Rock Music of West Germany

The United States military radio station American forces Network (AFN) had a great role on German postwar culture, beginning with AFN Munich in July 1945, which was formative for the further establishment of German rock and jazz culture. Bill Ramsey, a senior producer at AFN Frankfurt in the year 1953 who came from Ohio, later became popular as a jazz and Schlager singer in Germany while remaining almost unknown in the United States.

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Previous to the late 1960s however, rock music in Germany was a minor part of the schlager kind covered by interpreters such as Peter Kraus and Ted Herold, who played rock “n” roll standards by little Richard or Bill Haley, sometimes translated into German.

Genuine German rock first appeared around in the year 1968, just as the hippie countercultural explosion was peaking in the United States and United Kingdom. At the period, the German musical avant-garde had been experimenting with electronic music for more than decade, and the first German rock groups fused psychedelic rock from abroad with electronic sounds. Few years later saw the formation of an orchestra of bands that came to be known as Kosmische Musik or Krautrock orchestras; these include Embryo Dissidenten, Amon Duul, who later became the world music pioneers Tangerine Dream, Popol Vuh, Dissidentenm Faust, Neu and Can.