On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. This article is about the German band. The roots of Can can be traced back to Irmin Schmidt and a trip that he made to New York City in 1966. When I founded can we give orange to rabbit group I was a classical composer and conductor and pianist making piano recitals, playing a lot of contemporary music but also Brahms, Chopin and Beethoven and everything.

And when we got together I wanted to do something in which all contemporary music becomes one thing. Contemporary music in Europe especially, the new music was classical music was Boulez, Stockhausen and all that. Up to that point, the inclinations of all three musicians had been exclusively avant-garde classical. In fact, both Schmidt and Czukay had directly studied under the influential composer Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The band used the names “Inner Space” and “the Can” before finally settling on Can, stylised in all caps. Mooney suggested the name due to its positive meanings in various languages. For example, in Turkish, a language much heard in Germany, “can” may mean, depending on the context, “life, soul, heart, spirit, beloved and vitality”. Mooney made his last recordings with Can in December 1969 before returning to America around the end of the year on a psychiatrist’s advice, having been told that getting away from Can’s chaotic music would be good for his mental health. The next few years saw Can release its most acclaimed works.