How Kraftwerk set the protocol for modern sampling
There’s an argument to be made that Kraftwerk are the most influential band of their generation. Certainly, all electronic music can be traced back to the krautrock legends and their pioneering use of synthesisers, drum machines and vocoders. However, their influence isn’t just in the music itself; it’s also in the sheer number of artists who’ve made great music by sampling them.
For as long as people have been taking segments of their favourite records to build something new, Kraftwerk have been some of the most consistent foundational blocks. This makes sense as their spacious, metronomically precise music gives people ample space to work with, and after Afrika Bambaataa sampled ‘Trans-Europe Express’ for their song ‘Planet Rock’, all bets were off.
Within a few decades, everyone from Pharrell Williams and The Chemical Brothers to My Morning Jacket had crafted new sounds off the work of ‘The Robots’. Their tracks have even found their way into some of the biggest songs around. Did you know that the choir that kicks in 96 seconds into New Order’s dancefloor classic ‘Blue Monday’ is a direct lift from Kraftwerk’s 1975 track ‘Uranium’? You do now!
However, as we’re discovering with the internet at the moment, it is possible to move too fast in the name of technical progression. It’s not enough to just create the technology to do something; one must also maintain the etiquette of use. When making the telephone, for example, a word was also chosen specifically to be used when answering it, ‘Hello!’
How did Kraftwerk set the rules for sampling?
There are two stories that sum up how best to go about sampling—the first concerns one of the biggest bands the have UK produced this century, Coldplay. When making their breakout record X&Y, Chris Martin was listening to the Kraftwerk classic ‘Computer Love’. The song is built around an irresistible synth hook and Martin thought it could make a spectacular guitar riff.
In an interview with Q magazine, Martin detailed how intimidated he was about asking the band’s permission and how to go about it. In the end, ironically, considering he was asking such a forward-thinking band, he went with the most old-fashioned way he could think of doing it—a letter addressed directly to the founding member of the band, Ralf Hütter.
Unfortunately, this meant trusting his grasp of German, which, considering he hadn’t practised the language since secondary school, wasn’t exactly fluent. He recounted, “The only thing I could think of was the pen pal letters I learnt in German lessons at school. I had no idea if they knew who Coldplay were, so [I] had to explain myself like a 15-year-old school boy.”
He’s not kidding either. This may be an exaggeration on his part, but according to the interview, his message was along the lines of “’Dear Ralf, I sing in a band called Coldplay, blah, blah.’ I drew a little picture. Everyone says it’s extraordinary that they said yes.” It sounds like it, but, in fairness to the lad, it does seem that if you ask nicely, this most reclusive of bands aren’t opposed to letting people play with their music. Most of the time.
On the other end of the spectrum is Brooklyn rap legend and Mr Beyonce Knowles, Jay-Z. Kraftwerk provided the base for a number of Jay-Z songs, namely 1997’s ‘(Always Be My) Sunshine’, which sampled ‘The Man Machine’, 1998’s ‘It’s Alright’, which was built around ‘The Hall of Mirrors’, and finally, his 2010 collaboration with Dr Dre, ‘Under Pressure’, which sampled the title track from Trans-Europe Express.
Now, hip-hop has a symbiotic relationship with sampling. It’s one of the core tenets of the genre, and there is something profoundly sad about how a crackdown on sampling laws in the mid-1990s meant that genuinely mind-boggling records like The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique would never be recreated.
The legal battle needed to straighten out that dense tangle of samples would never end, and even if it did, the amount that would have to go out as royalties would be astronomical. It’s a classic case of the music industry putting a price on creativity.
However, it’s just common decency to ask before you use, and I’ll leave it to Coldplay bassist Guy Berryman to weigh in on whether Jay-Z asked first. In an interview for a DVD produced by the band, Berryman talked about the way Hütter responded to Martin’s handwritten letter. He said, “’Yes, you can use it, and thank you very much for asking my permission, unlike that bastard Jay-Z!'”
