Get the latest gossip
Damo Suzuki: Can’s free-floating vocalist gave us some of the 1970s’ most open-minded rock music
The singer on the experimental German rock band’s peak 1970s trilogy of albums embodied their adventurous spirit throughout his career
A 1971 TV clip from the long-running German series Beat Club shows guitarist Michael Karoli, drummer Jaki Liebezeit, bassist Holger Czukay and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt – all in luminous psychedelic colour – methodically coalescing around the abstract groove of the song Paperhouse. He arrived in Europe in 1968, and spent a couple of years drifting around from a Swedish commune to rural Ireland, stopping off in France, Germany and the UK, busking, painting and playing guitar along the way, a period chronicled by Rob Young in his Can biography All Gates Open. The trio of studio albums Can and Suzuki made together – 1971’s Tago Mago, 1972’s Ege Bamyasi and 1973’s Future Days – trace a sharp arc which runs from mystic rock through intricate funk-fusion to a multi-layered tonal drift that can be considered one of several precursors of ambient music.
Or read this on The Guardian