Daily Inspiration Quote by Klaus Schulze

Schulze’s line lands with the dry snap of someone who’s watched his art get repackaged as corporate garnish and decided to tell the truth anyway. On the surface, it’s a casual correction about a commission at the 1973 Hanover Industrial Fair: he built a “sound environment” for a giant electronics company’s booth. Beneath it, he’s sketching the bargain at the heart of early electronic music’s mainstream flirtation: the machines were expensive, the audiences were niche, and industry money was often the nearest thing to patronage.

What makes the quote work is the tonal split. “It was a job” is blunt, almost anti-mythmaking, puncturing the romantic story of the visionary artist commissioned to create futuristic ambience for the future. Then comes “Slightly good paid,” a deliberately unglamorous phrase that drains the sentence of prestige. Schulze is resisting the PR narrative that turns work-for-hire into a triumphal cultural event.

The kicker is the quiet accusation: “But not as much as my producer then told the press.” That “then” does real work, suggesting a pattern, not a one-off exaggeration. It points to the mediators who translate artists into marketable legends, inflating fees and status to boost a brand - the producer’s, the company’s, maybe even “electronic music” itself as a sellable novelty in 1973. Schulze’s intent isn’t just to clarify numbers; it’s to reclaim authorship over his own story, insisting that innovation didn’t magically escape capitalism. It was rented, underpaid, and spun.