Martyn Ware on Kraftwerk, Money, and the Cost of Electronic Innovation

Martyn Ware has a straightforward explanation for Kraftwerk’s status. “Everybody goes on about how brilliant Kraftwerk were,” the Heaven 17 founder said. “Yes, but they were only brilliant because they were rich.”

In an interview with MusicRadar, Ware argued that Düsseldorf’s wall-to-wall synths and Bob Moog custom-building instruments did not create Kraftwerk’s ideas. But the money behind them turned those ideas into finished albums. “You still need a good idea,” he said, “but the chances of you turning that idea into a great album have been greatly increased.”

The point is not an attack on Kraftwerk. It is about how much electronic music history was decided by economics before anyone heard a note. Ware knows the other side directly. Growing up in a two-up-two-down in Sheffield with an outside toilet, he said his chances of owning a Moog were “less than zero.”

What changed the calculation was a Brian Eno interview in the NME declaring rock ’n’ roll dead and arguing that all you needed was a synth, a mic, and a tape machine. Ware, Ian Craig Marsh, and Phil Oakey all believed it. With a Korg 700, a Roland System 100, an SM58, and a Sony two-track, they recorded “Being Boiled.” No MIDI, no sync, no computer. Music made inside severe limits.

Kraftwerk had the walls. Sheffield had a borrowed idea and four or five bounces on a tape machine. Ware’s argument is about the music that never happened, the potential cut off by price before it could be heard.