interview by steve cross.
edited by steve phillips.
article written in august 1997
published in "sadness is in the sky magazine" issue 4

In issue 3 SIITS presented part 1 of an interview by Steve Cross with CAN's Holger Czuckay. It seemed essential to also look (in somewhat more detail) at what really made CAN tick and some of the elements which were most important to their sound, the existence, and the life of this amazing German group. As well as maintaining their own CAN sound, the group also delved into other genres of music such as dub, reggae and experimental sound. They also forged precedents which today are still explored and admired by other musicians some thirty years later. One link between much of the CAN material over the years is something known as the "Ethnological Forgery Series" (EFS). There may or may not have been a conscious intention to include 'pieces' of the EFS on each CAN record and for this reason the tunes are very much scattered throughout their back-catalogue.

SC: Could you tell us something about the EFS that runs through CAN's albums? I understand these tracks go right back to the start of the band.

HC: You see, it came about because we had to do some film music and out of the film music we could make our living. And the film music actually had something to do with "Kama Sutra" or something. It was one of the films where we got paid quite a lot for it, and so we had to behave ourselves as if we would have been Indians, for example. So this thing, the EFS, it happened actually like that. Yeah!

SC: So to some extent then there was some degree of pretense as well as a genuine enthusiasm to embrace something slightly more tribal?

HC: That is right. There was an enthusiasm about it because it really had nothing to do with 'normal' rock. And it was for us somehow new, and as we were musicians you see we started as musicians again from the very beginning. That means we had to count until 3 again. Though we were quite studied, we thought we thought if we make something new we have to make that from the very beginning. and of course, we played together with all these things (sampling tape/radio editing, editing short-wave radio), I especially, I played the bass, all this kind of stuff. It was a very funny way to do that because I really had prepared that in my mind and i was studying with Stockhausen, you know the German electronic composer, and I was looking up the electronic studio here in Cologne and I just wanted to know how all the machines are working. And when he (Stockhausen) left one day I went the same night with my prepared tapes and had a second key and the Secretary opened it (the studio) and I got to know how to do all the things. In four hours I had the first (CAN) album ready! Then I left the studio and came back in the morning and it (the studio) was still warm!

SC: That's an interesting counterpoint to the way CAN would later on assemblage songs from hours and hours of improvisation.

HC: Yeah, I mean CAN was sort of improvisationalist but we always started from scratch and continued into sort of 'instant composition'. It has something to do with a football game actually.

SC: In what way?

HC: You know there's a team working and you don't know in the next moment where the ball's going to. But you can somehow direct the team and have a strategy, how to get that ball into the goal. And this is typical CAN. It means we didn't know even when we played live, what was the next song. We were never preparing a piece of music live on stage. We just waited sometimes for the people that they did something that we could give an answer to and then we started exactly like a football team to get the ball somewhere along the playground.

In many ways Holger could not have chosen a more appropriate hypothetical example. CAN was for many years the epitome of a team in the spirit that it's life flowed from a core of players, yet when the team needed an additional influence, they would introduce new members. Thus that ideal allowed CAN to head into new and uncharted waters whenever the opportunity arose.

SC: I guess that ties in with a quote I read from your guitarist Michael (Karoli) who said CAN operate as a 'geometry of people'.

HC: This is right. That was a very good constellation with can. We were four people, and one singer. And we never prepared what you would call 'playback' for a singer. This was never the case. Actually our vocalists, they had really to fight for their position in the group and somehow they bahaved themselves as a fifth instrumentalist actually. And in the beginning when we did not know even if it would make some sort of 'rock' oriented rhythms, suddenly Malcolm Mooney passed by from New York, but he was an artist, he was never singing before and one day he just joined in, in front of the microphone and we thought "man, that is a real pusher!" and we thought "maybe we should become rock musicians, why not?" And this is how it happened. And the he had to leave the group because he had to go back to America because he was sick, and then we found Damo Suzuki, and he was in the right timing too because he was not that sort of 'pusher', he was a different person. But CAN suddenly was a group who was bale to establish sort of a powerful rhythm and that was very good for Damo.

One of the most interesting elements of the CAN sound over many years was the influence of Jaki Liebieziet - CAN drummer and multi-instrumentalist. Coming from a free-jazz background, Jaki applied many of his own principles, not only to his playing but also on a personal level, where his wisdom was an inspiration to the other members of CAN, especially to Holger.

HC: He's a wonderful person. I mean when you listen to him today, he is the person who is thinking about "how did the first human being on Earth ever drum? What was the rhythm?"And he says "The first drum was probably something to eat! Some sort of plate or pot that people were cooking in." He says "this could possibly be the first drum ever and how would the people drum?" And he's very much into the idea of making everything as simple as possible even if it sounds complicated.

SC: He always seems to be talking about just being a simple metronome of making rhythm simple but how he gets from point A to point B, even if it's a very simple journey, seems to be a fantastically complicated route sometimes.

HC: If I may say something about that. Jaki thinks only in terms of long and short. That means a beat or a rhythm can be long or short. Like Morse (code) key, point and a little line. Short and long, that's the Morse alphabet. Jaki is playing with this Morse key actually. CAN is very very happy about Jaki because he was the best teacher for the rest of the group.

SC: And he'd come out of a free-jazz background, is this correct?

HC: He was playing with Chet Baker.

SC: Really?

HC: He lived for 3 years in Barcelona before he came to Cologne, and he was playing there with some jazz people, but as well with Chet Baker. He told me just 2 days ago the story actually. He said Chet Baker was a wonderful person and he liked Jaki a lot, then he (Chet) pulled up his arms and said "you see, I'm a junkie and I don't know where to put the needle anymore. And I show you this to give you the feeling, never do that which I have done because this will destroy you." And he really did it because he loved Jaki.

SC: When Jaki came to CAN, did he really change his style? Was he rebelling against what he'd been doing for the last few years?

HC: Jaki was mainly very open to what was going to happen beacuse was a free-jazz drummer and that means to make rhythms was somehow forbidden. He has to mono-sylabic drummer. And Jaki was very happy that he could start like 'a new born baby' on drums again and make the most simple rhythms ever.

SC: And what did Michael (Karoli) and Irmin (Schmidt) bring into that band that was very personal to them?

HC: Michael was actually the 'rock' orientated person because he was my pupil in 1966 when I was a teacher and he was sitting there and I showed him some guitar. And actually he gave me for the first time to listen, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix and The Velvet Underground. Actually he was always oriented to becoming a person who just anted to make some sort of dance music! Irmin was a fellow composer, and with me he was attending Stockhausen choruses. And actually he wrote me a letter one day and it said "Holger, why shouldn't we do something completely new and stop all this 'serious' music?" And I said "OK, I have a guitar player there, he was my pupil" and I said "I know a drummer and maybe he knows a drummer who can play with us." And so we asked Jaki if he knows a drummer and the next day Jaki came up, and there he was, and CAN was together.

SC: And I heard that Michael was working on a compilation of live CAN material?

HC: That is right. And I think he will be finished next year, then CAN is 30 years old and I think that is a very good anniversary to get a good live album out of us!

CAN'S back catalogue is worth looking into. Recently many of the titles have been re-issued in Australia, each at very affordable prices via MdS. Many thanks to Steve Cross.

-you can visit holger's homepage at THIS address-