Guru Guru

Mani und seine Freunde is the 1975 album that Guru Guru released on Atlantic at a moment when the group barely existed. Drummer Mani Neumeier had dissolved the trio at the end of 1974, and this record began as a quasi solo project with friends from the German underground. It sits between the heavy psychedelic trio years and the looser, jazzier Guru Guru of the later 1970s. Players from four bands of the Krautrock scene took part.

The sessions took place in April 1975 at Conny Plank's studio near Neunkirchen, reportedly over eight days. Plank engineered, mixed part of the album and even plays what the credits call a pig guitar. The core of the band came from Kraan, with bassist Hellmut Hattler co-writing most of the first side, and from Karthago, whose keyboard player and percussionist filled out the grooves. From Harmonia came Dieter Moebius on synthesizer and Hans-Joachim Roedelius on organ, and Neumeier produced. Two of the guests, a guitarist and a bassist, would join the next Guru Guru line-up.

The first half is mostly collective writing in the light, funky jazz-rock that Kraan played at the time. Chicken Rock is a joke song in the spirit of the later Tango Fango, while It's Your Turn stretches out over seven minutes around electric piano and Moog. The second half belongs to Neumeier. From Another World, nearly ten minutes long, is the centrepiece, a percussion piece with gong, kalimba, congas and flute that points to the world music side of later Guru Guru. Woodpecker's Dream (Ein Märchen aus dem Ulfenbachtal) unfolds like a radio play from soft voices and quiet percussion. The brief 1, 2, 3, 4, Marsch'n'Rock runs into a radio broadcast of Drink Wine by the American blues singer and pianist Champion Jack Dupree.

Talking to John O'Regan in Ptolemaic Terrascope in 1995, Neumeier said of the album: "I got a little help from my friends". The exchange went both ways, and the same year he played on Harmonia's Deluxe. Reviewing this reissue for the German site Betreutes Proggen, Juergen Meurer described it as closer to a Neumeier solo record than a band album, praising It's Your Turn and finding the Dupree finale out of place.

CD in a digisleeve on Made in Germany Music (MIG03602), released on 30 January 2026, remastered in 2025 by Willi Dammeier. It adds a live version of From Another World recorded in Bonn in 1974.