"I really don't know about that. I am not too familiar with this record of theirs, only really with 'The Man Machine'. I cannot say. I just met one of the guys from Kraftwerk in New York once, but it is very difficult to talk with them. They obviously speak German and I speak German, but they have very definite ideas..."
And what of Kraftwerk's implied conceptualisations (the Constructivist cover artwork to "TMM", etc).?
"This again is not something I can enjoy that much. I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do."
So you're not greatly taken with Kraftwerk's European emphasis?
"No, I must admit not. This matter of a European feeling is really quite complicated. I know that Pete and myself have combined a certain European feeling with Donna's more American experience, but this is only from Europe in the sense that we are both Continental-style writers, well trained in Continental pop music.
"To me, the only European leaning of the disco sound is that so much of the music is actually created here. There were, of course, discotheques in the States before they were here, but we have somehow taken a lead in making the music. Perhaps we just had the correct professional attitudes.
"Many producers began to make disco records after our success and that of Michael Kunze (Silver Convention). This is a great thing for the industry in Europe, for us to be able to make a way for others, but it could really be anywhere, you know, I don't think there are any special methods we have here that others could not have if they wanted. And this more artistic aspect, I have no involvement with it.
"Our studios here at Musicland are just typical. Nearly all the equipment there is standard, English or American. It isn't even a particularly sophisticated studio.
"And this thing", Moroder thumps his desk to his theme, "some writers have about German producers and players. As I have said, I am not German, Pete is not German. Boney M themselves are not German, although I accept that their producer Frank Farian is so. "Donna is American, so is Roberta Kelly, so are Silver Convention. In actuality, if we had been based elsewhere other than Munich, we might have achieved our success even earlier - because there in London, for example, you have more facilities and are nearer the pulse of the industry."

MORODER STARTED to work at Musicland in '74 on Ms. Summer's first album. The studio is situated beneath the hotel complex that contains the Oasis offices. It is, as Moroder points out, an unremarkable and decidedly cramped locale, boasting a mere 24-track facility. It has been used by artists as varied and various as The Rolling Stones, ELO and Deep Purple.
Moroder's rhythm tracks are almost exclusively recorded at Musicland, before being glossed in either Los Angeles or London. "The famous Munich Machine sound", as Moroder describes them, may be held responsible for these tracks and feature a consistent nucleus of players. Drummer Keith Forsey, bassist Les Hurdle and keyboardsman Alan Hawkshaw are English, guitarist Mats Bjoerklund is Swedish, another keyboardsman is Icelandic, and so on. The string sections are, however, mostly German (so if it's the orchestrations you dance to...)
But how, I wonder aloud, did Moroder and Bellotte define their disco direction?
"We take something from everything, then make it our own," Moroder confides with delightful candour, "although it is hard to analyse this exactly. There were obvious aspects that that we have used from the Philadelphia sound, although this was only successful in the States. We have..."
Moroder pauses to snaffle a chocolate finger-bisk, so I prompt him - internationalised it?
"Yes, that is definitely so. I would myself have liked to be able to make records like the classic Motown records, but I guess that four or five years ago we weren't advanced enough. It's crazy trying to record soul-type music in Munich. There aren't - or I should say, weren't - the players available. We were very lucky to find Donna, the first really good black girl singer who was living here.
"Myself, I liked very much the sound of Motown in the early times, up to seven or eight years ago, but now they do not have such a recognisable feel. Mind you, the actual quality of their first recordings was not good. You know, they recorded in a little building and so on. But the music was good, so very good - and that is why they succeeded.
And quite why Moroder's work should be so disparagingly referred to in some circles as 'product' (as in production line, etc.) when Tamla themselves formularised their songwriting - Holland, Dozier, Holland et al - and sound with similar success and without risking culpability is beyond this pair of ears. Attitude dancing, I believe they call it. Tamla even worked out of a similarly and supposedly 'industrial' environment in Detroit.
Admittedly, Moroder and Bellotte can (and would) claim they're armed with dramatically improved recording technology, but the principle is surely the same: define a sound and, as long as the going goes from good to better to best, decline to modify same overmuch.
All of which I put to Moroder, asking more specifically about the relevance of the credit listing on the "Whiter Shade Of Pale" Munich Machine release (cf. 'shop floor, electronics foreman, mechanics foreman, shop steward, apprentice, time and motion study').
"This, you know, this is just another joke. We know people think this about what we do, so we play (up) to them. It is the same with the dancing robots on the covers of both Munich Machine records.
"All this talk of machines and industry make me laugh. Even if you use synthesisers and sequencers and drum machines, you have to set them up, to choose exactly what you are going to make them do. It is nonsense to say that we make all our music automatically.
"I know for myself how difficult or how easy it was to get a certain sound. Sometimes it's easy, sure, but as often as not it is at least ten times more difficult to get a good synthesiser sound than on an acoustic instrument. And of course we organise things - who does not? We have to be professional about this. There is nothing wrong with this, surely?"

BUT ISN`T there a real danger of running to repetition? Your recording schedules seem very tight and there's surely a limit to just how much you achieve within the rhythm strictures disco danceability imposes.
"Yes indeed", Moroder makes and breaks a church of his hands, "this is one of many things that worries me. Disco is so immediately definable and recognisable. The main problem for the next years will be to change it, although we shall also be under some pressure from the big record companies not to change it too much, since they are really only just beginning in America, to invest in disco. I am not sure how we will cope with this..."
But how would you like to cope with it?
"Obviously on certain albums you do what you know can sell them, but I think you should always try for difference. It is not easy. In pop or rock you can make a fast song or a slow one, but in disco there is really just the one rhythm.
"As it is we are having enormous problems with the drums and percussion, for example. Because you are staying with one tempo, you have to change how you record that tempo. The technical gadgets that we use are quite alright in principle, but not so much in practice.
"In the studio these days you generally change the sound of natural instruments - but then, if you are not careful, you get just another synthesised sound. I am looking for ways of changing natural sounds in other directions, away from pure electronic treatments.
"The synthesiser has limitless sounds to give you, but I am again really too much of a commercial composer to be able to make full use of its possibilities. I would want to, although I accept I will probably not have the time or ability to do so. As it happens, I am not a very good keyboards player anyway. In fact, I am a lousy keyboards player..."
(So even disco producers have human hopes and fears, limitations and liabilities. Please note.)
"No, I think I continue in this way until I feel I have used up all its variety..."
Which, it seems, Moroder is unlikely to do for some time. His last major Donna Summer project hinted tantalisingly as a barely tapped lode in Moroder and Bellotte's writing and record vocabulary.
The "Once Upon A Time" album was remarkable by any standards, particularly those inherent in much current disco, as it set consistently high standards of composition and realisation throughout its four sides.
Moroder's awareness of the need for vigorous variety and sheer surprise is self-evident therein. Test and try the sudden switch from electronic to electric instrumentation on "Queen For A Day", for instance, or the swell and splendour of the string and brass phrasings elsewhere. Mood and mode are mixed and merged seamlessly throughout, chameleon but never caricature. You want disco, funk, soul, R&B and more? Sign on this line, then tell me this is automaton music - and I won't believe you, even if you point to the bleak mekanik of side two's inner city scarescaping.
Leaning and lurching elsewhere, I ask Moroder his opinion of Midnight Express, a film that has been mauled for its supposedly extreme portrayal of the Turkish Penal system.
"Yes, I too found some of the scenes a little exaggerated - but, you know, it is a movie. Then again, if one was going to some South American or African countries, the situation there is not too far removed from those in the film. Yes, perhaps it was a little hard on the Turks; the same things would probably happen in, say, Greece or Nigeria or anywhere.
"But I liked the film very much, though I don't like violence at all. I thought it was a good movie for young people to see. If they go to it and don't feel so inclined to smuggle drugs, then good. A preventative, yes, that is how I see it."

DRAGGING a wider net, I ask Moroder whether or not he considers the music industry itself to be lacking in certain 'moral' departments. He is, after all, one of its most successful sons.
"Well, this again is difficult, a grey area. When Donna toured in Italy not long ago, the press comment was very negative and critical of the luxury of her show, comparing it with the poverty in Italy. But that is the way of it. Donna worked for ten years and suffered a very hard life with her daughter - and some of this has come out in 'Once Upon A Time'.
"I don't know for sure. Every business is there to make money, and making a record is business. This tends to be forgotten by many. That is a fact of our lives and the way we live. Maybe it is right, maybe it is wrong. I am not a politician, I am a producer.
"At the same time I know that I myself worked very, very hard for seven or eight years without making anything back at all. I was losing much over my productions. And nowadays you need so much money to be able to launch a new artist, notably in America; you would hardly believe some of the sums involved.
"You also need an already successful roster of acts to establish yourself before you even begin thinking of something new. Even with Kiss, as you mention, you must never forget the work that goes into making them a success.
"There is a lot more to that band than just four guys with faces painted to look like cats. Neil (Bogart, president of Casablanca Records, the US-based company handling both Kiss and Donna Summer) risked his professional standing to launch Donna and Kiss, all his savings over the years.
"But yes, maybe things have got too big..."
And punk? Could Moroder sympathise with its initially highly motivated attempts to re-establish a more intimate understanding between artist and audience?
"The visual side and the closeness, these I can understand. They are very important. But the results on record aren't so good because, as I hear them, so much of the sounds are rock and roll of ten or 15 years ago. It's really nothing new - but perhaps I should not say too much about this because, I have to admit, I do not listen to much rock music.
"No, I would never be interested in producing a punk group myself as I probably wouldn't be able to feel this kind of music sufficiently well. I prefer to stay within the fields I am capable. Also, the punk lyrics, I have to admit that so many of them I can hardly understand at all. Nor do I know much about the social movement or the political life in England at the moment. I am reluctant to judge such things without being informed."
I can't help but counter that disco is hardly renowned for its lyrical perceptions.
"I agree. But in both pop and disco, my main concerns, the meaning of the lyrics is not too important. I have nothing I feel I particularly want to say and, anyway, Pete writes most of our lyrics.
"This, I suppose, is in the nature of the music that we make. The lyrics are important in a certain aesthetic sense - they should have a nice and pleasing turn of phrase to them - but I think it would be stupid for us to try and tell people who are dancing in a discotheque about the problems of the world. That is the very thing they have come away to avoid."
But reggae is dancing music and makes political statements.
"I know. But I cannot change my skin, so to speak. It would not be honest or true for me to do so."
And the current political situation in Italy?
"Well, some of the industrial sections of Northern Italy - people are not at all happy there. Their life is not good. Somehow I can even understand why The Red Brigades are so successful, because they can have the support of people who are not heard by the politicians.
The Italian Communist Party?
"One thing is for sure, the communists in Italy are very different from the usual communist world and way.
I guess they are just very left socialists. I am not sure what would happen if they were in power, but I think there wouldn't be too much of a difference..."
Because Italian politics seem so corrupt anyway?
"Exactly. There would be no more than a little change. Not only is the government in Italy corrupt, but the whole system. You have to do the best for yourself and that is it. If you want to buy a car, you have to bribe someone to get a licence in ten days instead of two months.
"Yes, it is all over - 'endemic' as you say. As for Germany, to me, a foreigner, the situation seems mainly OK. Most people have good living standards and the Baader Meinhof have not the support that is given to the Brigades in Italy. There is not, I think, the need." 8