Peter Hammill Vpro Interview
September 13, 2000





Introduction in Dutch

Q: That was a long introduction: Hello Peter, welcome to our show.

PH: Good to be here.

Q: I was just quoting your biography and saying that you feel that you only fit in one box; the box that says "Peter Hammill".

PH: Indeed in that box. I have to try and break out of it from time to time as well.

Q: Do you feel like an outsider in the pop business?

PH: Oh, I think the pop business has gradually moved away from the truth which has been a position in which I've always been standing [laughs]. Obviously I am an outsider because you're not meant to be carrying on at the age that I am at.

Q: 51, is it?

PH: 51 yeah, going on 52 quite soon. Ahm, certainly if you're still doing it you're not meant to be passionately involved in it, you're meant to be doing simply a re-tread of the past, and to be honest I do still feel passionately about it; I still feel involved in it. It's still something that makes sense to me and that certainly makes me an outsider I think.

Q: How come that you still feel so attached to the medium of the song and writing songs. You just released a new album None of the Above.

PH: Yeh, it's a fantastic medium; it's what I believe, longer than 30 years I've been doing it, when I was fired up by music I thought the song is such a fantastic thing, it can carry just the stuff of cheap perfume, and cheap emotions, or it can become a lifelong friend to you. And obviously professionally I've been involved in it for 30 years and still when I'm working on music - either writing it, recording it or playing it live - y'know there's that immediate contact that's harder and stronger I think than almost any other medium.

Q: You didn't start out as a say ... you did something else before you went into music- you did some computer stuff?

PH: I was... I worked for IBM In the kind of the long long long ago days. Yeh yeh

Q: How did you come involved. What triggered you to start songwriting?

PH: When I worked for IBM I was being trained as a scientist but already by that time I'd been writing music for a long time and to be honest that's what I was interested in. Em, we are talking about the sixties here so if you're thinking about a career in music.. forget it.. you know there wasn't any game plan y' know, and in fact even when I made the first record I thought I'll be lucky if in five years I'm still doing music and in so far as I had a plan I probably would have thought maybe I'll be a novelist in ten years or something like that. But to be honest at that stage it was, I was nineteen or so and there was still something of a game about it for me and then gradually you know the magic of music took hold and uh, and hasn't let go.. so far I'm happy to say.

Q: You said you thought about maybe being a novelist. I mean your lyrics - also of the new CD None of the Above - your lyrics often read like poems or like short stories

PH: Well I think, you know, I think I'd be doing myself and the music that's given me a career so far at least a disservice if I didn't try to apply all of the laws and the disciplines of a normal writer to writing songs. Again this might be an unfashionable and an outsider thing to say now, but you know it is a form I think that's on the same level as writing a film script, writing a novel. Obviously the closest parallel is with the short story. If you write short stories, then you read them and re-read them and there's something different there each time - and that happens with songs as well. So it's a personal, professional - in the best sense of the word - attitude that, you know, I want things to be right both in terms of the music and in terms of the words, so they can work seperately. But ultimately the proof of the thing is in the two of them combined.

Q: What comes first? Do you usually write your lyrics first?

PH: It's changed over the years, I know I'm known as a literary writer and often people would imagine that obviously the idea is that lyrics come and it's there, and that used to be the case. More and more in fact, I suppose as I've become more of a musician, because when I started I was a songwriter who'd just about play enough to write a song. And I've become a musician over the years, so more and more I write the music and then have to find out what the story is that's hidden in the music, that's either directly with the music or is opposed to the music.
Because one of the nice games - and this is the joy of songs and medium - is that you can have music that's quite sweet but has actually very harsh lyrics and this is what life's like (laughs), isn't it life is never entirely harsh or entirely sweet .. it's a mixture of the two. So yeah generally these days I'd say that the music arrives first.

Q: Still, I was listening to your new album and also to some other of your earlier solo material

PH: And it took 48 hours ha ha

Q: No it didn't, it didn't, I must say I haven't listened to it all of course, I just want to say that the first thing that came to mind - because I'm not a Hammill expert - so I was listening to some of the songs and I thought when it was playing I thought: "It's like uneasy listening, it's it's"

PH: I think there's enough easy listening around.

Q: You think so?

PH: I think there's enough easy listening around for there to be a place for uneasy listening and also I think there's a demand. Y'know exactly the same as every other form. Sometimes you want to just read a tabloid newspaper, sometimes you want something more in depth. Sometimes you just want a trashy novel that you read on the beach in two hours, sometimes you want something you're going to; sometimes you want a white screen extravaganza of a film, sometimes you want something harder. There should be that option in music. Not just for my career but in terms of music, for the health of music as a whole. There should be uneasy listening because in the end it's the uneasy stuff which becomes most closely associated with people's lives.

Q: When I say uneasy listening it's because you also- the way you use music and the way you use your lyrics you are very at least for a DJ a station like me

PH: (interrupts) I'm difficult! ha ha

Q: You're difficult, you know you move away from the traditional songstructure Was this something that when you started out that you already thought: I don't want anything to do with a blues structure, a pop song structure or lyrically or musically.

PH: Em, not exactly, I, I still think that I do use blues structure but I think it would be obviously absurd for me - a middle class white English guy - to try to write a Delta Blues. I want to try sometimes I want to write something that has the spirit of a Delta Blues, but to make it true for me I maybe have to go into a bit of a discussion about nuclear physics or something like that. You know, but the essence of the thing is often blues for me. I'm not deliberately obscure but I have certainly y'know... in order for a song to be real for me I don't want to copy anything else, even old stuff of my own and that does involve stretching the boundaries and after 30 years I hope I'm still stretching the boundaries to a certain extent.

Q: So you even- when you make a new song up you think: "Oh my God I've played this before - I won't use it again"?

PH: Yeh, if I spot the fact that this is just falling into a - "oh yeah, you know you can do that you know you can write these lyrics or this chord progression leads to that one, yeah of course I'll, I'll because that's boring. And I think if it starts being boring to me it might not be boring immediately for the audience but certainly two or three years down the line it will be and to be honest you know some of my luck has been just graced from heaven. Some of it has been the fact that I've deliberately said y'know: "I don't want to stick doing the same thing" and to that extent I believe that my audience has gone: "yeah ok, maybe we don't like this one quite so much but it might be going somewhere that's more interesting for the next one".

Q: But you have a very loyal audience I always hear.

PH: Yes, loyal but not entirely uncritical.

Q: No?! [laughs]

PH: There are criticisms.

Q: Yes?

PH: Quite often, yeh yeh,yeh.

Q: They e-mail you and say: "look, that last album you did was horrible"?

PH: Eh, I think if they're gonna say that they'd say it personally. E-mails are congratulatory normally; usually when I've said something disparaging about a particular record or song. Em, yeah they're critical but as I say there's positive criticism. At a certain point all of my audience will fall away; it might be when I'm dead or when they're all dead; but eventually they'll all fall away but at the moment there's this for me at least in terms of.... I don't think, oh well I should say I don't think about the audience at all when I'm writing the songs or recording the songs. I don't think I have this captive audience and I have to satisfy their demands. I'm simply trying to write the best song that I can on this subject, with this tune, with this chord sequence, with my technical proficiency at the moment. But also Hammill at this moment is 51 years old but trying to keep something of the excitement of being 17 or 18 and recording for the first time.
And I just think about myself. In a way I think that's continue to engage the audience more than if I'd thought about them and what would be the thing that would satisfy them because I think that's at that point you've grasped the poisoned chalice and drained it down to it's last draft and you can only repeat with ever more distant echo's of what you've done in the past.

Q: Doesn't that feel very self-absorbing or egotistical when you have to think

PH: Oh yeah.

Q: You're in your own bubble all the time then aren't you?

PH: I am in terms of writing the music and recording it. I'm certainly in my own bubble when I'm playing it. I don't think there's another way. In the modern world people may say.. you know actually yes I'm just here as a performer, giving it all out and you've come to see this and you know what this is going to be before you come to see it and you just want to affirm your idea of what it is. There is a place for that.
It's all show biz but in the uneasy listening section of show biz the responsibility is to concentrate on your role as writer, as recorder, as performer and eventually it's egotistical in one way but on the other hand it's offering up a measure of trust towards the audience to say: Look, I am trying to do this honestly - you may think I've gone wrong and you may be right but I'm trying to do it honestly.
And to do something like this honestly actually does involve that element of egotism. It's not like making cars. It's something else.

Q: That sounds like a very firm statement to start your show with tonight. Thanks very much for talking to us.

PH: OK, thanks very much.

Q: Ladies and gentlemen, dames en heren Peter Hammill!!!

IF YOU DON'T HAVE AUDIO here's what was said between songs:

The songs:

"A Better Time"

PH: Thanks very much; this was called 'A Better Time' and this evening I'm only gonna play songs from the 90's into the 2000s. Ah... the next one - I forget which album everything is from - because at the moment I'm playing the song it's just the song that's coming up. This is called Bubble.

"Bubble"

PH: OK the next one is from None of the Above and as it happens, uh, rusty as I am, I haven't played any live shows for a certain number of weeks going on months. Although rust never sleeps, it does keep you awake at least. Eh, this is a song called Touch and Go and it's a World Premiere in front of any audience whatsoever.

"Touch and Go"

PH: And now ah, something from one of the other albums. This is a song called Unrehearsed.

"Unrehearsed"

At the end the DJ remarks that he can't remember ever having had anyone as extreme as PH in the studio Amstel (het Lek) but refrains from telling us whether he loves or hates it.

Thanks to Marga for the translation

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Well, I for one loved it. Although during A Better Time Peter seems to be slightly out of breath - reminiscent of Tori Amos ( which is _not_ annoying, mind you)- the voice sounds as powerful and vital as ever. And it's lovely to hear a *real* piano for a change! A beautiful, passionate rendition of the song.
Bubble, never one of my favourites has been altered a bit somehow. There's a different piano improvisation after 1 1/2 minute, and I didn't experience the "bubble's going to, bubble's going to, bubble's going to..." bit so much as never ending and monotonous anymore. It's changed. In fact it's an excellent song! :)
Touch and Go live at first hearing was everything I had hoped for: almost disturbingly intimate.
Unrehearsed had been amazingly well rehearsed - both lyrically and musically. This is a strong performance; loud! :) and very coherent.
Since PH usually speaks very quickly and insists on using words to which I'm a stranger, I may have misquoted him occasionally - something I'm famous for doing with his songlyrics as well! (e.g. the "Hammill headed sky" in Touch and Go) :) It does make interesting reading though! Whereever I really failed to 'get' the proper word I've just typed what sounded most likely to me and put it in between question marks. So here it is. Enjoy!