The short version
- The score for an adult film by the Italian director Lasse Braun, released on LP by Metronome in February 1977.
- Braun had played Schulze's Timewind and Moondawn on set. Once the film was shot, he asked Schulze for new music of the same kind.
- Harald Grosskopf played drums. His name is nowhere on the original LP.
- Schulze said the fee paid for a two-manual Mellotron.
By the time Klaus Schulze was asked, the film was in the can. Lasse Braun had shot it with music playing on set, and the music was Schulze's own: Timewind and Moondawn. As Schulze told it in the notes to a 2016 reissue, Braun now wanted something like that written for the finished picture. Music in the vein of Moondawn, an hour or an hour and a half of it. That was the whole brief.
Where it sits in music history
The five records are laid out in Klaus Schulze: where to start. The guide puts this one fifth and last, because it is the easiest of the five to hear.
In the run of albums it comes straight after Moondawn. Early in 1976 Schulze had bought a Moog and found a beat with the drummer Harald Grosskopf. At the end of the same year he recorded this music in Frankfurt and Bochum, with Grosskopf on drums again, and mixed it at Studio Panne-Paulsen in Frankfurt, where Moondawn had been made. Two months after it came out, Mirage dropped the drums and left him on his own. Body Love sits between the two.
In a January 1984 interview Schulze went back over the job. Some fans, and people around him, told him he could not do a porn film. His answer was that it suited his kind of music unusually well. There was no dialogue to work around, since nobody talks anyway, so he could play for half an hour straight. He added that once he had met Braun and talked to him, it was clear this was no cheap production. The film, he said, even cut away to a journalist asking the performers why they did this work.
There was one more thing. In the same interview Schulze said the money bought him a two-manual Mellotron. From then on he had its choirs, and he used them again later on X.
- Released
- February 1977, Metronome 60.047 (West German LP)
- Recorded
- late 1976, Frankfurt and Bochum
- Mixed at
- Studio Panne-Paulsen, Frankfurt
- Composed and produced by
- Klaus Schulze
- Players
- Klaus Schulze (electronics), Harald Grosskopf (drums, uncredited on the first pressing)
- Film
- Body Love, directed by Lasse Braun, 1977
- Length
- three tracks, 52:27 on the original West German LP
Track list
| A1 | Stardancer | 13:18 |
| A2 | Blanche | 11:44 |
| B | P:T:O: | 27:25 |
Two pieces on side one, one on side two. The times are from the original West German LP as listed on Discogs. Schulze's official site gives the CD times as 13:38, 11:44 and 27:12. The 2005 CD reissue adds a 22:26 bonus track called "Lasse Braun".
Following side one
The guide says to play "Blanche". Here we take the whole of side one, "Stardancer" into "Blanche", 25 minutes in all.
Start with the beat in "Stardancer". Grosskopf's drums ride on top of a Moog sequencer pattern, and the pulse Schulze found on Moondawn carries straight on. Your feet get it before your head does.
Then the tune in "Blanche". Not long into the piece a melody arrives, the one the guide calls the door. Hold on to it and it takes you through 11 minutes.
Last, listen to what is behind everything. In June 1978 the American magazine Contemporary Keyboard complained that there was far too much choir and strings in the background. An essay on Schulze's official site dates his use of Mellotron choir to the two Body Love albums. Listen to how that choir swells and falls away behind the rest. That is the sound the reviewer did not like.
The rest of the record
"P:T:O:" is the whole of side two, 27:25. This is where you can hear what Schulze meant about having no dialogue to work around. It has a full side to itself, so even after the sequencer settles in, it takes its time. In the 1999 poll of the fan club The KS Circle it came eighth among all his tracks.
How to listen
- Side one first. Let the beat of "Stardancer" carry you into "Blanche".
- Leave the film out of it. Schulze did not cut his music to fit it either; he let it run.
- Save "P:T:O:" for later at night, and give it the full 27 minutes.
- Play "Floating" from Moondawn beforehand. That is the record Braun had playing on set.
What happened next
The record sold. In July 1977 the German magazine Fachblatt reported that it had turned up on the American trade paper Record World's list of best-selling imports. In the 1984 interview Schulze said this album and Moondawn went gold in France, and that Island then came to sign him.
The first sleeve did not last. The original West German pressing had a cover built from a film scene, and Discogs notes that it was withdrawn. According to a piece by David M. Cline on the official site, the black-and-white drawings used for the new cover had been sent to Schulze by a Belgian fan, Charles Mikael. They had nothing to do with the film.
Body Love Vol. 2 followed in December 1977. Despite the title it is not film music: almost all of it was newly composed, and only "Stardancer II" is a remix of a track from the first album. On the double album X the next year, the Mellotron choirs and Grosskopf's drums are both back.
The one track to send a friend
Send "Blanche", 11:44. Then tell them this: the man who played drums on this record is not named anywhere on the 1977 LP. It was Harald Grosskopf. Schulze's official site now lists him right next to Schulze.
Where to get it
The 1977 West German LP on Metronome, 60.047, is the record as it first appeared. On CD, the 2005 Revisited Records edition added the 22-minute "Lasse Braun", and the 2016 MIG edition kept that running order. Turn the lights down and drop the needle on side one. The sequencer starts to turn, and a moment later the drums climb on.