Kraftwerk's obsessive tendencies -- and breakup -- lead back to cycling

It was only a matter of time before cycling made its imprint on Kraftwerk's music. The bicycle, with its inability to travel backwards, was a perfect symbol for the band's retro-futurist ideals. Hutter says there are many similarities between music and cycling - "speed, balance, a certain freedom of spirit, keeping in shape, technological and technical perfection, aerodynamics."

The American press is so on top of rock stories. Well, some publications are, but the papers particularly have an uneasy relationship with the music scene. Maybe it's because rock writers have to scale down their work to fit into a system that is often insulated and nepotistic. And you want me to turn it down, man? It's not too loud, you're too old!

Press dinosaurs like the Independent understand that the curiosity that is rock music, just like the phenomenon of the internet, must be dealt with. Which is why it's exciting when you're presented with a story this interdisciplinary, manageable, welcome: Kraftwerk's career has been complicated by cycling. It's too easily imagined: Ralf Hutter goes off the deep end, Florian Schneider follows him, the other members (and legions of their less-insane fans) cringe, decades pass, the need for a retirement fund brings about a Tour De France album. Rush done it, King Crimson done it, Primus done it, and I think any of the bands I've admired have pulled something like this when denied the luxury of being able to stop playing. Age makes us obsessive, and when we lose the flourish of life that makes us good artists, we return to the only things we remember. Which, in this case, is bicycles. Will it turn out they're big in Holland?

"The bicycle is already a musical instrument on its own. The noise of the bicycle chain, the pedal and gear mechanism, the breathing of the cyclist, we have incorporated all this into the Kraftwerk sound," Hutter announced. In the same year, he suffered serious head injuries in a cycling accident near the Rhine Dam (he wasn't wearing a helmet), which left him in a coma for two days. His first words on waking were, reportedly, "Where's my bike?"