Now what might have happened if Banton, Jackson and Evans had ditched the gloomy frontman and all the angst and the not being able to find the front door to the lighthouse? Seems Van Der Graaf Generator’s Hugh Banton sneaked this fifty year old recording onto Bandcamp. Be careful, it is rather infectious, it is rather happy, couple of plays and it is stuck in your head forever. “Quick, he’s gone on holiday, let’s make some uplifting music….”

Captain Banana – 1974
(Banton) (Static Music Ltd)

Hugh Banton : Organs, Piano, Bass Gtr
David Jackson : Saxes
Guy Evans : Drums

Recorded at Chalk Farm Studios, London. 21st February 1974
Recording engineer : Neil Richmond
Tape operator : Sue Lowe

“In 1974 Van der Graaf Generator was, as it turned out, half way through a sabbatical that would last until our reformation in the autumn of that year, soon followed by the release of the album Godbluff in 1975. We band members were never far from each others’ company however; the previous summer of ‘73 had seen the recording of ‘The Long Hello’, and the four of us had recently played together again for tracks on Peter Hammill’s ‘The Silent Corner ..’.

Captain Banana is one of several instrumentals I devised during this period. Writing this kind of thing has always been one of my sporadic musical sidelines and which has, on more than one occasion, very nearly led me down a parallel career path.

By the end of ‘73 I was living away from London, but it seems I had managed to persuade VdGG’s record label Charisma to finance one or two professional recording sessions, accompanied by my former bandmates Guy & David, to see where this might lead.

Chalk Farm Studios was located in a former Victorian townhouse at 1a Belmont Street, just across the road from London’s Roundhouse. Owned and put together by sound-recording maestro Vic Keary, who a decade earlier had engineered Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger on the Shore’, a no. 1 instrumental hit on both sides of the Atlantic. By the mid-70s Chalk Farm had become the studio of choice within the burgeoning London Reggae scene; many of the UK’s biggest Reggae hits were recorded there. You could say it had an atmosphere.

A few days after recording Captain Banana I got an invite that led to me joining the innovative multi-keyboard band Seventh Wave, who were based at the studio, and that brought me back up to London. I joined a flat-share with Neil and Sue who I’d met at the session.

I’m still occasionally in touch with Neil, he continued with a successful career as a record producer. Sue Lowe (who incidentally the following month at Chalk Farm solo engineered the track for Ken Boothe’s no. 1 Reggae hit ‘Everything I Own’) well, a year later she became Sue Banton – our Golden Wedding is coming up in 2025!

Nothing ever became of this particular Banton-Jackson-Evans endeavour, and Captain Banana has never been previously released. I figured this 50th anniversary might be the fitting moment”.

Hugh Banton, 1 Feb 2024.