Michael Rother

Michael Rother
Rother in concert in November 2007
Background information
Born	(1950-09-02) 2 September 1950 (age 66) Hamburg, Germany
Genres	Krautrock, synthpop, proto-punk, art rock, electronica
Occupation(s)	Musician
Instruments	Guitar, keyboards, programming
Years active	1971 (with Kraftwerk) 1971–1975, 1985–1986 (with Neu!) 1973–1976, 2007 to present (with Harmonia) 1976 to present (solo)
Labels	Brain, Sky, Polydor, Random
Associated acts	Neu!, Harmonia, Kraftwerk, Cluster
Website	Michaelrother.de/en/

Michael Rother (born 2 September 1950 in Hamburg, Germany) is a German krautrock musician, best known for being a founding member of the band Neu!, and as a short-lived member of the band Kraftwerk.

Born in 1950, Rother was educated in Munich, Wilmslow (England), Karachi, and Düsseldorf. He also resided in Pakistan in the early 1960s where he was exposed to Pakistani music that would influence his own music in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From 1965 Rother played in the band Spirits of Sound, from which other members would later go on to join Kraftwerk (Wolfgang Flür) and Wunderbar.

Rother is a multi-instrumentalist (primarily guitar and keyboards) who, along with a catalog of several solo albums starting in 1977, is best known for having co-founded the German group Neu! with drummer Klaus Dinger (five albums between 1971 and 1996), and his collaborative efforts with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius (aka Cluster) under the name Harmonia (two albums, one in 1974 and 1975, with later 1976 sessions recorded with Brian Eno; the studio tapes for the latter disappeared but were found by Roedelius two decades later; he remixed the tapes and released the results as Tracks and Traces in 1997; Rother was the main producer for the version re-released in 2009). Rother and Dinger were also in a short-lived version of Kraftwerk in 1971, with Florian Schneider, during a time when founding member Ralf Hütter had temporarily left the band. (This version of the group was filmed during an appearance on the German music show Beat Club, which has been available sporadically on VHS and DVD.)