bit.

They kind of enjoyed it.

"We Are the Robots" was definitely their, sort of, stepping out moment as a creative, androgynous group.

Nobody knew for sure if these guys were gay or straight.

And I think they really enjoyed that.

♪♪ "We Are the Robots," hell yeah!

♪♪ ♪ We are the robots ♪♪ ♪ We are the robots ♪♪ ♪ We are the robots ♪♪ ♪ We are the robots ♪♪ ♪ Ya tvoi sluga ♪ Ya tvoi rabotnik ♪♪ ♪ Ya tvoi sluga ♪ Ya tvoi rabotnik ♪♪ It was so funky without being funky.

It was like, as if, it was... Wow!

It's hard to explain it.

I mean, the bass line to "Computer World" -- [ Humming ] You know, that was incredible, man.

"It's More Fun To Compute"...

These songs, man, it was just like, "F * *k!

This s * *t was on fire!"

♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪ It's more fun to compute ♪♪ ♪♪ "Computer World" was the album when they knew they could do everything they wanted to do.

Everything they dreamed of doing, they finally could do it, and they knew it.

That was the album that they could break the wall.

And they did it.

The compositional aspect of how some of that Kraftwerk music is structured never ceases to amaze me.

I think the melodies are very timeless.

And a good example of that is obviously the tip of the hat from Coldplay.

[ "Talk" by Coldplay ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Oh, brother, I can't, I can't get through ♪ Kevorkian: They were very big fans of the band's melodies and when they did that song, it was definitely a tribute, a tip of the hat or a way of saying, "Wow, we love you so much."

Everybody, okay?

♪ And you take a picture of something you see ♪ ♪♪ ♪ 'Cause in the future where will I be?

♪ ♪♪ ♪ You could climb a ladder up to the sun ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Or you could write a song nobody had sung ♪ ♪ Or do something that's never been done ♪ For a band like that it's probably the ultimate way to show appreciation.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Another lonely night ♪ Lonely night ♪ Stare at the TV screen ♪ The TV screen ♪ I don't know what to do, what to do ♪ ♪ I need a rendezvous, rendezvous ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ I call this number, I call this number ♪ ♪♪ ♪ For a data date, data date ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I don't know what to do, what to do ♪ ♪♪ ♪ I need a rendezvous, rendezvous ♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Computer love ♪♪ ♪ Computer love ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Computer love ♪♪ ♪ Computer love ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ 'Cause you feel like you're going where you've been before ♪ ♪♪ ♪ You'll tell anyone who'll listen but you feel ignored ♪ ♪♪ ♪ Nothing's really making any sense at all ♪ ♪ Let's talk, oh, let's talk ♪ My love, oh, do you want to talk?

♪ [ Cheering and applause ] I think it opened their music up to a whole new age group and audience that might not, otherwise, really have been aware of them.

♪♪ ♪♪ Narrator: Being aware of Kraftwerk does not mean, however, that this new generation of fans had it any easier getting tickets to the Tate Modern concerts.

With nine out of ten applicants disappointed, young devotees organized a midweek Kraftwerk party in fashionable Bethnal Green to coincide with the group's shows.

♪♪ Tonight was born out of a frustration that myself, personally, having stayed on the phone for nine hours and trying to get a ticket to see Kraftwerk perform live at the Tate... We felt we wanted to do a night that was exploring the music and the visuals.

We just wanted to do something for those people, including us, that didn't get tickets, basically.

Woman: My boyfriend, who's DJing right now, he DJs a lot of techno and a lot of minimal house and dance music and I'm coming at Kraftwerk from a Krautrock angle and so that was one of the things that we could connect about.

I'm really into Detroit techno so that's the kind of stuff that I play, and I kind of rediscovered Kraftwerk.

They're used on a lot of influential tracks that people will find again and again, no matter how old they are or what sort of music they're listening to.

So they're constantly going to be rediscovered, and they still feel new, even though they've been around for 40 years.

♪♪ Narrator: The difficulty of getting Kraftwerk tickets pales in comparison with the difficulty of getting close to the band.

Regarding themselves as simple workers in the sound factory, they rejected the cult of personality from day one and are mystified by the public's fascination with their private lives.

They turned down all superstar collaborations, including an offer from Michael Jackson, and the greater their fame became, the further they withdrew from the public gaze, the impenetrable shroud of media silence only fueling the aura of mystique that surrounds them.

Nobody knows this better than Peter Boettcher, who has been Kraftwerk's favorite photographer since the late 1980s.

As they themselves won't pose for photographs, he mainly photographs their robots.

♪♪ [ Speaking German ] They were careful enough never to put themselves in a position where they were being held prisoner by the media.

They decided when they wanted the media... to be their prisoner.

They decided when they wanted to make the industry bow to them.

It's a really important thing, especially in today's age of, like, everybody being on Twitter and Facebook and sharing, like, every detail of their private life.

If I went to the toilet two minutes ago and now I'm going to go wash my feet.

I think I'll go eat some spaghetti next and maybe I'll go to the movies.

As if that's really important.

As if your life is really so important other people just need to know every move about it.

When you look at the timeline of people like Mozart and classical composers and all that, what's left of them is that, the music, their compositions, the things that they created, and the rest is just trivial.

♪♪ [ Speaking German ] ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Tour de France ♪ Radio-Tour information ♪ Transmission, television Narrator: The themes that inform all of Kraftwerk's music -- travel, communication and the harmonious coexistence of man, nature and technology are driven by the dynamic of forward motion.

Nothing embodies this better than their passion for cycling, which produced both the massive 1983 hit "Tour De France," and their latest studio album.

♪♪ ♪♪ Morley: They were the embodiment of the emotion and motion of the 20th century.

Distilling it into these wonderful little almost electronic haikus.

I always think of them as historians, in a way.

The tracking of what happened in the 20th century, in terms of it being about speed, movement, technology, the relationship between humans and machines, which was becoming more and more of a problem.

In that sense, they were also cultural commentators, they were like great, kind of, you know...

They were like Roland Barthes or Walter Benjamin, diagnosing what was going on around us and compressing it into this kind of very brief, tender poetry.

♪♪ Kraftwerk: ♪ Radioactivity ♪♪ ♪ Is in the air for you and me Narrator: Launching in the age of glam rock and hippies, with short hair, suits, German vocals and industrial chic, Kraftwerk's styling was always provocatively radical, but nothing ruffled feathers in left-wing Europe like the "Computer World" album, which, when home computers were unheard of, made the tools of state oppression sing.

Long before there were mobile phones, and with lyrics that anticipated the curt language of texting, they announced that the computer would soon connect us to the world, and we would perceive everything through a ghostly glow of pixels to a soundtrack of regulated, machine-generated noise.

♪♪ Kraftwerk were aware, in a way, of a future that has led us to Google and Apple and Facebook and Twitter.

But also, because of their understanding of the art world, were also very appreciative that if there was too much of the technological side, there would also be a loss of the soul, the human side.

Kraftwerk had a really interesting view of the future, which was a nostalgic one.

And they always used the past expressions of hope, which had become defunct, as their main language.

We're now embedded in a sort of future that they appeared to predict.

They weren't specifically right about the details, and to some extent, they were imagining the 1950s or the 1920s as much as anything else, but they were the closest of anybody to understand what was going to happen.

Kraftwerk's approach, whilst extremely gentle and nurturing and continual and careful, is a revolutionary approach.

So what they're doing is they're not bringing short, sharp shocks; they're bringing a global revolution to the way they work.

And it's a never-ending story.

[ German ] ♪♪ It's funny, the rock critics bemoan, in such an old-fashioned way, that there's only one member of Kraftwerk left, you know, like it's the Dave Clark Five or Sweet or The Tremolos or something.

But of course, it doesn't matter who is in Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk itself is the work of art.

It's a bit like moaning that when you see a Picasso, there's no Pablo Picasso.

Well, no, he's dead.

When all members of Kraftwerk have died, Kraftwerk will still exist as a work of art.

You're looking at a living, breathing exhibition of historic electronic art.

The sound quality, the production -- that's the future.

Just to listen to it and archive it, archive it, make it part of a history lesson.

Put it in...

I mean, you know, you have Duke Ellington and Miles Davis songs, put it right next to that.

Disco and Kraftwerk, put them together and you've got the whole history of music ever since the mid-'70s.

I still remember the first time I heard "Trans-Europe Express," the first time I heard "I Feel Love," Donna Summer.

There was no turning back.

I mean, once you've heard this and you compare it to all the other stuff, you just go, "Okay, party over.

It's done.

They won."

For those of us who were fans, who attached ourselves loyally to the colors of Kraftwerk in the '70s and '80s, have also been proved right in our taste, you know -- we were right!

Myself, I'd like to say thank you very much to Kraftwerk.

That's my words.

Thank you for the opportunity to grow up with your music.

When I want to relax, when I want to watch the sunset, when I just want to, you know, drive my car for a long, straight distance really fast, that's my music that I need to rejuvenate myself from all the bulls * *t out here in the world.

I need to remind myself of the level of quality there once was.

And I would say, for any young people today, you really need to turn off the computer and the TV for a little while and just close your eyes and see what you see.

Because you just might see yourself.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪ Musique ♪ Non-stop