When can started I was finished with free jazz. I was not satisfied, they were not satisfied with me. In free jazz, there was no future, everything was destroyed. Repetition was not allowed, but for me, repetition was one of the basic elements in music.  I prefer music where you think rhythmically in cycles … with a cyclical rhythm you cannot change it, you have to obey the rhythmical movement. You can change some things but you must keep the basic shape of that rhythm.

Jaki Liebezit of Can (RIP)

… the joy of Can: their openness, their attentiveness to one another, to conflict as well as communion, a channel for the very electric energy of life itself, in all its variegation, its unpredictability, but also, when ears were open and egos suppressed, its potential for a harmony of which life itself has fallen short. Can were not just a group but a way of being, a way indeed of living forever, an infinite organic continuum. Said Michael Karoli, three years before he died: The soul of the entire thing was not composed of our four or five souls but was a creature named Can. That is very important. And this creature, can made the music., When my hour comes, I’ll know that, apart from my children, I’ve helped create another living being.

from David Stubbs, Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany