Klaus Schulze (4 August 1947 – 26 April 2022) was a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried and was a member of the Krautrock bands Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and The Cosmic Jokers before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across six decades.
Schulze was born in Berlin in 1947. His father was a writer and his mother a ballet dancer. After graduating from high school, he delivered telegrams and studied German at the Technical University of Berlin. He and his wife Elfie had two sons, Maximilian and Richard.
In 1969, Schulze was the drummer of one of the early incarnations of Tangerine Dream - one of the most famous bands that got the nickname "Krautrock" in English speaking countries (others included Kraftwerk and Popul Vuh) - for their debut album Electronic Meditation. Before 1969 he was a drummer in a band called Psy Free. He met Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream in the Zodiac Club in what was then West Berlin. In 1970 he left this group to form Ash Ra Tempel with Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke. In 1971, he chose again to leave a newly formed group after only one album, this time to mount a solo career. In 1972, Schulze released his debut album Irrlicht with organ and a recording of an orchestra filtered almost beyond recognition. Despite the lack of synthesizers, this proto-ambient work is regarded as a milestone in electronic music. His follow-up album, Cyborg, was similar but added the EMS VCS 3 synthesiser.

Return to Klaus Schulze Autograph Profile