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ABOUT JAKI LIEBEZEIT.
people often have wondered why jaki and myself became such a specific rhythm cell. this is strange as i was afraid of becoming a bass player in can from the very beginning. my feeling for rhythm was a bit like someone running around in an earthquake not knowing where to escape. and so i thought every moment that jaki must have been fed up with me and kick me out. he obviously needed to flip out from time to time emotionally (jaki: "i can understand why arturio toscanini had to become an unbearable conductor for an orchestra: he had so much to suffer under the weakness of musicians' rhythmical disabilities...")
it is very rare that jaki will change an once started rhythm. he did it once after a criticising michael karoli's guitar playing who consequently ran to his guitar in anger and began to push jaki into one of can's best ever live recorded pieces "uphill"
it was also him who said to me after a heavy combat that we should better be able to sell such kind of dispute to the public. in fact jaki has sometimes a very dry sense of humour and so I suggested to him several times that we both should become a couple like pat & patachon, laurel & hardin or abbot & costello.
having some spare time experimenting around with jaki liebezeit was always a great pleasure. he had an incredible amount of patience letting things grow. during the recordings of "the east is red" he played piano for hours, always the same type of sequence. as the amplification was no matter I could try out how the dictaphone was working like a live sampling instrument and when I recognized the perspectives I told him we could play as a duo in cafes or other small places which actually never happened. however, I did that once, without him: at a birthday party of my lawyer. and it really worked out fine.
one of the greatest experiences was working with jaki in order to practice for hopefully upcoming tv shows. I presumed that "photo song" was the right piece of music and so we met in the can studio in order to go in action listening to the playback. he used a very small drum kit and set it up aside where is normal drum kit was. right in front of him he could control himself in a monitor, the camera was posted in his bass drum at the side. with each rehearsal jaki got away from supporting me as a drummer. instead he went through a metamorphosis from a human drummer to a musical trained ape(see visuals5 # 44 and #47 though the realvideo format gives an inadequate impression. this will change when the files get available on super video cd). I really admire him still for this. the same goes for some few tv appearances he had made as a support drummer for well known pop stars. usually the camera is focusing the singer, not so with jaki. it was a pleasure to see him how he stole the show.
