Born in 1950 in Hamburg, Germany. Rother was in the group Spirit of Sound with Wolfgang Riechmann and Wolfgang Flür until 1970. For a very short time he played with Kraftwerk, though it was in between their first two albums and he is not featured on any of their official releases. When he left Kraftwerk, he took with him Klaus Dinger and together they became Neu!. Simultanously to that band, Rother collaborated with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius of Cluster in a new project called Harmonia. In 1976 he decided to go solo, though he still tours with Moebius sometimes.