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How I bit the bullet



Hello again,

just occurred to me; an interesting query would be on how everybody was
first introduced / struck by The Who.

On the Peter Hammill (PH) list -or rather the fanzine Pilgrims- this is
known as "How I bit the bullet", and some years back I wrote my own "bullet"
for this mag. which I put on my homepages and append just as example below -
bewarned, three Who mentionings only! but it gives a flavour of what I mean
I guess.
So how did you guys/girls "hit The Who bullet"?
(I'll work on my own Who-one tommorrow).

cheers, Rene

***** My old "Hammill" bullet written for the PH fanzine Pilgrims in 1992
****
HOW I BIT THE BULLET (twice), by Rene Bos
Starting from my early teens, my musical interests developed rapidly from
glam rock acts like Slade, to the Who - whose Quadrophenia I still value
highly - and then to symphonic rock, particularly Yes (Tales!) and Camel,
and Jazz Rock. At 15, I thought I owned quite a large collection of albums,
but I was extremely impressed when I saw the collection of my friend's
brother: about 5 times as large, including virtually every LP I had. During
that time, '77, I often went to the local library where one could also rent
LP's, and there I saw an album by a group whose name I'd remembered (how can
you forget!) from going through my friends' brothers' collection. It was
"Still Life" by Van Der Graaf Generator.

The neat cover and the "Escherian" font made me decide to try it out.
Although I didn't particularly like the first song -certainly not that odd
break "Away ..."- the thing that struck me was the singers' VOICE - Peter
Hammill; Peter Who?
However, only after "Still Life" started, my attention had been fully drawn!
Not only this remarkable voice, but the singing was part of intriguing
music, both simple and complex, with many changes in tempo, sound and
atmosphere (like, if you will, Yes), yet being a real song, like, if you
will, Pete Townshend could write. By the end of "La Rossa" I knew I'd buy
the record. Side two started off nicely, but I found "My Room" too long, too
quiet and too monotonous (I don't think so now!). Yet, this was more than
balanced by the other song of side two. I bought the album, and from the
library I rented two other LP's, Godbluff and World Record, which -though
not as good as Still life- I also liked and bought. I remember also renting
one or two other (older) VdGG albums and PH solo albums, but I did not like
them at all, I guess because these were less "symphonic" and even much
further away from Yes and Camel as in fact Still life/Godbluff/World Record
already were. Slightly later, The Quiet Zone was released and I immediately
liked that one and during 1977-78 I listened to this and Still Life quite a
lot (often omitting the first song of both side 1 and 2 of the latter!). Yet
my favourites at that time remained Quadro by The Who and Tales by Yes!.

After I'd bought Vital, which I'd found highly disappointing, my interest in
PH/VdGG slowly diminished. In 1980 I went to University in Enschede and my
musical interests were broadened (e.g. Siouxi, Sibelius, Joy Division, Kate
Bush, Brel, Cohen, Nick Drake and later Nick Cave and Foetus (only Nail!),
not in the least by the presence of a very large library run by students
(lots of items on your want list will be in this library!). It wasn't until
sunday 8 april 1984 that I really became a PH addict: for the first time I
went to see PH perform live, in the Royal Theatre Carre, Amsterdam. I had
actually caught a flue (I'm the one you can hear coughing quite a lot on the
recording of this concert), but I went nevertheless, because I already had
the ticket in advance (I'd payed for it, so I went; I'm Dutch!). To be
short, I'd never experienced such an intensive event, the band giving us all
it's got, and then of course this voice!! No LP/CD/recording has ever done
justice to the real PH voice!!!!
The week after april 8th I was sick. The next week, I rented/taped all the
VdGG/PH I could get hold of, and of course recorded the, almost completely
broadcasted, Carre show (why didn't those guys who made the bootleg A
Stranger Still track down a much better recording, mine is qualitatively
virtually similar to that of e.g. Room Temperature). Since I ran across an
ad in OOR from someone (where are you Maurice?) who sold tapes of PH, I also
started to collect tapes and other stuff and tried to complete my vinyl
collection. It took me till 1986 to track down the last one, "The future
now", in Seattle (!). Being no longer a student (with lots of spare time) or
a Ph-D student (with slowly diminishing spare time), but "Careering" at
"Shell"-laboratories in Amsterdam, I've become slightly less a PH fanatic as
a few years ago; but both "Usher" as well as "Fireships" almost made me bit
the bullet for the third time.

Rene Bos (written in 1992 for Pilgrims)

http://www.xs4all.nl/~renebos My Home Page