Talk:Peter Hammill

lyrics
I think the article should attempt to describe what makes Hammill's lyrics so distinctive (although of course it's their combination with his vocal delivery which tends to *really* make them distinctive) - but they do feature a lot of vocabulary, literacy & imagery not generally present in yer average pop song, and the article should note this - to the casual wiki reader unfamiliar with his music, it's certainly which differentiates him from Madonna or Kylie Minogue :) or Anyone, for that matter :) However I'm struggling to find a way to say this without descending into fanboy PoV blabber though. Anyone lend a hand?--feline1 11:58, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Added a sentence that tries to address your point (with which I wholeheartedly concur), but much more could be said. Richardrj 12:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Progressive Rock or not?
I won't change it back again, but I think you're the one being silly in insisting that Hammill is a progressive rock musician :) May I ask politely how much you know about him?  I have every one of the 50-odd PH/VdGG albums and have seen him live countless times, and my firm belief is that he has absolutely nothing to do with the genre of progressive rock.--Richardrj 08:57, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have about 30 of his albums and have been to most of his UK shows since the early mid 1990s. I also once gave myself throat nodules by singing "Birthday Special". And I have no great love of "genres"... but petulantly declaring that Hammill has "absolutely nothing" to do with prog rock is just ludicrous. VdGG are one of the quintissential prog bands. Just because Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues are sickening drivel does not change this, I'm afraid. And pedantry and artistic pretentions aside, the link is appropriate and relevant to the casual reader who wants to place Hammill within his peers in the UK music scene from the late 60s onward.--feline1 11:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Nothing petulant about it, it's just the way I feel about his music. No need to flame me, I was trying to have a friendly discussion.--Richardrj 15:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I have tried to convey some of this controversy in the article. The least to be said about it, is that it is a controversy amongst admirers of Hammill's music.--Mark in wiki 16:45, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. My feeling is that while it may be justified (although still contentious) to describe VdGG as progressive rock, Hammill's solo albums only really fit this description up to and including In Camera. From Nadir's Big Chance onward, the solo albums inhabit an entirely unique musical universe.--Richardrj 13:12, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Discography
I've made a couple of changes, splitting collaborations and guest appearances. The rationale is that the former are credited as 'PH and...' whereas the latter are credited to the other artist alone. And I've moved Veracious to the main discography section, since it seems to me to be more of a PH album than a PH/SG album - as evidenced by the fact that it is credited as 'PH with SG' rather than 'PH and SG'. --Richardrj 14:58, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Place ratings on Wikipedia?
Please see my comment on the ph7 discussion: PH7 (Peter Hammill album). However I see other artists and albums have already received ratings too.

I don't think it's a good idea. But I guess I have no choice to make use of the ratings system too...--Peter Eisenburger 15:33, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Image gallery
What do you think about designing the discography as an image gallery like described here? I would prefer the layout of the Beatles example. Since I own nearly all PH albums I could contribute the images. However, it should be checked first whether the one or two that I miss are availabe from you, my friends, or other sources.--Peter Eisenburger 16:47, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I have now completed the studio albums and will add other categories like live albums during the next days as well as write some missing album articles in the future.
 * I suggest to move "Unsung" to a category "Collaborations and miscellaneous", as well as some other albums like Peter does it on his homepage What do you think? --Peter Eisenburger 08:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I have completed the Live Albums. I let the compilations etc. untouched as long as these albums have no own pages because the gallery style would eliminate the annotations that Richard has wrote.--Peter Eisenburger 18:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, that was it.--Peter Eisenburger 09:55, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a great shame. As far as I can tell the gallery falls foul of the ruling that "The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, and navigational and user-interface elements is normally regarded as merely decorative, and is thus unacceptable."  The leap from decorative to unacceptable is staggering, in my view.  Thanks for all the work you did on it. --Richardrj talkemail 10:44, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I was borrowing the layout from the Beatles discography. - Have you noticed that a group of admins and users is working on forbidding the use of album and book covers at all if no extensive critical comments are made in the article on the covers? It's starting to get the bureaucratic way like many things are handled here in Germany where "fair use" is not accepted by policy at all. Only "free images". All the articles about albums, movies, books may not show pictures like in the English Wikipedia. You can't place a logo, nothing. -
 * I will use some of the PH album covers that have been deleted in articles I am preparing. Have you got some work in progress? I don't want to interfere.--Peter Eisenburger 11:03, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not doing anything PH/VdGG-related on Wikipedia at the moment. No time! Best wishes, --Richardrj talkemail 11:29, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The next article is out. Not one of my favourites PH albums but I already had some material for this one. Feel free to edit my English.--Peter Eisenburger 18:35, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Guitarist tag
The guitarist tag is misleading. I wouldn't see Peter Hammill as a genuine "guitarist". --Peter Eisenburger 15:07, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * ? He has composed around half his songs on guitar, and has played some electric or acoustic guitar at almost every live concert and every album he's recorded.--feline1 12:02, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Needs a lot of work
Hi, I was just browsing. As somebody who isn't an expert I have to say that this article needs a lot of work. The biography is mainly a long ramble about the distinction between Hammill's solo work and is group work. There is no real biographical information. No sources are cited. All in all, not very encyclopedic. If somebody wants to work on the article, I'm hoping that this general reader's impressions will help.

80.2.81.217 15:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)Matthew

Fair use criteria
The use of images not in compliance with our fair-use criteria or our policy on nonfree content is not appropriate, and the images have been removed. Please do not restore them. — M o e   ε  23:36, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

Viking
The reference to Viking, to illustrate a (useful) point about literary influences, is not only outdated (the song dates from 1967), but it's also a song that was not written by Hammill alone, but by Hammill/Smith. Maybe a better example can be found? Mark in wiki (talk) 15:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

About 2006
There's the following sentence: "has announced plans for a British and European tour in November," which is not very timely anymore, besides it fell through (there were 4 concerts in Japan, that's all), and there's a link to http://www.sofasound.com/nlnow.htm, which is not the newsletter this info came from, but rather the latest newsletter. Always only the latest newsletter stays online, and this link leads to the latest. So I removed the (obsolete) link and shortened the sentence. Mark in wiki (talk) 15:52, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Influences
I like finding little snippets in Peter's music that were sure to be inspirations for other artists. The more I listen to Hammill's old albums the more I hear such examples.

From "Over", the beginning of "Autumn" sounds like it could have inspired the beginning of Marillion's awesome titletrack to "Script for a Jester's Tear" and "Yoga" could have served as an idea for "Emerald Lies" on "Fugazi". Also from "Over", the song "Lost and Found" may have given Pink Floyd a few ideas for "Comfortably Numb". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cifrocco (talk • contribs) 21:25, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Album cover image
The reason why it was deleted is that album covers are only allowed if they are used to illustrate the album itself, not the artist. So it will probably get deleted again very soon, unfortunately. We need to find a suitable image of him to illustrate this article. I have been thinking about using an image from Flickr for this. There are plenty of good pictures of him on there, and I understand that in certain circumstances images from Flickr may be used here without a problem. I don't know any more about this, however. Anyone? --Richardrj talkemail 05:16, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, I was searching for the 'rule' on that (album cover as artist image) but haven't found it, Can you point me in the right direction? :) (maybe I gaffed there!) Stephenjh (talk) 06:01, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Non-free content no.1 is the relevant rule. It seems excessive to me, but rules such as this are zealously enforced these days. --Richardrj talkemail 06:17, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I added a picture I took at his concert in NYC this week. Freely licensed, up-to-date, and about the only good picture I got all night! gotroot801 • talk 12:34, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Charakterization
It's rather clueless working in the paragraphs w/o referencing and rewriting much of the article. But I didn't find "strange" as appropriate, and I never came across this attribute in any of the reviews and literature about Hammill.--Peter Eisenburger (talk) 14:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

More encyclopedic
Am trying to make the article look more professional and encyclopedic. I think those remarks "needs additional citations for verification" and "may contain original research or unverified claims" were very much true when they were placed there, and we should really get rid of it (by adding sources and removing some of the more vague info, for instance). An encyclopedic article about Peter Hammill deserves that, I think. Please help. I use 'Van der Graaf Generator - The Book' by Jim Christopulos and Phil Smart as a primary source. I feel that there should be a collection of footnotes in the article, instead of the current links here and there. I also feel that there should be some division of the career into sixties, seventies, eighties and later, or something like that (see articles of other musicians, Robert Fripp for instance). Please change. Please improve. Please help. Greetings.Mark in wiki (talk) 13:06, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Go this way, Mark. But you have to use the Wikipedia reference style (Citing_sources and corresponding manuals). You can also have a look at "Articles of the Day" how to reference. Don't write the book titles in the text. Other great PH material is at Couchnoise. Some more references and you can delete the tags. --Peter Eisenburger (talk) 14:31, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The following statements should remain in the article I think, but they definitely need a source. Who can help me find those?
 * Hammill himself has stated that he does not want to be put in [...] any music label at all
 * he growls [...] in ways that have drawn comparison with the guitar playing of Jimi Hendrix
 * He has been married since 1978
 * his wife's name is Hilary
 * and they have three children
 * If we do not find sources, I really think these statements need to be deleted. --Mark in wiki (talk) 09:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Once we have a source for 3, 4 and 5, the tag "original research or unverified claims" may be removed, I feel, and once we have 1 and 2 also, I feel the "additional citations"-tag may be removed. Oh, and should this personal info (3, 4, and 5) be in the article anyway? Maybe it needs to go, regardless of a good source. --Mark in wiki (talk) 11:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Statement without references can be deleted after a while but should not be deleted. Given your examples I am not sure about 78 and the term "growl".--Peter Eisenburger (talk) 11:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I am not sure I understand, "can be deleted [...] but should not be deleted"? --Mark in wiki (talk) 11:44, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry. "can be deleted if you are bold" but "has not to be deleted by any means". if the statement is plausible and the article has a good structure of references.--Peter Eisenburger (talk) 12:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay. I did it. Removed the tags. I think the article is a lot better now. It still needs some more references. I will add those if and when I find them. Thanks for the helpful and encouraging words, Peter! --Mark in wiki (talk) 08:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Manchester University
I was at Manchester with him in September 1967. He was regarded in the Hall of Residence Owen's Park with some awe as 'that guy in the up and coming band'. I never saw him after the end of that academic year - I supposed he dropped out to concentrate on VdGG. 89.168.90.197 (talk) 20:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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 * Added archive http://web.archive.org/web/20091103101313/http://www.couchnoise.com:80/years/1983.htm to http://www.couchnoise.com/years/1983.htm
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Merge Fie into Hammill
Recently there was a nomination for deletion of the article Fie! Records, and the consensus was to merge it into the article Peter Hammill.

The article Fie! Records is not much more than a list of Peter Hammill releases (and a few others) with their release number. The releases by Peter Hammill are obviously (and in greater detail) already mentioned on the page Peter Hammill discography, and those by Van der Graaf Generator on the page Van der Graaf Generator discography. I am not sure what relevance mentioning these release numbers could have in an encyclopedic context, but if there is such a relevance, I feel it may be the best option to incorporate it in the respective discography pages. Mark in wiki (talk) 17:18, 10 November 2023 (UTC)