Necromancers, Lighthouse Keepers And Forsaken Gardens: An Introduction To Peter Hammill and Van Der Graaf Generator

Despite his long and rich career, Peter Hammill is one of the most important "best kept secrets" of English rock. In 1967 he formed the group Van Der Graaf Generator while studying at the University of Manchester, a group that he led as a guitarist, keyboardist, singer and composer until 1978. Van Der Graaf Generator was the darkest and most chaotic traveling companion of other British progressive bands of the early seventies such as King Crimson or Genesis, although it would be wrong to enroll him under the label of symphonic or progressive rock. Parallel to his work with the band, Hammill began, in 1971, his career as a soloist with more than 40 works. A true artist, more interested in the authenticity of his art than in marketing rules, his work is impossible to label or enclose in a formula; Alone or accompanied, he can unleash a volley of electric fury or the most beautiful acoustic calm, rear up like the most philosophical of psychotics or dedicate an entire album to love songs, compose an opera based on a text by Poe or carry out spontaneous experimental works. Always with the song as the fundamental axis of his work. This is how important musicians of the most diverse extractions revere him, from Peter Gabriel to Johnny Rotten, including Luca Prodan, David Bowie, Jello Biafra, Roger Waters, Peter Murphy, Nick Cave, Robert Fripp, Marc Almond, Bruce Dickinson, Mark Smith, Thom Yorke and Steve Wilson, all of whom he has influenced in different ways. Owner of a unique and incomparable voice (capable of the most varied nuances), multi-instrumentalist and prolific composer, Hammill is also one of the greatest lyricists in the history of rock, author of a poetics that transcends his field and makes him one of the main artists to emerge at the end of the 20th century.