It takes a great deal of fearlessness and determination to make deeply peculiar music for 50 years, but Van der Graaf Generator were never a band inclined to toe the line. Progressive rock’s unofficial awkward squad, they emerged from rock’s fertile late-60s state of flux and steadily became one of prog’s most respected acts, despite sharing little musical DNA with either Pink Floyd’s psychedelic meanderings or the theatrical complexity of Genesis (with whom they frequently toured). Instead, early albums such as their 1971 masterpiece Pawn Hearts exhibited a precocious and prescient disregard for just about everything else that was going on during prog’s initial heyday. Vocalist and chief songwriter Peter Hammill’s lengthy and elaborate but thrillingly untamed and spiky compositions, full of churning riffs and brutal dynamics, tapped into something darker and more primitive than anything you could have found amid ELP’s virtuoso showing off or Yes’s quasi-spiritual opulence.
That may explain why members of the punk generation that was meant to renounce and overthrow prog – John Lydon, Jello Biafra and Mark E Smith among them – all declared themselves fans, and how, despite the splits, hiatuses and numerous lineup changes, Van der Graaf Generator’s reputation survived the scorched earth of punk.
“Oh, totally! We love making a racket, and that has to do with chaos, which is pretty punk,” the 67-year-old Hammill says, smiling. “That clean, precise way of presenting things as they are on the record, being consistent night after night – I’m not knocking it, because consistency is fair on the audience – but it’s not what we ever wanted to do. The idea of being a super-successful band was anathema to us from the outset. We always wanted to be twittering around with chaotic and raucous stuff, and you don’t get that by playing exactly the same thing every night. You get it by potentially getting completely lost.”
The band’s 13th studio album, Do Not Disturb, released in September, is a fervently experimental affair, full of jaw-dropping moments of angular fury and exquisite quiet, not to mention another typically startling display of Hammill’s extraordinary multi-octave range. What the new record manifestly isn’t is a cosy update of a familiar sound; instead it suggests that the band remain horrified by the idea that they might actually fit in somewhere.
“Well, yes, that’s certainly true,” Hammill says. “The title is a classic Van der Graaf flip-flop, saying ‘We’re not that difficult really!’ coupled with ‘Stay well back!’ It’s more or less the stance we’ve always taken. The thing to understand about this band is that people who get it, get it. And by now, I would think, people who get it don’t even bother trying to persuade the people that don’t. My wife always says, when there’s a new record, ‘I’ll play it in the car three times before saying anything’ and that’s what it takes, I guess. And that’s obviously against the grain in the downloading and streaming modern world.”
The band first assembled in 1967, before splitting in 1972. They reassembled in 1975, breaking up again in 1978. It took them until 2005 to reunite again, in the classic four-man lineup of Hammill, organist Hugh Banton, drummer Guy Evans and saxophonist David Jackson. Since Jackson’s departure in 2006, they have been plugging gamely away as a gleefully unconventional trio, at the fringes of the rejuvenated prog scene, slotting neatly into gaps in Hammill’s prolific solo career (32 albums and counting). And while Hammill admits that age has removed some of the urgency from the band’s creative drives, they are still propelled forward by the desire to do something that no one else is doing.
“I would say that the relationship between us has developed extraordinarily over this 10-year period that we’ve been together again,” he says. “It’s intensive stuff when we work, but we’re more solicitous towards each other than we’ve ever been. It’s a 50-year relationship, so it is complicated. We’re mates that have shared extraordinary experiences. Of course, it’s not like being in a war, but there’s a tiny scintilla of that. We were there when the whole damn thing was total wild west and we were in a clapped-out BMW, bombing around Italy, so there’s that shared experience which we treasure as friends. What’s particularly valuable about the three of us now is that we agree that this wouldn’t be interesting without having something interesting to do.”
Perhaps the most interesting thing that Van der Graaf Generator have had to deal with in recent times is the transition from quartet to trio, and the challenges thrown up by the absence of Jackson’s brass and woodwind embellishments. As with its two predecessors, Trisector (2008) and A Grounding in Numbers (2011), Do Not Disturb showcases three musicians with a shared chemistry and a wide-eyed enthusiasm for trying anything. The result is a collection of songs that incorporate everything from deeply wonky heavy metal to fragile and elegant left-field balladry. As Hammill notes with some amusement, being a three-piece means “there is always a casting vote”.
“We’re all particularly hot on watching out for any of the others going a bit too far on what Zappa used to call the ‘weedly weedly’ bits,” he says. “But we don’t have outright fights. I hope we’re honest with each other, even if it’s: ‘I don’t like that, but it’s up to you … I’m not going to make you change it!’”
Do Not Disturb concludes with Go, a gorgeous but austere hymn to finality which doesn’t so much tug the heartstrings as attach them to the back of a clapped-out BMW and roar off into the sunset. It feels like a firm full stop at the end of this chapter of the Van der Graaf story, with Hammill singing: “More or less, all for the best / in the end it’s all behind you.” But will they be able to resist making another obtuse and singular racket further down the line? Being awkward bastards is a noble mission that somehow makes even more sense with a bus pass in your back pocket.
“We still believe in the power of music, and that there will always be people who do care and are moved by it, and not just as a fashion accessory,” Hammill says. “We didn’t want to be a part of anything when we started, and we still don’t. If one thing has been the abiding deal with us, it’s that we have not wanted to be trapped in a box. And we haven’t been.”
- Do Not Disturb is out now on Esoteric Antenna.
