Every month we get inside the mind of one of the biggest names in music. This issue it’s David Jackson. As Van der Graaf Generator’s on/off saxophonist, he played a key role in the band’s sound during their heyday on albums that include Pawn Hearts and H To He, Who Am The Only One. Here, he reminisces about the Six-Bob Tour, hitting No.1 in the Italian charts, the events that led to the creation of 2005’s Present, and explains why he decided to update Pioneers Over c on his latest release with Dutch percussionist René van Commenée.

Words: Julian Marszalek

Even at the height of the first wave of prog rock, Van der Graaf Generator were a breed apart. Driven by Peter Hammill’s idiosyncratic songwriting, Hugh Banton’s expressive and expansive organ playing and Guy Evans’s declamatory drumming, there was darkness emanating from the band that cast a long shadow over the opening overs of the 1970s. And there, in the

PRESS/SEAN KELLY thick of their attack, was the extraordinary saxophone work of David Jackson. No polite blowing from him, but a brass hurricane that whipped up a sonic storm fed through a phalanx of pedals and effects that largely negated guitars while creating a style of his own.

Keep Your Lane is out now.

Jackson and VdGG may not have been without honour except in their own country –they only troubled the UK Top 50 album chart once –but their status in Italy was comparable to Godzilla’s rampage across Tokyo with riots following in their wake.

Yet despite their overseas success, punishing schedules, financial mismanagement and domestic indifference lead to VdGG’s first split in 1972. And while Hammill ploughed his own individual furrow – often with the help of his erstwhile bandmates –the rest of the band would carry on as The Long Hello. Jackson’s health faltered in the wake of VdGG’s first reunion and he first retrained as an HGV driver before moving into education and music therapy and then working with VdGG one last time in the 00s. Now reuniting with percussionist René van Commenée on their new album Keep Your Lane, he looks back at his career from a vantage point of over 50 years.

"I felt at times that VdGG was a bit out of control."

David Jackson and his daughter Dorie team up in Kaprekar’s Constant.

Who or what drew you to the saxophone?

It was my big brother, who was a brilliant clarinettist and then he took up the sax. And it was, “Oh, God! He’s got a sax now! What’s that?” And because I went to a very traditional English public school, the saxophone had not been accepted yet. When I eventually got one and took it to the school, after a couple of years, they said, “Enough is enough! The saxophone must go home now, David. You are the best flautist in the school. Take that evil thing away!” And my parents said, “The saxophone and the boy are now fused together.” So the school said, “We’ll keep the boy, but will you tell him to turn it down?” I practised two to four hours every day in school because there was nothing else to do.