Michael Karoli (29 April 1948 – 17 November 2001) was a German

guitarist A guitarist (or a guitar player) is a person who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of guitar family instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselv ...

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

ist and composer. He was a founding member of the influential

krautrock Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments ...

band Can.

Career

Karoli was born and grew up in Straubing,

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

, moving to

St. Gallen , neighboring_municipalities = Eggersriet, Gaiserwald, Gossau, Herisau (AR), Mörschwil, Speicher (AR), Stein (AR), Teufen (AR), Untereggen, Wittenbach , twintowns = Liberec (Czech Republic) , website ...

, Switzerland by the time he finished school. He learned to play the

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected stri ...

and

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...

as a child, and played in numerous jazz and dance bands. In 1966, he met and befriended

Holger Czukay Holger Schüring (24 March 1938 – 5 September 2017), known professionally as Holger Czukay (), was a German musician best known as a co-founder of the krautrock group Can. Described as "successfully bridg ngthe gap between pop and the avant-g ...

, who was his guitar teacher for a while. After he graduated he began studies of the law until leaving in 1968 to form Can with Czukay,

Irmin Schmidt Irmin Schmidt (born 29 May 1937) is a German keyboardist and composer, best known as a founding member of the band Can (band), Can. Biography Schmidt was born in Berlin, Germany, began his studies in music at the conservatorium in Dortmund, at t ...

Jaki Liebezeit Jaki Liebezeit (born Hans Liebezeit; 26 May 1938 – 22 January 2017) was a German drummer, best known as a founding member of experimental rock band Can. He was called "one of the few drummers to convincingly meld the funky and the cerebral". ...

, and David Johnson. In Can, he mostly played guitar, occasionally also playing violin; after

Damo Suzuki , better known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), is a Japanese musician who has been living in Germany since the early 1970s and is best known as the former lead singer of the krautrock group Can. Biography As a teenager, Suzuki spent the late 196 ...

left in late 1973 he was also their main vocalist. He was a constant member of the band, playing with it between 1968 and its break-up in 1979. He also joined the band for its three reunions, in 1986, 1991, and 1999. Karoli died from an undisclosed form of

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

in 2001 in

Essen Essen (; Latin: ''Assindia'') is the central and, after Dortmund, second-largest city of the Ruhr, the largest urban area in Germany. Its population of makes it the fourth-largest city of North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne, Düsseldorf and D ...

, Germany, aged 53.

Family

Karoli's sister, Constanze Karoli, and then-girlfriend Eveline Grunwald are the models on the cover of

Roxy Music Roxy Music are an English rock music, rock band formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry—who became the band's lead vocalist and principal songwriter—and bassist Graham Simpson (musician), Graham Simpson. The other longtime members are Phil Manzanera ...

's 1974 album '' Country Life''.

Discography

;Solo * ''Deluge'' (1984) with Polly Eltes ;Can: * See Can discography

References

External links

Michael Karoli's page at the official Can website
1948 births 2001 deaths People from Straubing Musicians from Essen Anarcho-punk musicians German violinists German expatriates in Switzerland German male violinists Deaths from cancer in Germany German rock guitarists German male guitarists Can (band) members 20th-century violinists 20th-century guitarists 20th-century German male musicians 20th-century German musicians {{Germany-guitarist-stub