Let's start off with the new album, Everyone You Hold, which seems rather similar to the Fireships album.
There is certainly a connection with the Fireships album and also with And Close As This. With Fireships obviusly because of this quasi-orchestral sound, slow evolving nature of the thing. And Close As This had this as well, but I think that there is more intimacy then on Fireships. Certainly there is a family resemblance. This should come as a total surprise since one can't reinvent oneself totally every single time. When you go into the studio there is a certain kind of language that I use.
Fireships was in the so called Be Calm series. But on this album I see nothing...
Well, yes I think I decided that the series idea is one that has run its course. Partly becaue I do not want to pin myself down to much. If te series would have continued, this would have been Be Calm number two. But it's not just that I do not want to pin myself down, but also that I do not want to appear in an all knowing way. And if I would have made this Be Calm number two then everyone would immediately say: "Ah, then this MUST be compared to Fireships. There must be a complete junction between the two". Clearly, there is, but I think it's better to keep it a bit hazy, so that instead having that this bit is a like it and that bit isn't, it becomes more a continuous thing. So, I think the reason that I started the series at all was to impose a certain discipline on myself, when I started Fie!, since I was to be the responsible person and I ought to really get a grip on myself. So I think the Be Calm series and the A Loud series are to be series of one each and from now on I'll just go back to making the albums. That's not a guarantee that there might not be further series of one in the future, but it has to start with C next time so we will C.
We didn't really talk about the previous album, X My Heart, since we hadn't heard it at the time. There are songs on that as well that would have fit on a Be Calm album, but the album seems more varied.
It is more varied. The characteristic of X My Heart, if any, is that I was making of a conscious effort to use the quartet of Manny, Stuart and David. Coming into the recording of X My Heart we had done quite a lot of touring, developed some of the capacities of the line-up, which are not exhausted, I hasten to say and this is NOT a finished group necessarily. I do not know when next it will play. We haven't played together, live certainly, for a couple of years, and there remains something to be done with it. But the songs that I had at the time of X My Heart seem to suit that particular line-up and particularly some the interplay that we had developed in the previous touring. So that was the characteristic of it.
It also struck me that you were experimenting on X My Heart with things that originated, say, outside Europe.
Ah, you mean the Celtic, Arabic thing. Well, partly that is a function of having the percussion, the violin and the sax, which meant in order to have variance we had to have different modes. So, there was an element of that which of course had been present to some extent at other times, virtually all the way back into Van Der Graaf. I do not make absolutely conscious decisions about this in advantage. Like I'm saying: "Ah, I know what this needs, this needs an Arabic scale". There's a slight element of that in Material Possession with the use of the riff which goes through being entirely Celtic to being entirely Islamic to being almost straight rock music. And there's a little bit of joke there about the nature of music, ah yes it's true, there are jokes in Hammill music. That's conscious. But usually it's like something "it feels right" and "I know it's got that inflection, but I'll just play for now and worry about inflections later".
I'm not sure how you construct your albums. I noted that you recorded this last album between 95 and 97. So, how does this go? Do you write songs and wait until you have a batch ready that might constitute an album?
Good spotting on the 95-97. It's because Everyone You Hold and tiny elements of From The Safe House were done in 95. In fact, with Everyone You Hold it was done and Davids keyboard part were done back in 95. Then he abandoned it, and I didn't, but it didn't fit whatever was the next album. The general idea is like this: the bulk of an album is written over a period that varies between six months and two years before its recording. There isn't a big stock of songs waiting; as of now there are I suppose five or six near-songs. I wouldn't call them songs at the moment, but they could be songs after some work. When I'm working on a project I'll look at the, say, half a dozen things that run around at that moment and are worth working and I'll already have started writing other things, so I'll probably end up with five or six that are songs at which point I will actually start recording. Then, there will be three or four that will be written in the course of recording, even though they might have started slightly before. There's a certain cohesion between these and the ones that previously existed.
When you have an idea for a song, does it stays just that until you start to record an album or do you develop it into a song?
Sometimes, if I'm in this stage before recording I know that I'm writing and I'm meant to be writing then I'll immediately write it. Wehn I'm out of this stage, which is probably about half the time, it is almost the idea of seeing whether an idea is strong enough to sink or swim. It could be a lyrical idea, it could be a musical idea. And a lot of them are strong enough. I do not do any work on them, I just note them down. Sometimes not even note them down, they just get stuck in the brain. Material Possession is a good example. I had the basic tune around for about six years. I never wrote it down, I never worked on it, but every once in a while it would pop up. Not in any conscious way, like when you say to yourself "I need a tune". Just every so often the riff will be there. So by the time I did get around to do it it was already as familiar to me like I've been playing it for ten years, even though it was effectively an entirely new song. So if it's outside that working process then things go into some kind of writer's RAM up ehre and only the really strong ideas come through. Then eventually their time arrives, their time and the subject matter that is appropriate for them and then the song gets written....I think. I mean it's still mysterious to me how it all works.
Does that mean that you just have ideas out of nowhere as well as sit down and write songs?
I get my ideas out of nowhere.
You often hear that people either just have ideas and start with that or they sit down behind a piano and then wait.
Well I have both. Even wider then that I can have wham, there's a tune, there's a chord sequence and in order to burn it into this temporary writer's RAM I have to learn it, play it and sometimes even record it on a dodgy cassette or a DAT, or a sequence. So I have to kind of solidify it, but it will be just that tune. Sometimes it's a conscious thing: I fancy this key and I go, well, having half an idea about a tempo, half an idea about the chord shape or what have you and I'll go work like that. Sometimes I'll just go and sit down and improvise on piano or guitar and sometimes bubbles up and emerges. Sometimes it's a lyrical line rather than a musical one. Then that can be utterly disassociated for me from any music, any kind of chord, any kind of arrangement, just a lyrical line. And sometimes these things just match up with each other. Like I said, I don't understand it still, but in the middle of doing it there's something that happens and the song eventually emerges.
Don't you find it hard to find a melody to match a particular piece of lyricism?
If lyrics come first?
Yeah.
Ehm, eventually I don't do it, and the melody comes along that does it. Usually it's a question of matching chords. If the chords match then the melody will be obvious. If I have a lyrical idea, then even if I haven't found it yet, there will be some kind of melody implicit, or some rhythm implicit in that line, so I'll be able to find it. Still, it is FIND it rather than COMPOSE it.
Does that maybe mean that if you start from the lyrics instead of a tune that the latter is more recognizable in any way?
...ehm...I think the strong melodies are those that come as pure melodies. I think that much is true. Because words...if a melody comes from words then it is bound to be bang on the syllables exactly. But when the melody comes first then the words can start working against it. It's also that the rhythmic thing almost determines it. But you just have to take the songs where you find them and if they come from the lyrics then you just have to go with that and you just try to disrupt it in the performance later rather than....
Last time you spoke of a lyrical thread running through X My Heart. What is it this time?
I think that also here there's some memory involved as well. My innate subjects for several years now have been memory and time and that certainly is here as well. The main thing here is what we collect and what we loose in terms of our own experiences and our relations to others. I think there is a lot of loss on this album and this is not necessarily like I am in a state of loss myself, but there appears to be quite a lot of loss involved. It's not in negative way I think, more dealing with loss than bemoaning it. That's the core of the record as well as different aspects of personality.
For me Fireships evokes a certain warm peaceful feeling whereas Everyone You Hold sounds a lot darker, especially with the soundscapes in the opening.
It is darker, yes. It is more the end of things. Not necessarily the absolute end of things, but that in the course of things changing, the act of things changing, things will be lost, things will not change the same. The comparative lightness of Fireships somewhat belies the kind of sentiments involved, but Fireships has it male and female side and this new one is much more monotone, and it has more an element of monologue about it. The songs are almost all in first person, singular, like talking to oneself in the mirror. It is darker.
Is the influence of Robert Fripps soundscapes a direct influence?
Well, I can't say there's not a nod in that direction. It's actually derived from very different techniques from his. He obviously has the very long running delay lines and he's playing plec, whereas I'm playing as I've been playing for years and years. It is completely improvised and large parts of this album are improvised. Apart from the process of dragging up the songs or writing the songs, I was consciously going into the studio at certain periods with absolutely an open mind and just simply play for ten minutes, half an hour, stop, play for another twenty minutes, half and hour, change things, and so on. I'd sometimes end up with actual tunes, sometimes with just passages and sometimes with something to build on, and in the case of Phosphorescense sometimes end up with an utterly alternative backing track to a previously existing song. I improvised and then discovered that the vocal of another track matched exactly. So, there's a lot of kind of found material. I'm obviously not pretending remotely to be a guitarist on Robert's level, or ingenuity or dedication or what have you. Nor am I trying to steal his sound, although obviously there's something like Robert Fripps copyright in it, but I'm using it....you see the basics of soundscapes is that on immerses oneself in them and emerges a CD later, basically. That's the use Robert is putting it to I think, whereas I'm using it as a kind of interlude leading into the songs, but the tone and the colour are more or less coming directly from soundscapes. Even though as I say, the means are entirely different.
They do evoke that dark atmosphere.
Hmm, particularly I think that dark atmosphere that we find is there in a lot of these soundscapes is not irredeemably dark. You know, you just have to be there with it and if one accepts this then there's an element of healing involved as well. That's a particular characteristic of the sound and the rolling oceanic nature that is simply adding seven seconds, thirteen seconds delays to long sustained notes and the accidentals of finding these kinds of melodies within them.
You mean that you can hear hope in the music of Fripps That Which Passes?
Absolutely. And I think there's something like this involved in the songs on Everyone You Hold. Of course, the songs are more specific since something is pinned down to the words, and there is going to be something of complete clarity, even if it is an obscure clarity, compared to an instrumental album. But yes, I totally agree.
One of the striking things is that your daughters sing along. Is that a one off? How did it come about?
Well they are both soprano's, both trained singers to one extent or the other. Holly for instance has done all the singing exams. Not through my saying "You should sing". Entirely of their own volition and obviously the area they sing in is, well they interest me, but it's not music that I do. Holly for instance likes early music from Britain (Britten?), that was around in her childhood and she's very good at it. But in fact it all depends on whether I will need angelic soprano's on a coming album, you know? That's the root of it. I just wanted something up there and well....they came in and they were very professional with me and they did that top-session musician thing like "ooh that top C there" and "Ooh Beatrice you'd better do that cause my voice is pulling back a bit at the moment.". They have sung other things you know and it is certainly not that I'm pulling the Paul McCartney thing here, like here are my daughters singing on my CD. They've recorded a choir CD by themselves, they've done choirs for music on TV, they've sung on choir stuff that David Lord has done in the studio. Holly has even organized choirs and she hs sung solo on television. So they are, although only 18 and 15, they are used to studios, since they've obviously been around studios forever and not fazed of it at all and they're doing a reasonable job. In fact, David Lord does use them and he thinks they are great, they're pro, they get on with it, they sing the notes, they do things the first time, bang, so it's not entirely Proud Dad you know?
But it's not like Hammill and Hammill?
Oh yes, the cash family Hammill. I'm not looking at that yet, not yet. You know, me sitting in the back at the grand piano and them singing. I'd rather they do something entirely different, if they want to. Holly is now at university working with choir and Purcell and Britten. but she's doing it because she wants to do it and enjoys it and gets a buzz out of it. She'll need luck in other places in her life rather than for getting a musical career.
I think you got me wrong here, since I was thinking more along the lines of Wakeman with Wakeman and Jerome Froese in Tangerine Dream. It's not something that has anything to do with money or cashing in, but just family working together to produce music.
Ahh. To be honest, I do not anticipate that.
My favourite song on Everyone You Hold is Bubble, because of the organ and the power in the song. How do you feel about that song?
It is an entirely new kind of song, of which Material Possession is another. It gets very big....it's something I've been working a lot on that, to get a song very big in the middle and then instead of doing the normal song thing of reaching a climax and then go diddelada and stop, somehow manage to get out of that climax. You see it is easy to build into a climax, that's so simple by ascending chords, but actually getting out of a climax so that a song dribbles down to nothing, which means a real resolution instead of that awful rock music diddelada bof.
Well, in classical music the same happens as well.
But in some classical music they have some good endings. In Bubble the organ keeps on going down and down and on and on and you get five minutes of false endings. In classical music you have a lot of false endings. But in rock music the diddelada bof keeps on popping up and I feel it's less conclusive then die down again to absolute nothing. Technically within the song, those are the ways to do that. It's a very old style chord sequence to me, but the old style also sometimes pops up in the songwriters RAMbanks and it's made the more so by having Banton playing on it, which is naturally a result of having played together at Union Chapel. The one difference of course is that if the power and the weight of it is entirely constructed by organ and guitar and that kind of guitar, that kind of organ, has not been put together, because I could not play guitar like that at the time when he was playing organ with me. I'd play a different, fractured thing. I'm very happy with it, it is one of the more rounded pieces.
Before this album there was Sonix. Seems like a follow-up to Loop And Reels. I liked it a lot, but what is the status of this thing. Does it just contain things that you record along the way in whatever projects and after a while you can fill a CD with it so you do that or what happens?
I always have to accumulate a certain amount of stuff before I do a project like Sonix. In case of both it and Loops And Reels it certainly was not something like: "oh, and that can go out as a CD". In the case of Sonix there were quite a lot of reworkings to be done on the soundtrack stuff, because it had only been part mixed, since a lot of it had not been used. The Dark Matter stuff was new and in fact it turned out to be used for Wolf And Water film, but I'd already started doing it with a view to Sonix. There were in fact a number of Dark Matter pieces of which this became the one. Labyrinthine Dreams had to be reduced in time and I know it was already quite long on Sonix, but that would be a little too short for a ballet piece, so I actually had to rework that and edit it down and now it's about six minutes shorter than the complete ballet piece. So it's not just a question of: "I've got these DATs, load that one up, load that one up and here comes the thing". Odd though it is, there's also the question of trying to make some kind of unity out of this material what I think is what Dark Matter is about, and although it seems to come from a different planet, the fact that its existence alongside these others gave it for me some kind of unity, in the same way that The Bells did on Loops And Reels. It is of course not as lengthy a process or as continuous, discrete and cohesive approach as with a normal album, but there's something...and if I do anything like Sonix, that will be what I'm doing that month, if not the six months of an ordinary album.
I'd like to compliment you on the cover of that album.
You should compliment Paul (Ridart), not me.
Of course I assumed you did not make them yourself, but still..
Paul had done the covers since Fireships and it's actually an important part of the process. It is obviously some kind of definition of the album where one does not want to impose too much, imply too much, nor be too bland. He does very good work.
But whose are the concepts?
The concepts are usually his. Generally he has four or five of them. First of all there is a debate and this homes down the area of the concepts. That narrows it down to four or five. Then at a certain point I get to look at those and I sort of, we home in on one of those and then he starts working on that and he comes back with another four or five. And then the process starts over again until we are there finally.
Since our last interview quite a lot of stuff came out and among it was included a sampler, Past Go: Collected. Did it help anything?
I think so yes. I don't suppose it sold to people who own the other things but it sold a reasonable amount. It was just a cheap taste and try and certainly some of the people got on to other things as well. It's certainly not the marketing scheme of the year and it is not going to wipe Oasis of the map, but it seemed a reasonable thing to do. Of course, every compilation is going to be satisfactory and unsatisfactory at the same time, but I think it was reasonable representative of everything up to that time. Often compilations appear when a career is on the rocks: let's drain this one for the last bit and have the hit on it. This is almost the reverse: Fie! is now really a label and there have been this number of records and it will carry on and people might be interested, and so we say "Here you are.". It's an introduction, but it did have its effect.
Would you say that on compiling Past Go, you approached it from a different angle than a normal compilation, like Calm Before The Storm?
Yes, certainly. I wanted it to be as representative as possible. I wanted to give an introduction, but not too benign an introduction. If I would have access to all of the material over the years and I wanted to do the completely benign compilation and attempt the major marketing campaign than I could have filled an album worth of sweet lovesongs that would have made me an all-out sweet-love-song-singer and might sell a lot of records, but it would be rather unfair. Past Go particularly is meant to draw people in, but it is not as simple as that: if you are interested then there might be another Traintime lurking around the corner from another Just Good Friends or an Accidents indeed hovering around in there.
There was this card coming with the CD with which people could order CDs. Did you also get reactions to that?
Oh yeah, quite a number of people reacted to that and it was quite a reasonable process all around.
I also liked the compilation in the sense that it contained some of the songs that I particularly like, like Traintime and Patience.
And which are not the necessarily easy and obvious ones.
Usually those are the best, at least according to me.
We did hear that you will be touring next year.
Yes, that is the plan, but that is all I can say. I do not know when or where at the moment and not even in what form, with whom, nothing more than that in principle I'll be here in January, February or March. I know that in December I will be in Russia again.
Will you also be touring the States then?
Yeah, hopefully. I really ought to do a lot of touring next year. I don't want to spend my life on the road. There's a life to be lived and songs to be written, songs to be recorded and so on and I don't want to tour months and months. But it is ludicrous that I have not been to the States for five or six years at the very least. And I would also like to a tour of Britain instead of just one show in London, which has been the situation for the last fifteen years. I will be attempting to address all of these things. To a certain degree it is out of my hands and in the hands of agencies and bookers and the hands of economics, of both time and money. It is my intention not just to play in Australia, Argentina and Siberia in 1998.
But if you've been playing in London only in Britain that means you have been playing more in the Netherlands?
Yeah, that's right. Okay, maybe a couple of shows in Bath, I've done Bristol, I've done Manchester in the last ten years. Generally it has been London.
Are you still connected with Discipline Global Mobile (the label of King Crimson)?
Yes, Everyone You Hold is out in the States on Discipline and they're still in touch and they're still the wacky, wildly independent.
Might it not be an idea to tour with King Crimson in the USA? That would be easier for you.
Yeaah, but I've always been loathe to go for that kind of route. It's not that I'm egoistical or iffy or anything, but I just don't want to feel beholden to anybody else, to feel that I might feel beholden to them. I've never asked anybody for any favours, I've never called anyone for any favours and I'd like to keep it that way. It's not any disrespect to them and in a way it would make a certain amount of sense, but I have to stand or fall on my own merits, my own abilities. Having said this I really do not know what I will be doing next year in 1998, and what the line-up could be. It could obviously be anything from solo to full band to I don't what. Within my audience there will certainly be a preference to some of these, but if they know what kind of line-up it ism they will know: "ah, it's that kind of performance". And they will go for that or not go for that. To attempt to produce a performance to go with somebody else's performance like potentially a trio of mine might work with some kind of Crimson line-up, some kind of Robert (Fripp) line-up. Certain trios, certain line-ups, certain songs might work. A solo grand piano show probably wouldn't work. So, if I would actually do that, go with another band, and I at that time fancy to play the piano, it would be kind of awkward. Still, for better or worse, I like to sail my own little ship. So again this is not disrespect, but I have never pulled any favours and I really do not want to start.
But you can still use the contacts out there, even if you're not touring with them?
Absolutely, and the friendship relation is symbiotic to a certain extent, certainly the record company relation is symbiotic. To that extent it works, but not actual playing and performing.
I sympathise completely.
Have you ever heard of Parallel Or 90 Degrees (PO90)?
No.
It is the continuation of Gold Frankincense and Disk Drive (GFDD). Know them?
Oh yes, with what's his name?
Tillison?
Oh yes, Andy Tillison. I know him from way back. What is the new band like?
Well they seem to have become more progressive in the old sense. GFDD used to have a punk side as well, a little rough and I like their album Lifecycle (in fact they even made a cover album with works of Hammill etc. but I do not have it). The new band also has a big organ sound to it.
Well he is originally an organist. In fact he followed up Hugh Banton on organ school so it's kind of natural. His interests always have spanned from the organ world, through punk, to real balladesque stuff, which has never been there in GFDD, but might be in PO90. He does have a ballad side as well and I like what he does.
This new album has one very long track Afterlifecycle, which had quite a number of pointers to Van Der Graaf Generator and since I reviewed it today I thought it would be nice to ask if you'd heard it.
I haven't so I really wouldn't know.
Talking about influences, what are yours?
Then it was Hendrix, British beat groups such as the Who, the Animals, the Kinks, Beatles, r&b, soul, lots of soul music, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
And during the Seventies? Somebody like Roy Harper.
When Van Der Graaf started, when I became a musician, I almost stopped listening to music. Partly, because it becomes impossible. One knows too much. If you're a football player, you can barely watch a match since you see what is going on. So, in music, you know what kind of pressure people are under, you know a little about sound, and so I stopped listening to rock music very very early on. At my age at the time, I would naturally regard anybody else as competition and not nearly be able to listen to anything in the proper way. Thereafter I did listen to things I did not understand anything about such as classical and jazz. So once the things began to roll, the influences became sort of self referential or influences drawn in from all these other areas of music. Particularly the collision between the thing that got me to do this, the r&b, the soul music, that world, and the slightly more esoteric classical thing, that is the main influences and remains the main influence. To put together different thigns, not to be a pastiche of one or the other, but to see what happens if this goes with that. That's kind of self referential, without, hopefully, being self obsessive.
It seems that if you listen to wide range of music, you are less constrained in what you can make.
Another album that came out since our last interview is the Union Chapel Concert live double album. It's among my Hammill CDs right here, but it is more an Evans album or isn't it?
Now that I'm not an ego obsessed nineteen year old anymore his name could come first. And his name comes before mine in the alphabet, doesn't it? Originally, the venue and the gig was his, a long time before. And I had expressed my interest since I particularly like to be just a musician. So, it ws his gig, and he organized it himself and in the end, the friends thing remained to be sorted out. It was bascially done by us two: he organized the Bath end and I organized the London end. I rehearsed with some of my guys a bit and he rehearsed some of his guys a bit, and really a bit. In my case, those were mostly calming phone calls saying: "don't worry, everything will be alright, Dad will be there, you can always stop playing, if you get lost Dad will take care". We had long chats, fax lists of what songs would be appropriate and who, how and what would be played. Then eventually it emerged. It was really a joint venture, with the things we did in the duo way and the balance of the things all around. It was a good night and I think it was reasonable captured on CD as well. Very wild. The one thing Guy was supposed to do was to make sure that there were three or four DATs running, but there was only one.
You got lucky.
Yeah, well I got a lot of work to do on that one DAT. But we got everything eventually.
Now we could talk of you playing in bands now
Van Der Graaf for instance?
Yes, for instance. But in view of what you said earlier about being bound...
Well, it was a delight to have the reformation at Union Chapel. It was particularly a delight to do it without there being any whisper about it beforehand, without, well it was quite obvious to everyone very soon that all four of us would be there, it was still not apparent that all four of us would play together. So that when we finally managed to it was a very sweet and proper moment, and also Lemmings was a particularly appropriate and proper tune to do it with, partly because it is one of those tracks that does not go diddelada stop, but it kind of drifts in and drifts out, which was ideal. But, I don't have an interest in doing more of this, I can't speak for Hugh since we did not speak too much about it, but both David and I were desperately keen to ensure that there was absolutely no hint of publicity about it, but also to make sure that that show was not revolving around that tune. It was an inevitable, but also an incidental aspect of the entire experience and it should be given no more and no less weight than it deserved.
It was played towards the end.
Yeah, it was the penultimate tune.
Now, I didn't mean you playing in Van Der Graaf, but more you playing in a band. It seems to me from what you said that you want to be independent and a band thus would not fit in well.
You mean a democratic band, like in this is the band and we agree and sleep in the flea-ridden mattress in the back of the transit
Also, but what about any kind of band? Of course you play with a band, but I assume you just call them when you think it is appropriate.
Well, the PH quartet is still kinf of a running band at the moment. But you're right I don't want to be in a band of the sort. Again, I thought it was a joyous and a bitter experience, simultaneously and I did enjoy it and it was part of the life at the time, but maybe because of the commitment to the spirit and ideal of the thing that Van Der Graaf was, continued non-reformation, continued non-trading on the name, continued non-cashing in in any way, is a restatement of, rather than a denial of the fact that I had all of that when I was that age and there isn't a place in my life for that right now. Because to be in a band like Van Der Graaf it has to be THE most important thing in your life, and it was in our lives at the time. Very very difficult for everyone who was involved with this personally, outside the group, verging on the downright impossible. You know, one needs untrammelled ego and unalloyed commitment to be a in band in that sense. I don't have time for that and on the other hand I would not want to be in a band, in a band like that that didn't have that. The alternative is for example, the bands that I have been in at different times, such as the PH quartet, the Noise, the K-group. All of these are loose things where I call the chaps up. If they are free they'll do it, if they are not they can't. If the money is right they'll do it, if it's not they can't. Just the normal things of life. Then, because it has got this strictly limited lifespan usually, just the duration of the tour we are talking about now...not the '98 tour, but say I call them up for a tour xxx and it lasts a month and I have this date sheet with 18 dates and we'll deal with that period the groups existence in that period. And we'll deal with our interpersonal relationships in the course of that, and that's okay. Of course there is some element of commitment. I look after the chaps in any of these groups as if it is a permanent band; they look after and look out for me to a great extent as well and I ask a lot of them and they...give me a lot. You know, it's not easy, it's not glamourous, everybody has to chip in. But that's enough, anything more permanent than that, no I don't think so (in low menacing? tone)
Is it that the chemistry in a band like VDGG makes it hard? And worthwhile.
It's the overriding commitment that such a kind of band involves. That it has to be the only important thing in life. A degree of chemistry and flash between people can be got as well with musicians that you work with over a longer period of time. You can stop and start again and one can get something of having the same language. But the day in day out Ersatz family that the band is and all of that stuff, sitting in the back of the car, thinking: "if he doesn't give me back the matches, that I lent him ten minutes ago, in the next two minutes, I'm going to throttle him". Ludicrous. But that, frankly, is the reality of being in a band, rather more than the swirl of the golden capers, the dry ice comes up before you, and the crowd rises wild in adoration.
If you look at another band such as King Crimson...
King Crimson has always kept on shifting. That's why it continues. And in a way you see, in a way that Crimson works is exactly as PH quartet or K-group, or the Noise band. I don't know that it ever happened that somebody wanted to stay in King Crimson, when Robert has not given him the call, but I imagine that if they did, they wouldn't: it is Roberts band. If Robert wants the band to change, it changes. People wouldn't want to stay if they weren't asked, because that's the nature of the thing. When they're in the band there's a complete commitment and they get to do the things that interest them and the collective work. And when it finishes, it finishes.
Does that mean that it's just a band name on an album?
No, I think there is a clear definition of King Crimson. But I think it is because he started doing it at a very early stage and already a flexible unit after Lizard, whereas we VDGG had a different continuity.