I was never able to open this file and therefore never able to actually read and review it. I did email netgalley to make them aware of this issue.

I'm a huge Kraftwerk fan, so was fascinated by this behind-the-machines look at the robot men from former drummer Wolfgang Flur. His departure from the band came amongst much rancour towards founders Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider, which in turn ended up with them suing him when this automaton-biography was first published.
As such, Flur's account of life inside the Man Machine is somewhat biased and he is a fairly unreliable narrator. The translations leave a little to be desired as well - his account of masturbating on his parents' sofa is one of the strangest things I've read in a long while!
There is a lot of excellent contextual history contained in this book, and some fascinating insights into the world inside the sacred Kling Klang Studios, but so much of this feels like either bitter recriminations or petty arguments, that it's hard to separate the facts from the friction.
Nevertheless, this remains a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the enigmatic German electro pioneers due to its controversial place in their history.

Wolfgang was the drummer for the German Band Kraftwerk for many years and now has a successful solo career. This autobiography is mostly about his time with the band and has been updated with his current projects. Unfortunately the writing is very clunky and this book could really use an editor. I enjoyed the behind the scenes and touring parts of the book but I skipped over the stream of conscious/philosophical parts. I was surprised at how much of the autobiography was only about him and his accomplishments. There is a lot about his sexual conquests even casual ones. Nobody in the book is really very likable. He does talk about why he left the band and the recent lawsuits over the book. The text is accompanied with some wonderful photographs.

Several times in the book the author has the gall to tell us that he's learnt to tell his story; not on this evidence he hasn't. A decent editor would crop a hundred pages out of this with no real effort involved, and no hardship to the book. Certainly the adverts for the one-flop-album Yamu stage of his career can go, as they're painful to read (and re-read, and re-read, as he often won't shut up about it). But what I was really here for was the life story of an ex-Kraftwerk member, and his reflections on that. And I got them in spades – with the addition of a heck of a lot more sperm and sex than I thought to expect.

You don't get a straightforward diary of his time with the band – the book is more concerned with the fall-out of the albums and the touring thereof rather than their creation (The ''Radioactivity'' album is written in about three lines). And of course you get a lot about the fact the remaining two members of KW once Wolfie and Karl had left tried to suppress the book – although from my reading of this only the barest few final pages are new, and a lot managed to get in the English translation that didn't make the original, redacted German volume.

And that will remain an issue, with the book being self-referential, and discussing the problems it made just as much as those Ralf and Florian (OK, Ralf) ever caused. Yes, the book offers implied reasons why none of the pre-''Autobahn'' albums have ever been re-released (because they stiffed Conny Plank, the producer). But Wolfie is also very snide, calling the current touring set-up Kraftwerk Mark III – er, mate, they were an acoustic-rock-hippy-shit band before you, so you joined for Mark II and have in one snide numeration belittled everyone that replaced you. Nice going. And while you're at it, try and combine your comment that sex needs a long connection before it happens with the girl that almost raped you in a Hollywood hotel shower, about which you never batted an eyelid in complaint.

Don't get me wrong, this is an important document, and a great telling of how he saw his time in the band, where you can see the end coming due to his being paid a flat wage and no royalties from a mile off, even if the actual conclusion relies on push-bikes a lot more than the novitiate may have expected. But it's not a well written book at all, and really does need the red pencil dragged through it at times. Also, my netgalley had upwards of dozens of typos, which is rum for a text that's mostly twenty-ish years old; not only the usual printing errors, but dislocating both OMD and Ischia into the wrong parts of their respective countries.

I have not read it through, and will therefore not review this book. I belive it will be better not to give a review as I do not have any interest to finish the book. Mostly because of my lack of knowledge on the tema, and my lack in interest.

Autobiography by a member of Kraftwerk sign me up .

Its interesting , highly candid and will change most peoples views of the band. Occasionally it feels that it drags and the language sometimes feels clunky but its fascinating and a view on something that is so hidden it feels so exciting to read .

If you are not a fan of the band it may feel un-intresting but essentially it is a tale of people who don't relate and how the cracks slowly increase .

Four years after it was a track on ‘The Man-Machine’ in 1978, Krafterwk’s ‘The Model’ reached No 1 in the UK singles chart. This delay occurred because Kraftwerk were ahead of their time, and the rest of the world, in the form of groups like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, the Human League, and Depeche Mode, trailed in their wake. Even Bowie, so often himself the musical trendsetter, acknowledged their seminal influence by labelling one of the tracks on his 1977 ‘Heroes’ album ‘V-2 Schneider’ – in tribute to Florian Schneider who, along with Ralf Hütter, co-founded Kraftwerk in 1970.

No one can deny Kraftwerk’s importance. Not only did they take electronic experimentation into the mainstream, but due in large part to Afrika Bambaata and the Soulsonic Force using the melody from ‘Trans- Europe Express’ and a beat based on ‘Numbers’ to produce ‘Planet Rock’ in 1982, they are also widely credited with being the progenitors of hip-hop.

House, techno, hip-hop, trip-hop, synthpop, trance and electroclash are all indebted to Kraftwerk, so Dr Uwe Schutte can at least plausibly claim that whilst, "The Beatles influenced Western society more than Kraftwerk … Kraftwerk … influenced the development of popular music more than the Beatles.”

Kraftwerk’s most creative and influential period dates from between 1974 and 1981 when they released the albums ‘Autobahn’ (1974), ‘Radio-Activity’ (1975), ‘Trans-Europe Express’ (1977), ‘The Man-Machine’ (1978) and ‘Computerworld’ (1981). During these years - indeed from 1973 to 1986 - the group’s percussionist (and sometime keyboard player) was Wolfgang Flür, so to have his autobiography is to have a potentially very valuable document.

In fact, the first edition of this book appeared in 2000 and would have been published even sooner had Hütter and Schneider not filed a lawsuit against Flür which was only resolved after some disputed parts of the text were amended. Nevertheless, when ‘The Observer’ listed its 10 best music memoirs in 2010, ‘I Was A Robot’ weighed in at Number 8. There have been many heavyweight contenders published since then, from the likes of Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Carly Simon, Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello but even if Flür was edged out of the top ten, which is by no means assured, it would not be by far.

After all, his book offers an insider’s account which is honest to the point of indiscretion (anyone for threesomes?), which is drolly but possibly unintentionally humorous (“I was impressed from the start by Ralf’s cautious driving”), which sheds light on the music and is a life with plenty of interest both before and after Kraftwerk. Having said that, the fact that Kraftwerk’s image is so robotic means that there’s an especial pleasure in the revelation of their feet of clay.

For some the bad blood at the time of Flür’s departure from Kraftwerk, which clearly received a fresh transfusion as a result of subsequent litigation, may colour too much of the book, skewing the narrative and giving it a bitter tang. For others it will be precisely what gives the book zest.

In his Prologue Flür wishes his reader “much pleasure with this book” and there is certainly much pleasure to be had.