Back to the future | 29 June 2017

As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their requirements for car transportation while on tour, necessitated by ‘rather bad driving experiences in the recent past in various parts of the world’. Kraftwerk, it said, should only be driven by ‘suave gear changers (if car is not automatic)’ and ‘suave breakers’. Both radio and aircon should be turned off, and on no account should the driver talk to the band.

It had the effect of making the Düsseldorf quartet — long since down to one original member, Ralf Hütter — look like grumpy old men who would rather be at home tinkering with their racing bikes. It was also another chip to the carapace of mystery that was long one of their most efficient tools. If Kraftwerk aren’t exactly Bob Dylan on his Never Ending Tour, then opportunities to see them aren’t as sparse as they once were. These days, too, Hütter’s interviews don’t see him dwelling on the need to eliminate the human from music, but have him teasing his publicist for looking as though he should be in Rod Stewart’s band.

If anything, Kraftwerk have transformed from the most forward-looking pop group in history — as influential as the Beatles, perhaps more so given the way mechanised music-making has taken over the recording industry in the past 35 years — into the very embodiment of the heritage rock act, taking a largely unchanging set around prestigious concert halls for people willing to pay a large amount of money for the privilege, and doing so for years on end. When they toured the UK in 1992, the venues they visited included Leicester Polytechnic and the University of East Anglia; now that they are unquestionably enshrined in pop history, it’s all high-status shows.