“And so, I said I go to Switzerland and find a rich wife, which means I could carry on as before, with a rich woman supporting me instead of my mother!”

Holger displays childish glee at his ingenious idea. His enthusiasm is so infectious that you can’t knock him for his unusually upfront desires. “I didn’t succeed. I went to Switzerland, but instead of finding a rich wife, I found Michael Karoli, our guitarist…”

Every cloud has a silver lining, as the silk purse said to the sow’s ear. Back to the basics. Flow Motion, Can’s new Virgin album containing aforesaid hit, struck me as evidencing new heights of humor on Can’s part. Adjectives that spring to mind while listening to Flow Motion include bizarre, wacky, zany, and off-the-wall even.

“I think Unlimited Edition has a lot of humour also. You see, with Can it’s a very spontaneous thing. Things happen just by luck, and then,” Holger adds modestly, “we can be quite funny. But when we think about it a lot, then…”

He trails off into the middle distance. Continues, “The others, I think, thought of making it light-hearted. For me, I said the thing that I do, I do only once. If it’s not good, then I leave it on the record, and then I will learn by it.

“That means when I played bass, I played it once and never again; when I sang, I sang it once and never again. I didn’t know what to sing, but I sang something, what was it? Ach ja, ‘laugh till you cry.’ I came to the studio and I made a mike test. I listened to the tape and thought, what shall I do? So I went ‘banana, banana,’ something like this, and it was alright.”

Nothing if not inventive. Banana, banana, eh? It may not be what they call heavy message, but it does have a certain ring. In fact, it sounds more like avant-garde Art Performance than yer average session.

“Aha! That is because Can are getting more and more disciplined.”

You mean you’re doing lots of heavy rehearsals?

“We don’t rehearse in the usual sense, not in the old way that we rehearse one piece. It is more to listen to each other.” And the result of enhanced listening power? Another single in the pipeline. Does this 45 share a similar set of influence with ‘I Want More?’

“Influences. Do you mean the whole group or me personally? It is hard to speak always in the name of the group, because everybody is influenced by something completely different. But there is one common thing which everybody appreciated from the very first moment, and that is the reggae influence. For me, when it comes to reggae music,” says Holger, practically jumping up and down in his wrought iron seat with enthusiasm, “I really can get CRAZY!”

Watch: “I Want More” [at youtube.com]

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