Michael Karoli died on November 17, 2001, in Essen, Germany, aged 53. A founding member of Can, he played guitar on Tago Mago, Ege Bamyasi and Future Days. His approach to those records depended on the other musicians: each player listened, responded and helped decide where the music would go.
Born in Straubing on April 29, 1948, Karoli became friends with his guitar teacher Holger Czukay while attending school in Switzerland in 1966. He played guitar and bass in jazz and dance bands while studying law, before joining Can in 1968. Czukay, drummer Jaki Liebezeit and keyboardist Irmin Schmidt brought different experiences into the group, from jazz to contemporary classical music. Karoli’s enthusiasm for rock became another part of that exchange.
Can made a working method out of those differences. In Pierre Perrone’s obituary for The Independent, Karoli described composition as something that belonged to the group. “The individual was Can. We were just helping Can,” he said. That idea gave the guitarist a role beyond supplying a lead part over an accompaniment. The music developed through the players’ interaction, including their disagreements, with no single musician owning its direction. Can’s debut album, Monster Movie, arrived in 1969 with Malcolm Mooney singing; its performances were recorded onto two tracks and shaped through editing.
That recording process demanded decisions from the whole band. In a November 1989 interview with Simon Trask for Music Technology, Karoli explained how Can combined sections from different overdubs with portions of the original performance. Edits could switch between an overdub and the first recording. When the group moved to a 16-track machine for Landed in 1975, he found that remixing could make the atmosphere of the original performance harder to recover.
With Damo Suzuki on vocals, Can released Tago Mago in 1971, Ege Bamyasi in 1972 and Future Days in 1973. Ege Bamyasi includes “Vitamin C” and “Spoon,” the latter used as the theme for the German television thriller Das Messer. Future Days was Suzuki’s final Can album, and Karoli subsequently took on vocals alongside Schmidt. His contribution expanded as the band’s personnel changed.
Karoli’s thinking about improvisation helps explain that flexibility. In the same Music Technology interview, he argued that a musician could become so fluent in a familiar style that surprise disappeared. He suggested trying an unfamiliar instrument to force fresh decisions, and encouraged guitarists to learn from musicians who played other instruments. “The more limitations you have the luckier you are,” he said. Having fewer options, in his account, could force a musician to discover something unexpected.
He also built a place to pursue ideas outside Can. In 1978–79, Karoli established Outer Space Recording Studio in a former olive oil mill in the French Maritime Alps. There he worked with English singer and artist Polly Eltes on Deluge, composing, recording and producing the album between 1981 and 1984. The studio became a meeting place for his former band, too: Can reunited there with Mooney in 1986 to record Rite Time.
Karoli co-produced that album with Czukay, and it was released in 1989. His collaborations with Can’s singers continued beyond the reunion record. He played concerts with Suzuki in Japan in 1997 and the United States in 1998, then brought his own group Sofortkontakt to the Can Solo Projects concerts in 1999 and 2000.
