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Translation
Peter Hammill: 'I've never had the discipline to be an
intellectual...'
Peter Hammill, back in Lisbon. Another time the wizard, still the poet, the
musician, the character. A chat or many, in the course of a weekend in
which "Se7e" talked to him "man to man" an interview that, if not new,
appears at least in a different way. Peter Hammill, portrayed here in an "A
to Z", in an effort to take advantage of our printing space, maybe in spite
of the sequence, in a discourse that, not being linear, is, in consequence,
a direct one...
NEW ALBUM
"It's good to be back to new songs, to ground zero. Since 'Enter K' I
haven't publish an original album, but I'm already working for a month in
the new one. All I can say is that the dominant themes are time an
obsession of mine since 'The Boat of a Million Years', the first VdGG single
and sex. I'm not worried by the fact of spending 3 years without a new
work now I've got another rhythm..."
BRITISH
"I consider myself, first of all, a European citizen. I'm very far from what
is considered the typical British attitude, their flair, their reserve... If
you noticed, I speak a lot with my hands, which is common, for example, in
Italy, but not in England. I don't know if this explains the fact that I'm
more popular in the continent than in my own land..."
CHAMELEON
"Above all, what matters to me in any kind of work is the attitude. In order
to keep the authenticity that comes from that attitude, it's necessary to
stop what you're doing and start doing something new. The VdG finished and
started a number of times, and my solo career suffered multiple
transformations that's the 'chameleon spirit'. More: if, at some point,
the attitude demands that you contradict all that you've done, it's better
to do that than to not act as you feel at the time."
DIVISION
"Above all, above personal tastes, today's music divides itself in 2 groups:
a positive one and a deliberate negative other. To Robert Fripp it's a
question of work for me, a question of search... That's why I consider
groups like U2, Echo & The Bunnymen and Simple Minds to be in the positive
side and people like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet to be necessarily in the
other one..."
WRITER
"I don't consider myself a poet, these days. I am, before anything, a
songwriter, I give as much importance to the poem as to the music, and it is
in this way that I'm interested in working. Maybe I'll continue to write
prose if I have the time to stop and work on a book. The poetry, that one
stopped..."
INFLUENCE
"It's hard to me to realize that I can be an influence to anybody. When it
was said that 'Nadir's Big Chance' was a pre-punk album, It made me laugh,
but I recognize that there are 2 or 3 songs there that can be seen as such.
However, the matter of influences, for me, has more to do with attitude than
with form. Examples? I recognize something of mine in Marc Almond (the only
man who recorded a song of mine), in Simple Minds, in Marillion. I've
considered many times to offer some of my songs, even if they,
unconsciously, are always written for my voice. But I've never done it
because, at some point, I feel ridiculous... However, I know that for
example Shirley Bassey thought about singing a song of mine. But it never
happened..."
GREAT BRITAIN
"I like to see, in the South of Europe, the interaction among various
activities in England, for instance, the politics and the arts are
completely still, there's a frightening ambition amongst the youth in the
English political parties. I am, by principle and conviction, against Mrs.
Thatcher politics, but, on the other hand, the Labour Party stands up for a
class struggle, 50 years old, and without any sense today..."
TODAY
"Today, I feel like an adult. And that means, for example, that I've become
less rigid not only at what I do, but also in what never leaves the
imaginary field. Even in the songs that can be noticed..."
INTELLECTUAL
"I don't consider myself an intellectual. Someone said that the
intellectuals' biggest problem is that they're not very bright... Besides,
I've never had the discipline to be an intellectual..."
JOY DIVISION
"Joy Division? Great! New Order? Hideous! When Joy Division came up, I had
some reserves. But, one night, during a concert, I saw Ian Curtis being
taken away for oxygen. I then realized that they really had the spirit.
Three years ago I thought that bands like The Cure and The Banshees were
breaking new ground. Now, they've chosen to go on the easiest path. They've
become 'dinosaurs' like the others..."
K
"'K' was a name that Graham Smith chose for me, based on the mathematical
constant, which no one knows exactly what is, but that is omnipresent. This
choice has also something to do with my gaze when I play the guitar. It's
also related to my scientific background and, of course, with 'key' and
Kafka..."
LOVE SONGS
"It was my hardest work since the first session. It's much easier to write
and produce new material than one that already has a definitive form. You
have to go back, realize what had lost its sense and what was missing... It
was an excellent exercise of auto analysis."
MEURGLYS III
"It's my electric guitar, my loyal companion. The only one I can trust..."
NADIR
"Nadir is dead. I might only admit that some parts of him may have evolved
into 'K'. These personalities that I create don't mean that I'm really
divided, but they exist to enrich my own experience and only show up when
they're needed..."
OPHELIA
"'Ophelia' is the second song dedicated to my first daughter. The other one,
'Handicap and Equality', was written and recorded when there was a strong
suspicion that my wife's pregnancy had been affected by measles. Writing for
children? I did it only once, in a BBC show about King Arthur. But I have to
confess that most songs made for children irritate me..."
PARTICIPATIONS
"I haven't got many... I did some things with my friends Colin Scott and
Peter Gabriel and only one really creative and decisive with Robert Fripp,
in the album 'Exposure'. I was a loner for a long time..."
QUIET ZONE
"I've always felt in the shadows, like in a closed room, for a big part of
my career; that is particularly noticeable in the album 'In Camera', the
creative vortex of this phase. Curiously, 'Quiet Zone' is the principal
component of the title of the last VdG studio album..."
CHORUS
"I used to be a rabid critic of songs with chorus, but as I grew older, I
realized that was just another pre-conceived idea. Normality can be a mean
so powerful as abnormality you only have to know how to use both..."
SIXTIES
"By then, there were still ideals because there were still reasons for
having them and for fighting for them. Now, the doors are much more closed
today, a 20 year-old has to act like a 25 year-old on order to resist, to
survive. Personally, I wouldn't like at all to be a teenager in the
eighties..."
TIME
"I don't have a linear idea of time, I see it as a globe where all the past
and future of a person is there since ever and for ever. God is the one that
can see that sphere in its totality I'm just a songwriter that, little by
little, discovers himself in the songs. Some people see me as a guru who, in
each song, tries to transmit a portion of the Knowledge. The truth is I
always discover much more about myself."
ONE
"It's important to me to play solo once in a while. When I play and sing, I
imagine all the other instruments and where they're supposed to be. I've
already conceived complete arrangements that way, experimenting by myself or
with one or two musicians. The last tour I did in England was solo it's
unthinkable for me not to stay apart from people once in a while. Always
together, people lose their identity, their attitude."
VAN DER GRAAF
"There'll never be Van der Graaf again even if everybody who has ever been
a member get together on stage, it won't be the Van der Graaf spirit, but
only a bunch of people. For me, it's unthinkable to go back to the recording
sessions-concerts unending cycle the idea of being a group is about having
total availability. It also means that all members must identify themselves
with the work presented it happened to me in VdGG having to write songs
without personalizing them too much. Now, I've got autonomy. Van der Graaf
had its era, its time, its reason to exist when it was no more, we had the
courage to split up..."
WERNER HERZOG
"I've been thinking about writing movie soundtracks. But now everybody has
been writing it, specially for American movies, so I'm a little retracted.
I'd like to work with the German expressionists, specially with Werner
Herzog."
X
"Mr. X the common man. On PH7 I could finally write a song about the
common man, but relating him with the faculty 'X', defined by the writer
Colin Young as the human perception opened in every brain channel. In the
end, it's the cosmic identification I was looking for since the VdGG years."
YOUNG
"Paul Young is one of my favourite voices, presently. His music is
commercial but stays in the British soul style of a Roger Chapman, for
example. The same goes for Tears for Fears honesty here is a keyword... I
admit that my present tastes derive from the fact that I haven't got the
time to listen to anything but what goes on the radio. About Neil Young, I'd
like that he would make a version of one of my songs, but I don't dare to
ask him he's too bizarre..."
ZOOM
A zoom in Peter Hammill himself, tall and thin to the last consequences.
Available and in good humour, amazed by the view of the Tejo river in a full
moon night and by an audience that knew by hearth his "assi-metric" poetry;
furious by the fact that he was forced to do a concert "merely professional"
(for he couldn't hear himself nor any of the other musicians on stage).
Hammill is also a talker, and so much a good listener as a deep author. Who
demystifies himself: "I'm not a genius. I write pop songs, some of them just
happen to be weird..." Who laughs when people call him a pessimist, the man
whose favourite color is white. "I believe that the real pessimists are
those who turn their backs at a problem, ignoring them to pretend that
everything is alright. I like to be called a realist..." Who thinks of
himself as a man that knows little about many things, who is an "expert on
nothing". "I'm not a simple person, I've got phases like everyone else. I
don't have the answer when I'm asked on the meaning of life. I just try to
discover it". Peter Hammill came back to Lisbon, with the K Group. But, to
the disappointment of some, didn't drink absinthe drank just (some) beer
and (a lot of) white wine.
João Gobern and José Carlos Fialho (text)
Pedro Múrias (photos) |
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... and Jeff on flute
Hammil is, above all, a man who doesn't leave anybody indifferent. People
can only have two attitudes in relation to his work: even you like it or you
hate it. "Se7e" invited one of its readers (one that likes it...) to ask
some questions, live, to VdGG's ex-leader, and clarify some doubts that have
been driving the fans anxious. The following text was written by Cristina,
"Se7e"'s special guest.
In 1973, Hammill was releasing his second solo album, "Chameleon in The
Shadow of The Night", considered autobiographic by many. Twelve years past,
the question is valid: is he still that chameleon? "Without a doubt. I
suppose I'll always be it, in a way or the other." Three years later, this
camouflage master gives a sudden leap towards the daylight: Alice, his
companion, leaves him, and that was the pretext for Peter to write the
beautiful work named "Over", an album that drags us to the depressive mood
of that moment, with no room for ambiguity. Anyone would think that this
album would be, consequently, a very pessimistic work. "No, I don't think
it's a pessimistic album at all, in fact, it's the other way around."
"'Over' is, by one side, about a situation nobody is immune to and, by the
other side, it begins with my own auto critic (in 'Crying Wolf'), going
through the perfect exorcism of the depression, to end up in a song where I
declare myself finally to be free from all obsessions. All this makes me
believe that it's about a healthy attitude and, by consequence, an
optimistic album." It doesn't make it an work easy to assimilate, though. In
Portugal, such discographic "adventures" would be completely impossible...
"It was very hard to make it in England too. I even consider it to be one of
my least accepted works, in every level." In the beginning of it all is
"Aerosol Gray Machine", VdGG's debut album, where there's a small curiosity.
One of the band members is referred to only as "Jeff on flute", although in
the liner notes he's considered an essential element of the band. The
curiosity about that character is unavoidable. "Jeff? Sincerely, I don't
remember his surname anymore, or the group he played in when he participated
in our album, but he actually was very important in the beginning, for he
prepared our sound for the devastating winds of David (Jackson)." There are
mysteries that will never be solved...
And so they played by heart...
An entrance strangely delayed by sound problems was the first impression of
Peter Hammill's concert in Lisbon. Actually, the first show inside the show
was the hectic action of Portuguese and British technicians in a (for a long
while) frustrated try to find out what was wrong... Finally, a decision was
made: Hammill and the K-Group decided to start the concert with an awful PA
sound, and even worse backline. Which means that they decided, very
professionally, to start playing without hearing themselves... Hammill, on
the piano, stroke the first chords of "The Future Now", and the initial
problems were immediately forgotten, faced by the sound sometimes unbearably
sweet, sometimes strikingly cruel, that four musicians very accustomed to
play with each other can extract from simple instruments. Selecting songs
from his more recent discography ("Just Good Friends", "Empress' Clothes"
and "The Jargon King"), the first third of the concert created the
atmosphere that allowed K (Hammill) and the group (Ellis, Potter and Evans)
to expand themselves as much as it was possible under that conditions, with
Hammill joyfully exhibiting his multifaceted musical personality. In fact, a
concert very similar to what we imagine in "The Margin", but with two
special "bonuses": an enriched version of the old theme "A Louse is Not a
Home" (from "The Silent Corner") and, to close, another premiere in
Portuguese concerts: "My Experience". There were no encores, thought. Two
hours of show had passed almost imperceptibly, almost like a religious
ceremony where time, a concept so relevant to Hammill, had paused. Even so,
the ex-leader of VdGG declared himself not satisfied with the final result:
"I was ready to make a more intuitive concert, but we were forced to play
only professionally, because we couldn't hear ourselves on stage..." What,
objectively, was more than enough to show the excellent creative form in
which Peter Hammill and the bizarrely diversified K-Group find themselves...
J. C. F.
Special thanks to Adriana Cataldo for the translation.
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