No Safety Net

He's one of prog's visionaries, and now a key period in Peter Hammill's creative life is being celebrated in a new 20-disc box set. The Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-1986 collates 13 of his early solo albums along with a selection of era-specific rarities, and, what's more, a new authorised biography has also just hit the shelves. Prog catches up with the Van der Graaf frontman to unbox his early years as a solo artist.

- Mike Barnes

My wife Hilary always says, ‘You start writing these nice songs, and then you spoil them’,” says Peter Hammill, clearly amused at her assessment. “There’s an element of truth. In one way or another I spoil them by running in a manic guitar or by having a rather too complicated lyrical map. I’ve always thought some of my songs could have been quite successful if somebody else had done them.”

But it’s this “spoiling” that gives Hammill’s songs their singular character, and is demonstrated throughout the recently released 20-disc CD and Blu-ray box set, Charisma & Virgin Recordings 1971-86, which dates back to the beginning of his solo career.

On his Sofa Sound website, Hammill announced it as “really quite an exciting thing”, and it would be churlish to disagree. The studio albums have been remastered, with a couple remixed, and are augmented by live and BBC session recordings.

Hammill has always been prolific and his solo career often ran in tandem with his time in Van der Graaf Generator. The hit rate of the box set material is remarkably high and his invention across song form is extraordinary. Tracks range from relatively straightforward – unspoiled, if you like – love songs and near-pop to A Louse Is Not A Home, in which the Englishman’s castle becomes the focus of a Poe-like existential psychodrama, and the allusive, metaphorical journeys of the near-20-minute Flight.

On the 1975 album Nadir’s Big Chance, Hammill took inspiration from his youth as a mod and R&B fan, recording “beefy punk songs, the weepy ballads, the soul struts”, as he states in the sleeve notes. It’s well known as a favourite of one John Lydon and has been cited by some as a precursor to punk.

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