During the seven years of my youth in Germany, I don’t think I heard a single note of music from my adopted country. The year I left school that changed.

Like everybody else, this was the first song I ever heard by Kraftwerk.
At the time, in 1975, it seemed to be another of those novelty hits of the Seventies, like Popcorn and Mouldy Old Dough and Gimme Dat Ding.

There wasn’t much to it: just a German bloke repeating the same phrase (in German) over a relentless rhythm that replicated the sensation of driving down a German motorway – an autobahn – interspersed with occasional vrooming sounds that went from speaker to speaker.

Many people seemed to think the song was about “fun fun fun on the autobahn” but clever old me, having grown up in Germany, knew the lyrics were actually “Fahren fahren fahren auf der autobahn” – “Drive drive drive on the motorway.”

When Kraftwerk vanished from view straight afterwar this they were presumed to be just another One Hit Wonder. Yet a decade later they were being reappraised as one of the most inspirational groups of all time – pioneers of electronica and forefathers of dance music.

In fact Kraftwerk had been around for a few years before this but this was their first hit, and their first properly electronic recording, and (not coincidentally) the first song upon which they had actually sung.

The single was a shortened version of the 22-minute album track and is (I think) the first example of the 4/4 “motorik” rhythm that drives much of what we tend to call Krautrock – a label the Germans themselves are understandably uneasy with.

Here’s an in-between live version nine minutes long.