THE INTRO
Van der Graaf Generator trumpet their return, plus the latest news on Yes, No-Man, King Crimson, Clannad, District 97 and more…
“I have a mixture of enthusiasm and terror!” says Peter Hammill as they prepare for their first live shows in seven years.
Van der Graaf Generator have announced a series of UK dates for May 2020, with more European dates in the pipeline. The group have been dormant since releasing their 13th album Do Not Disturb in 2016 and have not played live for seven years.
Vocalist, guitarist and keyboard player Peter Hammill has been particularly active this year, collaborating with Tim Bowness and Isildur’s Bane and releasing a solo eight-CD live box set Not Yet Not Now, but he sees the revival of Van der Graaf as a separate issue.
“We’ve been hovering around since Do Not Disturb and we meet for band lunches, but for various reasons we’ve not been in a position to crack on and do something,” he tells Prog. “And so at our lunch this year we said, ‘Well, should we, chaps?’ and nobody declined. That’s the way it works in Van der Graaf. So we said to our agent, ‘How about next autumn?’ and he came back with spring. So it’s happening a bit faster than we anticipated.”
Drummer Guy Evans is delighted at the prospect of playing live again.
“We’ve been rather frustrated that we’ve not been able to continue, although I think that we were due a pause,” he says. “But it’s been rather a long pause as far as I’m concerned.”
As with many of the originators of progressive rock, Van der Graaf celebrated a 50th anniversary this year, in their case the release of their debut album The Aerosol Grey Machine. But this resumption of activities is largely coincidental.
“The honest truth is that if we are going to do anything, playing live or recording, it’s in the present rather than with reference to the past,” says Hammill. “I’m not saying that we don’t acknowledge the past or play stuff from the distant past, but it’s the present that drives us on.”
When Van der Graaf Generator last played live, their set included two 20-minute-plus epics A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers and
Flight, but this time around they are playing shorter songs to allow them more options to vary the set.
Hammill also says that he views the prospect of playing live again with “a great mixture of enthusiasm and outright terror”, and jokes that he is already having disturbing dreams of being onstage or stuck in a tour bus.
“There are just the three of us and each has some quite complicated stuff to hold down,” he explains. “There’s always been the element of an act of faith in Van der Graaf and we don’t rehearse the thing to within an inch of its life, because the fun really is it happening on each night.”
He explains how the group determine which songs will need the most work in rehearsals.
“When we have decided what material we are going to do we all go into private study and [keyboard player] Hugh Banton provides us with a spreadsheet of all the tunes, with five columns,
from ‘I Am Absolutely Hopeless At This’ through to ‘I Hope That I Am Reasonably Competent’, then we put it all together when we finally get together.”
Van der Graaf plan to play some songs from Do Not Disturb for the first time during next year’s tour, but for them to do this, they will have to be rearranged.
“They are extraordinarily difficult to convert from the recorded versions,” Hammill explains. “Apart from anything else, HB and I start each song playing one instrument, then go to another and end up playing a third.”
“I’m totally confident,” says Evans. ”Just get me a stage.”
The tour runs as follows: Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, May 3, Manchester Bridgewater Hall, May 4, Birmingham Symphony Hall May 6, Bath Forum May 7, London The Palladium May 8. Book your seat now at myticket.co.uk/artists/ van-der-graaf-generator. See www. vandergraafgenerator.co.uk for more. MB