Ralf Hütter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ralf Hütter
Ralf Hütter by Ueli Frey, 1976
Ralf Hütter by Ueli Frey, 1976
Background information
Birth nameRalf Hütter
Born (1946-08-20) 20 August 1946 (age 75)
Krefeld, Rhine Province, Allied-occupied Germany
OriginDüsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia
Genres
Occupation(s)Musician, singer
InstrumentsSynthesizer, keyboards, vocoder, guitar, bass guitar, drums, percussion, vocals
Years active1965–present
Associated actsKraftwerk
Organisation
The Phantoms[1]
The Quartermasters[2][3]
Websitehttp://www.kraftwerk.com
Ralf Hütters Unterschrift.png

Ralf Hütter (born 20 August 1946) is a German musician and composer best known as the lead singer and keyboardist of Kraftwerk, which he founded with Florian Schneider in 1969. On May 12, 2021, Kraftwerk was announced as one of the inductees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Biography[]

Hütter was born on 20 August 1946 in Krefeld, Germany. In 2009 he lived near Düsseldorf.[4]

He met Florian Schneider while studying improvisation at the Robert Schumann Hochschule.[5] He is a vegetarian.[6] Hütter is a secretive musician who avoids interviews; throughout Kraftwerk's long career he has been notoriously hard to pin down for an interview.[7] He has a wife and a daughter.[citation needed]

Cycling interests[]

Ralf Hütter is an enthusiastic cycling fan, a fact reflected in some of the band's work. It was widely claimed that, when he was on tour, the group's bus would drop off Hütter 100 miles away from the next venue and he would cycle the rest of the way, a story that Hütter later confirmed.[4] The band members took up cycling when recording the album The Man-Machine in the late 1970s. Ralf Hütter had been looking for a new form of exercise. The single "Tour de France" includes sounds that follow this theme, including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based around cycling. At the time this did not happen, but the project eventually was released as Tour de France Soundtracks in 2003.

Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident in May or June 1982,[8] during the initial period of recording for the 1986 album Electric Café. He was in a coma as a result. Karl Bartos stated the first thing Hütter said when he awoke from his coma was "Where is my bicycle?", a story Hütter later disputed in a June 2009 interview in The Guardian.[9]

References[]

  1. ^ "Kollektiv - MySpace Music".
  2. ^ "Grant deBruin". www.facebook.com.
  3. ^ "Grant deBruin". www.facebook.com.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b John Harris (19 June 2009). "'I got a new head, and I'm fine'". The Guardian.
  5. ^ "Red Bull Music Academy Daily". daily.redbullmusicacademy.com.
  6. ^ "Ralf Hütter (1946 -)". International Vegetarian Union (IVU).
  7. ^ Phil Hebblethwaite (19 March 2018). "The secretive musicians who avoid interviews". BBC Music.
  8. ^ Karl Bartos 2017, Der Klang der Maschine, ch. 12
  9. ^ "John Harris interviews Kraftwerk's Ralf Hütter". the Guardian. 2009-06-18. Retrieved 2021-03-01.
Retrieved from ""