German electronic pop giants Kraftwerk bring 3-D tour to Bill Graham Civic

SAN FRANCISCO — One of the most influential groups of the past half century comes to the Bill Graham Civic Wednesday when German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk bring the long delayed return of their “Kraftwerk 3-D Tour” to San Francisco.

With the catchy melodies, pulsating electronic rhythms and otherworldly synthesizer sound heard on the group’s classic run of ’70s and ’80s albums like their 1974 international commercial breakthrough Autobahn and follow-up efforts Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World, Kraftwerk laid the foundation for a wide range of music that would emerge in their wake, essentially inventing modern synth-pop and providing a cornerstone influence for everything from post-punk, new wave, synth pop and hip-hop (which sampled the band’s kinetic electro grooves early on) to practically every style of electronic music that would emerge from techno and house to electro and ambient.    

Founded by principles Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970 in Düsseldorf, the duo of multi-instrumentalists originally worked together as members of the German experimental rock group the Organisation, which recorded its only album entitled Tone Float a year earlier before splitting up. Hütter and Schneider started Kraftwerk initially with the same improvisational and experimental focus as German contemporaries like Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream and Cluster after Schneider purchased his first synthesizer.

Using that synth along with organs, flute, violin and more traditional rock instrumentation from a variety of collaborators playing drums, guitar and bass — including guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who would leave to form another landmark krautrock band Neu! — the band created pulsating, droning exploratory tracks live that would eventually make up the bulk of their first two albums Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2. The group would subsequently pare down the instrumentation and primarily perform as a duo until after the release of the more pastoral, minimalist Ralf und Florian which pointed the band towards their future direction and led them to bring drummer Wolfgang Flür on to play an electronic percussion kit that took the place of their early drum machines.

While those early efforts are beloved by fans and hailed as important steps in the evolution of Kraftwerk, the band has basically removed them from its discography, refusing to allow them to be reissued (though they are widely available as bootlegs and can be listened to on YouTube) and disavowing the three albums. In their revisionist history of the band, Kraftwerk clearly prefer to view Autobahn — their first great commercial success in 1974 — as their debut.

Built around the hypnotic, 22-minute title track that took up the entire first side, the album pared down the group’s sound even further while introducing its self-described “robot pop” focus on simple melodies and mechanized rhythms. It also introduced vocals to Kraftwerk’s music for the first time, both traditionally sung and using a vocoder to process Schneider’s singing. The song would become an international hit by the following year after first finding a receptive audience through airplay at a Chicago radio station that gradually spread across the U.S., eventually propelling the album into the Billboard Top 5. The album also introduced the striking cover design of collaborator Emil Schult, who also advised the band on developing their distinctive visual style and regularly contributed lyrics.

Musician Klaus Roeder contributed violin and guitar to the album, but when the band embarked on its first tours of the UK and North America, they would be joined by new recruit Karl Bartos, who would play Kraftwerk’s homemade electronic percussion alongside Flür, completing the classic line-up that would stay together making groundbreaking music into the late ’80s.

1975 saw the band follow-up the international success of Autobahn with its first full concept album that featured only electronic keyboards and percussion instruments, Radio-Activity. As suggested by the title, the songs focused on either the energy released by the breaking apart of certain atoms or the information carried on radio waves, giving the tunes a type of thematic structure that Kraftwerk would frequently return. Trans-Europe Express in 1977 celebrated Europe’s railway service and European culture with its iconic hit title tune and “Showroom Dummies,” while The Man-Machine delved into the idea of man’s intersection with technology, a concept pushed further on 1981’s Computer World. Several of those singles were promoted with early videos that further pushed the boundaries of the group’s stylized visual aesthetic.

The band’s productivity would slow after the 1981 release of Computer World. They had another hit song with the release of “Tour de France” in 1983, but suffered a setback when Hütter was seriously injured in a cycling accident a short time later, ending up in a coma. He would gradually recover and Kraftwerk eventually completed and released Electric Cafe in 1986, but the group had already retreated from public performance since the Computer World tour before Flür departed the following year. The group wouldn’t resurface until the early ’90s after nearly a decade since a proper tour with the release The Mix. A collection of re-arranged, re-imagined and in some cases re-recorded versions of their earlier material, the album found Kraftwerk embracing their position as godfathers of electronic dance music.

Kraftwerk returned to the road in Europe, but wouldn’t perform in the U.S. live until 1998, previewing some new material that would eventually be released on Tour de France Soundtracks five years later as well as its first live document, the stunning Minimum-Maximum that came out in audio and DVD versions in 2005, eventually earning the band a Grammy nomination for Best Electronic/Dance Album. Even though Schneider left the group in 2008 (and sadly died at age 73 in 2020), Kraftwerk has regularly returned to touring with Hütter at the helm, performing its entire catalog of albums for an ambitious 3-D tour that ran from 2012 to 2016 which was also released in an expansive live set in 2017. Fresh from its induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year, the iconic group returns to San Francisco with its COVID-delayed 50th anniversary celebration of Kraftwerk Wednesday, reprising its 3-D tour at the Bill Graham Civic.  

Kraftwerk 3-D
Wednesday, July 6, 8 p.m. $69.50-$119.50  
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium