August 12th 2004 - Peter Hammill's 'comeback' concert after an 8 month recovery from a heart attack delighted all the fans who attended. An energized Peter Hammill lost none of the intensity in his performance, when he sung A Better Time, all could see the lyrics had a special meaning this time and he sung it with a special fervour. Rock journalist Marcelo Gobello, author of Los trabajos y los dias de Peter Hammill, invited by the Lunalunera Festival organizers to introduce Peter Hammill onstage, caught up with Peter before the show to ask him a few questions.
 

Marcelo Gobello: A couple of years have past since our last interview..

Peter Hammill: yes.. like under the bridge

MG: I only have a couple of questions.. fans, journalists have different thoughts than the artist.  Do you miss perfordming with a noisy backing band? As a fan I have listened to all your work and one particularly that stands out is Vital... I love it!

PH: Vital is a little bit chaotic. Even on the 'loud back band'... stratum, Vital is pretty chaotic. That's nearly a couple of steps too far.

GB: I saw you a few times but only once with a band, with Nic Potter, Stuart Gordon &  Manny Ellias.

PH: Uhm. It would be wrong to say I miss it and it would be wrong to say I don't miss it. On any given night, you are just playing in one place, with, the audience is there, with, like tonight is going to be solo, it might be a duo or it might be a trio or what have you, in music as in life - if you spend your time wishing for things that are not there, you're going to live a very disappointed life! So, sometimes even in the 'loud band' experience, you are actually hoping for the quiet - you are enjoying the quiet bits as opposed to the loud bits. Sometimes in the solo experience you are enjoying the loud bits in the way of it being a band experience. So it's complicated and I fear it's going to be one of those things that only 'me inside the experience' can know about. But that's not to give disservice to the question!

GB: No maybe not 'miss' but...

PH: Yeah, obviously I'm a 55 year old guy, you know i'm not the teenager, but I do still like just hitting a major chord on guitar - accoustic or electric. I do enjoy that. But 'miss' is something musicians should not do. They should be in what they are doing now, with whatever they are doing now.

GB: Since the last time I saw you, there was the release of The Box, it was a surprise..

PH: It was a surprise for everyone, yes! And also for us it was a surprise because it was the first time we got together to talk about things which was... very interesting.. yeah it was good! I think The Box is a good- it's a product, but it's a product that actually does proper respect to the way were then and the way we are now, so yeah, I think it's good.

GB: With the fans and the media, it's a product but it was important..

PH: It's a product in the best of senses, and it presents some aspects of Van der Graaf that have never been really there before.

GB: And a solo box?

PH: More complicated. Because actually there isn't as much stuff. Some of the stuff in the Van der Graaf Box had been out on bootlegs and..... A solo box, well, the Van der Graaf era was only from 68-72 and then 74, so that's a very very tight time scale and a solo box would be a more complicated thing and I suppose I would have to be in charge of it in a certain way... and... we were all involved with the Van der Graaf stuff... and it's a little bit too archeological... AND the solo career is still going on!!

GB: Yes yes! The Virgin era, it would be interesting...

PH: I think more important than a Box, would be first of all getting all the Van der Graaf stuff remastered and presented in a pop way, which is supposedly something that will happen within the next year. Then assuming that goes all right, then solo because obviously there are some solo things that are not available.

GB: I'm still rediscovering your stuff, I'm listening to In Camera and I'm thinking it could sound better, I was thinking about a Box of..

PH: Remastered stuff. It's possible. BUT to be honest, my interest and I think that actually anyone who's interested in what I've done would be heartened rather than saddened by the fact that my interest is to do stuff towards the future rather than towards the past. Because basically, having done this, for this amount of time, if I start doing things I've delt towards the past then that would almost be saying: "Ok, I have stopped." And I don't think I've stopped.

GB: Ok..

PH: I know..

GB: I disagree with you, I think it would be very interesting for you and the Van der Graaf Box proved to me that a Box of your early solo work would be very interesting ..

PH: We shall see. But all of this is out of my hands anyway obviously, cause it's in the work with- now it's Virgin, which is effectively EMI, which used to be Charisma and so on. So it's not stuff really that's in my control.

GB: This next question is similar, I listened to a new version of Refugees. Fantastic, I like it. It's from a Spanish film. I'm thinking, to remake the old... I knew you wouldn't like it but I have to ask!

PH: I think this is perfect for me to do a solo version for the film. It is a new version not try to pretend to take over the old version what have you, that's ideal to me. But what I mean to say and I think you will understand, the important thing is to do the music for it's own sake even if it might have a greater success being redone in one way or another.Saying just take this thing from the past redo it in this way and now it'll have a greater success because there is a vacuum, is not so interesting. Now that I'm a grown up 55 year old man, you know, since this wont be visible, it's an audio interview, we are seated in a library aren't we?

GB: Yes

PH: And I have the feeling more and more, that my work has been literary just as much as it's been musicaly. It's been a kind of a literary work within a musical field. So, would Cervantes doubtless in his later years, people come to him and say: "wouldn't it be marvelous if we remade Don Quixote and represented it to the public and really it could be a success this time". Do you see what I'm saying?

GB: Yes, I'm talking in terms of success, I'm just saying I enjoyed this version. Another politicaly incorrect question.. I'm asking questions that fans would like to know, many fans wonder about collaborations...

PH: Normally with collaborations, it's, is there a project that's interesting, that's outside the normal work that I'm doing, that will teach me something. But I don't do that many to be honest, I mean the most recent one was with PFM which you know came about by an odd set of circumstances and this would be a classic case that, it wasn't 'lets do a collaboration' you know, here's this thing, I'll present something I think might work and then yes that worked and so would you like to sing it as well, so it works out like that. But that's the way it was. At first, it was, would you like to do some words, and started singing as well. So that would a fairly classic... but for the most part, for me the important thing is my work (laughs).

MG: The most difficult to find is the Japanes collaboration..

PH: With Ayuo? Ayuo Takahashi's stuff is most interesting..



The organizer interupts to get both on stage for the concert...



Unfortunately, 200 or so festival fans were waiting impatiently for Peter to take the stage and so the interview was cut short and many questions were left unasked. Somehow this interview is unfinished not unlike Peter's career!

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2003