![\"Kraftwerk\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762320008_247_Untitled-1-1.jpg\")
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Culture<\/a><\/p>\n If you like Kraftwerk and cycling … well, let’s just say there’s an estate auction for you, full of bikes, weird instruments, sound equipment, and memorabilia.<\/p>\n In the late 1970s, the German electronic group Kraftwerk picked up a new hobby. Looking for something to do together that fit the ethos of the band, the four members of the time \u2013\u00a0including co-founders Florian Schneider and Ralf H\u00fctter \u2013\u00a0decided that cycling was going to be their thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n The bug bit hard. H\u00fctter and Schneider, the band\u2019s backbone, were soon cycling up to 200 kilometres a day, being dropped off from the tour bus early so they could ride the rest of the way to gigs. By 1982, the band began work on the song \u2018Tour de France\u2019 \u2013\u00a0an expression of the group\u2019s love for the event, and for the activity it hinges around. By 1983, after a hiatus while H\u00fctter recovered from a bike crash that had left him in a coma, the song was released as a single. And re-released, and re-released.<\/p>\n There are so many alternative versions of the song, different remixes and variants from over the decades, that there is not really a definitive version. But it is Kraftwerk\u2019s definitive cycling song \u2013 and one of the most definitive cycling songs of all time, full of heavy breathing, French lyrics about the sport, and freewheel buzz panning from ear to ear.<\/p>\n By 2003, the band had expanded the concept of the Tour de France song to an album, Tour de France Soundtracks. It’s 55 minutes of weird, rhythmic, chugging music about cycling\u2019s biggest race, with a representation of the four Kraftwerk members on the front cover riding through a tilted tricolor. It was to be Florian Schneider\u2019s last album with Kraftwerk: there was a falling out with H\u00fctter, with a possibly apocryphal tale of a dispute over a bike pump as the genesis. Schneider kept creating and collecting outside of the constraints of the band; H\u00fctter kept the Kraftwerk paceline rolling.<\/p>\n In 2017, Tour de France bigwig Christian Prudhomme got the band to perform at the Grand Depart of that year\u2019s race, in the group\u2019s hometown of D\u00fcsseldorf. (There was a French connection, because of course there was: the influential French electro duo Air played support, which is a hell of a step up from the usual dire Grand Depart entertainment.) <\/p>\n A famously taciturn band that gave few interviews, the glimpses of personality that Kraftwerk have shown are often centred around cycling. \u201cWe know that from cyclists, when they listen to our music, they understand; they listen, and they understand how the music is composed,\u201d H\u00fctter once said. \u201cIt\u2019s important when you move with your bicycle to listen to the environment, the surroundings, the wind and your own breath. At least that\u2019s the way we see this.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2020, Florian Schneider died after a short battle with cancer. Five years later \u2013\u00a0it probably took about that long to sort through his colossal archive \u2013\u00a0his estate is up for auction<\/a>, giving Kraftwerk fans (and even just the curious) a chance to look through what one of the world\u2019s most influential electronic music artists left behind.\u00a0It’s a fascinating collection.<\/p>\n This post is for paying subscribers only Already have an account? Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n \n \ud83d\udc4dYep![\"Iain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Iain-Treloar-150x150.jpg\")
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Schneider with his bike. <\/p>\n
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