Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s Hugh Banton. As Van der Graaf Generator’s longestserving keyboard player, his distinctive organ lines have underpinned the band’s best-known songs over three key periods of their career. Here, the one-time BBC engineer and organ builder recounts VdGG’s formative years and their reunion in the mid-00s – as explored in the new box set, Interference Patterns. He reveals to Prog why he’s proud of their creative output… and why he finally accepts the prog rock label.

Words: Sid Smith

No running back: Van der Graaf Generator circa 1969. L-R: Guy Evans, Hugh Banton, Peter Hammill, Keith Ellis.

Interference Patterns is out now.

KEVIN NIXON

While other keyboard players of the late 1960s and mid-1970s have lugged their instruments about the stage, hurled cutlery at the keys, or appeared as a caped magician encircled by a towering array of technology in a swirl of dry ice, Hugh Banton has sat sphinxlike behind his modest bank of keyboards since beginning his association with Van der Graaf Generator in 1968. He’s been a resolute and unflappable presence, providing much of the instrumental power driving the unorthodox, turbulent sounds crackling from the band.

Having learned piano from the age of four, Banton grew into an accomplished organist, but left performance behind to become a trainee engineer at the BBC. However, the creative explosion in pop music in the 60s, particularly with the Arthur Brown group, pulled his professional life in a different direction. Attracted to complexities and possibilities within Van der Graaf Generator, Banton had a pivotal role in getting the band noticed by Tony Stratton-Smith, which later led to a crucial signing to the fledgling Charisma label.

With a keen ear for textural detail, Banton’s thoughtful approach music is inextricably woven into the very soul and fabric of the group’s sound; it resonates and resounds throughout a long and eventful career as one of progressive music’s most distinctive acts. The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other and its follow-up, H To He, Who Am The Only One, both released in 1970, and 1971’s Pawn Hearts, garnered them a cult following, especially in Europe, but a lack of financial support saw them split.

Their dramatic reappearance and delivery of another trio of striking albums between 1975 to 1978, beginning with Godbluff, added to their legendary status, while 2005’s long-awaited return with Present cemented their reputation for continued experimentation and a refusal to indulge in nostalgia. A new 14-disc box set, Interference Patterns: The Recordings 2005- 2016, presents an overview of the later chapters of the Van der Graaf Generator story.