The new group's first gig took place during an improvised 'happening' at Schloss Nörvenich, a castle near Cologne the show being documented on the cassette "Prehistoric Future". The castle became the band's home with a sizeable live studio space being established within it's great hall, it's acoustic dampening coming from mattresses placed all over it's walls. A chance meeting (one of many that typifies CAN's career) between Irmin Schmidt his wife Hildegard and American sculptor Malcolm Mooney then provided the group with their first vocalist. Despite the fact that Malcolm Mooney had no experience of singing at all he was soon adding a unique and distinctive flavour to the band where as David Johnson's involvement had begun to wane and he left the band at the end of 1968. By this stage the group had already begun experimenting with an improvisational approach to making rock music that found it's first niche as the soundtrack to two German feature films.

By now, all they were missing was a name and so Malcolm Mooney and Jaki Liebezeit came up with The CAN for their 1969 debut LP, "Monster Movie". Despite the limitations of the 2-track recording technology used to realise the record, "Monster Movie" exhibited flashes of the spontaneity, strange vocals and highly repetitive rhythms by which CAN would come to be know. It's also home to an early Can classic, the epic "Yoo Doo Right", a track that twists and turns for over 20 minutes.

Like many ground breaking musical recordings "Monster Movie" proved a little too experimental for the many record companies CAN played it to. Unable to secure the record deal they wanted, the band opted for pressing 500 copies of the LP themselves and miraculously sold them all within a week! Their ploy certainly paid off as they were then offered a major recording deal with United Artists, who immediately re-released "Monster Movie" no doubt realising the creative potential contained within this amazing debut.

Sadly, the strange vocal performances that came to typify Malcolm Mooney's style were also an early indication of his fragile mental state and whilst his weirdness certainly propelled CAN's earliest shows, he found performing to be unsustainable. On the advice of his psychiatrist he returned to the United States in December 1969 to resume his vocation as a painter. His last recording with the group was "Thief" (which eventually resurfaced on a second LP from this period called "Delay 1968" which the band released in 1981)

By May 1970 CAN felt lost without a vocalist but despite this they took up a four night residency at Munich's new Blow-Up club. During the afternoon before their first show Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit discovered their next singer busking outside a café in Munich's Leopoldstrasse. Japanese singer Kenji Damo Suzuki was a globetrotter who had been a cast member in the musical 'Hair' and was working as a street musician. In the true spirit of creative freedom that the band encouraged he joined CAN onstage that same night adding a maniacally visual and aural presence and adding another improvisational element to the CAN sound.

September 1970 saw the release of "Soundtracks", a collection of commissions for films, including Roland Klick's Deadlock, Jerry Skolimovsky's swinging sixties London flick Deep End, as well as a music for a racy little film called Cream. This album contained another epic track in "Mother Sky " which took up all of side two and was destined to become another CAN anthem

By the end of 1970, CAN were back within Schloss Nörvenich, busily moving their Inner Space studio to a former cinema in Weilerswist that was to became their creative home for the rest of their career. Inner Space was soon reverberating to the sounds that became "Tago Mago" a double LP released by UA in 1972. "Tago Mago" is a striking, unusual and highly influential record that even today sounds like no other. Damo Suzuki's enigmatic lyrical style compliments the sonic exploration that surrounds it. Walls of noise and sound make way for percussive journeys that remain strangely timeless. It's not at all surprising that this ground- breaking record came to the attention of the international music press. Many critics were eager to praise it and even more keen to see CAN in action so at the end of 1971 they played their first show in the UK, to yet more rave reviews.

CAN's performance at the Cologne Sporthalle on February 3, 1972 created an even wider audience for them as it was filmed by Martin Schafer, Robbie Muller and Egon Mann for Peter Przygodda's Can Free Concert, a film that has become something of a perennial feature on the 'Best Ever Concert Film' lists. It's a terrific document, capturing the early CAN at their best and with more than a hint of 'a happening' about it, as CAN share the stage with a host of vaudeville performers.

"Ege Bamyasi", released in October 1972 features the single Spoon, which had grown popular in their homeland as the title track in the crime thriller "Das Messer". It gave the band their first and biggest chart hit in Germany when it reached No1 in the German Top 30. "Ege Bamyasi " has music from another TV crime thriller as "Vitamin C" was written for the Samuel Fuller-directed play Tote Taube in der Beethovenstrasse and demonstrated their continuing involvement in the world of soundtrack composing. "Ege Bamyasi" also features "Spoon" another CAN musical interaction with an electronic rhythm machine, an early version of a drum computer first heard on "Tago Mago". CAN have joked about Jaki Liebezeit's uncanny ability to outdo these drum machines with a metronomic precision that seems to make the machine sound human! This early use of electronic components alongside traditional instrumentation typifies the sound of CAN during this period. It's a sound that owes much to the fact that their music was being recorded in the same studio using gear that the band had fashioned themselves. For instance, their P.A system was a wall of grille-less speaker cabinets that travelled with them from the studio to the concert hall or TV studio, creating a sonic consistency across both their live and studio performances.

CAN's reputation as a live act was formidable with their reputation growing to the point that they were considered amongst the best performers within the genre that had become know as progressive rock. However prog rock's reputation for lengthy bouts of self-indulgence had nothing in common with CAN's improvisational and experimental techniques, which were extremely well honed, through endless improvisation in their studio. The band themselves have described the importance of listening closely to each other when they played and always aspiring to a harmonious quality to their work to the point that sounds are seldom out of place. Practice truly does make perfect. This familiarity with their instruments, music and each other also allowed CAN to arrive on stage without a concrete idea of what they were about to play, spontaneously feeding off the venue and the audience to create true musical magic.

Their next album "Future Days" (1973) was their last with Damo Suzuki, who left the band as suddenly as he'd joined them in order to become a Jehovah's Witness. Damo Suzuki's extremely distinctive vocal style had become an integral part of the CAN sound and so their music was inevitably forced to change following his departure. Michael Karoli took over the vocal duties for a while followed by various singers for short periods, among them Tim Hardin.

In 1974 CAN played the longest concert in their history when during a show in Berlin they played from 8 p.m. until 8:30 a.m. the next morning. 1974 also saw the recording and release of "Soon Over Babaluma", with it's glorious mesh of tight, dramatic rhythms, driving guitar, electric violin and soaring synthesiser sounds. There's the playful fun of "Dizzy Dizzy" and "Quantum Physics", which the band like to refer to as the first CAN ambient track. CAN followed this release with "Landed" (1975). Amazingly, given the quality of the records that precede it, this was the first CAN LP to be produced using multi-track technology, a fact that says much about Holger Czukay's masterful use of their two track recording machine.

The next CAN release was a double album entitled "Unlimited Edition" (1976) and was simply an extended version of an LP they had made available as a fast selling "Limited Edition " of 20000 in 1974. It's an interesting record in that it demonstrates the many facets of the CAN sound during their sessions between 1968 and 1975. Both Malcolm Mooney and Damo Suzuki feature on vocals as well as recordings from the "Ethnological Forgery Series (EFS)", these being numbered, mischievous explorations of foreign musical cultures that were developed over several CAN albums and that predate the notion of 'world music' by some years.

If the usual concerns of mainstream musical success had really failed to bother CAN up to this point, then their next album "Flow Motion" (1976) changed all of that. It featured a cheeky disco flavoured song called "I Want More", which upon it's release as a single, promptly made it's way up the record charts of Europe and prompted TV appearances and press interviews. "Flow Motion" is however far from a commercial record and features explorations of many musical forms including the waltz!

1977 proved to be a year of changes and more than a few upheavals for CAN. The line-up changed to incorporate rhythm duo Rosko Gee (bass) and Reebop Kwaku Baah (percussion) who the band snapped up when they left Traffic. Holger Czukay then retired from his role as bass player and immediately used this new freedom to investigate the possibilities of what he called 'special sounds'. His new instrument of choice was the short wave radio which he combined with other electrical devices like tape recorders, telephones and signalling devices on his 'magic table' to add a highly experimental edge to CAN's; cleaner, funkier sound. Some members of the group felt that these ideas were not entirely in keeping with the new CAN and they soon became the basis for his first solo recordings instead. However CAN's next LP "Saw Delight" (1977) does feature his vocals and special sounds but he ultimately felt the need for pastures new and following what became the last CAN tour he left the band in May 1977.

"Out of Reach" (1978) made the most of Rosko Gee and Reebop Kwaku Baah 's considerable talents but something seemed to be changing both within the band and within the musical climate. In the UK punk rock had exploded into life and was sweeping away everything that it considered to be pompous, overblown, progressive and hippy. Luckily for CAN the punks did not dump their music into any of these categories, instead choosing to pay homage to the band when they released a retrospective double album called "Cannibalism" in 1978. The record featured sleeve notes from The Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley who said "I never would have played guitar if not for Marc Bolan and Michael Karoli of CAN." A comment that surely bought CAN a whole new generation of admirers.

Holger Czukay returned to the band in 1979 in order to help complete the album "CAN" (1979) but sadly the release of this record was followed by an announcement that despite burning brightly for over 10 years, the band no longer existed.

Always keen to control things themselves Irmin's wife and long-time CAN manager Hildegard Schmidt set up Spoon Records to handle the sizeable the CAN back catalogue, re-issuing CAN's first six albums and the long lost "Delay 1968" , between 1981-82.

As solo musicians the individual members of the group soon found themselves busily reorganising their lives. (See individual biographies) Michael Karoli built a new studio in Nice, France which he named Outer Space. Irmin Schmidt continued to score for film and stage undertaking a commission to write a fantasy opera based on Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and forming his Irmin Schmidt and Kumo project whilst Jaki Libezeit appeared on albums by Brian Eno, Jah Wobble and the Eurythmics. Holger Czukay enjoyed the highest post-CAN profile completing a steady stream of solo LP's as well as work with Jah Wobble, Cluster, Eurythmics, and David Sylvian. In fact it soon seemed that the CAN experimental influence was almost tangible in much modern music. Work like Public Image Ltd's superb " Metal Box "(1979) and Jah Wobbles own sessions with Jaki Libezeit and Holger Czukay that were released as "Full Circle" in 1981 represent a continuation of the work that Can had begun in 1968. Groups like The Fall wore their CAN influences on their sleeves and within the early 1980's experimental music scene it seemed that CAN may have gone but they would certainly not be forgotten.

And then just as everyone was beginning to think that the story might be over they reappeared! Eight years after splitting the original "Monster Movie" line-up got together at Michael Karoli's studio in France with their first vocalist, Malcolm Mooney, and recorded "Rite Time"' which they released in 1988. The record was extremely well received and boasted some very catchy tracks, but insistent that this was strictly a one off, the group then returned to their solo careers.

In 1989 Spoon and Mute records combined their talents and began re-releasing both the CAN back catalogue and all of the group member's solo projects, a task that continues to this day. Renewed interest in just about everything related to the band suggested that another chapter in the CAN history was about to follow and sure enough, it did.

In 1991 the band assembled again at the CAN Studio with their reunion line-up (but minus Holger this time), where they recorded the track "Last Night Sleep" for Wim Wenders' film "Until the End of the World".

Spoon and Mute continue to release everything that the musicians in CAN had produced and still produce as part of their various solo careers. A 25 year Anniversary Anthology appeared in 1994 and May 1997 saw the culmination of an idea that had been hatched by Irmin's wife Hildegard together with Mute's founder Daniel Miller, himself a long time fan of the band. They both had wondered what would happen if the band's back catalogue was reinterpreted by the people that they in turn had influenced, an idea that both felt was in keeping with CAN's own philosophy of continued development. The result was a remix CD entitled "Sacrilege" and saw a diverse set of artists paying homage to their heroes through re-exploration of their back catalogue. Artists as wide ranging as Brian Eno, Sonic Youth, The Orb, Francois Kevorkian and Pete Shelley to name but a few, got their teeth into the CAN classics and promptly introduced them to a new generation of admirers including those within the dance fraternity who were quick to recognise the immediacy of CAN's rhythmic sound. With a new audience of DJ's keen to incorporate a few of Jaki's solid beats within their sets, Mute also re-released "Monster Movie", "Tago Mago" and "Ege Bamyasi", on deck friendly vinyl too.

In their heyday CAN's fans had been keen to capture the essence of CAN live and consequently, several bootleg recordings of them in action had appeared on the market in the 1970's, but a sanctioned live concert recording had never received an official release. This all changed in 1999 when Spoon and Mute created Can Box, a limited edition package that featured several highly desirable items including a double CD "Can Live", a superb compilation of Can performances from the 1970's that had been carefully recorded on cassette by Andy Hall, an old friend of the band. Also inside was Can Box:Book ,edited by Hildegard Schmidt and Wolf Kampmann a prominent German music journalist. The book reveals details about the group from their own mouths and remains the best publication about them to date. As if these items were not enough to send fans of all ages quivering at the knees, Can Box held a two hour video featuring not only the much sought-after Can Free Concert film but also a new documentary that featured all of the band talking about their career, intercut with some of their best TV appearances from around the world and rare film clips. In short CAN gold!

Can Box quickly became a must have item and perhaps it was the interest that it's publication provoked, that led CAN to take to the road again, this time however they were presenting their own solo projects as part of a package. (See Solo Biographies for details of Can Solo Projects). Each member demonstrated that they were still brimming with creativity and audiences could only marvel at the talented collaborators they had all found to work on new projects with.

The fact that CAN were collectively still on top of their game meant that no one was really prepared for the death of guitarist Michael Karoli in November 2001despite a lengthy battle with cancer. 'Miki' (as he was known to his band mates), will always be sorely missed.

The remaining members of CAN placed their footprints in a 'Walk of Fame' during the inaugural ceremonies at the Museum of Rock N' Pop in Gronau, Germany during 2001. The museum is now also home to the original CAN Studio from Cologne where it can soon be seen as a permanent working exhibit.

In 2003 Germany honoured it's own by presenting CAN with an Echo Lifetime Achievement gong at this annual awards ceremony.

To celebrate 35 years of the music of CAN, Mute and Spoon complied and released the CAN DVD BOX which along with beautiful digital versions of Can Free Concert and Can Documentary also features new filmed material like Hildegard Schmidt and Peter Przygodda's "Can Notes", a short contribution from collaborator and fan Brian Eno , an extended tribute to guitarist Michael Karoli and stunning remixes of classic CAN tracks which make the most of 5.1 surround sound technology. Packaged with the dual DVD is an audio CD of live recordings of their various solo projects that reveals them to be as happy experimenting with sound and music as when they first commenced their journey back in 1968.

In September2004 Spoon and Mute released fully re-mastered versions of "Monster Movie", "Tago Mago", "Soundtracks" and "Ege Bamyasi" on CD (and compatible SACD) proving that the longevity inherent of these recordings shows no sign of ebbing yet.

After all. the music of CAN was always part of a process, a veritable index of sonic possibilities that were somehow never final, so maybe there will never actually be an end to the story of CAN One thing is for sure, the music that they made and continue to make is sure to influence subsequent generations who will be wowed by it's diversity, it's beauty and that endless stream of possibilities that their experiments represent.