DAF

Hanna Bächer

How much do you object to the German nation today?

Gabi Delgado-López

Well, like you object to any nation. Completely. I mean, what is a nation today? There are many different and also weird ways to interpret this, “What is a nation?” I live in Spain, but I still want to be up to date with things happening in Germany. That’s always a big point of discussion: What is the German nation? What makes up a nation in general, what are nations?

Because the sense for family is not important anymore, and the sense for the nation actually originates from this sense for family. To say “we are family,” you know, the Germans, they’re all my brothers and sisters, that’s my family. But is Europe family, too? Or what about a person from India, does he belong to my family as well? And as long as you’re trying to convey this, nothing will change, because there’s no sense for family anymore.

Hanna Bächer

What’s your opinion on this, Robert? I know you’ve converted to Buddhism some time ago. This rejection of nationhood, is that something you can identify with?

Robert Görl

No, actually I can’t really identify with this, because I have veered away from these thoughts completely. In my opinion, all this has to be seen individually – every human has to find his or her own path, and a nation or nationalistic thoughts or a culture or religion, whatever humans have to deal with in the society they live in, does not actually exist. It’s all just an idea, and I have overcome this idea a long time ago. That’s how I see it.

Hanna Bächer

Was that an idea that felt closer to you because you had to deal with it during a time when this was recorded? During that time both of you had already been in London, but before that in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf...

Gabi Delgado-López

We started in Düsseldorf, at the Ratinger Hof. However, after the first concerts and rehearsals we quickly made our way to England, because during that time it was almost impossible to perform in Germany, there were only like three bars... And the record labels said, “That’s not music, that’s more like rhythm... Come back when you’re recording real music.” England during that time was simply the center of a new kind of music, with punk, new wave and many other variations. And you really need to be where new music is being created, you need to be in the center of it. And yes, we were a little weird and sang in German and talked to the people in German, so the English were a little surprised, sure, but it quickly turned into some sort of hype in London with DAF: “That’s a strange group, they play electronic music, they play the drums, they scream in German, we don’t understand a word of it.” But it had an expressionistic power to it.

Hanna Bächer

You grew up in Remscheid, right?

Gabi Delgado-López

No, I’m 100% Spanish. At one point my parents had to emigrate as guest workers and first moved to Remscheid-Lennep. I was already eight years old at that time.

Hanna Bächer

Oh, OK, yes, I was talking about that time, because... I don’t know if it bothered you, being co-opted, despite moving to London, by this art scene, Düsseldorf, Wuppertal... Did you notice that?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, we noticed that, but the Germans are funny, I mean, there is hardly any nation that is so envious like the Germans, people who think, “Man, they made it and we’re still trying and not getting anywhere.” But the truth is, this will eventually reverse or... The time we were really successful, the Germans were almost proud. I like to call it the Boris Becker syndrome. “Oh, there’s a German band and they are in the NME, in Melody Maker? Those are the best dressed people in the world, our boys are in England!” And then you get this strange adoration which you haven’t consciously created... Yeah, the so-called Boris Becker syndrome. “Great, our boys rock the house, awesome.” So then it reverses and everybody loves you and after some time they hate you again. You can’t take that seriously. And especially today it’s an illusion to think that you can control the public image in any way. Or if you want to control it, you’ll have heaps of work and stress, it’s not a lot of fun.

Hanna Bächer

Did you notice what happened in the field of arts during that time? Had you heard of Beuys in Wuppertal and Düsseldorf and were you interested in them?

Robert Görl

Well, Beuys and those people were at the Ratinger Hof as well. There were people from the arts academy, most of the time Beuys brought some pupils and it was actually a scene of observation. We observed them and Beuys came over and was interested in us, to see what we’re doing. Everybody wanted to check out everyone else.

Gabi Delgado-López

For example, the drummer of one of my punk bands, Mittagspause, was Albert Oehlen, the painter from the arts academy... It was a very special mixture at the Ratinger Hof: punks, people from the arts academy in Düsseldorf and advertising people, like Schirner, GGK, Gredinger, advertising companies.

Hanna Bächer

What did they contribute?

Gabi Delgado-López

Oh, well, the interest. Like no other industry, advertising is always trying to find new sources of inspiration, new trends... They just discovered this. And many regulars at the Hof, like Philip Tanzmann, also worked for Gredinger, the GGK advertising company. They were interested as well, documented everything... As well as the artists. For us the art was interesting. I was still a kid. I quit school, didn’t want to go there anymore, and together with [Mary Lou] Monroe, one of Charley’s Girls, we started a private university. We called it free boarding school.

Hanna Bächer

Where was that?

Gabi Delgado-López

In Düsseldorf.

Hanna Bächer

Simply in a venue, or?

Gabi Delgado-López

No, at home. We went to the library, and borrowed everything about Dada and constructivism and agitprop and really learned our stuff, who are all these people, what did they do. We studied this for days, weeks, the work of other people that we liked. We also wrote Dada pamphlets ourselves when we were kids. That inspired us.

Hanna Bächer

You have a classic education in the sense that you actually went to an institution to learn. At that time, did you reflect on this in a similar way? Did you want to teach yourself or was that just something that you would do on the side?

Robert Görl

Well, in contrast to what Gabi’s just said, I didn’t learn from the others or borrowed things, my plan actually was to study music. When I came to Düsseldorf, my only goal was to produce my own music. I wanted to start a band and record my own music. That was the only thing I was interested in. I didn’t care if Beuys entered the room or some guys from the art academy, that wasn’t that interesting for me.

Hanna Bächer

OK. The friendship with the early members... You’re not on the very first official DAF record. Was that more like a party friendship, or did you choose... Someone like Kurt Dahlke, Pyrolator, who had a venue for some time, Grün Inn, a shared venue?

Robert Görl

That’s a long story. I studied music and then I took a break from studying and went to London. That was when punk music was at its peak, and from there I just let it take an impact on me, since I came from a classic education and a jazz education and like I’ve just said, my plan was to go to Düsseldorf and produce my own music. So, when I met Gabi... We first met and exchanged opinions and I thought this could work with him. He said he wanted to sing, I told him I wanted to produce my own music. I had just finished my academic studies. So the story is quite long. We weren’t really that well equipped... For example, in the Ratinger Hof there were punks who played the guitar enthusiastically, just like punk music is, simple music, but that wasn’t interesting for me. What I like about punk is the energy, the aggression and these new elements... The vibe was what interested me. The music itself, however, I thought was kind of stupid.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, we immediately agreed on this.

Robert Görl

And that’s why we took such a long detour. And in Düsseldorf I met people in a gallery, like Kurt Dahlke, who you’ve mentioned before, and [Wolfgang] Spelmans and [Michael] Kemner. And they had a venue in the countryside in Gevelsberg, Grün Inn, a little eco-inspired, but they also had rehearsal rooms where we could be secluded.

Hanna Bächer

It surprises me that you went to some sort of hippie commune, called Grün Inn.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, but we needed a place which was completely cut off the world. We really wanted it to be like that and try it out. We met and said we’d start a band and wanted to find band members, how it was commonly done. “You play bass,” and so on.

Hanna Bächer

How was it commonly done back then? Because today you don’t need anyone anymore to start a band.

Gabi Delgado-López

A synthesizer was way too expensive for us back then.

Hanna Bächer

Because you didn’t have any money, right?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, we didn’t have any money, so we were looking for band members and then there was the possibility to use this rehearsal room, across from the Ratinger Hof, so that we could find our way not within the scene but outside of it. Just like Robert, I thought punk was like badly played rock & roll, and I wanted to break out of these American patterns. I didn’t want to make Anglo-American music. Robert and I both wanted to create music that didn’t have a tradition yet. In our first concept meeting we decided to make some kind of music which had no tradition. No German, no American tradition, just no tradition at all. And that’s why... Everything that reminded us of music which already existed, even if it might be good, well... We got rid of it!

Hanna Bächer

How much does this have to do with the history of the music of your fathers? So, to be German in the ’50s – I mean, Spain took a similar path, politically, at least in some ways... To close the chapter, and because of that start something completely new?

Robert Görl

I didn’t really have to do anything with this, for example. I didn’t have a father. So I don’t have anything to do with fathers and I don’t know any stories like that. This doesn’t exist for me.

Gabi Delgado-López

I didn’t have a father either. I grew up only with my grandmother and we moved to Germany when I was eight. That’s when I saw my father for the first time. Because he was anti-fascist, he had to flee from Spain overnight, and that’s why he couldn’t enter the country again, he would have been arrested. So that’s why I only really got to know my father at the age of eight, and I moved out from home when I was 15. So both of us don’t really have a father, I’d say, if that’s of any importance. Maybe not. But I think it’s quite interesting to do some psychoanalytic speculations.

Robert Görl

Not having a father is integrated into our musical originality and development.

Gabi Delgado-López

Oh, this really hums, right?

Robert Görl

Yeah, so, not having a father, not having a connection to your family and your father, and family structures, subjection... If you don’t have that, like me, you go the way of complete autonomy. I don’t even know these structures. This sense of family is very alien to me. In all my life... When I was a teenager, before I really got into music, I tried to acquire some professional education, but nothing worked because I never learned to subordinate.

Gabi Delgado-López

We both have trouble with that. The master, the teacher, the father... We’re very different, but in this case we think the same way. Accepting authorities who don’t act out of real accomplishment or knowledge, who say, “I am the teacher, I am the master.” Both of us never really accepted that. That’s true, that’s really difficult for us. If someone says, “You have to do this,” that means for us... No matter if it’s a record company or... “Hold on. Seriously?” Someone wants something from us, we don’t decide. We’re not used to this. We always have to be self-determined. We can’t have someone else decide for us. That doesn’t work for either of us.

Hanna Bächer

What did you think of musicians in Düsseldorf who were well known, more than you, someone like Kraftwerk. Did that annoy you?

Gabi Delgado-López

Well, they also watched us and stuff. The punks never wanted any contact with Kraftwerk. They were classified as [a] white-bread band, with their ties... They’re from Oberkassel. That’s the wrong side of the Rhine, Oberkassel is on the left side of the Rhine. They sat in bars with their expensive cocktails and leather ties, and the punks thought, “What’s wrong with them?” But of course, Kraftwerk was well known, but like we said, it didn’t really interest us. Later we got to know them and they were really nice, but Kraftwerk... So, I as a songwriter think that Kraftwerk’s lyrics are really bad. That really bugged me with Kraftwerk. Like, “She’s a model and she’s pretty, I’d like to take her home with me,” that’s just really white-bread.

Hanna Bächer

That’s a really different way of treating bodies, in comparison to what you did.

Robert Görl

Yeah, sure. We’ve always been a band who accentuated the body, and Kraftwerk didn’t move. But that’s their concept. They’re very calm and static, without any movement. Later I met up with them, in the Angerhof, not the Ratinger Hof, after the scene had moved to the Checkers on the Kö[nigsallee], it was more like a club and there they actually danced, but privately.

Gabi Delgado-López

So privately, they do dance.

Hanna Bächer

Did they dance well?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, it actually was a real club, a modern one. They were really nice, but like I just said, they weren’t exactly an inspiration for us. But we tried to create something, that didn’t remind us of anything, that didn’t have a tradition. We wanted to do something that is completely self-determined.

Robert Görl

That was easy for us. We didn’t have to try hard, it was just us. It fit our personalities. We’ve already told you where we’re from and what we’re like and how our partnership developed, and so it’s easier to get to some sort of originality. To create your very own thing. For example, if you really want to make original music... We had the feeling we could only make it if we’re original. We didn’t want to copy someone. Yeah, that was what mattered to us.

Hanna Bächer

During that time, was there a gay scene in Düsseldorf that noticed you and said, “You’re one of us,” or, “You’re not one of us?”

Gabi Delgado-López

No, there wasn’t. However, later in Berlin, we were in contact with Mabel and all these people who sang and had a band, right, and... That really took some time until the gay scene noticed us and honored us as icons. That took a really long time, because first we were punks, then we were skinheads, then we were some weird sort of mods, right? We came along with our leather things and that’s when they started to realize, “Aha, those outfits are from gay clubs.” But we didn’t live in Düsseldorf then, we only lived there during our real punk times or rockabilly... We were only kids. Kids play with identities and that’s a lot of fun! I was a skinhead, great! That was fun, we had good styles and–

Robert Görl

It only turned gay in London, I’d say.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, in London we went to clubs of that scene, and later on in Berlin we were in contact with Wieland Speck and Mabel and these people. Yeah... And then came “Räuber und Prinz” and that was some sort of secret weapon, when some idiots at “[Tanz den] Mussolini” screamed “Sieg Heil,” we played “Räuber und Prinz.”

Hanna Bächer

OK, that was a time when there were people who said “Sieg Heil” as some sort of provocation, or?

Gabi Delgado-López

Mainly because they wanted to be provocative. And later, not at the beginning, but a little later, there were also skinheads from the right-wing scene and... Like I said, we play with everything. We also object to German culture, that’s all a game to us. We only accept a little authority and that gives us the possibility to play with anything. Even with things that might be prohibited. Let me tell you, this is really liberating. Through my parents I witnessed this,[ that] it’s good to play with everything, because they were anti-fascist and Franco was the picture of the negative. But it was also a monument. A negative one, but still it played a strange role, and that’s why “[Tanz den] Mussolini...” It’s about the exchange of ideologies, those were all off.

Hanna Bächer

Frei.Wild says they “don’t dance the Mussolini,” which I think is even more funny.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, Frei.Wild is Frei.Wild, I don’t have to add anything to that.

Hanna Bächer

Let’s have a look at an old live recording of “Der Räuber und der Prinz.”

(video: DAF – “Der Räuber und der Prinz” live)

Gabi Delgado-López

Nice fade-out. I have often claimed that “Räuber und Prinz,” for German society back then – we’re living in different times today – was actually a little more provocative than “Tanz den Mussolini” and “Tanz den Adolf Hitler” and “Tanz den Jesus Christus.” This homoerotic moment in some ways alienated people more than “Mussolini.” This piece had a really weird effect back then. When you heard it somewhere or when we performed it.

Robert Görl

Because they said, “That’s a really gay song.” Back then that was a real no-go, to sing an obviously gay song.

Hanna Bächer

When did you realize that this sort of provocation didn’t work anymore? “Homoeroticism is not a provocation anymore.” Was there a time.?

Gabi Delgado-López

Oh, well, it actually still works. There are places in this world where being gay is still not accepted at all. I’m talking about groups of people, but also about whole countries. You might think that society has become free in their way of thinking, but actually no. Society has become more permissive, it admits more. However, only in those countries where there’s a loss of power. When church and state lose power. That’s just how it goes, nobody bothers about the Catholic church anymore. They say, “That’s OK, we don’t burn people anymore.” If they had enough power, boys and girls, you could be sure that the Catholic church would still be burning people today. That’s simply a loss of power. If the state says, “OK, 175” – the gay paragraph back then – “fucking someone in the ass is not permitted,” and I say, “Dude, how do you want to control this? Just let it go...” That’s simply loss of power as well. Freedom arises where authorities lose power, then holes are created and you can provoke this loss of power. You shouldn’t stick to the illusion that no-goes from 30 years ago aren’t still no-goes today. So-called mega-trends need to be looked at in categories of 200 or 300 years, not from one generation to the other. Actually, the world today is exactly the same. Nothing has changed. OK, we have more phones today, but that’s also not something that has changed dramatically. The world hasn’t really changed since the ’80s.

Hanna Bächer

You became more explicit, at least for some time, after the albums that you produced together in the DAF period. You sang songs like, “I’d rather fuck you later, because first I have to go dancing.” When I thought you’d reached the limit... How far do you want to go singing about sex?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, but it was 1995, you would never have said “fuck” on German TV. That’s different today, in each comedy show every comedian says fuck at least five times. “Kentucky screams fuck” and stuff, but that was a time when you didn’t say fuck. We knew that, but actually it’s just a song. I think “I fuck you later, I’d rather go dancing now” is more about the overrating of sex. “I’d rather go dancing, please don’t be pissed off, I just love to dance.” And dancing is nice as well. That’s what it was about. And I liked that we didn’t say, “I fuck you later,” but, “I think I’ll fuck you later.” I liked that. Linguistically. I was a verb fanatic somehow. I love the German language, I see it as a special way of poetry. Yeah.

Hanna Bächer

This... I have the first four albums you recorded. Conny Plank was part of the production and you had this extremely minimal equipment. What was it like with him in the studio back then? Did you record to multi-track?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, we recorded to 24-track on an old MCI machine. A 24-track on 76 velocity, uncompressed, and we used track compression to its best. Today you can get it as a free plug-in, you can get various track compressions. Someone texted me, “It’s very music-oriented, track compression for free.” It sounds very different, a bass drum on AGFA 74 [tape], than on an MPEG, or something. Track compression is interesting for musicians.

Robert Görl

Back then it was only big machines, giant studios. Plank had a gigantic studio.

Hanna Bächer

Do you remember anything special he contributed to the music? Your very first album was produced by someone else and that went wrong, and it wasn’t used.

Robert Görl

Well, sometimes things get mixed up, right? There are bands who are produced by a producer and the producer takes part in the production musically – that was not the case. Conny Plank was not a musician. He simply was good at fiddling with sounds. We used to call him “sound coachman,” he would always stand at the mixing desk–

Hanna Bächer

Coachman?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah. He said that himself: “I’m your sound coachman. You write texts and record the music, that’s not in question. I’m just your sound coachman.”

Robert Görl

So, if you want to know what that looked like, we always went into those rehearsal rooms, worked on our songs. I started playing the synthesizer... First there were the synths, so Plank recorded the synths. Then I played the drums, so he recorded the drums and in the end Gabi sang. And only after that was Plank’s biggest part. Conny was the recording guy, and we created the songs in the rehearsal room, recorded one after the other, and Conny’s biggest part was only after everything had been recorded, because then the production started in the sense of mixing. Back then, Conny really had some good stuff, for example, a giant hall plate under the ground. This gave us a big room sound. It was a big thing, you know, room for effects.

Gabi Delgado-López

It’s also important to say that he recorded us really well. He was a master of microphonic effects. He used to fiddle for days and would only stop when the bass drum microphone was at the exact right position. What you put on your track is just as important as how you produce it later, so yeah, he was a master of microphones and our sound coachman, and he had the idea to... To record the signals of the synthesizer, cold, electronic, via amps – guitar amps, bass amps, strange dirty speakers sitting somewhere. To send that out again, to record that as well with his excellent microphonic knowledge, and turn all these different signals into the DAF sound. And I get messages, like Snapchat or... “I bought a choir [effect], but it doesn’t sound like DAF?” So I said, “OK, get yourself a guitar amplifier, record and mix it with a good balance and then you get this powerful sound.” Through the amplifier. That was a Plank idea.

Robert Görl

Well, you could say that Plank inflated us, made us big, with hall effects. He was a real specialist, almost a freak, so to say.

Gabi Delgado-López

And I gotta say that he was for me, apart from our contact as musicians... Except for my wife, there’s no human being who influenced me like that. I’ve learned so much from Conny Plank. [Robert says something to him] What? Yeah, I’m impressed by Jane [Robert's wife] as well. I’ve learned a lot, but also from Conny Plank. And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with music, I’ve also learedt from him about business, but also generally about life. Maybe, as you said before about fathers, there are no fathers. Plank, for two or three years, I saw him as some sort of virtual father, Darth Vader. No, I’m just kidding. No, but he was that kind of guy who also told me, “Gabi, no, you’re gonna have to do it this way, it doesn’t work like that, we’ll have to do it that way.” About business he taught me a lot as well. He always said, “When you produce music I like it, you’re 100% an artist...”

Hanna Bächer

Did he watch Star Wars?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, sure. “But now you also have to become 100% businessman as well.” And he brought me all those files, GVL [German rights agency] and management and publishing and HAP and NDP and all this stuff, he almost taught me like a teacher and I really liked that, he influenced me a lot. And of course we watched Star Wars, but it’s difficult to say who I liked the most, but in the end I think it was R2D2.

Hanna Bächer

You’ve said that Plank liked to experiment with your sound. Did you, however, insist on defined equipment?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, of course! There’s no room for twirls.

Robert Görl

Minimalism...

Hanna Bächer

But on many albums you only had, like, three instruments.

Robert Görl

The recordings are actually only a sequence, a beat and vocals. That’s it.

Hanna Bächer

And was there never any impulse, especially from you, to say, “We have to go beyond that, we can’t…” What did you have, an MS-20 and drums?

Gabi Delgado-López

On two or three tracks, I thought, “Oh well, I wanna play the rimba again,” or play a glockenspiel, a kid’s toy, for “Räuber und Prinz,” you know. But rarely.

Robert Görl

Like we said, we found something that worked for us, and at some point we knew. Like I said, to come back to the very beginning, with old instruments, when they played bass, we didn’t want all that anymore. Our people said we threw everyone out, which was true in some ways, but we also explained to them that we didn’t want this anymore, because when we discovered the machines... And in 1978 when the Korg [synths] came from Tokyo, we decided to take the electronic path. Minimalism, it was all about sequences.

Gabi Delgado-López

We had a real concept.

Robert Görl

All the other musicians weren’t needed anymore so to say, and like you asked before, did we want to break away from it? No, because we wanted exactly that. We didn’t want a bass and a solo. It should be very minimalistic. We wanted it to be machine music. That was clear to us.

Gabi Delgado-López

And we never wrote anything down. It was the DAF manifest, that’s just how we did it. Music with no tradition, sound-oriented, it didn’t have stanzas, no chorus, no part A or B, it just flowed, and then slogan-like orders to the music.

Hanna Bächer

So, then you are similar to how I imagine Kraftwerk. You dance when you’re not working, in your solo albums you did other things.

Robert Görl

No, we’ve always tried different things. That’s what solo is for.

Gabi Delgado-López

There are so many projects and DAF is just one of very many. For most of them I don’t even use the name Gabi Delgado, because it’s so different. It doesn’t make any sense when I say “Gabi Delgado performs Miami Latin house.” I do that as Santos Leon – nobody knows this, now they do. Sooner or later it will be discovered, but it’s wrong to start with it, that’s what I tell people who ask me. Nowadays you can have many different identities and like that the chances are way higher to make it. That’s very important today. It’s like a click machine, you increase the number of projects to have better chances and then it’s better to have different names for different projects. And had we said with DAF, “We want to do something very different from what we did before,” we wouldn’t have called it DAF anymore.

Robert Görl

We stayed loyal to ourselves. We worked for something, we actually really fought for it. People had to leave. It really was a fight, and when you reach your goal and the result is right, we got the confirmation that the fight was worth it, our music was acknowledged worldwide. At this point you don’t want to do anything else.

Gabi Delgado-López

That’s important, it really was a fight. Just imagine, we came in 1979 with a piece, that piece didn’t have a melody, there are no ups and downs, there are no verses, no melody, no guitar, no organ. That was difficult; it really was a challenge. And even Conny, who was so open and fair to us, said... When we said, “Everybody needs to leave the room,” only Robert and I could stay, he really didn’t know what to think. No bass... We really taught Conny a lot as well: no bass, no guitar. In the beginning he was really skeptical. He wasn’t sure if this would work, but yes, it did! We knew what we wanted, and once we had it we built the house.

Robert Görl

And Conny was happy and satisfied.

Gabi Delgado-López

When he saw how it turned out, he immediately understood why. I mean, today 80% of the music played in clubs is produced according to DAF rules. There’s a beat, a sequence, an A and B part and a house sequence which goes on and on. Sometimes the high [frequencies] is part of it, then you take it out again. DAF rules. Another important momentum of the DAF music was that we didn’t care about classical harmonics. DAF sequences always sound slightly off-tune. That’s not because we strongly wanted to produce something discordant, but because the sequence sounds perfect as it is. It makes sense when discordant. It’s not a trick, it’s the truth. That’s how it sounds good.

Robert Görl

The way you feel it.

Gabi Delgado-López

And due to DJs who change the pitch, and with that the tone pitch, people are used to hearing sounds like that. If a person who lived a 100 years ago walked in there, they would think it sounds like cat music, it would sound very wrong.

Robert Görl

“They need to tune their instruments.”

Gabi Delgado-López

We also changed the listening habits, that’s what we wanted to say with that. Also in the sense of vocals, it’s not rap, it’s not singing. It’s orders, statements. It’s an actor who interprets them.

Hanna Bächer

Did it annoy you at a certain point... So in the middle of the ’80s, you split up for some time just to reunite several times, and split up again, as if to entertain us.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, it’s true.

Hanna Bächer

Is DAF together right now or not? But didn’t it annoy you? You produced tracks for Disko B and... Did you think, “Damn, the people sound like us”?

Gabi Delgado-López

No, seriously, I was really happy about it from the very beginning. At some point I listened to Nitzer Ebb. It was just like a DAF piece, only in English. It was DAF, and everywhere. And I was really happy, because I thought... It was important for us to shape history and culture and I thought, “Great, we really made it.” And I was really happy when in 1986 house music was popular, and I got to know some of these people and they told me, “Kraftwerk and DAF, yeah.” That feedback, you know, ten years later you get it in a different way, I think that’s great. I was always very happy, and all those kids or people who have been influenced by us also helped to keep DAF young and kept us going and kept the DAF name alive. I mean, they promote us. I like that. And I like it when they say, “Hey, I listened to DAF and I now I also want to make music.” I like that.

Robert Görl

Only the business annoyed me a little. OK, we’ve separated, we got back to the ground. Since we separated at our peak, there were many people in the business who thought we were out of our minds, Gabi and I. They had prepared a tour of the States for us. They really wanted to make us big and that’s exactly at the point we wanted to quit. So we came back to reality, we needed to touch base again. And during that time nothing was started up, because they closed the doors. They were mad and we were all alone again, so to say. I met up with Daniel Miller, like I did in the very beginning. And what annoyed me a little, when I walked into the club and we didn’t know how we would go on, I heard music that sounded just like DAF and record companies put it on the market, like copycats. That’s when I thought, “Fuck. Now this kind of music is popular and we quit.”

Gabi Delgado-López

I thought that was great, because I didn’t have to promote it anymore, now there was the Belgian EBM scene: “Should they take over and make that kind of music?” I thought it was great that this kind of music won recognition and that we weren’t the only ones in this world. This had many advantages, and I wanted to say, our breakup was the smartest move of our career. We were at our peak, and we saw this new wave coming, not interesting music, just cheeky German Schlager music. And if we get into this too much we will be engrossed in a weird way. On the other hand, there were also business sharks who wanted to co-opt us, so I gotta say, people, there’s always the possibility – especially in the first world, with all the luxury – there’s always a way to say “no” and “I don’t want to compromise, that’s just not good, bye.” And that’s how we suddenly reached some kind of cult status. We were out of reach, and that was also profitable for the business, because it was worth something. We could make way better deals for the solo albums, more than we thought, because we were really wanted, a rare product.

Robert Görl

What I meant was just that moment, when you see that the record labels simply tag along, with loads of money to put bands similar to us on the market.

Hanna Bächer

Talking about money and business, did DAF always belong to the two of you, and did you manage to handle it in a way that you were both happy with?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, except when we were fighting. Then we put it on hold. But we always managed to find a way, it always belonged to us. But you have to be realistic, and that’s valid for the newest, most innovative and most crazy things. You can code new waves – it doesn’t matter if it’s fashion, art or music – so that it takes a long time until the real capitalist economy understands how to copy it. But you cannot create the illusion of inventing a strong code that can’t be cracked. Sooner or later... Capitalism is like the Borg in Enterprise. Capitalism assimilates everything, and that’s exactly what will happen sooner or later. So if you want, you can code your work, to make sure it takes quite some time for this to happen, but don’t think it won’t be cracked at some point. As soon as the industry cracked the formula for success for new wave and for synthesizers, it was obviously used, because it was a good formula. So, I wasn’t surprised, and thought, “That’s just how it is, anything can be cracked.”

Hanna Bächer

Why are you laughing?

Robert Görl

Well, in different moments you’re thinking different things.

Gabi Delgado-López

That’s true. And that’s good. Talking about music... That’s the advantage of a formation or a project that produces music for a very long time, in comparison to a project that’s been making music only for one or two years. That’s the big advantage, that the thoughts and views about things you do, did or will do, are changing constantly. That’s a process that takes two to three years, and you really have to think in terms of a modern soccer team. They also take like two and a half years, the actual team, someone like a Cristiano Ronaldo leaves and someone else has to take his place, after two and a half years you need a twist, because otherwise it won’t work. That happens automatically once you’ve been working together for quite some time and know each other. We’re so different from each other, but we know each other very well.

Hanna Bächer

You also lived together for some time in London, right?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, but that happened only once, for one week? No, for some months.

Robert Görl

Longer.

Gabi Delgado-López

You see, we have different memories, Robert always thinks we lived for years on Holland Road. In my opinion that was only three to four months!

Robert Görl

What?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, sure!

Robert Görl

That’s weird, I thought it was three years.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, right, but now we wrote this book you know, when people asked us, “What it was like back then?” We had so many different memories, like the apartment on Holland Road, Robert really thinks we lived there for three to four years, I think three to four months. But that’s not important, because the past changes because of what you’re experiencing. Everybody knows this. “Oh, at my grandma’s place my room was so big,” and then you walk in there and the room is really tiny, because you were little back then and now you’re grown up. Memories sometimes play strange tricks on us.

Hanna Bächer

I think we probably should, there are some questions from the audience. So we’ll officially open the discussion. There should be a microphone somewhere that will be passed around for those who have questions.

Audience Member

Is it on?

Gabi Delgado-López

I can hear you.

Audience Member

You said that there basically was no blueprint for your music and that this was important to you. What about Suicide?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, Suicide was a little bit earlier, actually. When I listened to Suicide, I was a real punk, I wasn’t in DAF. I was in Charley’s Girls and Mittagspause, I was in Yuri Gagarin and the Soviet Union. I still remember that. Suicide is most similar to DAF, I think, even though other people copied it more accurately, like Nitzer Ebb using sequencers. Suicide is closest to our spirit, especially because of the expressionist touch in the music, like Gottfried Benn, the expressionist element in the music. So they’re somehow similar to us. Of course the repetitive sequences sound different – they have a drum machine, so it’s different – but like I said, around that time all those albums that we liked were thrown out, because we wanted to create something new. But sure, the brain is big, it’s possible that... But there weren’t other concrete things. We didn’t say Suicide is especially good, or... It was the same to us. Suicide was as good as Kraftwerk, as Suzi Quatro, as T.Rex, as whatever.

Robert Görl

I didn’t even know them.

Gabi Delgado-López

Right, Robert didn’t know them.

Robert Görl

I only learned afterwards that they were part of the flow. If you see this worldwide, there are always people who do this, too. Whatever, you work on a really crazy idea in Germany, you can be sure that someone in Africa or in the USA or in Japan is working on an idea similar to yours. It’ll always be like that. You’re never alone on this planet. There’ll always be someone who is as good or as special, there’ll be parallels and that’s how it is. Like I said, I didn’t even know them, and later when I listened to “Dream Baby Dream” I thought, “OK, that’s not DAF, it’s more like an organ.”

Gabi Delgado-López

I used to have this weird band, Yuri Gagarin, and I showed it to you and you thought it was a cover and said, “You don’t listen to stuff like that,” and yeah, Robert didn’t know Suicide. I like Suicide – one of them passed away unfortunately – and for the tribute CD which was released in France I also sang a piece with the music. And they were great, Suicide, but like I said, it was like that for us. We wanted to get rid of all this shit, the good and the bad, just generally away with it.

Robert Görl

I gotta say, especially in the beginning... It might sound egotistical, but I don’t mean it that way: I wasn’t interested in any other kind of music. Not at all. So when somebody asked me if I knew this band, I’d always say, “Don’t ask me that.” But as soon as you say you’re not interested, people start asking, “What’s wrong with you?” Or – I’ve always had trouble [with this] – “Hey, can you listen to this?” I felt that as soon as you engage with the other, because other people want you to do it, I always wanted out of it, because it would also influence you artistically. When your interest moves into a different direction, you let it flow to you and work with it, and luckily that’s not how it went for me. I simply wasn’t interested, but it was not egotistical.

Gabi Delgado-López

When I’m in the studio looking for something, I switch off all music channels, I don’t really listen to music, I even get rid of the music on TV, or I try to avoid shops. Music is everywhere, and I like to just not hear anything. Only what I’m doing.

Robert Görl

That was an important point for our originality. That’s our thing, and later people said, “Oh right, this is DAF, that sounds like DAF.” So, when people say something like that, you know you’ve created something original and that’s the only way it works, because if someone hadn’t known Suicide, someone might have said, “Hey, listen to them, they’re good,” and then maybe you would have bought the album, and then suddenly you might come up with a song that sounds like Suicide.

Gabi Delgado-López

Well, I’m interested in everything, especially if it’s new. When I’m in a phase where I say, “OK, I want to come up with something new,” then that’s not good, but other than that, I like it. There’s so much out there, and so many new things, and other people now produce music similar to ours. Like Burroughs said, “I hope that you keep taking these experiments further,” and I can explore something new. It’s good to experiment many times. For economic reasons, experimenting multiple times is smart, but it’s more fun to discover new experiments rather than to repeat old ones.

Hanna Bächer

In the beginning I asked you about art. Today, apart from music, are there any forms of art or literature that keep you occupied when you make music?

Gabi Delgado-López

Making music, no.

Hanna Bächer

What is it precisely?

Gabi Delgado-López

So, when we’re making music it’s Tecktonik, a new musical movement from the banlieues, coming from Paris, Arab and black people, hardcore electro, but that takes it too far, I can’t explain that right now. Literature is exhausting at the moment, because I’m really busy with Deleuze. And I haven’t read for a very long time and now I have to read it again, with all those stupid comments, and the whole Deleuze devices, shit, which is really interesting. Constructivism and stuff like that interests me at the moment. With arts it’s difficult. Especially things from the video game world – like moders, people who create their own mods with prefabricated software, but create their own games, their own art, moving lines, GIFs, but as forms of art – I find that interesting. And films, I don’t know. I’ve been watching a lot of Fassbinder lately. Berlin Alexanderplatz, epic.

Hanna Bächer

Any more questions from the audience? No? I don’t think so. Hold on, wait for your microphone.

Audience Member

Back then there wasn’t so much electronic music. The less there is, the more you see a relatedness which actually doesn’t exist. Today you could say that many projects sound like DAF. Back then it was Suicide, but if you listen to Suicide, there might be two to three pieces that sound similar to DAF. Or is it blues or something?

Gabi Delgado-López

Yeah, you’re right, there was Cabaret Voltaire, maybe Throbbing Gristle, maybe Beta, but you’re right, there really were... If there are only three panpipe groups in the world, then all of them sound similar in some way, right.

Robert Görl

And if you said, “Oh, they use panpipes, they blow into them... They’re similar.”

Hanna Bächer

OK, if there aren’t anymore questions then... Oh yes, you see, when you say it’s over then...

Audience Member

Making music today, how much does it differ from your earlier experiences? Especially when you’re listening to your latest pieces, which you released in a best of, it sounds similar to what you did before, but the 15 new DAF songs, for example, sound computerized, especially the drums.

Gabi Delgado-López

Yes, we used a drum machine.

Robert Görl

Yeah, with the 15 new DAF songs it was like, drum machine. It was something different, of course.

Hanna Bächer

Do we say goodbye?

Gabi Delgado-López

But like I said it changed dramatically, and it always depends on the project. DAF is created according to DAF rules. Other projects are created according to very different rules, with other means.

Hanna Bächer

OK, thanks for coming!