“it’s legendary how complicated my organ was!”
From building his own instruments in Van der Graaf Generator to making electronic church organs, Hugh Banton is a pioneering prog force.
Why did you choose to play keyboards in the first place? We had a piano at home so I started pressing keys at the age of three or four. I obviously took to it so my parents gave me piano lessons from the age of seven, and then I started on church organ when I was 12. I did that all the way through school.
When did you realise you could do it for a living?
It was with Van der Graaf. Electronics and music have been my two hobbies since the year dot, so a couple of years after I started messing with the piano, I started messing with batteries and lights and that sort of thing. After I left school, my first job was with the BBC as an engineer but I swiftly realised that wasn’t for me. When the opportunity came up with Van der Graaf in 1968, I switched to doing that.
Did you ever build your own keyboard?
Oh yes. The first sort of keyboard/organ thing I built, I was still at school – about 16 or 17. That was quite an unusual thing to do then. And with Van der Graaf, I was always messing with the inside of the organ and wiring it my way. In 1975 or so, I actually built an organ that I used in the band. It became known as HB1. I’ve no idea where it is now though.
In Van der Graaf, what were you trying to do with keyboards that no one had done before?
There were quite a few bands, such as Traffic, who used organ pedals instead of bass guitar, and I was quite keen on doing that. When our second bass player left, I said, “Instead of replacing him, shall I take up bass on pedals?” Which I did from thereon after. In order to make that work, I had to devise an organ that had bass pedals that were not just how you buy them in a shop – it had to have its own amplification, so I modified the organ to do that. The other thing I did was to split the organ up. You have two keyboards on an organ I wanted to have effects on one and not on the other, so I could be lead rhythm and bass, right hand, left hand, feet. My organ was completely split into three electronic sections, all with its own amplification. It’s legendary how complicated it was.
It seemed like what could be done on a guitar was limited compared to what could be done on a keyboard. Is that how you felt? Actually, no. I don’t necessarily agree with that. The trouble with keyboards is you press a note and it gives you that note. On a guitar, you can bend it and all sorts of stuff. You can’t strum a keyboard – there’s lots of things you can’t do on a keyboard. On the other hand, yes, sonically you can go to all sorts of places. But I’ve always seen them as going hand in hand.
Of your contemporary keyboard players, who were you most impressed by? Vincent Crane. I can pinpoint an
exact gig where I saw him with The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown and thought, “I want to do that.” I was just watching Vincent playing organ and it was incredible. The sound he made was astonishing.
You left Van der Graaf in
1976 and went to work for a company that made electronic church organs. Why?
I’d had enough of being on the road for one reason or another and didn’t want to know about it. I was looking for something else to do and going back to electronics was the obvious thing. It just so happened that I lived within 10 miles of a electronic church organ company called Makin Organs, and I went to them and said, “I’ve just built an organ, I know all about them, can I have a job?” And they said yes. I worked for them until 1992, then I set up my own company.
What did it involve?
A conventional church organ is a mechanical, wind-driven machine that’s been around for hundreds of years. The idea was to make an organ that sounds as much like that as possible. It was a natural place for me.
Van der Graaf Generator reunited in the 00s. Are you still making electronic organs? I call myself semi-retired. I’m still doing it but I’ve sort of backed off. I do electronics more to amuse myself than I do for other people these days. I’ve recently devised organ sound-generating PC-based software, which is
HB3 – HB2 came somewhere in between. I used to get other people to write software, but I decided to learn how to do it myself. I’m recording a new classical album and it’s entirely done on HB3. I might be one of the first people to play and devise an album on my own software.
In terms of your playing, which song are you proudest of?
Oh, I don’t know. Maybe Still
Life. Or if not that then Childlike Faith from the same album. At the time I didn’t have the big modified organ. I was playing a very straight Hammond organ, and for six months or a year I just enjoyed doing that. Plus I can remember how to play them, which I find a lot harder with the newer songs.