Off the Beaten Track # 14: A Louse is not a Home by Peter Hammill

“They don’t make ’em like this any more. Actually, they didn’t at the time. Then, you were a serious concrete artist, or a sensitive singer-songwriter, or an all-out rocker, or a Progmeister, or whatever. Weren’t you? As now…aren’t you? Get in your cage or box! I begged, I beg, to differ.“

Peter Hammill writing about his 1974 album In Camera on his Sofa Sound website

Fifty years ago, in 1974, Peter Hammill had a prolific year, releasing two solo albums In Camera in July and The Silent Corner and the Empty Stage in February. The latter album at times feels like an album recorded by his group Van der Graaf Generator, rather than a solo effort. The song ‘A Louse is not a Home’ was originally meant for the band’s follow-up album after Pawn Hearts (1971) and although the band performed the song on tour in 1972 they split for a while before recording another album. But with Hugh Banton on bass and organ, Guy Evans on drums and David Jackson on saxophone this song feels like a joint enterprise. Hammill has resisted his music being categorised, as shown in the quote above, and his output is notable for its variety, from long-form prog epics to heartfelt love songs, moving ballads (like ‘Autumn‘ from his 1977 solo album Over), heavy rock, the experimental and proto-punk. This track lands firmly in the progressive rock category – it’s over 12 minutes long and is divided into several instrumental and vocal sections.

The song is a supreme example of the range and power of Hammill’s remarkable voice. As Nick Hasted of The Independent on Sunday wrote in 2004,

It’s his singing that always gets talked about first. Hammill once aspired to be “the Hendrix of the voice” and to that end in the late Sixties he blew out amplifiers as if on a mission. John Lydon [Johnny Rotten] admitted partly basing his punk howl on him. 

Each section is given a title in Hammill’s book, KILLERS, ANGELS, REFUGEES published in 1974. The song contains some of Hammill’s most profound lyrics, which stand up well when set out on the page as poetry in his book. It’s a meditation on the nature of modern existence, and the house (or ‘louse’ of the title, a play on the words ‘a house is not a home’) becomes a metaphor for the protagonist’s varying mental condition, creating a work of art that is exhilarating, terrifying, poignant and occasionally optimistic.

Part I The Mirror on the Landing (0:00 – 3:00)

The track begins with Hammill singing very low in his range, like Nick Cave or Tom Waits, with ominous piano chords. This creates a gothic atmosphere which continues throughout the opening section. There’s a touch of madness and melodrama here, with demented saxophone fanfares winding round Hammill’s voice. The language and imagery are gothic too – Hammill uses archaic language such as ‘betimes’. The line ‘a cracked mirror ‘mid the drapes’, creates an image of the protagonist withdrawn from life, like the Victorian poet Lord Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, who lives in a high tower in a castle on the river that flows to Camelot,

'The mirror cracked from side to side;
'The curse is come upon me,' cried
 The Lady of Shalott.'

From The Lady of Shalott (1832) by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809 - 1892)

The protagonist thinks he could make his home in another castle, a ‘lofty, lonely Lohengrinic castle in the clouds’, a reference to Neuschwanstein (literally ‘new swan stone’) Castle in Bavaria, named by King Ludwig II (1845 – 1886) after the Swan Knight, the title character in Richard Wagner’s opera Lohengrin (1850).

A pastoral passage with gentle flute poignantly evokes the protagonist’s desire to ‘find a place to hide my home’, somewhere to withdraw from the world. Earlier in this section Hammill’s voice becomes so menacing and distorted that it’s reminiscent of one of Hendrix’s distorted guitars, but his voice is much quieter and more contemplative here. A short, elegant, almost Baroque section for piano and woodwind leads to Part II.

Part II The Mental Ferule (3:00 – 7:00)

After the brief moment of respite, the second part leads to a brutal bass line and weighty drums, with syncopated rhythms, very characteristic of Van der Graaf at their most progressive and extreme. Hammill’s vocals are so agitated and unsettled that they almost fail to keep time with the backing instruments. The first ‘house’ in this section is made of glass, adapted from the expression ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’, used to describe hypocrisy. But Hammill instead uses the glass house as a metaphor for paranoia, a place where ‘every movement is charted.’ The monitor screens – now dark – which usually watch his every move, remind us of the ‘telescreens’, the two-way video screens in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) through which Big Brother surveilles the population. But even when the video screen is switched off, there’s another presence in the house,

'Sometimes I get the feeling
There's someone else there:
The faceless watcher, he makes me uneasy
I can feel him through the floorboards
And his presence is creepy'

It appears at first that the ‘presence’ could be a ghost, or even a supernatural being or presence, a common trope of horror films such as Paranormal Activity (2007). But the next ‘house’ suggests a religious presence, the human soul or conscience, or perhaps even God himself. Although the house is now made of ‘brick or lead’ like a traditional English home, there’s overtly religious imagery here, describing a spiritual journey to a higher existence. This relates to the state of religious ecstasy described in another track on the album ‘The Lie (Bernini’s St Theresa)’. (See ‘Peter Hammill and the Jesuits’ below). On the current track, Hammill describes devouring fruit, presumably the Biblical fruit of knowledge, and laying your body before the shrine.’ But instead of reaching St Theresa’s swooning state of grace, as shown in the image below, the protagonist worships at the altar of high art, ‘with poems and posies and papers.’

But the religious image soon returns. The title of this section, ‘The Mental Ferule’ may need a little explanation, particularly as googling the word ‘ferule’ brings up the word ‘ferrule’, a piece of rubber or metal that protects the end of a walking stick or umbrella. A ‘ferule’ according to Collins English Dictionary, is an instrument of punishment, ‘a flat piece of wood, such as a ruler, used in some schools to cane children on the hand.’ The protagonist asks what home is, and one possibility is a, ‘beating at the hands of your Protector’. This could refer to being beaten at school, although the capitalisation of the word Protector¹ suggests that Jesus, who is often known as the Defender and Protector of Christians, is inflicting the punishment. The religious ‘idol’ may have ‘feet of clay’, or in other words have human faults. The strange presence referred to earlier is now also given capitals, ‘I’ve never actually seen Him, but I know He’s in my home.’ This image relates back to the gothic imagery of Part I – it’s revealed that it’s a religious Force (again with a capital) that ‘cracks the mirror.’ The whole section is a frightening but invigorating description of the deepest of existential and religious crises. Although the protagonist’s relationship with God is ambiguous at best, he fears what might happen if He (God) leaves the house. In one of the most poignant moments in the whole song, the protagonist, very sweetly voiced here by Hammill, breaks down, no longer knowing what he believes,

'And if He goes away
I can't stay here either
I believe... er... I think...
Well, I don't know...'

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Part III Home is (7.45 – 12.31)

Part II segues into the final part, Hammill’s gentle falsetto voice drifting disturbingly upwards as other instruments join and the song slowly rallies itself. Instrumentally, Part III is very much a Van der Graaf song, sounding like the prog rock epic ‘A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers’ from Pawn Hearts (1971). This section takes the protagonist even deeper into his existential crisis. He finally realises that his home could be inside him,

'Home is home is home is home is home is home is home is me!'

The sentiment is similar to that of the poet T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets

'Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living.'

From East Coker, Four Quartets (1943) by T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

But despite this realisation about home, the protagonist’s existential, crisis gets even worse,

Day is just a word I use
To keep the dark at bay
People are imaginary, nothing else exists
Except the room I'm sitting in
And, of course, the all-pervading mist -
Sometimes I wonder if even that's real

There is at least a moment of truth when he wonders whether even the mist is real, but he has reached a very low point. The track ends with an anthemic section, similar in musical feel to the end of ‘A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers’. But whereas that track ends on a note of hope, ‘Begin to fell very glad now…’, the current track poignantly collapses into ruins, with organ chords that feel they are about to resolve into a concrete ending but never do,

'Sometimes I think I'll disappear, sometimes I think...
I... I... I...I...'

This final failed attempt to assert an identity, after over 12 minutes of existential angst, is very moving, ending one of Hammill’s finest songs.

Sources

KILLERS, ANGELS, REFUGEES Words 1966 – 1973 (Second Edition Sofa Sound, 1980)
Hasted, Nick Peter Hammill: Heart attack music (The Independent on Sunday 27 June 2004)
sofasound.com

1. It should be noted that there is inconsistency in the use of capitalisation. For instance the lyrics on Hammill’s website capitalise the word ‘Protector’ whereas the book uses the form ‘protector’. ↩︎