Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Van Der Graaf Generator
Label: EMI Records
Release: 1971
Running time: 45:08
Rating: 5/5
The monumental masterpiece “Pawn Hearts” is the high point in the story of prog rock giants Van Der Graaf Generator, one of the most thrilling, unique and innovative bands of all time. Their then-manager Tony Stratton-Smith often claimed that these devoted, untameable musical visionaries weren’t a band in the true sense of the word, but a society of exceptional individuals held together by revolutionary musical ideas. With this record they finally managed to write themselves in among the immortal icons of rock music. “Pawn Hearts” today, more than deservedly, lands on nearly every list of the ten greatest achievements in prog rock history.
The creative process behind it could easily have ended up producing a quite different musical picture, though no less thrilling or ambitious. In Italy, where audiences always had a much keener ear for experimental, spiritually rich music that treats your grey cells with intelligence, the album even climbed to number one on the charts, which remains the biggest commercial success of this thoroughly anti-commercial band.
These scientists of progressive rock, led by the genius and visionary Peter Hammill (a singer first and foremost, plus occasional guitarist and poet, and one of the most innovative and original British musicians and vocalists around), were riding an incredible creative surge at the time, one that only grew after the release of the phenomenal “H to He, Who Am The Only One” (1970).
Hammill and his bandmates (Hugh Banton on organ and bass pedals, Guy Evans, one of the best jazz-rock drummers of the era, and David Jackson, the eccentric saxophonist and flautist) had only just wrapped up recording Hammill’s first solo album “Fool’s Mate” (1971), which, compared to the VDGG sound, was much lighter in nature and already close to a pop record. Helping out as a guest on it was none other than the eccentric guitar maestro Robert Fripp (King Crimson). He couldn’t very well turn down Hammill’s invitation to join the sessions for the new VDGG album, and so Fripp’s electric guitar plays an important part on “Pawn Hearts” (above all his trademark “Frippoid” solos). A deal made in heaven, or, when it comes to VDGG and King Crimson, more fittingly in hell.
With Fripp on electric guitar, Hammill could almost completely unburden himself as an instrumentalist (piano, electric piano and acoustic guitar stayed in his hands, as usual) and focus on the singing, which was always fantastic and one of a kind. As a lyricist, the would-be physics professor hit one of the peaks of his career, serving up three big stories bound together by sci-fi apocalyptic themes and countless metaphysical messages, with the conceptual masterpiece “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” triumphant as the centerpiece and the best piece on the album.
His signature theatrical-poetic vocal style, swinging between high and low registers, often downright brutal ones, once again stamps the whole album. The individual arrangements take your breath away more than ever, not so much because of their sheer complexity as because of their beauty and the ease with which they glide between motifs and slip in intelligent improvisation. Despite the plentiful free-form passages scattered across the album, nothing is left to chance. Throughout, elements of classical music, jazz, rock and avant-garde fuse in remarkable harmony.
The album’s main virtue, as is almost typical of their music, is its extraordinary and singular atmosphere, which is best described as a sort of in-between state between heaven and hell. VDGG were one of the very few bands able to carry a listener in the next second from the majestic heavenly heights of melodic symphonic music down to the infernal depths of jazz-laced rhythmic dissonance. To put it a bit poetically, VDGG could be darker than night or brighter than the break of dawn.
Given all that, it’s hard to believe such an ambitious record was originally conceived as a double album, until the band changed their minds at the last moment at the label’s request. The first part was meant to be all three tracks that ended up on the official release, while the second would have been made up of individual creations by the various members. Those later came out as bonus tracks on the reissue. I’ll get to them a little later in this review, but first comes a rundown of the three compositions that turned “Pawn Hearts” into a masterpiece that simply can’t be praised enough.
The journey through VDGG’s post-apocalyptic world kicks off with the fantastic epic “Lemmings (including Cog)”, a sci-fi tale about the mysterious “lemmings” (the name of a rodent species, and just one of Hammill’s many metaphors for outcasts), the last survivors of a once-glorious civilization, searching for their place under the sky in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by chaos and anarchy after the triumph of machines, or artificial intelligence. Fittingly, the track is dominated by a chilling, deliberately paranoid atmosphere, with plenty of ominous sound effects in the background courtesy of Banton’s ARP synthesizer.
After a relatively innocent intro on acoustic guitar and organ, Peter’s phantasmagorical vocals crash in and the composition instantly latches onto sinister atmospheric elements. Banton’s organ teams up with Jackson’s sax passages to build all kinds of creepy motifs, while Evans stages one hellish drum transition after another. There’s plenty of room for scattered, often dissonant but brilliant jazz-tinged improvisations that wander excellently through the individual motifs. Above all, though, Hammill’s phenomenal performance is front and center once again, shining with full theatrical charisma and covering a rich range of emotions, from rage and confusion to melancholy.
Next up is the majestic epic “Man-Erg”, one of their best and most beloved creations, where their exceptional skill at forging melodic, theatrical symphonic arrangements really comes to the fore. After a tender piano intro with organ in the background, Hammill’s breathtaking singing builds into a magnificent chorus that sends shivers down your spine with the greatest of ease. The central arrangement, where organ and mellotron swirl together, is finger-licking good. This symphonic Parnassus doesn’t last forever, of course, and VDGG soon throw themselves, completely out of nowhere, into the depths of hell with frenzied jazz improvisations on drums, organ and sax.
That’s followed by a calmer section with subdued singing over organ, witty sax flourishes and well-oiled drum transitions. Uncle Fripp pops in to help with his trademark guitar solo, and the instrumental feast is complete. A longer instrumental section follows and sets the stage for the return of the grand chorus, where Hammill’s gut-wrenching performance once again confirms his place among the best singers in prog rock history. The main motif returns a few more times in the outro before the piece ends in thoroughly apocalyptic fashion, through frenzied improvised passages.
As for the lyrics, in my opinion, of all their songs it catches the dual nature of this band best. It’s about an individual who is aware of being torn between good and evil, which is also illustrated by the word “erg”, a physical unit of energy in the cgs system (the international system of units classes it as a non-permitted unit and today prefers to replace it with the joule). It’s a metaphor for the fact that the person in the song, with their exceptional creative energy, is capable of both good and bad deeds, but because they can’t tell the two apart, they remain a kind of anti-hero in their confusion (neither saint, nor fugitive, nor dictator, as Hammill puts it in his verses).
Both “Lemmings” and “Man-Erg” are still among the peaks of their career, compositions that have always stirred up, and will forever stir up, the spirits of prog fans. But compared with what follows later on the album, they can’t really compete for the title of best composition on “Pawn Hearts”. I’m talking about “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers”, an epic suite of more than 23 minutes made up of no fewer than ten different sections, a timeless masterpiece and the most ambitious creation in their history. Up to that point they had performed it live only once (in Brussels, for Belgian TV), since its sheer complexity makes it a tough challenge even for musicians like VDGG. With it they undoubtedly reached their compositional peak and created a work that ranks among the greatest achievements in the history of rock music when it comes to virtuosity, atmosphere, and spiritual and poetic breadth. First I’ll touch on its lyrical side, and then I’ll say a few words about its musical structure and individual sections, so the reader can more easily understand how they tie into the story itself.
Hammill’s lyrics are downright incredible and fit the chilling atmosphere of the whole composition perfectly. Here’s just a short summary: through individual chapters, which are essentially the individual parts of the suite, it tells a mysterious and dark story about a lonely, aging lighthouse keeper who is slowly dying of a plague in his lighthouse. The keeper increasingly longs for relief from his loneliness and pain. So every night he gazes out the window at the waves, yearning for deliverance as soon as possible. One night ghosts and the dead come ashore from the sea and begin calling him to join them. The keeper is torn between leaving his lighthouse to join them in their damnation or trying to rediscover the god he has suppressed within himself because of life’s disappointments, including unhappy love (once again that Hammill-style poetic split between darkness and light, hell and heaven).
In the end he makes the fateful decision to seek eternal peace. He leaves the lighthouse and joins the ghosts on the shore below, recognizing in them many familiar faces from his youth, including his lost love, which in rational terms means that he ends up drowning in the sea. I’m not exaggerating one bit when I say that with this lyrical masterpiece Hammill stood shoulder to shoulder with the greatest masters of spooky literature and poetry, like Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.
A few more words on the musical structure of this timeless super-epic. The opening section, “Eyewitness”, slowly builds a mysterious, sinister mood through Hammill’s falsetto, sax flourishes and the mighty sound of the organ. Right after comes a jolting turn into a more brutal atmosphere and the “Pictures/Lighthouse” section, with plenty of improvisation on organ and flute. In the background, all sorts of creepy sound effects on the ARP synthesizer mingle, in places recalling the blare of a steamship horn and the clatter of the weapons of the ghostly sailors as they crawl out of the sea. In time, a majestic Banton organ solo weaves in, and then the main motif from the “Eyewitness” section returns, the only moment in the whole epic where any motif is repeated. After yet another outstanding theatrical turn from Hammill comes the “S.H.M.” section, with mighty passages on sax and organ and killer drum transitions.
After the organ interlude, Fripp’s guitar flourishes join in, followed by the gloomy section “Presence of the Night”, where Hammill’s singing over the prominent organ sound creates an extraordinary melancholy. Next is the section “Kosmos Tours”, with Evans’ wild drum transitions, a phenomenal sax solo and Hammill’s almost paranoid vocal performance up front. That’s followed by a longer section with a flood of frenzied, extremely complex improvisations (mostly on ARP synthesizer and drums), the most complex and unusual moment of the suite. With the epic section “(Custard’s) Last Stand” the suite suddenly takes on somewhat brighter, more optimistic shades. Hammill, who suddenly sings here with an almost angelic tenderness, once again stuns with the chameleon-like variety of his vocal range. Meanwhile a gentle melody flows in the background on piano, organ and mellotron.
This rare bright moment in an abyss of darkness is brutally cut short by the schizoid section “The Clot Thickens”, which, through vocal improvisations, descends into frenzied instrumental ones, with a hellish march on drums, bass pedals and sax. Then Hammill literally loses it, which is to say he gets perfectly into the role of the old lighthouse keeper, whose mind is slowly leaving him. After the crazy improvisations comes the calm section “Land’s End (Sineline)”, marked by Hammill’s falsetto and gentle piano accompaniment. The mood rises again toward brighter shades here and peaks in the chorus, where Banton and Jackson join Hammill as backing vocalists. This incredible epic poem closes with “We Go Now”, an instrumental section somewhere between the epic brilliance of the organ and sax solos and the eeriness of the dissonant sounds flowing in the background. With their help the listener can truly picture that harrowing moment at the end of the story when the ghosts drag the old lighthouse keeper down with them into the depths of the sea. What more is there to say about this finest and most ambitious creation in the band’s history, other than that a work of modern musical art like this deserves to be nominated for the list of the most important British artistic relics.
It’s only right to say a few words about the tracks that were meant for the potential double version of “Pawn Hearts” and that today turn up as bonuses on the latest CD reissues of this masterpiece, because some of them are really great. First among them is undoubtedly “Theme One”, which in the American and Canadian version of the album appeared as the fourth track (between “Lemmings” and “Man-Erg”). It’s an adaptation of the epic arrangement of the famous theme that the old radio station BBC 1 used to close out its broadcast every night. VDGG, for whom this was the only cover in their entire career, changed its central arrangement quite a bit and turned it into an incredibly mighty creation, distinguished by a majestic, melodic symphonic-jazz motif that sounds unusually cheerful by their standards. The original arrangement was written by the legendary George Martin, best known as the producer of the even more legendary The Beatles (he was often called the fifth Beatle). In Europe the track came out as a single with “W” on the flip side. The version on the reissue differs from the one on the American and Canadian LP and the European single.
“W” is also an interesting piece that deserves attention. After the opening improvisations comes a majestic symphonic, almost gothic arrangement on organ, sax and acoustic guitar. There’s another great vocal performance from Peter here, with plenty of shifts between high and low registers. The majestic, highly melodic symphonic arrangement repeats a few times along the way. VDGG wouldn’t be VDGG, of course, if they didn’t treat themselves to a longer instrumental stretch for improvisation afterward. This version of the track also differs from the one that appeared on the single.
Three individual compositions follow, each stamped by one of the band’s three main instrumentalists. First up is Evans’ rather avant-garde “Angle Of Incidents”, made up of a drum solo, crazy rhythmic flourishes and wild sax improvisations, which in the middle and at the end include the sound of smashing plates. It’s just one of the many avant-garde improvisations they produced in their career, though few of them found their way onto their albums (often inside particular compositions, but only rarely as standalone pieces).
“Ponker’s Teme”, on the other hand, is a short, simple but excellent jazz-rock fusion instrumental by Banton. Banton on organ and piano, teamed up with Jackson’s sax, creates a very pleasant and highly melodic arrangement that could easily be used as the theme for some comedy series. “Dimunitions”, Jackson’s highly avant-garde, ambient experiment, offers yet another completely different musical aspect. After the ominous opening swells of mellotron, percussion improvisations kick in. In the final part the organ joins in, along with an accompaniment of dissonant effects. Without a doubt one of their most avant-garde pieces, and it reminds me a lot of some similar experiments Pink Floyd were doing in the late 60s. This is music that demands a lot of attention and definitely can’t be listened to with just your ears.
To wrap up this review, it’s extremely hard to find the right words to express my admiration for the immortal musical excellence that is “Pawn Hearts”. With it, VDGG wrote one of the most beautifully crafted prog rock fairy tales, which admittedly never had the commercial success of some classics by their peers, but which has been etched forever into the heart of every music gourmet who couldn’t care less about chart rankings. As already mentioned, the album was really successful on the charts only in Italy, and the band rewarded their Italian fans accordingly with two back-to-back Italian tours. That move later proved very exhausting, and the band members put VDGG on ice for three years (from 1972 to 1974). That doesn’t mean they were sleeping in the meantime, though. Hammill in particular became active as a solo artist, while the others, besides guesting on his albums, also made their mark with the instrumental project “The Long Hello” (released in Italy in 1974, in the rest of Europe in 1976). That “rest” ended up being extremely beneficial, but that’s a story for another review.
With “Pawn Hearts”, VDGG found themselves for a short time at the top of the prog rock world. Here and there you’ll find some, even among the band’s fans, who favor “Godbluff” (1975) as their peak, but usually even they agree that on “Pawn Hearts” VDGG created their best composition and reached their compositional and lyrical zenith. “Pawn Hearts” is a legendary album in every sense, still the yardstick of perfection in highly experimental music and one of those records everyone should hear at least once in their life.
Line-up
Peter Hammill – vocals, acoustic and slide guitar, electric piano, piano
Hugh Banton – Hammond and Farfisa organ, piano, mellotron, ARP synthesizer, bass pedals, bass guitar, backing vocals
Guy Evans – drums, timpani, percussion, piano
David Jackson – alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, backing vocals
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Robert Fripp (King Crimson) – electric guitar (on “Man-Erg” [5:55-7:10] and “Plague…” [8:10-10:20 and at the end of the suite])
Production
John Anthony
Track List
1. Lemmings (Including Cog)
2. Man-Erg
3. A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers
including:
a. Eyewitness
b. Pictures/Lighthouse
c. Eyewitness
d. S.H.M.
e. Presence of the Night
f. Kosmos Tours
g.(Custard’s) Last Stand
h. The Clot Thickens
i. Land’s End (Sineline)
j. We Go Now” (Jackson/Banton)
Bonus tracks from the 2005 reissue:
1. Theme One (original mix)
2. W (first version)
3. Angle of Incidents
4. Ponker’s Theme
5. Diminutions
