Florian Schneider RIP

There were a string of deaths in the music industry in the past month, including Little Richard and Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers.  But the passing of Florian Schneider was the most personally affecting for me.  He died as quietly and as privately as he lived.  We know he had a battle with cancer and little else.  How had he been passing his time since leaving Kraftwerk over a decade ago?  Nobody really knows.  And yet, the list of musicians who truly transformed music in multiple genres is a very short one, and Florian Schneider is on it. 

Is it wrong to be rankled by the obits who make note of the David Bowie song "V2 Schneider", as if he were a footnote in a song title by a more famous musician? 

Florian Schneider has died, but what is there to write about?  Kraftwerk were a monolithic entity, the individual contributions of the group members have been blurred out almost completely.  There are no amusing anecdotes about how Schneider composed a cool keyboard riff, about a song jelling in the studio, about life on the road.  It is assumed that he, along with Ralf Hutter, were the key creative forces in Kraftwerk, and indeed, the band hasn't released any new material since he left.  Kraftwerk and Hutter haven't said anything outside of a brutally dispassionate statement confirming his death, no personal remembrances, nothing.  The statement had all of the emotion of a company-wide email from the CEO's office, informing the masses of an unfortunate death within their ranks.  It was courteous and respectful, but gave no indication that they knew anything about the man other than what appeared in his employee file.

However, there's no indication that Schneider would have wanted it any other way.  He was an intensely private person when he was in Kraftwerk, and had ample time to set the record straight since leaving the band in 2008.  He could have written a book or started new collaborations but he didn't. It's a sad day for music, but music continues on exactly as it did before.