Hendrik Schaper - Trikolon/Tetragon Interview
Tell me about growing up in Osnabrück - Northern Germany? When did you first begin playing music and more specifically the piano/keys? Was music something that was relevant in your household growing up? Do you have any siblings? Who were some of your influences early on? Where would you go to see shows in your community and what groups/performances stood out to you the most during that time? What would you and your friends do for fun back in the day?
I started out when I was about 10. My parents had already hired a piano for my slightly elder brother, so I sat down there and listened to "Radio Luxembourg", the shortwave-station from out there, playing "Play With Fire", which I immediately tried to play, cause I liked the mood. So I first adored the british R&B Bands, Animals, Yardbirds, Spencer Davis Group, Pretty Things, Them. And also Beatles, Stones and more melodic songs, like from the british charts, the Move, Who, later Cream, Dylan, Hendrix. My brother was a bit influential, musically, cause he had more pocketmoney to buy an album once in a while, but he got more and more into electronics, so he built the amps for my first band, "BluesLTD". My parents were only influential because they listened to their albums: Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven. That kind of sticks anyway. In our town there were bands on tour once in a while, at that time the "city" hall being an old auction hall for cattle. There I remember adoring one of my early idols, Brian Auger with the Oblivion Express. Or the German big band led by the great Kurt Edelhagen. For fun with the freinds who were not directly involved in my music, we drove motorcycles - oldtimers mosty, like the 1-cylinder BMW 250 / 3 and repaired them ourselves.
Prior to Trikolon, you formed one of the earliest electric blues groups in Northern Germany called Blue Ltd. Can you tell me about that band how this all came to be? You guys recorded one single in ‘71 that featured tracks, “St. Andrews /Butterfinger” Can you tell me about writing and recording those songs? How did the deal with Progressa Records come about?
The band Blues Ltd. came about because a drummer / friend was into Ray Charles, and he lended out albums to me an I was stuck. So we decided to add a friend of his, Eckhard Lohr, on guitar, and an aquaintence of me, Udo Michels, on bass. My brother Michael provided self-built amps and speaker cabinets. We rehearsed in my room in my parents house, and started to play in public at dances for the youth, a students club, and band contests in and around Osnabrueck. The record came later, when the band had already dissolved and only Udo Michels kept it and met other musicians.
Tell me about how Trikolon came about because I understand these were all started in/around ‘66, correct? How did you initially meet Ralf Schmieding and Rolf Rettberg? What were those early days like for you and when/where did the group first rehearse, or get together to jam? What was the chemistry between everyone like right off the bat?
Trikolon originated because I was willing to extend the music from the blues to wider styles, influenced by Miles Davis, Coltrane, and classical-rock-jazz fusion groups like the Nice, and Brian Augers Trinity. In a middle sized town by chance you meet regularly guys who make music, so after meeting an talking it was a kind of a logical thing to meet and play, and it worked from the beginning, so we founded Trikolon. Rehearsals took place in a cellar room of my parents house, which was small but usable anyway. I do not remember the location of the first public performance, but whenever there was a reasonable chance, we took our equipment and played in small clubs / venues. The excitement on our side was defintely big, the urge to play music AND getting reaction by an audience was the reason.
When and where did the band make their live performance debut and what was that experience like for you? Tell me about writing as well as recording the band’s lone debut LP “ Cluster”. When and where did recording begin in ‘69 and what was that process like creating those songs? How did the deal with Ruampool Acoustic come about? Would you mind giving some background to each of the songs that are featured on the album? I understand you worked with producer Gebarmaschine on this project, correct?
The songs for the live recording "Cluster" came through obvious influences: Brian Auger, Keith Emerson (Dave Brubeck), the british band "Egg" , Miles Davis, etc. We just grabbed what we liked and tried to emulate that. Of course, what came out of that was raw and quite wild and chaotic, but we were youngsters. What we later called "Hendriks Easy Groove" was definetly a kind of an improvisation on a little theme I invented on my piano at home. "Trumpet For Example" came about because, having played the trumpet for a while in my schools brass band (they played mostly marches), I wanted the effect of my Watkins Tape echo on the trumpet and "Let It Oout".
The "producers" of the album were my brother Michael Schaper and a friend of his, Ingo Petzke. They liked the term "Gebaermaschine", which was also a tiltle of a work by swiss artist H.R. Giger, and called their production-team like that. But there was no serious producing of the album. It was all a fun effort by all of us. The tapes were sent to a record pressing plant, and out there came the records, I think 120, or 150 maximum in number. A local printing plant made the covers, which we had to glue together ourselves. We also had to glue the labels onto the records. We went to the local record stores, 3 all in all, and offered them to sell them in commision. And yes, they took, maybe about a hundred, all in all, and that was it. The rest we gave to friends, and whoever wanted to buy a copy.
Did you guys go on tour, or play a line of gigs to help promote it? The band would again spawn into another project called Tetragon and would go on to release one LP entitled, “Nature” in ‘71. Can you tell me about this group as well as writing and recording that album? How did the deal with Soma come about that?
Since you mention the term "promotion" - no, we did not even know what that was! It was all about our own initiative and fun! The addition of a very fine guitarist from Osnabrück led to TETRAGON, which was a big leap forward, musically. The progress was then manifested in the record "Nature", which was produced by a friend, Peter Kretschmann. (all info attached). The group developed even more over the time, and recorded material for 2 more albums, which were later released as "Stretch" (2009) ans "Agape (2012).
