Certainly one of Krautrock’s pre-eminent bands, Can loved an illustrious profession between 1968 and 1979, and in 1976 they really had successful single within the UK with I Need Extra. A step into the present disco-pop sound, its lyrics have been written by a roadie and the TV look featured a whole stranger on guitar – however Can took all of it of their stride, as keyboardist Irmin Schmidt informed Prog in 2022.
I Need Extra was Can’s eleventh single, however the one one to chart in Britain. The lyrics have been written by Peter Gilmour, their reside sound engineer – “As an open-minded artistic crew, we didn’t see why Pete shouldn’t contribute a humorous lyric,” late co-founder Holger Czukay as soon as defined. It’s is one among few events when all members of the bands are featured on vocals.
The place did the inspiration for the tune come from?
Schmidt: As was standard with us, it simply got here from jamming out a musical thought and seeing the place it led. We by no means got down to write a single – not to mention successful one. For all we knew, it might have ended up being 12 or 13 minutes lengthy. We all the time did what suited the concepts we had. The very fact I Need Extra got here out the way in which it did was merely all the way down to the way in which the concept developed.
What was the response to it?
I believe we have been all the time lucky that our followers accepted all the things we did. They’d no expectations, so no matter the kind of tune we did, or its size, it was high quality by them. That gave us the liberty to have successful like this and know it could by no means undermine something extra advanced we tackled.
The opposite factor was that it bought a variety of copies, so there was an viewers outdoors of our standard one which picked up on the tune. That was clearly good for the band.
Did you’re feeling like pop stars?
I might sound pompous and say we have been too cool to be pop stars – however there was clearly a component of that happening. I keep in mind one ‘pop star’ second was after we have been requested to seem on High Of The Pops.
It was such a last-minute factor that all of us needed to come again from holidays from numerous locations. Michael Karoli was in Kenya and we couldn’t attain him; it was lengthy earlier than cellphones and e-mail.
So we needed to do the present with a stand-in guitarist. You see this man on the again enjoying guitar and searching awkward? I can’t even inform you his identify!
Was having successful a blessing or curse?
Oh, it was neither. We’d had profitable singles earlier than in Germany, so we took all of it in our stride. And we have been by no means beneath stress to have extra hits. Our label knew attempting to get us to do this was a waste of their time. We’d all the time do what we wished – I Need Extra didn’t alter that.
