Peter Hammill Giveaway

The portentousness of FOOL'S MATE makes Bowie's ‘Quicksand’ sound like a hit he wrote for Herman's Hermits, ‘Moonlight Mile’ a happy ever after in Satanic Majestyland, and ‘Cold Turkey’ a brisk shower. The point being that Hammill rarely if ever considers anything but Death worth getting off on, but he and his session people have managed their necrophilia with an abundance of wit and class to produce some extremely moving music out of an attitude that might seem to have exhausted itself with ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’ or at least ‘Alone Again, Naturally’.

Fact is, Hammill's a sly and sexy image-maker beneath his pallor and his songs frequently capture a sense of desperation that may not have the directness of ‘Love in Vain’, but nevertheless remains credible over an extraordinary spectrum of suicidal explorations. Nothing drags the fans in faster than the possibility that they can bring their broke down and busted hero back from the edge. Unlike those of pretentio-rock robots, almost all of Hammill's songs are love songs, if nothing else but fatalistic self-love is involved; every song is a climax, a crisis past the point of will, yet Hammill's music has more balls than that of a hundred wiseass Mickey Mouse Jaggers.

When one looks into Hammill's four-year career, one discovers him as the creative thrust behind the monomaniacally depressing if consistently bizarro Van der Graaf Generator, who produced four albums (1968-1971), while remaining mainly a local and cryptic group with apparently no commercial ambitions. Only a handful of Van der Graaf's tracks have a fraction of the fluency, edge and precision of FOOL'S MATE, yet the musicians are mainly the same – Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, and David Jackson – as V.D.G.G. with the addition of Magpie mandolinist Ray Jackson from Lindisfarne and Robert Fripp, an erratic cultish demi-heavy in his own right. The difference has to lie in Hammill's odd decision to record material written for Van der Graaf four or five years ago that was evidently so snappy that V.D.G.G. wouldn't touch it on record. John Anthony, at one time Charisma's resident production whiz, has pulled all of this fifth dimensional jive together like Pete Townshend with a gold single in the re-mix stage to make the most of Trident Studio's extreme suitability for the likes of David Bowie, Elton John, Harry Nilsson, and Genesis.

Despite Hammill's disclaimer that FOOL'S MATE is "an album of songs rather than musical extravaganzae," each number is worked for all it's worth and programmed intelligently. ‘Imperial Zeppelin’ opens the album with a frantic rhumba exhortation to turn on and take off, goes through five distinct changes including a lost-in-space instrumental break, a false ending, and a kitch fifties acappella fade.

‘Candle’ works wonders with Jackson's hit-making mandolin, developing a tango to death, and throwing in some Paulish sweetness that sends a chill up your spine. Hammill is frequently unlucky in love, but he doesn't torch long; every tune seems designed to make us sorry we didn't care about him more when we could have. ‘Happy’ is no less weird in its uniqueness, combining a literary facility that is fortunately closer to Bowie than Brooker, with some Bachish recorder and a nice little bouree on the organ. Hammill's self-assured, but never snide or flashy, theatricality is played off against a great sense of music as metaphor.

Demonstrating this ability even more dramatically is ‘Solitude’, which conveys a richness and ominous serenity that even Bowie can seldom bring off without undercutting himself. Hammill, unlike most English pop geniuses, is not a cartoonist. ‘Solitude’'s acoustic torpor and a feeling of surging power in the band show an understanding of every element that make ‘Moonlight Mile’ great, while ‘Vision’ accompanied by just a piano, Hammill achieves a poignancy that in Rod Stewart makes us think the Mod is the richest soul that ever wore gold lame. What's more Hammill can pull off verses like:
"Be my child
Be my lover,
Swallow me up in your fire cloak,"
without letting this lack of tackiness seem a deficit.

‘Reawakening’ closes side one, with a hard swinging track and a vocal all syncopations and manic slides up and down Hammill's range. As affecting and beautiful and unbelievable as High Mass, ‘Reawakening’ is the most decadently celebratory tune in rock along with ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘The Supermen’. Guy Evans' drumming is stupendous, a Moonish lunacy tempered within the arrangement.

Side two is a reworking of many of the same musical and lyrical concepts with changes in the production, arrangement, and structure, if not the overall tone, sustaining interest in more of the same. Most notable is the ‘Viking Song’, a chilling and almost prehistoric tale of travel that makes ‘Space Oddity’ a little trivial in its technological preoccupation. There is a Seventh Seal majesty and inevitability to this song, undoubtedly the best ever about the sea, in a class with ‘Odessa’ for sheer dignity.

FOOL'S MATE comes to us courtesy of Buddah Records almost six months since the disintegration of Van der Graaf Generator. For those curious about that most curious of bands there is available a fine Chrisma Perspective (CS 2, in England) that covers their career historically and aesthetically and includes previously unreleased cuts.

Hammill himself is beginning to perform with little or no accompaniment other than piano in England. Unfortunately, PAWN HEARS, V.D.G.G.'s last LP and presumably Hammill's latest work is more wearing, busy and monotone than anything before it. FOOL'S MATE strikes a rare balance between self-indulgence and one of the few talents in rock that's worthwhile without being rock and roll."