Giorgio Moroder Quotes

One of the songs which certainly impacted greatly in the summer of 1977 was a song which sounded as if Kraftwerk had gone potty and recruited a bona fide American soul singer. In fact, it wasn’t Kraftwerk, but Italian musician and producer Giorgio Moroder. ‘One day in Berlin,’ says Bowie, ‘Eno came running in and said, “I have heard the sound of the future.” … He puts on “I Feel Love”, by Donna Summer … He said, “This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.” Which was more or less right.

Neil Tennant: I liked anything that had a slightly artificial construct to it. I’ve never really been that interested by authentic music. I think authenticity is a style. But I loved Bowie when he went electric with Low and ‘Heroes’, and I really loved electronic music. Although I wasn’t officially gay at this point, I had gay friends who I would occasionally go to nightclubs with, and you would hear what we would think of as gay disco music. That was heavily electronic. I really loved electronic music, like Kraftwerk’s Man-Machine, and at the same time I loved new-wave music. I liked the pop end of it, the Jam and stuff like that. Then the Human League came along, and OMD’s first album was great. Then, of course, at the same time you had Giorgio Moroder, who wasn’t, lest we forget, cool at this point. In fact, he was quite naff. There was a designer who worked at Marvel Comics who would put on ‘I Feel Love’ because he could put it on, go to the toilet and come back, and it was still playing.

There were girls here with fire-engine-red lips, and boys with such pronounced eyeliner that it looked permanent. And as you moved back to the dancefloor, the music overwhelmed you: Yellow Magic Orchestra, Space, Ultravox, Eno, Fad Gadget, Sparks, Grace Jones, Thomas Leer, Cerrone, Psychedelic Furs and Bowie, obviously, lots of Bowie. On and on it went, a constant swirl of automated Germanic beats – hard-edged European disco, synth-led, bass-heavy … all very angular: Kraftwerk and Gina X, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer, and some early Roxy Music.

While Bob was busy with Clara’s recording, his modular had just notched another first in the world: it sired the genre of electronic dance music. “I Feel Love,” a hypnotic, seductive single by Donna Summer, the “Queen of Disco,” had cast the Moog in a central role. Soon after the song’s release in July 1977 it went to No. 1 in the UK, climbing to No. 6 in the U.S., and then perched atop charts internationally, eventually making the “top songs of all time” lists of magazines and critics worldwide. Donna Summer and her collaborator, composer Giorgio Moroder, had pushed the boundaries of disco permanently into the electronic sphere with this single song.

They were also the tracks on which we channelled a love of Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Ian Curtis had first introduced us to the icy Germans, and that was quickly followed by an even greater admiration for Moroder, particularly his work with Donna Summer on ‘I Feel Love’ and his production of the wonderful Sparks track ‘Number One Song in Heaven’. His solo record E=MC2 became a big inspiration and definitely led us into ‘Temptation’. All we had to do was work out how they bloody did it.