PETER HAMMILL PLAYS THE PHOENIX CONCERT THEATRE (410 SHERBOURNE) WITH PRIYA THOMAS TUE, OCT 14. $25 FROM ROTATE THIS,
TICKETWEB.CA, CIRCUS BOOKS & MUSIC. 8PM.
For the first time in decades, Van Der Graaf Generator’s Peter Hammill, one of the most singular artists to emerge from the British progressive rock scene, is touring North America. Once the Charisma label- and tourmate of Genesis, Hammill’s music was more challenging, and as a solo artist he anticipated the anger of punk on his 1975 LP Nadir’s Big Chance, which urged listeners to “smash the system with the song,” becoming a favorite of the Sex Pistols’ John Lydon (Johnny Rotten). Since 1967, Hammill has touched many musical bases, from art-rock to electronic music to opera, but what remains consistent is his passionate, dynamic voice. That voice now sounds better than ever as Virgin have remastered both his group and solo catalogues in the wake of the VDGG reunion of 2005.
Legend has it that John Lydon was fan of yours.
Quite a few of the punks were, in fact. I’ve heard that Mark Smith [The Fall] and Howard Devoto [Buzzcocks/Magazine] were fans also. It seems odd because we were nominally a progressive band, but it doesn’t surprise me because we were a very, very aggressive group, even if we were playing complicated music. And we weren’t elitist. We might have been mad, but elitist we weren’t. So, oddly, there was a certain kinship.
Was there any glam band in particular that you were singing about in the song “Nadir’s Big Chance,” with lyrics like “Look at all the jerks in their tinsel glitter suits”?
I’d hate to point to any individuals. But there was the principle of not doing something that was real, that’s what upset me. They weren’t our competition of course, because we were never going to be on Top of The Pops, ha!
So where was the character of Nadir coming from?
Basically Nadir is that spirit of just wanting to get hold of an electric guitar and bash out three chords loud. And there is something about that spirit in most of the good people who kick off into rock music. It’s definitely a teenage thing.
What was your impression about how prescient you were a year later when punk happened?
When Nadir the album came out it got pretty slammed in terms of reviews, so I think I had a wry smile to myself. But it wasn’t the first or the last time that I guessed or got a jump ahead of the general view of the future.
You certainly caught the spirit of the age in the late ‘70s when you stripped down and plugged in, as well as began to work with independent labels.
The late ’70s and early ’80s were particularly experimental, I think. It was still, surprisingly, a comparatively open world in terms of what was expected from music. Especially as I was going off and doing solo work in my own studio and gradually teaching myself new techniques and instruments, it was possible to be pretty experimental. And also because the technology wasn’t that developed… not having the whole banks of computers and adjustments one can do today was good for making instant decisions. And in a way, it was possible to be more experimental then than it is these days. Because these days one can do almost anything, and actually having the luxury of having a million choices makes it harder to choose anything particularly.
You are taking time off from recording to play solo over here for the first time in Canada since 1986. What can we expect in the set list?
I’ve got really quite a lot of tunes in the bag at the moment so, as always, it’s never certain what I’ll play on any given night. It depends what was done the previous nights, and how to aesthetically assemble a good dramatic shape. Undoubtedly it will be a mixture of old stuff, new stuff, calm, aggressive, internal, external, all that stuff, I would say.