Hope and Spray

Like many of the great progressive rock stories, the Van der Graaf Generator saga began with a meeting of unsuspecting kindred spirits. Both arriving at Manchester University in the mid-60s, aspiring young musicians Peter Hammill and Chris Judge Smith could easily have never met, but fate had other ideas. A sign on the Students’ Union noticeboard asked whether anyone was interested in forming a rock band. Hammill had been writing songs and harbouring creative ambitions for years, while Smith had just returned from an enlightening trip to California at the height of the psychedelic movement. Forming a rock band was exactly what they both had in mind.

“About 30 people turned up in response to the ad,” Smith tells . “Peter was there, on the floor, playing a guitar. I staggered over to listen and it was a good song but I didn’t recognise it. I asked him whose song it was and he said it was his. I said, ‘Blimey, got any more like that?’ [Laughs] He had 30 or 40, so I thought, ‘Ah ha, this guy’s good!’ That was how we got talking about maybe