interview by steve cross.
edited by steve phillips.
article written in august 1997
published in "sadness is in the sky magazine" issue 3

Around 1968, four men joined forces to create CAN. Nearly 30 years later, the band whose records Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) found "dumped in Woolworths department stores at approximately 45 cents.." are being re-discovered and are possibly only now gaining the full scale admiration they deserve. Using all manner of musical experimantation, embracing broad exploration and even 'ancient' philosophies, CAN were (and are) and insparation. A new Mute Records release, "Sacrilege" is an apt testament to just how amazing the music of CAN is, as 16 performers from Brian Eno to System 7 and The Orb, repeat, remix, and re-interpret CAN to pay the ultimate tribute to and amazing group. Can's inspirational master of possibility, Mr Holger Czuckay, spoke tp Steve Cross, about the philosophies behind CAN and the new collection of tunes on 'Sacrilege'.

HC: When we started in the beginning we didn't know if we should become a 'rock' group, yes or no, and then we thought maybe we should try to behave ourselves like tribal musicains, with instruments of (our) time. And that's why we listened sometimes to other people's music and made a joke out of it. But anyway, that was the way that we could express ourselves very well before we could really establish a real 'rock' rhythm.

SC: An interesting thing of you starting something right from the beginning is that in 1969, 'The Boatwoman Song' on your "CANAXIS 5" album, which surely must be in a 'rock' context, the first example of sampling and of taking of what is now viewed as 'world music' and samplin onto it your own sort of 'concept'. Can you tell us how that came about?

HC: You see this was parallel. When we started with CAN, I was quite interested in all these things and so with a friend of mine we were sitting at home, had a tape recorder and some 'loops' running around beer bottles and 'loops' running along the floor and this was the first time when i heard Australian music and for me it was like "What? This sounds completely and absolutely modern and like most modern electronic stuff!"

SC: What was the source of this? Was it from the short-wave which i know you were interested in?

HC: Yeah, yeah, that's right.

SC: So you would tape from short-wave radio and then, to use the modern terminology, 'sample' what you taped?

HC: Yeah. We (took) first from the radio and then we got cassettes which nobody had at that time, it was 1968! And we thought "man, we have to do something with it!" and this was the first time we tried to make a sort of 'longer sentence' out of it and make a sort of 'combination' with them.

SC: Was it really important for CAN to bring in these outside sources, like people from other cultures? Did that broaden things as well?

HC: You see this principle to bring in things from other worlds into the misuc had something to do with the idea that musicians should listen to something that they don't know. Now when all out singers were leaving and we were suddenly playing together again, there was not that person left (to fill the vocalist's role) (Editor's note: At the end of the 60's, Can's vocalist Malcolm Moody left the group. Can also lost their next vocalist Damo Suzuki, who departed the group in 1973.) So, I was looking to the radio, to transmitter, to telephone, to all these things, and I invented a sort of electronic assembly with cassettes and tapes and with very strange tape recorders which were always going up and down. Never going at one speed of course, always making different speeds and just to give the musicians the feeling that there was something coming from outside and they have to react to it.

SC: Obviously what went down in CAN was a very personal thing between the 4 core musicians plus the other people contributing. How much of it was driven by the mood of the time? I've read that at your first gig you actually had (audio) tapes of the 1968 riots in Paris as part of the performance?

HC: This is right. We had those tapes of the recording of the rebellion in Paris and they were making this sort of (thumping) rhythm in the streets and we played that as sort of 'inserts' into the first live concert ever and we were playing together with this rhythm. From the beginning we had this open minded idea actually to what was later established.

SC: Did you find it a very liberating period, just generally?

HC: It was. You know it was 1968, it was the time of 'Beat' music, it was the beginning of the sort of 'rock' music. But one thing we knew, if we wanted to become another rock'n'roll band, we would miss the point because American or English rock'n'roll bands are just better. And we didn't have the chance of that and that was not not our intention, to get in competition with 'rock'. This was the reason we said "come on, even if it will be experimental music, let's find a place where we can start from." And you know we had a great drummer, Jaki Leibeziet. He, when you look at him, looks like he's playing a mcahine. Actually I think the drum machines were invented because of this man's drumming. And he always said "Everybody has to reduce himself as much as possible", and to me personally he said "Holger, don't play so many notes, just one is enough to make a lot of 'holes' and just make pauses and don't play, and just wait and see what the others (musicians) do." And this was actually the beginning of the CAN sound.

SC: You've got the remix album coming out right now, what's your reaction to it? What are your favorite tracks on it?

HC: Oh I love the tracks from Francois Kevorkian, "Blue Bag", which is sort of jungle music that I like very much. Or "Yoo Doo Right" or "Vitamin C" or the Sonic Youth mix of "Spoon" is very nice. There are many tracks which I like, "oh Yeah" from Daniel Miller, the boss of Mute Records, is I think one of my favorite tracks. But they are all very different. That was Daniel Miller's idea. CAN was not at all involved in the whole thing. Though I may say I personally have done a lot of remixes from 1990 on, especially the unknown CAN material. But this is a completely different chapter This (the remix album) was the idea of Daniel Miller and I think he has succeeded very, very well with this thing bacause he found a lot of different 'positions', with different styles.

SC: Is there anyone you might work with in the future who've contributed to this record?

HC: Yes. Oh certainly. More or less i would like to work with all of them and I think everybody in the group is thinking like that. I will say that when we go to London to look at the release I think we will meet all the remixers somewhere in a club. Some of them I know like Brian Eno. I was working with Brian Eno before, but some of them I don't know and then we will see how we (get) along. I think it could be very interesting. I was working with quite young musicians from the techno/trip hop/ jungle scene here (in Germany). It was like a CAN concept of the beginning of the 70's. It was really unbelievable working with these musicains but just for the equipment of today and the music of the 90's.

SC: Do you listen to the back catalogue very much or are you just pushing forward all the time?

HC: The back catalogue of CAN is of course something where there are still things which are not released from the very old days. They will see the light someday I'm sure, and of course maybe all the remixes I am doing for example.

The double CD remix album of 16 CAN tracks, "Sacrilege" is out now on Mute Records thru MdS in Australia. It is an awesome collection of reworkings of some excellent CAN material.

... click here for part two of steve cross' interview with holger czuckay...