By Danny Scott
A
nyone who takes a serious look at the history of electronic music, will, at some point, come across Tangerine Dream. Formed in 1967, they were one of the bands that undeniably helped steer music towards its experimental, electronic future. In the late-60s and early-70s, there were several, shifting line-ups, but everything seemed to pivot around the band’s driving force and ‘frontman’, the late Edgar Froese. They enjoyed underground success with albums like Electronic Meditation (1970; recorded by Froese, Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler) and Atem (1973; this was the second album to feature what is widely regarded at the classic line-up of Froese, Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann), which John Peel made Album of the Year. Their music also caught the attention of a young British hippy called Richard Branson, who’d recently set up his Virgin record label. Virgin had just signed Mike Oldfield and was about to enjoy worldwide success with his debut album, Tubular Bells. Tangerine Dream had found their spiritual home! The deal with Virgin allowed them to make maximum impact on what was still a fledgling electronic music scene, and the period between 1973 and 1979 became known as TD’s ‘Virgin Years’. Remarkably, the band’s first album for Virgin, 1974’s Phaedra, made the UK Top 20, rubbing shoulders with the likes of The Carpenters and the Bay City Rollers! It’s this era that has been chronicled and celebrated by the recently released and rather lavish 16 CD/2 Blu-Ray box set, In Search of Hades: The Virgin Recordings 1973-1979. Alongside remastered versions of the albums, there is a selection of unreleased Phaedra outtakes, some 5.1 mixes, a German documentary that hasn’t been available since it first went out in 1975 and several live shows, including Coventry Cathedral in 1975. Tangerine Dream are still around. Sort of. It contains none of the original or Virgin Years members, of course – Edgar Froese was the only constant until he sadly passed away in 2015. The other two main members of the Virgin Years
line-up were Christopher Franke (a member from 1971-87) and Peter Baumann (1971-77). Franke now works in the soundtrack industry in the US, while Baumann released several solo albums and founded the Private Music record label. Like Franke, he’s now based in the States and has just released a new collection of tracks called Neuland, recorded with another former TD member, Paul Haslinger. We managed to track down Baumann to his San Francisco studio and asked him about the box set, playing live shows in cathedrals and the ‘relaxed’ recording sessions for Phaedra. According to the various versions of the Tangerine Dream story, it seems that you joined the band by accident. Is that actually how it happened? Yes, totally! A complete accident. I was at a concert and I ended up talking to this guy who turned out to be Christopher Franke. I told him that I was playing in a band, but I didn’t find the music exciting. It was a covers band… playing English and US rock covers. I told him that I wanted to find something that was more experimental. He seemed quite excited by this and made a note of my address. Several days later, I received a letter asking me to come to a rehearsal. His band was looking for a keyboard player. Analog technology… A letter! Ha ha! This was decades before mobile phones. In fact, I didn’t even have a normal phone. None of us did. Musicians didn’t make much money back then! When I went along to see them, I was worried that they thought I was some kind of master keyboard player. I wasn’t! I grew up with classical music because my father was a composer and, yes, I understood classical music, but I wasn’t a fantastic classical musician. There was no need for me to worry. When I arrived at the studio, I said, “OK, what are we playing? What’s the song?” Edgar said, “I don’t know what we’re playing. We’ll start something and you can join in with us.” Christopher was
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INTERVIEW
A 16 CD box set celebrates the German synthpioneers’ much-lauded Virgin Years. Peter Baumann was part of that Virgin line-up and he reveals the secrets behind those classic electronic albums. “There was no preparation. We just switched on the synths, smoked a joint and made some noise!”