Peter Hammill interview June 1996

Introduction

Anyway, through Roughtrade we, that is Jurriaan Hage and Roberto Lambooy, got a chance to talk to the man himself (to our surprise I might add) and so we did. I have to admit feeling a little, well, nervous, and this feeling was only enhanced because I had forgotten to put the taperecorder back in my bag after testing it. Fortunately a friend of mine, Roberto Lambooy, was also present to participate in the interview and he did bring his along. Still, I have to admit feeling a bit awkward there.

So there we are in Paradiso, a former church and regarded as the rock temple of the Netherlands (quite rightly so, I think), the three of us sitting at a table while people are still experimenting with the lights, but all very relaxed and hoping to get some serious answers to our rather serious questions. The following interview is fairly unedited.

The interview

Ehm, this is kind of a dangerous question, I think. I've noticed the last few years while visiting your concerts, that you have quite a devoted following.

Hmhm.

How do you feel about that?

Well, it's a very devoted artist and eh to some extent or another I'm a cult artist, which of course can be dangerous position to be. For all sorts of reasons, for life (live?) reasons, for musical reasons and so on. I think there are, if there is however, a Hammill cult, there are two not ordinary distinguishing features of it. The first is that the aah cult consist normally of one specific type of person and usually of one specific age. Well, one of the characteristics of the Hammill cult is that there's a very very wide spread of age, and that there are all sorts of lifestyle's basically. There's everything from bankers to unemployed and what have you. That's the first thing. And the second thing is, that although it's cult, it's usually quite critical. It's not a blind exceptance of whatever I do. There's always: this is good, this is bad. So that's my response: not so dangerous after all. (time for a little snicker there)

(in a slightly ironic tone) So you don't think it will turn into a religious cult.

No I don't. There are a quite a number of pointers in the songs that say that this would be a bad way to go really. So that shouldn't happen.

Our idea also, but of course you never know with audiences.

Well, another aspect, of why it is devoted is (now PH apologizes for the lights going on and off, but I really couldn't see what we can do about it. Anyway it didn't bother us.) Partly the reason for the devotion among my "following" is that firstly I'm demanding of myself. That is also a difference maybe with the cults; I am demanding of myself. I do not want to do things over and over again. I don't want to be trapped in the Peter Hammill of any particular era. I want to be playing now, what there is to play.

So what do you think about the older Peter Hammills. Are they that different?

Well, they're the same person. They are of different age, but obviously they're the same person, that I've lived through and I wouldn't be that person now, if I hadn't been that person then at whatever stage. In musical terms, in terms of work, then eh...they're more the same than really they are in life, because at each stage you see the person doing stuff or about stuff that interested me, to the best of my abilities at the time, so that remains the same. And also not trying to repeat myself. But eh I don't dwell so much on the past. That's another danger, to dwell on the past, to analyze myself. Other people can do that.

Don't your fans usually dwell on the past

Yeah, well, sometimes.

I mean everytime you release a new album they tend to compare it.

Of course, well that ehm, I think it has to do with the problems of reviewing my albums. You have to compare it with the past things, because it doesn't actually compare with anything else. And this has been so for almost all of the past 26-27 years. One could say that a particular album might fit into a particular genre, but the next one won't. So, generally it's a peer group of one almost, which is both good and bad.

It seems though that relatively few progressive bands tend to imitate VDGG or yourself, although in our opinion VDGG was also one of the cornerstones of progressive rock together with bands like King Crimson, Yes,...

But it was harder to imitate. Yuo see it had the combination of an organist, a sax player and a singer, so it's quite a hard thing to do, unless you're slavish about it, which evidently was one of the foundations of VDGG and my subsequent music, is that it is actually very passionate -- heartily agreed upon by the I's -- and very wild and learning the notes is not enough. There's the question of learning the notes, so you know them well enough to throw them away when the opportunity comes, while in the case of King Crimson and Yes it is more precise, there's more of a precise structure. We are definitely the more chaotic and well you can't imitate chaos...you have to find your own chaos.

Especially the intensity. There might be people willing to imitate this intensity, but usually you can see through it.

Yeah, yeah, you can't it, yes.

You can't keep that up, you have to live it. Like the singer of Joy Division, people who are so intense they are inimitable.

Yes.

Do you feel this as a joy, being inimitable.

Ehm, I don't know any other way. I didn't really try to be inimitable, nor to be a cult artist. The two axioms have been first of all these songs, this music, this way of playing makes complete sense to me, and thus might also make sense to other people. If I would do it in another way, it would not be me and it would not be true. It's more of a privilege than a joy, because I've been able to do things I love for all these years, I do still have an audience, I do still feel that I'm not repeating, I'm doing something new and being demanding of myself, also of the other musicians naturally, whoever go in or out. And that is a privilege, you know, even without having toured around Europe to all those places, seeing those changes, having a chance to appreciate what happens in other cultures, that's another privilege. But to do that and to be part of that culture, for one night, even if one does not know anything about it. If you do a show, you a part of the culture of that city on that particular night. And that is, it is a responsibility as well as a joy.

Well, for some people joy comes from responsibility.

Yeah

How do you feel about those Tribute albums (Mellow released a tribute to VDGG some time ago)?

Well, I actually haven't really heard anything of it.

Well, I hoped you might have heard it. By the way I also got a review copy of the Roaring Forties from Mellow Records, which is....

From Mellow Records, you got it???

Yes, because when I contacted Rough Trade it was already long out.

Oh I see.

Mellow didn't mind giving me one, so that's what happened.

Well, Mellow only had Roaring Forties..and well they've gone now I believe.

What?

I think they've gone now, they've disappeared.

No, they still exist. I have contact with them regularly.

Oh? Well anyway, I haven't had any contact with them lately. Anyway I haven't heard it. It's an interesting idea. I mean this tribute is not so much by known people.

Very much unknown actually

We were talking about this the other day. There are potentially many songs that could be done by other people. They'd be different songs. In terms of what I do, I'm a player, I'm a singer, I'm a musician, I'm a writer. The people who know my stuff understand this, and they can almost sort out the different areas and even like a song and think that the performance are flawed. But the songs can exist somewhere other as potential songs. And it would be interesting to have, it's obviously not about a degree of stardom, but they have sorted out things, thought about things, that inexperienced bands have not. So in other words, if you are an established artist, then it is possible to interpret somebodyelses song. But if you haven't reached that level, simply in terms of having confidence about it, then well.. What I mean is that personally I would really want to hear proper interpretations of songs, and a different well...there have been a few proper covers, proper means having enough of a budget and it means having someone secure enough in themselves to take a radical angle.

Well, on Eyewitness, they never really did. There was a terrible cover of Refugees (mostly because of the female vocals) and one track of which I liked their version better than the original -- oops, dangerous territory this -- which was Meurglys.

Aah Meurglys.

Yes, it's a lot shorter

Yes it was a bit long.

And there was another track which approached the intensity of VDGG, which was Arrow (by Egoband), and it's a very difficult track to do, with a lot of anger in it.

Yes, certainly

And most of the tracks didn't differ much on approach and didn't tend to live up to VDGG standards. It's nice but not really new. If you listen to for instance that Bowie cover album, Pinups, then it's definitely Bowie that you hear

And it's the songs. Sometimes they're more or less straight, sometimes they are taken apart. This is more or less what I mean. The person who has actually covered things, Marc Almond, did two. Even as an established when he did Good Friends, he and his producer, whoever it was, were intimidated by the original production, so there's nothing changed in it. But the version of Vision is quite radically different and actually quite interesting.

I know of another cover, Liquidator done by Chris McMahon

Don't know him.

It's on a tape, The Truth about Flying Saucers. He used to play in Haze. An English hippy band sort of.

Oh yes.

Still I've never heard the original, so can't compare it really. (laughter all around)

The Ex, from Holland, they did an interesting variant on covers. They covered the lyrics of A Motorbike in Africa, but with totally different music.

So, you're treated as a poet as well.

I do my best to write a reasonable word.

About these books then. Is there chance that they might ever get reprinted.

I think well, I've been talking about this a lot especially the last few weeks. There certainly will be something printed or reissued, whether it will be the two books separately or combined and there has been an enormous amount of things since then as well. There's a momentum, in the sense that something will happen with the printed word in the next year.

Well that's good news. When I see you on stage, you often seem to be in a trance. When the song ends, you sit still or a second and then you get back to reality.

Well, this is so. Whether it's solo playing or with other musicians. To do it, you have to be there, which is both inside the song and inside each moment of the song. Time, subjectively for a performer is a strange thing. There's lots of parts in it, where you simply rush past, maybe because you know this is familiar territory. You can't deviate too much, you know what the piece is, you know what everyone else is doing, but you have to stay locked on, in case something strange happens, or just to deliver it. Since I'm a performer, but I'm really only performing when I'm performing, so this transition between finishing and coming back. I mean I'm almost off the stage when I'm coming back. I don't have the "Hey Amsterdam" or "Let all girls on the left sing now", I don't go for that. It's a bit like swimming.

So, you're just coming up for air? Aren't you afraid to sometime not being able to snap out of it?

Oh no, it's nowness, because it's being right in the now, but it still has a structure even though I'm playing it and I'm locked into the playing, there's a time line going on and so I will inevitably come out of it. More relevant is the question whether I'm afraid that one day I can't get in anymore. The point at which I'm not able to get into it is the point at which I stop or at least to pause. If I wasn't able to get into it I would be in trouble as a performer, for my kind of performance, not necessarily for everybody's, but for mine.

This trance, when people are trying to photograph with flashlights, you get easily irritated.

Flashlight. I can't stand flashlights. Because flash will drive you out of wherever it is. It's not just me. It's all the other musicians as well. In a different way, because I'm a sainger, I'm usually leading, but we have to concentrate on what happens to everybody else and the minute a flash goes, you know...but this is the same as normal life. You're at a party and you're having at good time and suddenly someone takes a photograph and you know...

I have it with television. Talking to people I can't keep my eyes of the tv, because it's moving. It's automatic, because it's changing. That's why I don't like television, if it's not for looking at. (snicker)

Is it necessary to live your music like this.

Yes, it has been so far. We not get back to the privilege thing. You know the job and the career, it is something I need to do. Probably it will be something that I need to do, even though I might lose the nowness and emotion. Or if I lost the eh confidence to present me in public. I do suppose music will always crucial to me. In a way this realization has led to survival now, because in '72-'73 already I was aware that we were graced by our good relationship with Charisma. We were first of all given the time to find ourselves, to find our audience. Of course, in '68-'71 there was much more freedom, much less to be have some specific sales targets, so I've been graced by that. Still, I was aware that couldn't last forever and I had this idea that the industry at some point might say: we don't need any more of that. So back then I bought my first fourtrack recorder and in fact this had led to having my own studio now, which in turn leads to the possibility of recording my own albums economically and to continue. Everything really springs from that. The point is that at this early point I did something, although I had no idea at the time which way the industry would in fact go, and had I not done this, I certainly wouldn't still be around now, or I would be forced to do things I didn't want to do, which is of course a common complaint by people.

So you might be hopping around in shiny trousers by now?

Yes, exactly. Wel, I think not, I suspect not. (snicker)

Does (your music) also have a therapeutic effect?

Oh yes, in terms of writing, I don't think about the audience when I'm writing; I'm writing for the song. In the process of writing for the song, I'm trying to get to know something, or I'm just juggling a few balls in the air about a certain subject or another. And when it ends up in a satisfactory way, then it has had some therapeutic value. I've organized things a bit for myself. Then when the audience gets it, the same kind of juggling is done in reverse. So the focus is the song rather my saying it to the audience this about this. I sort of muse in my room and I think this about this and that about that and together that's the song.

So they can solve the riddle.

Well, nobody solves the riddle. There isn't fundamentally a riddle. It's not like I have a book of knowledge which I'm trying to impart and that the whole game is "Ha, I know this" and "Ha can you work that out". It's not liek that at all.

On the one hand your lyrics are very personal, but on the other hand you also write about scientific subjects. Is this something from your background?

During my university training, which I only did for year, because I started the band right afterward, I was studying Liberal Studies in Science. It was a very new course at the time and the aim of the professor, a very very good professor, was about trying to talk about science to society and vice versa. Also, in my mind's eye there are in science many metaphores, that are apposit of the way we live today, so they seem very natural for me to use in songs.

Still, you don't see it often

Yes, but there aren't that many ex scientists among musicians. Most of them come from Engish, history or fine arts. But no, there are many that come from the (natural) sciences but they tend to be the keyboard players, because they have to ix the equipment all the time.

The guys from Queen however do have a scientific background.

Yes, Brian May did astrophysics and built his own guitar, which still plays.

It struck me that the subjects in science that you used 25 years ago were more natural science based, and nowadays you seem more philosophical.

Yeah? Wel, these days people tend to be more inclined to science than they were. 25 years ago there was no question of ecology, there was no interest in nuclear physics or whatever and now there's much more of a science culture. If one looks at what a Renaissance man should have looked like 25 years ago, he would have very little science. Not as far as I was concerned then. It's definitely a shift from the original concept of the Renaissance man, who wants to know everything about everything. These says such a man would have a much more stronger idea about science. And much less in Latin and Ancient Greek.

Well, we are interested in this, because we're both computer scientists and so we are of course interested in these things.

I was fundamentally a mathematician and artist. The reason I was once on this course, was that were only nine in the first year and twelve in the second and basically everyone in the course was a grade A scientist. And I wasn't a grade A scientist. Maybe grade A mathematician and C physicist. But I was also grade A English. The things we studied in the first year were engineering, economic history, physiology, didn't like that at all, nuclear physics and the philosophy of science which was the core of the thing. So I did come from physical sciences.

Well for us it's nice to hear something about the world of the scientist in music, being ones ourselves.

So you must have appreciated that out of memory question Ram Origami on the last album?

Well, ehm we don't have X my Heart. There's was some mix up there and we didn't get it in time. (PH immediately rectifies this by giving me one)

Well the song is Ram Origami. A lot of the songs on this album are about memory. Ram Origami is about losing your memory and the fundamental, well it's sort of a Hammill joke, you know there are Hammill joke's in lots of my songs, but people never seem to get them, but you know the chorus is "We are only what we manage to retrieve out of memory". So it's obviously between the Ram aspect and the normal world aspect.

To change the subject: there used to be talk about doing a grand performance of Usher.

Yes, it's still possible, it's still feasible. I was talking about this only two days. It won't be, I imagine until probably 1998 or 1999, because these things take a long time to organize, but it's still potentially an active project yes. For my part I would like to see it on stage, in one form or the other, because that is what it was intendend for.

I think so to.

Stage or film or dramatical musical.

And also with a real orchestra?

Yeah.

Now that wuold be a good thing.

Yeah , it would be a good thing, but guess what?

The costs.

Yes, it costs quite a bit of money.

In the seventies you had bands taking an orchestra along on their tours and sending them home in the middle. P: Well, there was a lot nonsense like that in the seventies and usually the orchestra's didn't end up doing anything interesting. I did sing with an orchestra in February in Lille. I did two songs with them, when they had their twentieth anniversary celebration. It was fantastic and different.

What did you do?

Well we did "This side of the looking glass" and "Traintime"

Ehm good choice.

It would have been easier to do a few romantic things. (we now finally get to meet Oskar from Roughtrade who helped us talk to PH)

They sometimes called you the unhappiest man in the world. Was that real, or was it more of an image.

(sounding very tired, I think we blew it here) It's a misconception fundamentally of what I do and this doesn't mean that my audience doesn't feel it that way. Obviously a lot stuff is dark and solitary, in particular in those days, but the whole point is to deal with these things. The fact that you deal with is is in fact that one is liberated more in the rest of life. It doesn't mean that the riddle is solved, or put away forever, but does mean you've addressed it. It is true that anybody who has been into my music or VDG's music has had the experience that they got the new record and played it to some friends saying that it was really great and they say that they can't stand it, it's too depressing. Still it's not at all, if you understand it. The problem was for me, that being unclassifiable, that was the only thing they could say: doctor Doom with a bag over his head in the corner. So, it wasn't anything of my doing anyway.

So a way to deal with misery

Well yeah, the thing to do with a problem is to face it. And since I am a songwriter and because the subjects in songwriting deal with me, some of them have to be problems that are faced.

Well some people use a dairy for that. But it does take courage to do it openly like that. Or is it a necesarry part.

By now, it's impossible for me to know or to say, because I've done it my entire life. It might be so that the longer I continue doing it...well I'm not nineteen now, then it was simply outpouring...and somewhere along the way, not necesarrily a reluctance to pour things out, but obviously one of the things that age does is to make things different shades of grey instead of black and white. Still it's a thing I've done. To write a song to record an album is not an extraordinary event to me. There's a certain regret involved in that, because I remember how exiting it was to have written song and to go and record it, but since it is something that I do, it has become a natural thing for me to do.

Doesn't it turn into a routine?

It certainly doesn't, because I couldn't justify it for myself if it was a routine. I mean it is a routine to the extent that my studio is not in my house and I have to go to the studio, to work. It's basically there that I do the business, at home I write letters or tending the children.

Does that mean you only involve yourself with music in the studio?

No, I finish the songs in the studio. I usually write them at home. I have a piano there and a guitar and I have my head with me, I trust everywhere, and a bit paper always, so I can start anyway. But usually things get finished in the studio. But that's just the routine aspect, the physicality of it. Since starting each song is different and new and not knowing how it turns out, it's not routine. And if it was, I'd have to go...for myself and also for my audience in terms of why do I have this particular kind of audience, because even if somebody hates the new record.. I mean they might get the new record and somebody or other will hate it and with most cults people would say, I hate it so that's it, but I think in my case it's not, because when they say I hate that, they will think that the next one obviously will be better, because this aspect has been dealt with.

Lately you've have been releasing albums that have a different style to them.

Hmhm.

And Roaring Forties for instance was hailed as return to the VDGG.

I think this is only because it had the long song on it.

Well there was this part "Long flight" which had a definite VDGG ring to it, but for instance "Talk turkey" was entirely the Nineties Peter Hammill.

Well, you'll find this one (X my heart) interesting. It's different again. We'll be playing to or three songs from it..so you'll be hearing it. Well, the doors are open..so I guess it's best to stop now. I'm sorry we haven't got through all of the questions.

(lightly) Oh we are barely halfway.

Later...

This day was memorable actually for another reason, because Roberto took his first photograph.