Guru Guru
Formed in 1968 by drummer, singer and visionary Mani Neumeier, GURU GURU has been an institution for over five decades. Their own brand of “acid rock”, often labelled as krautrock, has played an important part in musical history, not only in their native Germany but the world over, especially in the USA and Japan. With an ongoing musical career of 54 years, over 40 albums, more than a hundred radio and TV appearances, they have performed over 5,000 live shows to date.
What they brought to the stage in the 1960s may well have been seen as shocking. Fusing free jazz with rock’n’roll, GURU GURU experimented with Asian and African rhythms and styles, incorporating these into their own brand of psychedelic cosmic rock. The musicians lived under the same roof as a commune, enjoyed hallucinogenic drugs and shared their political views on a regular basis, reading out statements during performances. Their live shows were – and still are – experiences, with the band surprising audiences, for instance when they released live chickens into the respectable Grugahalle in Essen, Germany. To this day, Mani Neumeier still performs their song “Elektrolurch” in a newt costume.
As well as pioneering their own musical genre, GURU GURU were the first German band to perform at the legendary WDR Rockpalast show in 1976, and played a lead role in the German TV crime show Tatort (German for crime scene) the same year. In 1972 they performed a memorable show at the Germersheim festival (Germany) after Pink Floyd in front of an audience of over 100.000. They co-founded the annual Finkenbach festival (Odenwald, Germany) in 1977, together with the Finkenbach fire department, regularly headlining until 2019.
* Fun fact: in 1996, Mani Neumeier was the first German musician to have his own wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in Tokyo.
Despite countless line-up changes, and more than a half-century after the band’s creation, today GURU GURU still shine with exuberance, as alive and active as ever, performing around 40 live shows a year.
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