Carry On Following That Camel
It’s always good for a band like Camel to look back at landmark moments that have helped to define their career. And certainly the two shows at the Royal Albert Hall – in 1975 and 2018 – being celebrated in this issue of Prog (see page 40) were crucial to them. However, founder member Andrew Latimer is not someone to dwell on the past. Inevitably, the guitarist/vocalist wants to look to the future and what it might hold.
This autumn sees the release of live DVD/Blu-ray Camel At The Royal Albert Hall, a cinematic document of the results of a spectacular comeback for the band, in spite of Latimer’s past health issues and a testament to the love from their fanbase. We grabbed put it onto an album. Until or unless that happens, there will not be any new record that involves me.
“I feel that I am still writing as well as I have ever done,” he explains. “And I do want to put out the new stuff. But only if it can be done on my terms.”
Having steered the reinvigorated Camel since 2010, Latimer’s fully aware of the problems that now face any band when they put out new music, and that’s to make it financially viable.
“In the good old days, you released an album, and you knew the fans would go out and buy a copy,” he says. “I’m not saying you took the fans for granted at all – that never happened. But if you recorded a decent album, then you could feel some time with a positive and jovial-sounding Latimer on the phone from his Wiltshire home as he planned the next steps for the new Camel. And our first request was, of course, beyond 17 years ago?
