Original subtitles

[electronic music playing]

[slot machines beeping]

♪

With this, uh, noise,

I can try to find

if it's possible to make music out of it.

Um...

It's like the beginning of music.

Uh, when a human being listened into the woods,

and listened to noises of animals,

and other noises,

um, there are noises that human being doesn't like,

and other noises he likes.

And, um...

those he likes, he picks up and turns,

converts into music.

So, any noise has the potential to be music

if it's liked by a human being.

[projector whirring]

[electronic music playing]

That's me, Stephan, as a boy.

I grew up in the countryside, half an hour outside of Cologne, Germany.

In 1973, my parents, Christa Fast and Conny Plank,

turned an old farm into a state-of-the-art recording studio.

I spent my childhood between mixing desk and manure.

Our farm was always chock-full of musicians.

Like playmates for a few weeks,

until some new crazy guys moved in.

The music they recorded is the soundtrack of my youth,

and my father, the conductor.

And the songs, the albums they recorded,

have become part of music history.

[rock music playing]

[Stephan] Cool.

To many, my dad was a genius producer and sound engineer.

They say he has influenced them greatly.

I missed out on much of that.

My father died in 1987, when I was 13 years old.

There are a lot of questions unanswered.

Many things I never got the chance to discuss with him.

Conny is a blur in my memory,

a phantom.

I want to shed light on the man,

his passion and influence on modern music.

By talking to his friends,

I hope to find out more about him.

[instrumental rock music playing]

♪

♪

The first person I meet is Michael Rother.

He knows me since I was born.

He collaborated with my father on many albums.

From Kraftwerk to Neu!, to Harmonia,

and his solo works.

[Rother speaking German]

[Rother continues in German]

[Stephan] The strange-sounding records by these pioneers

did neither find a large audience,

nor critical reception in Germany.

But according to legend,

were the talk of the town in England.

[indistinct chatter]

[electronic music playing]

[Stubbs] Germany was in ruins.

There was almost like this culturally orphaned generation.

And throughout the '50s and '60s,

although there'd been this kind of regeneration,

material regeneration in Germany,

there hadn't been a kind of spiritual and cultural regeneration.

That was down to the artist.

And in all various art forms,

there's this idea of going back to year zero,

tabula rasa, begin again.

And there was this handful of musicians

who had that spirit.

They said, like, "Let us reinvent rock music."

Let's just do something that's kind of German

in origin, West German in origin.

Rather than just constantly taking groups like The Rattles or whatever,

just borrowing from The Beatles,

or aping American blues music.

Let's do something of our own.

We're German, we're innovators.

And I think Conny Plank was a real believer in that.

[rock music playing]

[Rother speaking German]

[rock music playing]

[Rother continues in German]

[rock music playing]

[Rother continues in German]

[techno rock music playing]

♪

[Stephan] Conny was the second of five children,

growing up in Kaiserslautern in post-war Germany.

His father was a music teacher and organ player in the local Catholic church.

According to his siblings,

the relationship between father and son

was a rocky one.

But both were passionate about music.

For Conny, it was the jazz played by the American troop entertainment

that fascinated him.

After learning the trade of an electrician,

he became a sound engineer at the local radio station.

That's when music became the center of his world.

[man speaking German]

[audience clapping]

[Hirschmann speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Hirschmann speaking German]

[slow electronic music playing]

[Hirschmann continues in German]

["I'm Going Mad" playing]

[Meine speaking German]

["I'm Going Mad" playing]

♪ Walking through the desert

♪ You know what it's about

♪ It's really from the church Too foreign ♪

♪ That was never there

[Meine speaking German]

[all laughing]

[Meine continues in German]

[Meine] That's a little bit too much.

[Schenker speaking German]

[Stubbs] He talked a lot about the word "authenticity".

There had to be something valid there.

This can't just be somebody who's just a kind of,

you know, commercial opportunist or whatever.

Somebody that does...

That is making music out of a kind of

compulsion, a need to make music.

You know, they have something valid to say,

and they'll say whatever.

They'll go out to the forest and say it.

They're not simply sort of trying to make it as pop stars.

So, I think that was important to him.

Um, and I think that perhaps...

And I think perhaps the idea of innovation,

people who are open to innovation,

open to the possibilities of the studio.

And, you know, music was gonna be kinda slightly future-proof.

It's not just gonna be dated.

[Roedelius speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Roedelius speaking German]

[surreal electronic music playing]

[Roedelius speaking German]

[Miller] You know, I was buying a lot of records

from Germany at the time.

Early Kraftwerk, Cluster, and the Neu! albums.

And I noticed that the same guy

had been involved in the production.

The records all sounded really unusual.

Very different, very...

kind of experimental, but in a very musical way.

Uh, and then...

So, I don't think he had a sound,

but I think that was what was great.

The bands sounded like the bands,

but the approach, you could feel his...

You could feel his input, his aesthetic.

[surreal electronic music playing]

[Stubbs] I think this is the wonderful thing about Conny Plank,

that he didn't have this kind of signature style.

He was very selfless.

He wants to, sort of, personally step aside.

But what he did do... He was a tremendous enabler.

He helped them...

He was almost like a kind of a window or prism or something,

in which he could enable whatever the band's vision was.

Whether it was Cluster, whether it was Neu!,

whether it was early Kraftwerk,

whether it was D.A.F. later on.

He enabled them to, kind of, realize their vision,

and realize it as clearly and as fully as possible.

Which is why the music they produced always sounds like it was made yesterday,

or even the day after tomorrow.

It's interesting

Kraftwerk's own attitude to all their work pre-Autobahn.

I think they would like to think that Autobahnwas their first ever moment.

They were like robots trundling off the, kind of, conveyor belt in a factory,

born the moment that the ignition turns on the track "Autobahn".

They don't seem at all interested in people knowing too much about their early work,

in their very beginning, as they are just like some typical Krautrock

with lots of things going on, lots of members.

Tom-toms, and Florian Schneider with the flute,

which then disappears.

But there is, at the same time,

this emerging clarity in their music,

and this emerging, sort of, minimalism,

which gradually is the kind of electronic pulse

in the drum machine that is really coming to the surface

as all these other elements melt away.

Conny Plank must have really helped them, enabled them with his vision.

Helped them to, kind of, bring out the essence of what they're really about.

Although he's not involved in those later records,

I think that he has a kind of very sort of quiet,

Perhaps unacknowledged instrumental role

in Kraftwerk developing their vision.

[Miller] There was an ethic about those German records.

The ones by Conny, and also the ones that weren't by Conny.

But that whole feeling, the atmosphere at the time,

was kind of like punk rock, really.

I mean, it was a bunch of hippies,

in the sense that they had long hair,

and took a lot of LSD or whatever,

and smoked a lot of weed.

But, um...

But it had an attitude

that I think carried over into punk rock.

And if you talk about...

To people like John Lydon, especially,

you know, he wanted to join Can, when the Sex Pistols, you know...

They were into the...

A lot of the guys in punk rock were into the Krautrock thing

much more than the English thing.

I mean, at that time, there was hardly any

American or British bands I was listening to.

I was pretty much only listening to German music.

So, I was kind of obsessed.

[Krautrock music playing]

[man singing in German]

♪

[Conny speaking German over video]

[Miller] I got a call from Robert,

from Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft,

saying Conny Plank wants to produce, uh, our album.

I said, "Very funny. He's never gonna," you know...

I mean, how are we ever going to do that?

I mean, this mythological figure.

How, you know, who...

You know... And he said, "No, no, he really wants yo do it."

I said, "Okay."

And I had no money, obviously, which was the first problem.

I said, "So, how are we...

How are we gonna be able to do it?" You know.

He said, "Don't worry. Conny said he can do it in three days."

And, um...

So, I said, "Well, okay. Let's go. Let's do it."

[switch flicks]

[electronic music playing]

[exhales]

[speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

Mmm-hmm.

[Miller] I flew over to Cologne,

was picked up at the airport by Christa, very kind always.

Um...

Went to the studio, with the band already there.

And they were arguing amongst themselves a lot, okay?

And discussing a lot.

And, uh, I said to Conny...

Well, you know,

I was getting nervous, 'cause it's like, I've never made an album before.

I was sitting next to my hero producer.

And my band were not even in the studio.

They were in the farmhouse,

arguing, or discussing, or whatever they fucking did, you know.

He said, "Don't worry, don't worry. It'll be fine. Don't worry, don't worry."

Day two, I said to Conny,

"I'm getting a little bit worried."

He said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Yeah, I'll go and talk to them.

Don't worry, they're just having a chat about how they want to do it."

So, nothing really happened in the first two days or the three days recording.

[speaking German]

[speaking German]

[speaking German]

You know, I was freaking out inside.

Hopefully not too obviously on the outside.

And Conny said, "Oh, I think they're ready to start now."

[speaking German]

I must have been so annoying.

I mean, he must have really... I was really bugging him,

'cause I was saying stuff like...

'Cause he was getting these sounds,

and he was plugging things in here,

and plugging things in there.

I said, "What are you doing?" "I don't know," he said.

"I don't really know. I'm just making, you know, seeing what happens.

And I'm making..." Kind of like a cook putting in ingredients

without reading the label, you know.

[speaking German]

[Krautrock song playing]

[singing in German]

[song continues over speakers]

[song stops]

[speaking German]

[metal squeaking]

["Der Mussolini" playing]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Gorl speaking German]

["Der Mussolini" playing]

[singing in German]

♪

[Gorl speaking German]

["Der Mussolini" playing]

[Gabi singing in German]

[Coleman] Fuck. I love you.

Come to me.

[laughing]

Oh, goodness gracious.

Come and sit down.

That song "Der Mussolini" made us really want to work with your father.

Everywhere you went in Germany,

you'd hear... [scatting]

And it was the first song I ever heard

that I really loved with the German language.

To sum him up, I think,

politically, he was a revolutionary.

And musically, he was absolutely a revolutionary.

Uh, 'cause he did... Before all the technology and sampling,

he was doing it all.

Like, I remember this one time,

we did this song, "Birds of a Feather".

And, uh, he got the chorus,

and he got voices of, uh, the Nuremberg Rally.

[mimics crowd shouting]

And he managed to get

these voices in the chorus.

♪ Birds of a feather

♪ Flock together, oh

And he managed to get the voices of...

From the Third Reich of this Nuremberg Rally

to be these backing vocals by triggering it.

And I remember him turning it right up as we're hearing this thing.

We were all laughing our heads off.

He liked this kind of extreme experience and stuff.

["Birds of a Feather" playing]

♪ Birds of a feather

♪ Flock together, oh

I remember these political rallies

that he included in those,

which were perhaps, you know, kind of...

[mock gasps] to some people.

-But-- -He loved to scare people.

Yeah, but to us, they were noises.

And he explained about the use in those rallies

of the microphone

-and how they would distort. -The flask.

Yeah, and how they would make the little man appear very big.

And I was like, "Oh, yeah."

And he said it was like Motown.

This is all, you know...

It's like Motown. I go, "Yeah, Motown."

I love Motown.

As a kid, you see, I grew up on Motown.

And I go, "Yeah, it's like Motown."

The microphone distorts., makes it exciting.

♪ And we go doot

["Doot-Doot" playing]

♪ Doot doot

♪ Look at them fall Flicker and fade... ♪

[Hyde] It meant a lot to us.

Rick and I became fascinated by the sound of language.

The sound of other tongues.

And we started to include that in all Underworld.

He would get us to experiment.

I remember he taught the drummer how to drum differently.

He taught him about space.

About how to not drum.

How to kind of miss beats out.

["Doot-Doot" continues]

♪ Doot

♪ Doot doot

[Hyde] I think that what he did do is liberate us from our thinking.

♪ Doot

♪ Doot doot

[Hyde] We did a version of "Doot-Doot".

It was kind of gentler.

Sequencing kind of vibe.

And so...

And so, he, um...

He, uh... He asked if we, um...

He asked if we did anything in terms of...

[stutters] If we took anything to change our consciousness.

And all I did was drink at that time.

And that wasn't gonna be very good.

So, he introduced something to my partner,

and then we started to make the recording.

He got us both playing on the PPG,

playing these poly-rhythmic pieces

and just locking on.

And we had that ability in those days

to just lock on to each other's orbit.

And then he got one of the other guys, Alfie, to...

I think it was... They used one of those voice boxes.

And they put the synth through this voice box.

And then, with this tube,

he was stood in the middle of the studio,

whirling it around his head.

He had two microphones up in the ceiling,

and it made this kind of, you know, swirling sound.

You know, your father always had these visions of sound

that we related to.

["Doot-Doot" playing]

♪ And we go doot

♪ Doot doot

[Hyde] This beautiful, gentle,

trippy kind of sound that he would do,

repeating on a loop, repeating on a loop.

Which was Kraftwerk, repeating on a loop.

You know, repetitive music,

which was funk, you know, through Kraftwerk.

Through what your father was doing,

and others here in Germany.

And then, on to acid house.

It was direct lineage.

[electronic music playing]

♪

♪

[siren wailing]

Do you remember how much you liked chocolate Kaba?

[Stephan] Yes.

-You remember that? -Yes.

Do you remember the guy in Devo that said,

"Hey, Kaba is kaka"?

-[laughs] -"Kaba is kaka."

And you said, "No!

My Kaba is not kaka!"

And started stomping around.

Yes, I remember.

And made me laugh.

[Stephan laughs]

[Casale] Originally, we were supposed to do the record with David Bowie.

And David Bowie was, uh, preoccupied.

So he said, "Why don't you do it with Brian Eno?"

So, we met Brian in New York in December of 1977.

And had a really great time speaking with him.

And then David had planned to do it with Conny in Germany,

and so Brian...

of course, said yes, because David and Brian had worked together.

And the next thing we know,

we were scheduling a trip to Germany.

We had no idea where we were going,

or what it would be like.

We didn't know it was so far outside of Cologne.

["Mongoloid" playing]

♪ Mongoloid He was a mongoloid... ♪

What happened with "Mongoloid", with him and Brian,

uh, deciding on what to do with the snare.

'Cause when they heard the pattern,

the drum pattern...

The drum pattern was a mutation...

of something that American,

or marching bands in college use

to work up the crowd.

Like... [mimicking drum beat]

It's the... [mimics drum beat]

They created something that

completely changed the song,

and completely focused the beat in a new way,

and made the song special.

Made it what it was.

["Mongoloid" continues]

♪ Mongoloid, mongoloid

♪ His friends were unaware

♪ Mongoloid He was a mongoloid ♪

♪ Nobody even cared

Conny liked the industrial, brutal, aggressive approach.

Brian not so much,

'cause Brian wanted to distill that.

He wanted to make it more palatable.

He kept adding things and making suggestions.

He added vocals, he played synthesizer tracks

to make it more pretty,

more melodic.

And of course we were like, "We don't want melody.

we're anti-melody."

And Conny understood that.

["Mongoloid" continues]

♪ Mongoloid He was a mongoloid ♪

[car engine starts]

[Stewart] It's really weird, 'cause I always think

that there's these parts of the world

that are like, um, lightning rods.

Like Kingston, Jamaica, you know.

Havana, Cuba.

There's like a place in Liverpool,

places where, shit, the fucking music that came out of these...

Like, this little place.

It's insane, right?

But then Wolperath is, like, on this tiny, tiny...

I mean, Liverpool is a big city, and, you know...

Havana, Cuba, and Kingston...

And then you got Wolperath, it's about this micro dot, right?

And all this stuff came.

["Never Gonna Cry Again" playing]

♪ I'll shed more tears for you Than the ocean ♪

♪ The ocean

♪ I didn't wanna let you know

♪ I didn't wanna Take your time ♪

I didn't wanna Bring you down ♪

♪ I didn't want To hang around you ♪

♪ Around you

[Stewart] Yeah, he was involved in making timeless music, really.

Capturing, um, the essence of something,

and putting it into a context.

And the context is the world of sound.

["Vienna" playing]

♪ Freezing breath On the window pane ♪

♪ Lying and waiting

[Ure] Conny was so different from

previous producers that I'd worked with,

because he spoke and he thought in sound.

He thought about sound all the time.

We were playing a very rough idea of "Vienna".

And as we played the song through for Conny,

and he sat in the studio and he listened to it,

and, uh, we sat and talked about

what this song should and could be.

And we talked about it in musical terms.

But Conny answered us in sound terms.

He said, "What I see, what I imagine

is an old man sitting in an empty ballroom

behind a piano.

And he has played the same tune

for 40 years.

And he's tired."

And we went in the studio and recorded that.

And we came into the control room,

and he played us back a recording.

And that was the sound

that he'd created on the piano.

This sad, slow,

tired, piano piece.

But that's how he thought.

We didn't think that.

He thought that.

♪

Having worked with him, it does change how you approach making music.

After the success ofVienna,

we decided to come to your house for three months

and live in the studio,

and create and record the entire album.

We turned up at Conny's place with no ideas.

We had no songs. We had nothing.

But we decided that the environment was right

for us to be incredibly adventurous,

and start creating something from scratch.

Now, we wouldn't have tried that

with anybody else other than Connie.

We wouldn't have done it

anywhere else other than Conny's studio.

♪ ...to me

♪ Oh, Vienna

With Conny, you know, he could have had a thing written on his hat

saying, "There are no rules."

Right? That was the thing.

Whereas before that,

if you sat at the back,

and there was an engineer and a producer,

you weren't allowed to go near, or touch the desk.

And anything you suggested,

they would be, "No, you can't do that because the levels will be..."

Whereas Conny would go... [mimics distortion]

Who cares? Distort the whole channel.

Uh...

And so, I applied the "no rules" to the Sweet Dreamsalbum,

which we don't care. It's electronic and it has a trumpet playing.

You know what I mean?

And, uh, an experiment.

["Sweet Dreams [Are Made of This]" playing]

[Annie singing] ♪ I've traveled the world And the seven seas ♪

[audience singing] ♪ Everybody's lookin' For something ♪

♪ Sweet dreams Are made of this ♪

♪ And I say Hold your head up Keep your head up, movin' on ♪

♪ Hold your head up Movin' on ♪

♪ Keep your head up Come on, come on ♪

♪ Hold your head up Movin' on ♪

♪ Keep your head up Movin' on ♪

♪ Hold your head up Movin' on ♪

♪ Keep your head up

[crowd cheering]

Hello, this is Christa.

[laughs] I'm wonderful.

-Yeah. -[man speaking indistinctly over phone]

Yeah, we made it to the hotel.

Yes.

Yes, he's in my room. You want to speak to him?

Uh, we're in...

Conny... 438.

-[Conny] Yes. -Yes.

[laughs] That's me.

Okay, okay. Great. Bye.

[speaking German]

See you in a minute.

Oh, yeah. It probably is. Yeah.

[laughter]

[indistinct chatter]

[Ure] You know, I remember being there when, uh,

Dave and Annie, Eurythmics, were there,

and, kind of, living in the house.

And we were living in the bed and breakfast,

the pub around the corner, the bar,

you know, in the next village, and whatever.

It was just this constant chaos,

and Christa was the glue

that held the whole thing together.

[Hirschmann speaking German]

[bluesy instrumental music playing]

[Stephan] Only handful of pictures from my family exist.

That's why I treasure these photos and the stories they tell.

The studio might have been a special environment to grow up in as a child.

To me, it was the most normal thing in the world.

Plus, my dad wasn't constantly on the road, like the other fathers.

But it doesn't render him more present.

And he had all the other people in the house

to take care of and record their music.

True. There are only a few family photos,

but I have large stock of records.

Memories pressed in vinyl.

Bass parts, melodies, and song fragments

that have nested in my brain,

which trigger memories

the moment I hear them.

♪

[Stephan speaking German]

[speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Stephan] Okay.

[Czukay speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[speaking German]

[Terstappen laughs]

[speaking German]

[surreal instrumental music playing]

[speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Annette speaking German]

[speaking German]

[Lola speaking German]

[car indicator clicking]

[Stini speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Lola speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Lola speaking German]

[slow electronic music playing]

[Gianna] I was in Milano. I live in Milano.

And I have two records.

One from D.A.F and one from Ultravox.

When I got a manager, a new manager,

he told me, "You know who can be a good producer for you?

Conny Plank."

So, that's why we met one day.

And we have our first meeting, I will never forget.

It was to enter a fairy tale.

Because me, I was born in the country, you know.

And the studio was in the country.

Before the studio, Milano, we are all in the middle of the city,

all the traffic.

There's no noise. Only horses, cats,

plants, trees.

And I enter, and the studio was like...

Especially the studio was kind of magic, you know,

in the spirit.

And Conny was there.

He look like a big boy to me.

You know, like a man, producer, big boy.

And a lot of fun, a lot of groove,

and whatnot, he was moving like me.

[laughs]

We always said, "Me and you, we are like two little elephants,

to find the groove."

["Bello e impossibile" playing]

[Gianna singing in Italian]

[Gianna] I think he like very much Italian music.

I think... I hope.

I don't know, I'm not sure to say that,

but we may find some emotions in Conny.

Some emotions different, you know.

Because Italian, we are emotional.

Sometimes too much, you know.

He wanted us all to calm down.

And I was too energetic, melodramatic.

He said, "Cool, cool."

I learned this word "cool".

To say it to an Italian to be cool, you know,

is very difficult.

Just to understand what does he mean.

We don't used this word, we don't have it, "to be cool," you know?

The "cool" was the moment we groove.

"Cool" I learned with Conny.

[singing in German]

I had something come over me, I didn't know why,

and I have this immediate instinct

to... "This is the man.

My man."

Because also he criticized me for one aspect,

but we didn't fight about it.

The cover from the album California,America.

You have a big statue with big vibrator with American flag.

This is great rock and roll provocation.

But why use America arranged in the copy?

I never thought about that, you know.

And Conny, he told me, "You must find a new identity."

And this word "identity", for me, was the starting point.

To find identity on my vocals.

Over my sound, European sound.

The logic of Conny about Europe, I think was, uh,

something revolutionary.

Our music is more... It's very important.

Italian music now is for Italy.

But opera was for everywhere in the world.

Conny always made you work hard

in your system to be true

with the instrument, with the voice, with the lyrics.

Conny want to make each different production

very personal, unique.

And me, I become unique thank you to Conny Plank.

["Monotonie" playing]

[singing in German]

[speaking German]

[man speaking German]

[upbeat German song playing]

[man continues in German]

[speaking German]

[upbeat song playing]

♪ If you don't want My kisses ♪

♪ Break my heart and go

♪ Just take my heart And go ♪

[speaking German]

♪ Don't come close to me

♪ Stay where you are

♪ Wash the plastic shine Off my vision ♪

[speaking German]

♪ Don't come close to me

♪ Stay where you are

[Annette speaking German]

♪ Nothing truly does So please don't stay ♪

[Conny speaking German]

[speaking German]

["Marcia Baila" playing]

♪

[singing in French]

[Catherine speaking French]

At the end, you are what you are.

And always be courageous and feel what you feel really.

And what you like, really,

don't be too influenced by advices around and all that stuff.

And do it well.

[laughing]

[Catherine] And he told also something

that we always say again.

[Chichin] Ah, yes.

This thing about not to be too clever.

[Chichin] He always said that, yeah.

It's what he said to us. "Don't be too clever."

Yeah, yeah. Because I stress too much for a song.

And what he said, too,

is, "Good quality of bad sound."

[Catherine laughs]

He said you can have any song,

you know, dirty song, but you have to catch it.

As an engineer, he was a really good engineer.

We have the best quality possible.

♪

[Catherine] You remember we saw the first Whodini,

and he show us this, uh...

He made me discover the rap.

The rap. At that period...

Because he was mixing Whodini.

I said, "Why Whodini came from New York to work with you? Why?"

He said, "Oh, 'cause of my delay."

["Nasty Lady" playing]

♪ Excuse me, excuse me

♪ Can I tell you a story?

♪ About this lady That I once met ♪

♪ In the underground Discotheque ♪

[Fletcher] Good to see you, man.

[indistinct chatter]

-Welcome. Welcome to Atlanta. -How you doin', man?

Come on in.

Look at you, man.

You were a little kid, man, when we first met you.

I know you don't remember. You were so young.

We were absolutely nobody in the business.

Nobody knew who we were.

-We were just guys. -Nobody.

We barely knew. Who... dini?

Whodini? Who is that?

It was such an early stage for hip-hop.

Um, we needed somebody that just understood

something that was similar to our sounds, you know.

And, um, somebody that we can understand.

And, uh, Clyde mentioned Conny Plank.

And he mentioned his work.

Early work through Devo, and early work through Kraftwerk,

early work through Ultravox.

And being in New York,

we catch a piece of everything.

I remember this and that.

Okay. He touched that? Okay, let's do that.

And like, a month and a half later or something like that,

we were sitting in your house.

[all laughing]

I'm like, "Where the hell are we?"

I mean, like, ain't nobody out here.

Yo, what they doing to us?

I'm really Brooklyn, New York. You know what I mean?

I like it fast, I like it coming at me.

I like it all day, all night long.

-People everywhere-- -Concrete jungle.

Right.

You gotta remember, we were 17-18 years old.

-So... -Right, right.

[Fletcher] You know, we had really never been out of New York City.

So, it was really our first time

just leaving our home,

and then going to Bonn, Germany,

and being there at the farmhouse,

and looking at the beautiful home that he made

-out of the farmhouse. -Oh, man!

Man, then the studio...

I was like, you know...

The way he had everything hidden out

but open, you know?

And where the studio was, it was fantastic.

I loved the woodgrain.

It was so warm.

That really was the most pleasant studio we had ever been into, man.

-Really. -Even to this day.

We've kinda seen a lot of great studios, but that was...

first of all, way ahead of its time technologically.

The equipment that he had in the studio...

Right. But--

Fairlight Computer, emulator...

Just, at that time, hip-hop had never...

We had never seen it.

["Rap Machine" playing]

♪ Look out, world Stand aside, MCs ♪

♪ 'Cause I'm a definite Threat to society ♪

♪ My name is Ecstasy And I'ma tell you what ♪

♪ For me to get down You've got to get up ♪

♪ With the pep in my step And Jalil by my side ♪

♪ I've got the ladies yellin' Ride, Whodini, ride! ♪

♪ My work ain't hard My boss ain't mean ♪

♪ 'Cause Ecstasy's kicking Like a rap machine ♪

♪ You know I heard this story Just the other night ♪

♪ They built a computer That could rock a mic ♪

♪ A computer whose rap Was always right ♪

♪ A rapper with Built-in disco lights ♪

♪ A MC that could last For years and years ♪

♪ A rapper that all MCs would fear ♪

♪ I finally finished My MC King ♪

♪ Let me introduce you all To the rap machine ♪

♪ Right about now On the microphone ♪

♪ It's the rap machine...

[groans]

The video was primitive, but the concept was way advanced.

-Yeah. -I hated that video.

I hate the word "hate", but I hated that video.

♪ It's the rap machine

♪ The rap machine

♪ It's the rap machine

[Hutchins] Besides the language barrier,

we're dealing with a time when

all of this was really primitive.

[Fletcher] I mean, we take it for granted now,

because hip-hop is well-established.

But back then, we had to create it.

We had to create the sound.

We had to literally sculpture the sounds.

♪ Reprogram, reprogram Reprogram, reprogram... ♪

He understood a lot.

Like, I had a problem...

with hearing.

I loved being where we was at in the park.

But nobody could record you like that.

But your father did.

He stopped me, and he was like, "What's wrong?"

And I'm like, "I really like it like, you know,

when we're in the parks.

You know, I can feel free."

Your father actually took it and put speakers behind us in the back of his studio,

and played the sound up,

and balanced the sound perfect

until I can hear it from the back.

And didn't have to wear headphones, so I could do it like in the park.

It made me get emotional for a minute,

because nobody's ever took that time for me.

So, we thank you, man. For your family, man.

For having such an impact in our lives, man,

and our careers, man. Just...

Not only Conny Plank, but Christa.

And you, when you were little, man.

You welcomed us, too, man.

I don't know if you remember that, man.

We had fun with you, man.

You was like our little brother, man.

For real, man. It was great.

[speaking indistinctly]

[laughter]

And we get to tell you a little bit about, you know,

the impact that your dad, your papa had in our lives and in our careers, man.

Definitely never forget Conny Plank.

[pleasant instrumental music playing]

[Ure] When we were working together on theU-Vox album.

which was the last album we did,

uh, Conny had bought a cornet.

Trumpet. Cornet.

And he was practicing this thing.

And he was going to South America.

He was going to South America,

um, to go and do some live things.

And he was really excited about this,

which was fantastic.

And every so often in the studio,

this thing would come out and he'd be practicing,

blowing away and playing some tunes.

Getting ready for this tour.

♪

♪

[Steffen speaking German]

[audience cheering]

[speaking German]

[band playing]

[upbeat song playing]

[man] Your voice is excellent.

[singing in foreign language]

[indistinct chatter]

♪

♪

[applause]

[Ure] I heard, later, that he got ill when he was there.

We presumed it was, uh,

something you get in tropical countries.

You know, you catch a bit of a disease or something.

Didn't think it was anything particularly life-threatening.

But that was all... That was all we kind of heard.

[trumpet playing]

[speaking German]

[speaking German]

[speaking German]

[man laughing]

[somber music playing]

[water splashing]

[Christa] This is an English lesson in the bathtub.

Your equipment...

is very good.

[translating in German]

Your equipment is not good enough.

[Stephan translating in German]

Your equipment is good enough for our roads.

[Stephan translating in German]

[speaking German]

[speaking German]

-This? -Yeah.

A certain part of the rhythm track.

[man shouting over rhythm track]

-Yeah. -The timing should be right.

It's between the beat and the shout.

[shouts]

Ha!

[music playing on laptop]

So sweet.

You see, when we'd made the Revengealbum,

Conny was gonna mix it.

But I remember in the studio,

he started to lie down on the sofa and say he wasn't feeling very well.

And then... Then we would cancel.

And then, the next day he wasn't feeling very well.

And then...

Then it was obvious that,

actually, he couldn't do it.

He was saying, "I have to go back."

[Stephan] I am certain my dad knew exactly why he took me with him to Japan.

He knew that we had to spend as much time together as possible.

My dad died on a Sunday in the winter of 1987.

♪

[somber electronic music playing]

♪

[Stephan] Now, you're taking the desk of Conny to London?

Yeah.

My therapist is very happy.

[Stephan laughs]

There you are.

They've gone and got a second mortgage

on another house in Spain or somewhere.

[Stephan laughs]

It's not a thing to be taken lightly.

I haven't taken it lightly.

And I've still only 50% convinced myself

that it's any kind of...

um...

It's just a stupid thing to do.

But there we are. Stupid thing's the best.

I've worked on lots and lots of desks.

It's completely brilliantly thought out.

The physical dimensions for a 56-channel desk...

Obviously it was built for Conny. Big guy, yeah?

He could stretch probably both arms,

and reach the end faders. Yeah?

Maybe bar a couple of inches.

But certainly with a slight movement there,

you can control the whole mix. One person can.

This desk and the studio

was in essence, it's the hippies who fell in love with machines.

Because the whole thing is angled completely correctly for natural light.

A lot of studios have natural light.

I'm completely indifferent to natural light in studios.

I don't care about it. It doesn't do anything to my body clock.

I've always thought it was an affectation.

This is the only place I ever came

where the natural light really worked.

Where the passage of the sun was used

to create a natural kind of space.

The morning's on your left,

mid-day is from behind you,

and the evening is on your right.

[speaking indistinctly]

[Allen] Keep it off the ground. Come on.

You have to be supporting the joint down there.

-Okay. -[Stephan] The joint. Just grab it at the joint.

[Allen] Okay.

[Stephan speaking German]

[Lola speaking German]

[door unlocking]

-Hello. Hi. -[woman] Hello.

[speaking German]

Wow.

[Verena speaking German]

[Stephan speaking German]

[Hutchins] So, I walked in the bathroom.

I turned on the light, and I was like...

"This is where it's at!"

The whole bathroom is wallpapered in platinum and gold albums.

I'm like, "Wow!"

I'm sitting there on the john, just reading all the albums.

[laughs]

That's when we started to know the magnitude

-of this producer that we were working with. -Yeah.

And we was like, "Holy smoke!"

[speaking German]

♪

[Stephan] It's a strange feeling

to stand at this place where it all started.

I have come full circle.

[Stephan speaking German]

[Stephan] I heard about my dad from his friends.

About his music,

and his passion for which he ultimately gave his life.

He had the unique talent

to push artists beyond their wildest dreams of what they thought was possible.

To create something unique and lasting.

Nothing is too crazy not to try it.

Or how father used to say,

"Craziness is holy."

[Ure] I'd say that without knowing it at the time,

all of us, we managed to work together,

and create something that was utterly timeless.

That had a life beyond the life that Conny's had,

and will have a life beyond the life that I have.

'Cause the music we created together

is something that will be in the ether forever.

[rock music playing]

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪

♪