Van Der Graff Generator

26th February 2022

The Queen's Hall, Edinburgh

Prior to a few weeks ago, I knew next to nothing of Van Der Graff Generator.  Other than they had a few cool album sleeves from the 1970s, and that vocalist Peter Hammill sang on Robert Fripp's first solo release.  That was sort of it.

I could not name a single one of their songs, indeed am still unsure if I had ever heard any.  Quite a confession from a chap who grew up in the 1970s obsessed by prog.  Although, in my defence, Van Der Graff Generator were hardly Radio One (or even Radio Luxembourg) airplay fodder.

I could have done a bit of homework here before this gig, but decided instead I was going to approach the show blind, as it were.  Just too see what sort of impression the band's stuff would make upon first exposure.

All the good seats were taken by the time I had purchased my ticket, so I wound up in the Queen's Hall upstairs gallery, with all the crappy sight lines that area entails.  Mine being particularly poor, with only two thirds of the band visible to me, until I migrated to the other side of the gallery at the break.

Anyway, just before proceedings commenced, I squeezed into my allotted eighteen inches of former church pew beside a very-well nourished Geordie who had come up from Tyneside for the gig.  He gave me a shocked stare when I informed him I knew nothing of the band's work - but he soon brightened up informing me I had a real treat in store, rhyming off a lengthy list of frankly odd-sounding song titles, the performance of which this evening would leave me enthralled.  

And did they?  Well, not quite.  

The opener (I learned later) was called Interference Patterns, and began with a pleasing keyboard interplay between Hammill and Hugh Banton, to which drummer Guy Evans soon began bashing along with to fine effect.  Hammills' vocals, when they arrived, I found more than a touch difficult; he appearing to indulge in as much shouting as actual singing.  And when he did choose to sing, he appeared to almost wilfully sound just a tiny bit off-key.  But, then again, perhaps that was just his style.

What I could make out of the lyrics of this set opener appeared to almost represent some sort of Standard Grade physics lesson, Hammill informing us:

"Everything is made of particles" and that "all that you see is a construction of waves".

The next two songs (Black Room and Every Bloody Emperor) I think ran into each other, and were to my untutored ears so cut from the same cloth, that I failed to notice they were separate tunes until Hammill introduced them retrospectively.  

And thus did the first half of the set run - aurally and lyrically challenging tunes, with each having sufficient going on to maintain one's interest, but few real hooks or conventional song structure to allow much of anything to remain in the memory.  Gog, in particular, found me liking Hamill to a drunken tramp in the street ranting unintelligibly at passers-by.

Hugh Banton

Guy Evans

Peter Hammill was lost to me during the first half of the set.

Ah, there he is.

I lost Hugh Banton after the break.

Peter Hammill - Edinburgh 2022

Van Der Graff Generator - Edinburgh 2022

The second set, I found much more enjoyable.  Lemmings could easily have found a place on any album by The Fall, whilst Alfa Berliner once the sampled street noises was gotten out of the way, settled down to pleasing organ driven experience, with Hammill chatting about the old days.

But it was only with the last couple of songs that I began to glean an insight into what the fuss was about.  Scorched Earth was a superb jazz-tinged rocker, which benefited from some more fine keyboard interplay, which Hammill's vocals - at time sounding like Peter Gabriel - complemented perfectly.  

Why couldn't more of the gig have been like this?  So many of the earlier tunes sounded like ideas salads - with every musical ingredient to hand force-fed into the compositions.  There are, after all, only so many time signature changes you can shoe-horn into a song, before it starts to unravel.

Hammill ignored an number of shouted suggestions for the encore choice, plumping instead for a beautifully understated piece intriguingly entitled House With No Door. 

Listening to the originals of some of these songs as I write these scribbles, I am struck by how much David Jackson's flute and saxophone work added texture to the studio recordings.  Which it makes it all the more puzzling that the band chose to plough on as a trio, rather than replace the aforementioned Jackson when he quit the band in 2006.

Set list

Interference Patterns

(In the) Black Room

Every Bloody Emperor

Room 1210

Lifetime

Gog

Go

                                                                  Interval

Lemmings

Alfa Berliner

Over The Hill

Scorched Earth

Encore

House With No Door