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 the 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 can you freeze rice once cooked 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. While its earlier recordings tended to be at least loosely based on traditional song structures, on its mid-career albums the band reverted to an extremely fluid improvisational style. The track “Spoon” was used as the theme song and, released as a single, reached number 6 in the German singles chart.

Tago Mago was followed in 1972 by Ege Bamyasi, a more accessible but still avant-garde record which featured “Spoon” and the catchy “Vitamin C”. Czukay said, “We could achieve an excellent dry and ambient sound reflects the group being in a lighter mood. It was followed by Future Days in 1973, an early example of ambient music that also includes the pop song “Moonshake”. Czukay said, “‘Bel Air’ showed Can in a state of being an electric symphony group performing a peaceful though sometimes dramatic landscape painting. Suzuki left soon after the recording of Future Days to marry his German girlfriend, and become a Jehovah’s Witness. Soon Over Babaluma from 1974 continued in the ambient style of Future Days, but with some of the abrasive edge of Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi. Can moving toward a somewhat more conventional style as its recording technology improved.

The disco single “I Want More” from Flow Motion became its only hit record outside Germany. During this period Czukay was pushed to the fringes of the group’s activity due to disagreements about the band’s creative direction and his failure as a bass guitarist to keep up with the growth of the other musicians. Bass guitar was something Czukay had “taken up almost by default” and he readily admitted his limitations on the instrument. Since the split, all the former members have been involved in musical projects, often as session musicians for other artists.