Enlarge image (© http://roedelius.com/v1/) “I didn't agree to the sentence, 'Everybody's an artist,'” German electronic musician Hans-Joachim Roedelius said, referring to a famous quote by artist Joseph Beuys. “But I agreed to the sentence, 'Everybody could be an artist.'”

On a recent stop in Washington, I had the chance to sit down with Roedelius in a coffee shop on U Street (see portions of interview to the right). Now, I've been a fan of Roedelius since records started to pile up in my dorm room, especially of the band for which he is most known and which basically invented electronic music, Kluster. After he talked about Beuys, and after starting to feel comfortable, it hit me like a bag of bricks: “You're talking to the guy who made electronic music!” I got nervous.

But then he gave me a wide-open smile, followed by a laugh. I calmed down. Roedelius exudes easy like a lazy stream, and despite the critical acclaim he has enjoyed throughout a career spanning more than 40 years, he doesn't carry around his ego on his shoulders. To his countenance, small explosions of laughter crop up out of nowhere and drop around like little joy bombs.

His career began early, but not in music. Young Hans started out as an actor working in various films for the most prominent film studio in Germany at the time, Universum Film AG, better known by its acronym, UFA. But the acting bug did not bite too hard. After taking on a number of careers, including coal-mining and massage therapy, he got his start in music, and arts in general, when culture was ripe: the 1960s in Berlin.

“Flower power,” was how he started to describe the city at the time – “the hippie movement that came over the ocean to us” from America. In the late 60s, Roedelius and a few friends founded the Zodiak Club, a highly influential collective of artists that would produce some of the most seminal bands of the period, like Kluster (and later Cluster), Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream. When I asked what a typical Friday or Saturday night was like, his eyes widened in what looked to be surprise or amusement. Then he deadpanned: “It was all week.”

So, on a daily basis artists would experiment together, mixing influences and styles in music that ranged from free jazz, to psychedelic rock, to the the broad swathe of the avant garde. Just nothing standard. Although the changing times in Berlin were influenced by America, the expression from Germany was much different than the overtly political lyrics coming from the States. Whereas Country Joe McDonald asked, “What are we fighting for?” in Vietnam, Hans and his fellows were constructing walls of sound with homemade electronic contraptions that didn't have names yet.

Despite the lack of politicized lyrics, some of Roedelius' friends, he said, took part in political demonstrations during the 60s. For Roedelius, the 60s were about learning music. He was older than the others, and had experienced first-hand the oppressive regimes of the Nazis and then Communist East Germany. Politics had already played too large a role in his life. Before moving to West Germany, Roedelius spent two years in prison for deserting the East German army. And as I continued to ask about politics, he finally just said, a bit exasperated, it seemed, at having to explain why he had focused his 60s activism in music and not politics, “I was bored!”

From one of the Zodiac Club's experiments Roedelius would form Kluster with the late Conrad Schnitzler and Dieter Moebius. Both Schnitzler and Moebius had studied under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Fine Arts Academy, but Roedelius had no training in music. After two records, Schnitzler left the band, whereupon Roedelius and Moebius anglicized the name. Cluster, now with a “C,” continued to put out bold, innovative music, working along the way with musicians like Brian Eno, and peppering their collaboration with solo work. Roedelius has a veritable mountain of releases with Cluster, Kluster, another band called Harmonium and countless collaborations and “self portraits.” To call his continued output prolific is misleading: It's staggering.

Enlarge image Roedelius Way (© Media Loca) “I don't approach music intellectually, I just do it.”

Going at music openly, unencumbered by presupposition, does not mean advancing blindly. And although it is likely not a popular stance on arts-school campuses, it is not necessarily anti-art or distrustful of art as an institution in the vein of either Dadaism or Fluxus. After all, Roedelius' first two collaborators, Schnitzler and Moebius, attended art school. And Beuys taught them there, however far from the main stream he cast his net. Roedelius's method is equally non-dismissive.

But, one gets the feeling when talking to him, “just do[ing]” art is the only one that really moves him. After the camera was off, we continued to talk for several minutes. When the discussion turned more personal, he told me about his house in Austria, his family and his copious collection of recordings.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius will turn 77 on the 26th of this month. He's scheduled to play a show in San Francisco on his birthday. This is not a man who is trying to secure a legacy. Even if, for an inventor of electronic music, not to mention a pioneer of electronic elements in any type of music, he would be excused if he were.

Instead, the tour continues. Toward the end of the conversation, I suggested that his head-first musical approach, whereby he plays music then picks out the parts he likes, was a bit like fishing. A hearty laugh let me know the comparison was accurate, if also a bit amusing. Leaving the coffee shop, I knew that he'd be right back at his fishing soon, with a vision but perhaps without a set plan. In February, those who hung out at Zodiac's haunts in the 60s have planned a reunion in Berlin. Plan on being there, but don't plan on the celebration to follow a plan.