The multi-instrumentalist was also a member of Kraftwerk for a brief time in the 70s.
Neu! founder Michael Rother has paid tribute to Florian Schneider in a piece written for Uncut. Detailing how he first encountered Schneider at the Rethel Gymnasium school in Düsseldorf, Rother goes on to chronicle their 1971 meeting at a studio, where Scheider invited him to join Kraftwerk for a run of shows.
“Florian had a unique metal construction onstage on which he assembled his effect units and a mixer” Rother explains. “He played an electrified violin which he ran through a fuzz box and a wah-wah pedal, and a flute which he treated with delay and a unit that changed the pitch to one octave down. Especially this flute, and the way Florian played it like a crazy fast-forward bass, was thoroughly exciting and unheard before.”
As Rother writes, those shows – which featured Schneider on electronics and flute, Rother on guitar and Klaus Dinger on drums – would lead to the formation of Neu!, with Dinger and Rother joining forces and Schneider reuniting with Ralf Hütter to form the ‘classic’ Kraftwerk line-up.
Rother also reveals that Schneider asked him to join Kraftwerk’s 1974 tour for Autobahn, but he rejected the offer in favour of working on Neu! and Harmonia projects. Read the tribute in full on Uncut.
