Peter Hammill first made a name for himself in the 1960s as the singer-songwriter for prog-rock innovators Van der Graaf Generator, and since that band broke up in the 1970s has gone on to record literally dozens of shape-shifting solo albums, including his most recent, 2006's Singularity, his first since a Van der Graaf Generator reunited in 2005, and also his first since a near-fatal heart attack. The Shepherd Express' Mark Krueger interviewed Hammill this September, in advance of Hammill's Oct. 5 concert at Shank Hall.
MK: This is your first tour in the States in a long time…
PH: A long time, yeah. I came earlier in the year, just a few shows on
the East Coast but it's the first time of the whole of the States and
Canada as well for many, many years.
MK: Is that because America's so big, or…
PH: It might be surprising to Americans, but it is quite difficult to get
over there in one way or another. To start, there are lots of Visa requirements
that you have to have that weren't in place earlier. And then, as you say, it is so massive. Now, I've got the traditional thing that you were meant to do, being a musician, was try
to "break America" as they always used to say. They probably still do,
actually.
MK: [laughs] Yeah.
PH: And the idea about breaking America seemed to be endless touring,
which to be honest, even in my youth was not that appealing a prospect.
Don't get me wrong, I love touring. But, it's one of these things where,
you know, how many steaks can you eat consecutively before just wishing
for a piece of fish, or something like that?
MK: What about the new technology? How has that affected you? To
me, it's seems like you're always on the cutting edge, you know with the
internet and the downloads, but having your own label, for a long time now you weren't part of a big record label.
PH: Yeah, I mean, way back in the '70s, I sort of realized that the
music business possibly was not going to have need of my services
because I never sold that many records and at a certain point, you're
politely shown the door. So, at a very, very early stage, the minute
that Domestic . . . came out, I bought it, first of all, because I
thought it would be an interesting learning curve for me. And secondly,
because it meant that I would have the means of production, even if I
wasn't going to be releasing things. Back in the '70s,
it was inconceivable that an individual could put out that many records.
So, I started doing it from a very, very early stage. I think of it at
the time, the only other person doing complete solo recordings was Todd
Rundgren.
MK: Right, yes.
PH: And let's face it, Todd Rundgren, was a rather more famous record
producer already by that time and he was working with a one-inch eight-
or 16-track as oppose to the four track I was working with. But that's
fine. It was actually a very, very interesting curve and produced
actually some quite experimental stuff, directly because of the
technology. As the years rolled by, I would renew that stuff and kind of stayed
cutting edge, I guess. Not massively cutting edge, I didn't have wave
synth, I didn't have a . . . or that sort of thing, but I kind of
gradually went with it … you know these days I record using my laptop.
MK: You had a heart attack, what was that in 2002, or 2003?
PH: It was in 2003, I had the heart attack. The album [Singularity] is very much
influenced by that, the whole album. Because, obviously, seems like my
job has been over all these years, tying to document what happens to the
human mind, soul, spirit, as you go through those passages of life. When
something like that happens, I better address it basically, or else give
up and find another day job. The story actually wasn't about me, it was
a very, very sad story. I had a great piano technician who looked after
my piano for many years-10, 15 years-and he was in the middle of
doing a lot of resurrection on it, but he came and worked on it one day, and
I was going off on holiday, so he was going to come and finish up the
job two, three weeks later. I went off on holiday and when I came back,
I discovered that literally, the next day, he'd gone off and he was going to drive home and
some, you know, a drunk driver came and killed him. And so, I survived
my heart attack and you know, took it as a wagging finger and what have
you, but sometimes the stories don't work out so well. And that's the
tightrope that we're all walking, which we know, we should walk. In
principle, we are always aware of these things … It takes something like that to make you go "oh, wow, actually I'm not the immortal one." Having said that, you know, I went around with that consciousness a considerable time after my heart attack, but gradually it creeps in again and I feel like I'm immortal again.
Transcribed by Ashley Beyer
