Freddie B on Lol Hammond
June 27th, 2002 by freddie96
Recently a debate raged on this site’s Forum about the relevance of punk rock today. For many people – especially those who were too young at the time to have experienced it for themselves – it now seems to sounds like just so much sound and fury, signifying almost nothing.
This certainly isn’t true for Lol Hammond. Watching The Clash’s wonderfully raw ‘Rude Boy’ movie together, we came upon the scene where they play the Anti-Nazi League Rally in Victoria Park, Hackney (1978). A riotous, high energy event at which The Clash’s roadies literally had to fight off the stage manager after he pulled the plug on Joe Strummer’s crew. Plugged back in, they stormed through a high-octane version of ‘White Riot’ with Jimmy Pursey joining them onstage. ‘I was there,’ Lol grins. ‘It was quite something.’
Indeed it was. For without the incendiary example of punk, it’s fair to say that neither of us would be sitting together in Lol’s leafy Dulwich street listening to and talking about music one weekday afternoon. For whatever else it was – and it was a good many things besides – punk was a direct invitation to live life on your own terms and, especially, to do it for yourself, whatever ‘it’ might be.
It was a lesson Lol took to heart, picking up a guitar and teaching himself how to play it. Some years later he found himself involved in the next great wave of the DIY ethic, creating dance parties and the records to fuel them. And now here he is doing it once more with The Big Chill, which in many respects is DIY all over again, only in different clothes (and much cleaner ones at that).
Seeing Lol’s eyes light up as The Clash tear through ‘White Riot’, I wonder idly to myself if the urge to do it for yourself underlies all great musical and artistic innovation. Why else do so many people expend so much precious energy on creating new music if not to satisfy that urge? Certainly this seems to apply to Lol, who in musical terms is entirely self-taught. When his girlfriend’s granny died at the ripe old age of 98, a baby grand piano came home to roost. Lol taught himself how to play it, creating in the process tunes such as ‘Baby Piano’.
When the film is over, Lol plays it for me. It’s quite something hearing that piece rendered in its original form; such a gentle, melancholic piece, full of unresolved emotion. The other tracks Lol goes on to play – material for his forthcoming ‘Piano Lessons’ EP – all share a similar quality. To my ears they sound like mathematical problems that have to be teased out, note by note, and chord by chord, in the emotional language of music. Think Harold Budd and Steve Reich on a relaxed afternoon and you might begin to get the picture. ‘I’m hoping to play these tunes in Naxos,’ Lol suddenly says, breaking off a slow, meditative piece. ‘Just me and a piano in the middle of the afternoon by the swimming pool. How perfect would that be?’
If this gives the impression that Lol is steeping himself ever deeper in the healing waters of chill out, it’s only half the story, however. For he is now close to completing an album with Brian Eno that should challenge any preconceptions about the direction of both these versatile men’s music. Lol plays me four tracks from this project, and each is extraordinary, unsettling and oddly addictive – and especially so if you know both Brian and Lol’s other work. You hear pure Eno distilled through Lol’s unique feel for rhythm, which, as it happens, is pretty much how they have been working. ‘Brian lays down these long, looping tracks and grooves,’ explains Lol, ‘and I have to make something of them. I arrange them, in effect, adding a few little touches of my own.’
It’s a strange and beguiling meeting of musical minds, not entirely dissimilar in parts to the Eno-meets-Byrne extravaganza that was ‘My Life In A Bush Of Ghosts’ – only this time, it takes place in the warped idiom of post-everything twenty-first-century electronica. I get the distinct impression that many a Big Chiller is going to love this one.
Indeed, when Lol plays me ‘Metal Bounce’, I am firmly convinced of this fact. ‘I saved the best till last,’ smiles Lol, and it’s true. Building on a deep swampy groove, it takes the listener on a journey through a bizarre, imaginary landscape. Please, I say, release this soon. ‘Well, Brian keeps saying that we’re finished but then changes his mind. He’s murder like that – but then he goes and comes up with something fantastic. So it should be worth the wait.’
You can’t argue with that. In the meantime, I guess, we will just have to make do with Lol’s live appearances at The Big Chill this summer, not to mention many a club night and evening down the Dogstar. Lol might have come a long way from Victoria Park over the last twenty-four years, but his energy certainly remains undimmed.
Freddie B, July 2002
