artist condition

As a genre, progressive rock has been around for 40 – 45 years, and Peter Hammill is one of that small group of artists that have been active for most of that history, either through the hugely influential group Van Der Graaf Generator or via his solo recordings. Through all this time he has remained true to himself and his fans, never ‘selling out’ to commercial pressure and maintaining the intensity of his compositions – no prisoners asked or taken. His voice is one of the most distinctive and powerful in any genre and his lyrics are as profound as you could wish. When he announced his European tour I cheekily sent him an email requesting an interview, to which I expected a polite ‘no’, but to my delight he accepted. So here we are, chewing the fat at Verviers Spirit of 66 ...

DAVE: This tour you're on, it's pretty big compared with what you've done in recent years

PETER: Yes it is, three weeks is quite a long time, it's about the outer limit to be honest of what I can do in one consistent go DA

DAVE: So how come?

PETER: Well it's not my fault. I said to my agent that I'd like to do a maximum of two weeks please, and he came back with three weeks

I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.

It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.

Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.

Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero
and that anyway there's non-one left to play to...
oh, well, there you go.

Are we ever going to get this act together on time?

Let's recount our history,
our tale of boom and bust.
We could talk a good fight on our day
but when we got a hand to play we bit the dust.
Now in our threadbare suits we do our duty,
still sold on the pursuit of a common cause.

Now let us call to memory such witness as we dare.
We built our bridges, burned them down as well,
maybe all we have to tell is off the square.
We tried our instant remedies - they didn't clear the air.
Who could foresee how it was bound to end,
in a break or in a bend?
We intended well enough....
Oh, but the clock was always counting,

Seems the fashion's for one-liners these days,
the kind that get up everyone's nose,
so much back-slapping that the vertabrae
are fatally exposed....
Me, I'm pushing thirty, pulling sixteen,
though much of what's around me is dead.
They got so shirty when I tried to glean
the meaning from what they'd said:
"If you wanna be a viable artist when you're twenty-five
you'd better be a meat-head by the time you're twenty-one."
But now I'm pushing thirty and I'm still alive,
so tell me who, tell me who has won?

See the survivors in the upcoming acts,

I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.

It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.

Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.

Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero

Mannheim, Saturday

Dear Audi,

He made a bit of money,
that's something you might like to know....
He'll be drinking in the cafe on the corner
after the show.

He's been so many people,
he wore them all like poisoned vests,
still playing the soliloquy from Hamlet
close to his chest.

Where do the actors go after the show?
Where do the actors go?

He had his hour of glory,
that's something you should keep in mind....
When he's drinking in the cafe on the corner
there's no sense of time,
just waiting on for Godot,
convinced he's been here years before...

"Sod the music," said the man in the suit,
"I understand profit and without that, it's no use.
Why don't you go away and write commercial songs;
come back in three years, that shouldn't be too long..."
He's a joker and an acrobat,
a record exec. in a Mayfair flat
with Altec speakers wall to wall,
a Radford and a Revox and through it all he plays
strictly nowhere Muzak.

"Hey, listen, baby, this band's got a lot of soul...
if we can beat that out of them I see a disc of gold!
Give them an image, maybe glitter, maybe sex,
maybe outrage, maybe elegance -

Letters in pencil, some of them as heavy as lead,
as dated as carbon, as black as coal, but burning as red.
Clues faintly stencilled: the message, though leeched, is unbled,
as secret as marble - as young, as old, as living, as dead.
And always that laugh
that comes as though it's from pain:
though I'm lashed to the mast
still it hammers round my brain.

Laughter in the backbone,
laughter impossibly wise,
that same laughter that comes
every time I flash on that look in your eyes
which whispers of a black zone
which'll mock all my credos as lies,

There are so many questions,
there are so many doubts -
this is auto suggestion
your spirit is giving out.
If I offered my reasons
would you give me a break?
Now it's all open season,
no sense of give and take.

You see I'm not the man I was....

But if I'm not the man
that you took me to be
do I fade from your dreams,
disappear from your memory?
Look at me:
if I'm not the man I was
then who was he?

There can be no returning
to the scene of the crime...
for perfection you're yearning -
some romance, some foreign clime!
Is the memory explicit