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I Van Der Graaf Generator sono forse il mio gruppo preferito in ambito prog e non solo e quando, nel 2013, ho avuto la possibilità di vederli dal vivo a Pistoia è stato come coronare un sogno. Peccato che, in quell’occasione, l’esibizione fu breve in quanto maggiore spazio fu concesso a Steven Wilson (il quale si è ben guardato dal condividere il palco con uno dei suoi miti dichiarati). Quando il gruppo nel 2005 decise di riunirsi le attese furono molte: i dischi del nuovo corso ovvero “Present” (2005), con ancora David Jackson, “Trisector” (2008) e “A Grounding In Numbers” (2011) hanno dimostrato, pur non essendo obiettivamente dei capolavori, come il Generatore avesse ancora qualcosa da dire. Purtroppo, a causa di non meglio definite incomprensioni, dopo “Present” se ne è andato il mitico sassofonista David Jackson. Non è stata sicuramente una partenza indolore considerando che, storicamente, David Jackson era l’anima dei Van Der Graaf agli occhi del pubblico assieme a Peter Hammill. Onestamente si è perso qualcosa e mi sento di poter dire tranquillamente che si è trattato di una perdita pesantissima tanto che, secondo qualcuno, il gruppo non aveva più senso. Detto questo il Generatore ha saputo riorganizzarsi ed è andato avanti con grande impegno e dedizione per la sua strada. Ne è una chiara dimostrazione questo nuovo stupendo disco dal vivo intitolato “Merlin Atmos” che esce per la Esoteric Antenna. Il tour del 2013 che, come detto, ha toccato anche l’Italia, è stato per certi versi memorabile: la scaletta presentata era semplicemente da brividi. Per dare un’idea è stata proposta per la prima volta interamente la suite epocale “A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers” e, sempre per la prima volta, è stata eseguita come Van Der Graaf Generator la mitica “Flight”, altra suite contenuta nel disco solista di Peter Hammill “A Black Box” (1980).
“Merlin Atmos”, di cui consiglio caldamente la versione limitata Deluxe in 2 cd, è un grande disco che non dovrebbe mancare per nessun motivo a chi adora i Van Der Graaf. Il primo brano è appunto “Flight”: quando l’ho sentita a Pistoia ho visto scorrere qualche lacrima in più di una persona. “A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers” è l’altro pezzo forte del disco: è stata suonata in maniera praticamente perfetta e proviene, come “Flight”, dal concerto di Milano ritenuto dal gruppo il migliore di quel tour: Hammill era in gran forma e, anche se la voce non è più quella di un tempo, ha dato una grande interpretazione sorretto dal grande lavoro di Hugh Banton e Guy Evans. C’è poi una versione pazzesca, corrosiva e da brividi di “Gog”, uno dei cavalli di battaglia di “In Camera” (1974), altro disco solista “hammilliano”. Le canzoni nuove ovvero “Lifetime”, “All That Before” e “Bunsho” sono forse di minor impatto nei confronti di questi capolavori ma in ogni caso non sfigurano.
Il secondo dischetto inizia con 2 brani tratti da “Trisector”: “Interference Patterns” ricorda molto gli Emerson, Lake & Palmer mentre “Over The Hill” è quanto di più vicino agli splendori del passato il gruppo abbia composto. Dopo “Your Time Starts Now” viene dato spazio anche a”Scorched Earth”, tratta dal grandissimo “Godbluff” (1975) e per “Meurglys III, The Songwrites Guild”, suite che proviene invece da “World Record” (1976) . Il livello resta sempre alto anche se non tocca i picchi del primo cd. “Man Erg” è un altro classico proveniente dalla pietra miliare “Pawn Hearts” (1971). La chiusura è affidata a “Childlike Fatih In Childhood’s End” dall’immortale “Still Life” (1976).
“Merlin Atmos” è la testimonianza di un evento storico e la conferma di come il Generatore non si sia mai spento e sia sempre restato attivo in tutti questi anni.
Elenco tracce e testi
10 Scorched Earth (10:13)
(Hammill - Jackson)
Just one crazy moment while the dice are cast,
he looks into the future and remembers what is past,
wonders what he's doing on this battlefield,
shrugs to his shadow, impatient, too proud yet to kneel.
In his wake he leaves scorched earth and work in vain;
smoke drifts up behind him - he is free again,
free to run before the onslaught of a deadly foe,
leaving nothing fit for pillage, hardly leaving home.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Charging madly forward, tracks across the snow,
wind screams madness to him, ever on he goes
leaving spoor to mark his passage, trace his weary climb.
Cross the moor and make the headland -
stumbling, wayward, blind.
In the end his footprints extend as one single line.
This latest exponent of heresy is goaded into an attack,
persuaded to charge at his enemy.
Too late, he knows it is, too late now to turn back,
too soon by far to falter.
The past sits uneasily at his rear,
he's walking right into the trap,
surrounded, but striving through will and fear.
Ahead of him he knows there waits an ambuscade
but the dice slip through his fingers
and he's living from day to day,
carrying his world around upon his back,
leaving nothing behind but the tell-tale of his track.
He will not be hostage, he will not be slave,
no snare of past can trap him, though the future may.
Still he runs and burns behind him in advanced retreat;
still his life remains unfettered - he denies defeat.
It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone.
Leave the past to burn - at least that's been his own.
Scorched earth, that's all that's left when he's done;
holding nothing but beholden to no-one,
claiming nothing, out of no false pride, he survives.
Snow tracks are all that's left to be seen
of a man who entered the course of a dream,
claiming nothing but the life he's known
- this, at least, has been his own.
13 Childlike Faith in Childhood's End (12:36)
Existence is a stage on which we pass,
a sleepwalk trick for mind and heart;
it's hopeless, I know, but onward I must go
and try to make a start
at seeing something more
than day to day survival, chased by final death.
if I believed this the sum of the life to which we've come,
I wouldn't waste my breath.
Somehow, there must be more.
There was a time when more was felt than known
but now, entrenched inside my sett,
in light more mundane, thought rattles round my brain:
we live, we die...and yet?
In the beginning there was order and destiny
but now that path has reached the border
and on our knees is no way to face the future, whatever it be.
Though the forces which hold us in place
last through eons in unruffled grace
we, too, wear the face of creation.
As anti-matter sucks and pulses periodically
the bud unfolds, the bloom is dead, all space is living history.
It seems as though time must betray us yet we're alive
and though I see no God to save us, still we survive
through the centuries of progress
which don't get us very far.
All illusion! All is bogus...
we don't yet know what we are.
Laughing, hoping, praying, joking, Son of Man,
with lowered eyes but lifting hearts, we're grains of sand
and though, in time, the sea may claim us for its own
we are the rocks which root the future - on us it grows!
We might not be there to share it
if eternity's a jest but I think that I can bear it
if the next life is the best.
Even if there is a heaven when we die,
endless bliss would be as meaningless as the lie
that always comes as answer to the question
"Why do we see through the eyes of creation?"
Adrift without a course,
it's very lonely here,
our only conjecture
what lies behind the dark.
Still, I find I can cling to a lifeline,
think of a lifetime which means more than my own one,
dreams of a grander thing than we are.
Time and Space hang heavy on my shoulders...
when all life is over who can say
no mutated force shall remain?
Though the towers of the city are denied to we men of clay
still we know we shall scale the heights some day.
Frightened in the silence, frightened, but thinking very hard,
let us make computations of the stars.
Older, wiser, sadder, blinder, watch us run:
faster, longer, harder, stronger, now it comes...
colour blisters, image splinters gravitate
towards the centre, in final splendour disintegrate.
The universe now beckons
and Man, too, must take His place;
just a few last fleeting seconds
to wander in the waste,
and the children who were ourselves move on,
reincarnation stills its now perfected song,
and at last we are free of the bonds of creation.
All the jokers and gaolers, all the junkies and slavers too,
all the throng who have danced a merry tune...
human we can all be, but Humanity we must rise above,
in the name of all faith and hope and love.
There's a time for all pilgrims, and a time for the fakers too,
there's a time when we all will stand alone and nude,
naked to the galaxies...naked, but clothed in the overview:
as we reach Childhood's End we must start anew.
And though dark is the highway,
and the peak's distance breaks my heart,
for I never shall see it, still I play my part,
believing that what waits for us
is the cosmos compared to the dust of the past.
In the death of mere Humans Life shall start!
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