location: Udine / Teatro Palamostre / Italy
date: Tuesday, 02.07.2013
The legendary British pioneers of progressive rock Van Der Graaf Generator (VDGG for short), who in recent years have been working as the trio of Peter Hammill (vocals, guitar, piano), Hugh Banton (organ, bass pedals) and Guy Evans (drums, percussion), paid another visit this year to our western neighbors in Italy, where they’ve enjoyed cult status since the early seventies. In fact, Italy has always been the one country you could say gave the legendary band the recognition it deserved for its hard work and for sticking to its musical vision. This time they stopped by Udine, almost exactly four years after their show in Trieste (2.8.2009), the closest they’ve ever come to Slovenia, where, for well-known reasons that there’s really no point going into at length, we almost certainly will never get to see them play. Today VDGG are one of the last, increasingly lonely pioneers of progressive rock who, even though the hair of individual members is getting ever grayer or thinner, keep on touring intensely and putting out quality studio albums.
What’s more, the more the years go by and the more the faces of the three VDGG members get furrowed and sunken from the lashes of time, the more they seem to realize there are only a few opportunities left to create new music and promote their unique musical expression live. Unlike, say, Yes, where the old members will eventually just be replaced by new faces or, in the worst case, by their own family members (and where a whole bunch of ‘tribute’ bands are on their tail too), Hammill and his two old buddies know full well that live promotion of VDGG’s music will almost certainly go to the grave with them, especially since there’s only one Peter Hammill in this world. That was precisely one of the main reasons they decided to perform the 23-minute epic magnum opus »A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers« at every show on this tour, for the first time since 1972.
So far they’ve played it in full live only once, in 1972, during a performance for Belgian television. This conceptual epic suite, which comes from their album »Pawn Hearts« (1971), probably still the most cherished among fans, has always been extremely popular in Italy, along with the album itself, while back then the British critics at home once again ‘distinguished’ themselves with their ignorance and complete incomprehension of VDGG’s musical and conceptual vision. Besides this masterpiece, which is a monster to pull off, they added a few very pleasant surprises to the setlist that evening. Even though all three members of the band are rapidly closing in on seventy, the trio was in incredible form in Udine too, and more than once it seemed like there was some special onstage telepathy going on between Hammill, Banton and Evans.
Sadly, the same can’t be said for the organizers at the Teatro Palamostre, who didn’t exactly shine that evening. A couple of clumsy things happened before and during the show. First, the hall was simply too small for the turnout, so the seats ran out fast, or it turned out that people had been given tickets with the same seat number, which led to a few awkward situations. Second, the choice of support act was completely off. Actually, hardly any support act would have been right for VDGG, but Giovanni Guidi Trio’s set was a true nightmare and a traumatic experience for body and soul alike. A trio of young guys on piano, double bass and drums churned out repetitive, mind-numbing avant-garde free jazz rhythms without any rhyme or reason, let alone soul. Almost an hour of utter sonic cacophony, pounded piano keys, broken rhythms and ten minutes of tuning the double bass strings would have worn down even the steeliest nerves. You couldn’t shake the feeling that these were failed music academy students, rejected by every orchestra and big band, who now, when they’re not playing for a hand-picked audience, mostly jam in damp cellars, endlessly improvising ‘God knows what’.
The third and biggest problem was the totally unsuitable sound system in the hall, which pretty much wrecked VDGG’s performance. Hammill’s microphone crackled and popped more and more from song to song, while Banton had it even worse on and under his organ, since the bass pedals sometimes couldn’t be heard at all, and a few times the speaker crackled so nastily that someone with weaker nerves and less experience would have walked off the stage long ago or at least stopped the show. But the legendary trio didn’t let these technical problems get to them, nor the fact that the clumsy stage techs only figured out something was wrong near the end of the show and then started shuffling around the stage far too late, completely needlessly. Like true professionals they gritted their teeth and made it to the end, though you could tell they were a bit annoyed at the clumsy sound techs, since Hammill eventually stopped bothering with his gracious Italian.
Now for the positives. VDGG are, as already said, incredible musicians who age like fine wine. Hammill’s voice is still beautifully preserved, even if over the years it has dropped lower, since he can no longer reach all the high registers. That’s the main reason we’ll very likely never again hear legendary ballads like »Refugees« and »House With No Door« live. The setlist was made up of songs from the last two ‘regular’ studio efforts (the instrumental-improvisational album »ALT«, which has no Hammill vocals, doesn’t really fit in here), namely »A Grounding in Numbers« and »Trisector«, one Hammill solo piece and three classics from the seventies. They opened with the brilliantly chaotic »Interference Patterns«. The mighty atmosphere, born of Hammill’s thunderous chameleon-like shifts, Banton’s melodramatic organ passages and Evans’s merciless drum flourishes, bloomed in an instant. Mr. Hammill, who for the first time in ages sported slightly longer hair than usual, spent most of the opening stretch seated at the piano, before the songs for electric guitar came up. The heated atmosphere calmed down a bit with the more ethereal and subtly tuned »Your Time Starts Now«, which showed the other side of the legendary band.
One of the biggest surprises was a superb rendition of Hammill’s solo masterpiece »Flight«, which comes from the album »A Black Box«. Along with »Meurglys III« and »A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers«, it was one of the epic suites of the night. With »Bunsho« and »Lifetime« they reminded everyone in the hall once again that their newer studio material is every bit the equal of their seventies classics. The epic treat mentioned earlier, »Meurglys III, The Songwriter’s Guild«, another pleasant surprise, originally from the rather overlooked album »World Record«, was a little shortened, as this time they skipped the famous reggae section, which many fans just don’t like, even though it’s not bad at all and is one of the most fun experiments of their career.
To close the regular part of the show they went, as expected, with »A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers«, where the technical problems mentioned earlier threw a wrench in the works, but despite that, with all its complexity and countless improvisations, they confidently carried it through to the end, proving to the crowd and themselves that they can still play even the most demanding pieces from their rich career. They capped off the show in just about the best way possible, since »Man-Erg« is one of their best and most representative songs ever, even though some would rather have heard the more demanding »Childlike’s Faith in Childhood’s End«. Without the technical trouble they might have played one more song, but by the end it was already late, partly ‘thanks’ to the totally unnecessary support act, and bedtime had come. The legends of British (prog) rock, who in their youth looked after their health and never indulged in intoxicating substances or lived by the motto ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’, go to bed ‘with the chickens’ in their old age, which in a way is fair enough. With the Udine show, despite all the technical complications, Van Der Graaf Generator ultimately came out as winners and were duly rewarded with a roaring ovation from the audience. VDGG proved once again that they remain a category of their own and surely the pioneering progressive rock outfit most worth seeing live today.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Interference Patterns
2. Your Time Starts Now
3. Flight
4. Lifetime
5. Bunsho
6. Meurglys III
7. A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers
—encore—
8. Man-Erg
