Review of Van Der Graaf Generator's Godbluff

Released 1975

"Here at the glass - all the usual problems,
all the habitual farce.
You ask, in uncertain voice, what you should do
as if there were a choice".

I doubt that anyone's first encounter with Van Der Graaf Generator is a pleasant or even a comfortable one.

One of the challenges of writing this blog is to divorce my later knowledge and experience of an album and the rest of the band's output from how I felt on that very first listen. Everyone will be able to cite numerous examples of albums which simply didn't work for them the first time around and in some cases, there are examples which don't become enjoyable until years later. My own view is that some artists are so far away from the Zeitgeist (what is the opposite to Zeitgeist?) that a only a minimal frame of reference can be applied to the work at the time; whereas it is possible to 'tune in' to most pieces of music, others are just too odd or 'out there' to be fully appreciated immediately.

I mention this of course because I believe VDGG fall into this category. In this instance I feel that the contrast between it's first airing and my view now is so pronounced, that I will reluctantly pass comment at the end of this review. Otherwise I run the risk of alienating any VDGG virgins!

As a keen and impressionable seventeen year old, I was voraciously consuming anything and everything I could lay my hands on regarding my new found interest in prog rock. Having purchased the first two Marillion albums, and being familiar with the obvious comparisons being drawn between the vocal styles of Fish and Peter Gabriel, I found it interesting that Fish himself saw Peter Hammill as a more direct influence. Therefore, when I stumbled across a copy of Godbluff at my local market, I decided I'd make my own judgement.

Although the prog rock section of my record collection was still in its infancy, I had already given up the on the theory that you could spot a progressive rock album from its cover. The band's logo was borrowed from the stylings of M.C. Escher, renowned for his warped otherworldly perspectives, but the feel of the cover overall, was one of starkness and minimalism, being both literally and figuratively dark.

Laurie Anderson's uber-weird 'O Superman' flashed into my mind when hearing those first few seconds of brief breaths made by what, a flute? a saxophone? This thought was swiftly followed by "Oh God, what have done?". A voice, initially whispering conspiratorially joins in. Words are delivered in a manner somewhere between speaking and singing, dense and dark, absolutely mirroring the feel of the cover art. An ethereal and yet angular keyboard sound combined with the voice and the wind instrument and floated around in the ether. The strangeness of the voice, a million miles away from that of the traditional 'rock' vocalist was very difficult to assimilate. The menace and sustain employed in the 'man' of 'undercover man' was very powerful and impressive allowing a crescendo of sorts to build throughout the duration of the word. But then the voice seems to take on a life of it's own, leaping with wild abandon and little logic into explosions of grandiose poetic mania.

On that first listen, it all seemed so uncontrolled, with no pattern or direction that I found it hard to be drawn along. There was just so much going on. I had considered The Nice to be eclectic, and Yes to be complex, but they both seemed like purveyors of nursery rhymes compared to the apparent tunelessness of this. Occasionally there would be something approximating a saxophone solo, but then the drums would be beating out something in a different time signature entirely and confusing any feeling that this was going somewhere.

I sat back and let the general effect wash over me, hoping for a light bulb moment. It didn't happen. Where was the guitar? What is he going on about? I was nothing short of bewildered as each of the four tracks, which all sounded very similar, wailed on and on. Safe to say, that first listen wasn't a success.

As I intimated at the beginning, I now see the album very differently. It is still a mad and very peculiar album, but I can now see why it ranks so highly amongst not just VDGG devotees but the wider prog audience.

The easiest way to describe why I see it differently now is as follows. Occasionally you will turn on the radio and hear a song that is familiar to you, but for several seconds, although you know you know it and know it very well, it may as well be the very first time you'd ever heard it. Then, out of nowhere, in an instance, and for no obvious reason, you recognise it completely and are mystified as to why it seemed so alien. With Godbluff, one day, for no reason it just seemed to work; I could see the genius of the vocal delivery, I was bowled over by David Jackson's singularly brilliant saxophone playing and I realised that the keyboard sound was at least on a par with the Tony Banks, Tony Kaye and Rick Wakeman's of the world. I could see what Fish was aspiring to achieve but only mimicking.

This may have been uneasy listening, and hardly one to get the dance floor full, but it's eccentricity and Nietzchian-like madness did, in time get it's hooks well and truly into me.