theatrical release
The difficulty of the avant-garde: Documentary about Can founders
The band Can with Irmin Schmidt (lr), Jaki Liebezeit, Michael Karoli, Ulli Gerlach, Holger Czukay and Damo Suzuki in the front. Recorded on December 1st, 1971 in Hamburg. photo
© picture alliance / Jacques Breuer/dpa
The film “Can and Me” takes a poetic look at the life and work of the virtuoso Irmin Schmidt, who co-founded Can, one of the most influential bands in music history.
Avant-garde has never had it easy in Germany – the German band Can is an example of this. She revolutionized rock music, which was long underestimated in her own country. “It took a while for Can,” says band founder Irmin Schmidt (85) in an interview with the German Press Agency in Berlin. In the 85-minute documentary “Can and Me”, which portrays the only surviving core member of the Krautrock band, we learn that it took five years for the musicians, with their mixture of classical, rock and free jazz, to find electronic music Experiments and outrageous sounds and rhythms brought the first successes. “It’s strange. I’m in France a lot, I’ve spent a lot of my time with Can playing in England and it’s striking in both countries how much the people there love and adore their artists.”
Today Can is revered worldwide – even in his own country. The Cologne band is considered a classic. And that was exactly what Schmidt aspired to, as he reveals in an interview: “I come from classical music and wanted to be a conductor and was one shortly before I founded Can. When you become a composer, you do things that will still be there in 300 years there. I was aware of that. That was the claim, if it were successful.” And this film by director Michael P. Aust tells of this happiness with his band, which existed for about ten years until 1979, but also of the wounds in the musician’s life. And with a tender intimacy that never comes across as revealing.
Also the story of a life love
Another stroke of luck in the life of Irmin Schmidt is Hildegard, the woman at his side for over 60 years. She has managed Can since the beginning. It was she who immediately recognized the band’s potential: “She said from the start: Can, this is a classic.” So “Can and Me” is not only a film about one of the most important and influential German bands and their co-founders, but also the story of a love of life. This is not avant-garde, but very unusual. Hildegard and Can, that was “working on happiness,” says Schmidt. This film makes that tangible.