I think Herr Hütter would probably care more about a bike ride than this news, if he still cycles regularly… something that, due to the privacy surrounding his figure, we can neither affirm… nor deny.

It seems like a joke, because after having been nominated… six times! (2003, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2017, 2019 & 2020), finally in 2021 Kraftwerk will be inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

The 36th Annual Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony will take place on Saturday, October 30, 2021 at 8pm. ET at the Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse in Cleveland, Ohio.

The museum’s name has long since become outdated. But it seems like a joke that the biggest culprits in the demise of rock ‘n’ roll are included in such a prestigious (?) line-up. This is said with all the sarcasm in the world, because the fact that a band as unimportant as Green Day has been in this position for six years gives us an idea of the criteria used to select the members of this club.

Perhaps we cannot ask for more. This is an American invention, and the choice of the Düsseldorf band has sparked comments from HOF fans in that country like this one:

“No, they shouldn’t. EDM is not rock and roll. It’s shitty dance music.

The whole thing looks like a bad joke. First of all, because that “group of voters consisting of more than a thousand artists, historians and members of the music industry” who make the choice have been made too late for this one, in case they had to have made it. Ralf, Florian, Wolfgang and Karl were already eligible in 1996, when their influence was already so undeniable and obvious… It is a bad joke that people like Depeche Mode or Bowie (to cite two examples of the Düsseldorf Four’s very clear influence on a band or an artist) were in that club before Kraftwerk.

Secondly, it is ironic, as we have pointed out before, that the band that has made rock ‘n’ roll pass away, after six attempts, are elevated to the altar of that musical style.

Kraftwerk are to blame for the fact that pop and rock have become almost mere memories of the past. Their influence has already surpassed that of Elvis and The Beatles, having been around for more than half a century, and is likely to remain active for some time to come.

 

Besides, neither Elvis nor the Liverpool band created a sound of their own, a unique and unmistakable identity. There were people making rock ‘n’ roll when Elvis became famous, and there were bands on Merseyside as good as or better than the Beatles, and later on it wasn’t them who invented psychedelia either.

Ralf and Florian laid the foundations of what has become electronic music, and they have just shaped it together with Karl Bartos and Wolfgang Flür (together with Schneider and Hütter they are the four members inducted to the Rock And Roll HOF). Today, the influence of what they created is still so strong that it is difficult to see the end of it.

Who will certainly not be there, unfortunately, is Florian, who left us last year. Perhaps the only point of interest in this whole affair is whether we will see the three remaining members of the golden age of the band attending the ceremony. I can hardly see Herr Hüter and Herr Flür coinciding anywhere, after the bitter controversy (court cases included) caused by the publication of Flür’s I Was a Robot, a book that ended up with excerpts censored and removed by court order.

Ralf would probably prefer to take his bike out for a ride.

 

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