1. Killer – 8:24
2. House With No Door – 6:37
3. The Emperor In His War Room – 8:15
a. “The Emperor” (0:00-5:05)
b. “The Room” (5:05-8:15)
4. Lost – 11:17
a. “The Dance in Sand and Sea” (0:00-5:40)
b. “The Dance in Frost” (5:40-11:17)
5. Pioneers Over C – 12:42
When I was about 16 or 17, smack bang in the middle of my rapid musical horizon expansion, my usual learning source and treasured friend gave me the latest of many collections of wild and wonderful music from this new and exciting whole venerable and old Progressive Rock genre. One of those, was the song Killer, by Van Der Graaf Generator. It immediately became one of my all time favourites and forever holds an important place as one of the great Prog classics. It is fun, simple and catchy, rocking hard around a basic but enthralling organ riff and the astonishing vocals of young Peter Hammill. It was wild and crazy and energetic and fun, but also dark, sinister and sad, and with a unique organ and saxophone led instrumental palette, no guitars to be seen. In short, it is quintessential Van Der Graaf Genlerator and for me, as surely it was for so many others, the perfect introductory track to this unknown band. Next therefore, came the rest of the album it is from, the bafflingly titled H to He, Who Am The Only One.
As a whole album, it expands on the same vibe as Killer, functioning as the most accessible and immediate of the band’s classic work. It was the first of theirs I heard, which might be the nostalgic reason why I consider it the best (against convention wisdom), but it really should be the first anyone hears. Whether it is their best is arguable. That is it not their most refined, professional, complex and ingenious work is inarguable. That is probably Pawn Hearts, which I covered before, or maybe even later works like Godbluff or Still Life. But it is without question, (of the classic albums I’m most familiar), their most immediate, their most upfront and upbeat (at least musically if not lyrically). This is a unique, deep, dense, thoughtful but eminently enjoyable album all the way through, absolutely one of the greats.
The circumstances behind the making of the album were unusually chaotic for a band so early in their history. But then Van Der Graaf Generator, with their intense personalities, the ambition of Peter Hammill, and the heavy duty nature of their music (in both difficulty and theme) were always an inch from disaster through their whole very stop-start history. The early days of the band, through 1968 and 69, were fraught with problems. There was major financial troubles, line-up shifts, equipment theft and contract shenanigans between different companies. So all the usual troubles of the time really, but a confluence of misfortune resulted in the band being without a recording contract, the capacity to shop their music to or release it with any other record company (due to Hammill being hemmed in by an older contract) and no equipment. The result was their breakup in May 1969. Frontman Hammill then proceeded with solo shows and recordings. However he used his former bandmates on his album sessions and after some rethinking and various negotiations to solve old knotty contract disputes, it was decided to release the psychedelic tinged The Aerosol Grey Machine under the Van Der Graaf Generator name.
By 1970, the fully fledged VDGG were back and their second album, The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other was a critical and commercial success, with just enough of an accessible flavour on top of their new, dense, deep, dark patented sound. Hammill, bassist Nic Potter, drummer Guy Evans, and the expanding organ work of Hugh Banton had been joined by David Jackson on saxophone and flute. As the band went on gigging full time throughout 1970, still struggling to make ends meet, the tracks that would make up H to He were devised and recorded, but sporadically amidst the relentless touring demands. These demands, coupled with musical differences, saw Potter leave the band in mid 1970 at an inopportune time, with approximately half the album recorded. This final personnel shift was the catalyst for the last changes that would come to define the great VDGG sound. Banton adding a Hammond Organ to his repertoire and playing most bass parts, live and on record, on its bass pedals. Meanwhile Jackson converted full time to playing entirely electric saxophones, largely self-rigged, to allow him greater volume and expand the sounds available to him as they could be processed through various effects boxes. This Hammill, Banton, Jackson, Evans four-piece would come to be the classic lineup, but the slight contrast between the tracks recorded with and without Potter, as well as the contribution from major guest star Robert Fripp, add to the variety and the always subtly shifting sonic landscape of the album.
That somehow, this relatively more accessible effort than some of the later ones, was particularly poorly received upon its initial release, seems strange. But so far much of that is always likely about name recognition and context. Not only were these guys not yet an established major act, but they had disappeared completely a couple of times, and this album was recorded in such fits and starts that it didn’t really garner an environment conducive to any sort of hype. It was also more immediate than the following albums, but not so much compared to its predecessor, particularly the minor crossover pop hit Refugees. More to the point, this is Van Der Graaf Generator we’re talking about. Even in the artsy days of 1970, the critical landscape was best cut out for more traditional rock ‘n’ roll sounds. Whatever crazy things might happen and unique sounds might layer on top, almost everything was rooted in a general base of bass and guitar. Here was a band with no lead guitarist and, by the end of the album, no bass player. Here was a band with its singer insisting upon the high class pristine Englishness of received pronunciation. Here was a band singing about esoteric things, with both themes and sonic palette as dark and dense as they come in the wild party sphere of rock ‘n’ roll. The esoteric references included the title itself. What the whole thing means is unclear to me, but the H to He is referring to the process of nuclear fusion within stars, in which Hydrogen becomes Helium.
Killer is an iconic Prog opener. As I mentioned previously, it is to me one of the quintessential Prog tomes of all. There’ll always be that 10 or 20 songs, of 10 or 20 minutes’ length, that the most hardcore of Prog devotees hold so sacred and this clearly should be among them and easily is for me. It is the signature VDGG song and, simplistic and predictable a pick though it may be, still the greatest for me. It is a simple and rather deceptively sad tale of a killer shark who is forever lonely because he devours all those who come near. The atmosphere does not quite capture that desolation, usually something the band embrace readily, because it is just so anthemic instrumentally. This was by design, out of a desire to create something with commercial appeal. Making it eight minutes was always going to hinder that but given its status to this day, they fundamentally succeeded in making a defining anthem.
Hammill had a story, lyric and overall structure, but the driving energy of the song comes from the heavy, powerful, simple, straight up rocking iconic excellence of Banton’s main lead organ chord riff. The opening sequence of the track drives on through this simple main theme, with each of Hammill’s sparse, deliberate verses building the the mighty crescendoes that are the song’s most legendary moments. The first ‘dead in the sea’ bridge shifts things up another gear again, with a clear tempo change and another powerful, straight lacked rock riff led by Jackson’s saxophone. The frenetic jazzy section that follows is maybe my sleeper moment for greatest VDGG moment of all, with Evans rat-tatting brilliantly behind an effects-laden, terrifying solo where Banton’s organ sounds like some distorted screaming grizzly bear. The bridge riff then returns, but led by piano, allowing Jackson to saw away into maybe the most astonishingly filthy sax solo in all of recorded history. It is foul in the most awesome way, gritty, squealing, distorted and crusty all in equal measure.
The opening structure resumes with the final verse, but with everything turned up another level again, to maximum levels of epic grandiosity. The structure really is very simple, alternating between two main riffs. Banton’s long, drawn out, epic chords are the bread and butter, with the faster bridge section providing the punches of energy, which it once again effectively does at the end, leading the song to its mighty squealing conclusion. It is fundamentally a straight laced hard rock classic, which can be kind of hard to compute without all the screaming guitars. But once you peel back those layers of sonic familiarity you get a song that just staraght kicks ass.
After all the ferocious energy and power of such a mighty classic, any worthwhile artist was always going to shift down to a more tender number second. But few reach quite the solemmn beauty of the achingly gorgeous and melancholy House With No Door. This is peak proto-gothic crooning Hammill. It is a desperately devastating song but somehow through its chord changes and Hammill’s sweetness of young, unblemished tone, still hopeful. Once again, everything is strikingly simple. The song is essentially a sad piano ballad, with particularly promninent and always interesting bass guitar parts. That it was recorded after Potter left and is maybe the album’s most notable bass part, speaks a lot to Banton’s talents as player and composer.
The verses are soft, sweet and sad, as Hammill laments on loneliness and vulnerability over Banton’s sad piano, before each chorus provides a feeling of relief, if not lyrically, than thanks to the upliftingly swelling tone, as Hammill and band all surge and swell with optimistic vigour. In between these vocal sections is an equally beautiful bridge section. The stucture doesn’t change, essentially just replacing one of four verse-chorus repetitions with an instrumental section. In the verse, Jackson lays down a peak Prog lilting, sweet, flute solo. In the chorus, this flute and his overlayed sax mesh with Banton’s monster chords to provide the song’s most triumphant moment before returning to the audible heartache of Hammill. He really is the star, with a vocal performance in equal parts virtuosic yet dripping with pure raw emotion, as showcased most stunningly in the final chorus falsetto.
It’s three gems out of three on the opening side, completely by The Emperor In His War Room. A seven minute epic but with an extremely simple structure, it is divided into two contrasting parts. The opening sequence is a tense and dynamic exploration of the inward and outward torture wrought upon others and the soul by a conflicted but brutal tyrant. It is bristling, always restrained and refusing to burst forth, but full of staccato explosions of energy and fury from Hammill. The verses are slow and sombre, but Hammill’s deranged effects-laden screams propel the band into the firmer, even darker, thick organ-laced chorus section. Three repetitions later and you can sense that something is about to change, and does it ever.
The first half fades into total silence, before a janky drum break fires back in and launches us into the second part, as close to funky as VDGG ever got. It’s a section that kicks full ass, with a crisp, higher tempo rhythm track backing up one of the more remarkable guest slots ever, featuring the legend himself, Robert Fripp. In his trademark style (with his trademark lack of notice and rehearsal), Fripp seared away, unleashing a jagged, though by his standards quite muted and melodic solo, full of minimalist energy and sustained notes. This long solo and energetic section gives way back to a reprise of the main verse-chorus structure, completing an efficient and effective exploration of so many standard VDGG tropes, not an absolutely delirious standout but a perfect summary of everything they do well.
Side B is where the album at times meanders a little more, after a consistently punchy and economic first half (by their standards). The two tracks here both stretch over ten minutes and both jump around more structurally, with more changes of tempo and mood. Lost in particular is the most esoteric of the album’s tracks, which I’ve taken the longest to sink my teeth into. But ironically, it is perhaps the simplest thing they ever did in lyrical theme and concept. It is in fact, a love song! It begins with and always calls back to a frenetic, discordant little flute and organ ostinato that immediately established a tense atmosphere of lost love, and features some of the album’s most direct and powerful bass work. The early sequence of the piece alternates between this more crazed main riff, and a beautiful, melodic, melancholy main verse, the ‘I know I’ll never dance’ motif that gives the song most of its emotional energy.
After just a couple of minutes comes the first wild detour, as the band fire away into a mighty rockout more reminiscent of stuff that would come on their later albums. A distorted organ riff gives way into a high speed saxophone led staccato jam that is definitely the song’s highlight everytime it occurs, though it never seems quite to know how to resolve. The minimalist, sparse, bass-heavy section that always follows contrasts beautifully though. The ‘it’s far too late to contemplate’ motif that comes next recalls House With No Door in its aching, careening sorrow.
That I’m constantly quoting lyrics instead of being more descriptive says so much about how difficult this song is to pin down. Every section is wonderful but it moves so fast between motifs that you can’t actually keep up and it means that I always reflect on this as the track on the album I appreciate the least. The middle of the song definitely is the most meandering section of the whole album, plodding along quite slowly, though with reason and thematic significance, as heartbreak overcomes our narrator. The main highlight motifs always return though, jumping back in and out as the end approaches. This includes a hilarious, counting down breakdown, as the rockout section occurs a second time, before the song’s conclusion ratchets up to a surprisingly simple and effective emotional climax, as Hammill professes his love for this unnamed woman again and again.
Pioneers Over C also goes on a wild journey in and out of melody and focus, but it is one that is appropriate for its sprawling, sci-fi tale. It will always be a favourite of mine as it tells a story of the kind that will always be appealing to me. The song tracks a group of faraway space travellers (the pioneers) who end up exceeding (going over) the speed of light (C). Such a functionally impossible physically barrier always provides great fodder for creative wonderment. What possible sensations could occur beyond this threshold? In this case, they enter an unstable time warp that makes time shift and bend backwards and forwards in rapid, non-linear fashion. Eventually they return to Earth, but many centures have passed and all they knew and loved is long gone. It’s not quite straight up gravitational time dilation, but it’s still good, proven sci-fi fare.
A thematically fitting nasty little, terrifying, sci-fi horror organ tone opens things, before the first of the song’s two iconic basslines, a slow, ponderous, gorgeous organ bass figure that anchors the slow entry of the rest of the band. After a first verse based around this melody, the tempo shifts up to the other famous moment, with bass guitar the fore in one of Prog’s all time great, and rock ‘n’ roll’s undervalued and most unknown, classic basslines. More slow, tense story building and shifting, evolving moments and riffs unfurl from there, as the song builds in much the same complex manner as its predecessor, but with a more melodic bent.
The middle of this final track introduces all kinds of wonderful, new, interesting sonic experimentation, as both Banton’s organs and Jackson’s saxophones continue to push the envelope, while Hammill even briefly introduces a folksy acoustic guitar section. Drum-led funereal dirge, solo, farting sax discordance, and psychedelic organ and drum rockout later, we reach the album’s climax as the first anchoring bassline warbles its way back into proceedings. All the elements from the opening minutes then return for a slightly meddlesome middling finish, but including a striking acapella section and furious deliberate cacophony as the final, seemingly deliberately challenging, section of music on the album. This wildness is overtaken by the most fabulously punchy little overdrive tone that ends the album on a single note of pure low end feedback.
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