Faust

The story of Faust begins in 1969, when cultural journalist Uwe Nettelbeck met with Horst Schmolzi, an A&R man at Polydor in Hamburg. Schmolzi was looking for a German answer to The Beatles, but Nettelbeck had other ideas. With a generous advance in hand, he set out to assemble something far more radical. Nettlebeck headed into the Hamburg underground and fused members of the bands Nukleusand Campylognatus Citelli into a new six-piece lineup. From Nukleus came bassist Jean-Hervé Péron, guitarist Rudolf Sosna, and saxophonist Gunther Wüsthoff. From Campylognatus Citelli, he brought in keyboardist Hans-Joachim Irmler and drummers Werner “Zappi” Diermaier and Arnulf Meifert.   Installed in a converted schoolhouse in the rural village of Wümme, Lower Saxony, the band lived and worked communally, while Nettelbeck oversaw the project as producer, alongside engineer Kurt Graupner. Much of the Polydor money went not into marketing, but into building a custom studio on-site,