page_title: Van der Graaf Generator
section_title: First reunion (1975–78)
hierarchical_section_title: Van der Graaf Generator / History / First reunion (1975–78)
caption_attribution_description: David Jackson
context_page_description: Van der Graaf Generator are an English progressive rock band, formed in 1967 in Manchester by singer-songwriters Peter Hammill and Chris Judge Smith and the first act signed by Charisma Records. They did not experience much commercial success in the UK, but became popular in Italy during the 1970s. In 2005 the band reformed, and are still musically active with a line-up of Hammill, organist Hugh Banton and drummer Guy Evans.
  The band formed at the University of Manchester, but settled in London where they signed with Charisma. They went through several incarnations in their early years, including a brief split in 1969. When they reformed, they found minor commercial success with The Least We Can Do Is Wave to Each Other, and after the follow-up album, H to He, Who Am the Only One, stabilised around a line-up of Hammill, Banton, Evans and saxophonist David Jackson. The quartet subsequently achieved significant success in Italy with the release of Pawn Hearts in 1971. After several exhausting tours of Italy, the band split in 1972. They reformed in 1975, releasing Godbluff and frequently touring Italy again, before a major line-up change and a slight rename to Van der Graaf.
context_section_description: Hammill's split with the group was amicable, and Banton, Jackson, and Evans, among others, all contributed to his solo work at various times. By February 1975, the members of the band were ready to work with each other in a full-time capacity again, and they decided to reform the band. All the members were keen on carrying on with new music, with no nostalgia for their previous era, and did not want to play earlier stage favourites such as "Killer" (the opening track on H to He, Who Am the Only One) and "Theme One". "We didn't want to continue as if nothing had happened," said Hammill. Banton was in the middle of building a custom organ at the time, and halted the project to join the reformed group, using a rented Hammond C3 organ instead. Hammill began playing electric guitar in the band, which had been conspicuously absent earlier in their career.
  The reformed band worked at a prolific pace, rehearsing, and touring France before recording three new albums in just 12 months, beginning with Godbluff (October 1975). Unlike the earlier work with John Anthony at Trident, the sessions were produced by the band themselves, and both the Melody Maker and Sounds thought they were a tighter and more cohesive unit than previously. The album in particular saw Hammill making significant use of the Hohner clavinet keyboard. Still Life followed on 15 April 1976. Banton considers this album one of his favourites by the group.
  In the summer of 1975, the band gigged in Italy without incident, but when they returned to tour there in November, the intense political situation the country was going through caught up with them. The opening concert in Padua was marked with clashes with communists delivering political speeches, and the audience started throwing missiles towards the stage. After a gig without incident in Genoa, the third day of the tour at the PalaSport in Rome, in front of 40,000 people, saw similar confrontations to the Padua gig. A fire broke out at the venue, but was brought under control. The next day, the band learned that most of their gear had been stolen from the tour van, including Hammill's blue Fender Stratocaster, christened "Meurglys". Despite threats from promoters that the band would continue the tour using hired equipment (which Jackson considered impossible given the electronic modifications he had made to his saxophones), they abandoned the tour. Miraculously, all of Jackson's saxophones had survived the theft.
  In December 1976, following theWorld Record tour, Banton quit, and in January 1977 Nic Potter returned to replace him alongside the violinist Graham Smith (formerly of Charisma folk-rock band String Driven Thing). But when suddenly Jackson also decided to leave the band, a four-piece line-up with a quite different sound, with a shortened  name of Van der Graaf, had to play the spring tour. They produced the album The Quiet Zone/The Pleasure Dome, released in September 1977, and then Charles Dickie joined the band in August on cello and keyboards, and stayed with the band in their last year. A further studio album was never recorded, so that the only document of this line-up is the live double-album Vital, which was recorded in January 1978, and contained at least several new songs. The 2 concerts played for this record also brought a brief reunion with David Jackson, who guested on 6 of the album's tracks. By the time Vital was released, in July 1978, the band had already split, because of lack of record company support in the United States and financial difficulties.
  In 1982 a collection of out-takes and rehearsal recordings from the 1972–1975 hiatus was released (initially on cassette only), called Time Vaults. Intended only as a gift for hardcore fans these are mostly not studio-quality recordings, some of them have even a quite bad audio quality full of distortions.
caption: David Jackson (pictured in 2009) played with the band through the 1970s and for the 2005 reunion.
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