THE PROG INTERVIEW HUGH BANTON

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 longest-serving 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.

Sid Smith

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 sphinx-like 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…

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Prog (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 134

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