The Collected Lyrics Of Judge Smith
is out now in paperback.
It’s not unusual to find Chris Judge Smith amid a pile of books. This is, after all, a man who’s made the written word his living.
“I like telling stories,” he says over video-call from his home study. “That’s why quite a few of my music projects have been long-form story-based. Or ‘songstories’, as I call them.”
At 76, Smith remains one of Britain’s cult treasures. He’s familiar to Peter Hammill fans through his pivotal role in co-founding Van der Graaf Generator in 1967, when the two teenagers were studying at the University of Manchester. And while Smith admits his musical abilities are limited –both as a singer and drummer –he helped VdGG recruit members, secure them a record deal and appeared on their 1969 debut single, People You Were Going To, playing a customised ‘slide sax’.
He went on to co-found jazzrock outfit Heebalob, whose saxophonist, David Jackson would shortly depart for VdGG.
Van der Graaf Generator in 1967. L-R: Peter Hammill, Judge Smith, Nick Pearne.
VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR ARCHIVES/ESOTERIC/AEROSOLREISSUE PROMO
But it was as a conceptualist that Smith found his true calling. In the early 70s he instigated an opera –in tandem with Hammill –based around Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall Of The House Of Usher, an on-off project that took two decades to complete.
Smith spent the interim in myriad ways. He and composer Maxwell Hutchinson created a handful of theatre musicals, beginning with 1976’s The Kibbo Kift, and Smith also wrote for a chamber opera and classical oratorios. His work with Hammill spilled over into the latter’s solo albums, most memorably as creator of Been Alone So Long, Four Pails, Time For A Change and co-writer on The Institute Of Mental Health, Burning.
The advent of digital technology provided the cue for Smith’s sample-laden solo debut proper, 1993’s Dome Of Discovery. But it’s 2000’s Curly’s Airships –the first in his ‘Songstories’ series, exploring a new form of narrative rock music –that serves as his magnum opus. Based around the R101 airship disaster of 1930, which claimed 48 lives, the sprawling double album boasts a parade of guests, among them Arthur Brown, John Ellis, Pete Brown, Hammill and other VdGG alumni. Right now, Smith is enjoying a breather.
“I did album after album from Dome Of Discovery onto [2023’s] Mr McKilowatts Dances, without a break,” he says. “So I didn’t want to dive back in.”
That said, it hasn’t stopped him from composing The Overstayer, a new 17-minute track featuring his old friend David Jackson and the latter’s daughter Dorie.
There is, too, the impending live première of Requiem Mass, Smith’s hugely ambitious rock/symphonic work initially conceived in 1975, but unrecorded until 2016. And the recent publication of The Collected Lyrics Of Judge Smith, a dazzling showcase for his unique literary sensibility. Plenty to go at, in other words.
Dome Of Discovery
, 1994.
JOHN ELLIS