1971 Albums

Having already spent most of the year on tour with VdGG, Peter Hammill’s first solo album was recorded in what must have been an exceptionally busy year for him. As a solo artist, Hammill was a slightly different creature. It wouldn’t be incorrect (at this stage) to call the singer-songwriter acoustic; but in true progressive tradition, his song-form certainly was original. The album, as Hammill states on the liner notes, is “an album of songs rather than a musical extravaganza” (that of course, he was saving for the next VdGG album).

Founded by Irishman John O’Brien-Docker, Hamburg’s The City Preachers was folk-rock band that featured (among others) vocalists Inga Rumpf and Dagmar Krause, as well as drummer Udo Lindenberg. They split in 1968, with Rumpf, Krause and Lindenberg teaming up with French keyboardist Jean-Jacques Kravetz and bassist Karl-Heinz Schott. By 1970, however, Krause left to eventually join Slapp Happy (but not before recording the split-album I.D. Company with Rumpf), while Lindenberg went off to Klaus Doldinger’s Passport.