The PAP DX Blog: Peter Hammill live in Athens

There were probably two famous Peters in the 70's. One was Peter Gabriel and the other was Peter Hammill. They both became famous as members of successful bands of the time (Peter Gabriel was fronting Genesis and Peter Hammill was fronting Van Der Graaf). I saw Peter Gabriel live in Athens back in 1987, a concert that is available on DVD. As for Peter Hammill, there was a rumour that he would play live in Athens in late 1979. If that had happened, it would have been very important, because the last rock concert to take place in Greece, was by The Rolling Stones back in 1967. And that didn't go down very well as it was stopped by the local police. Probably because of this there were no rock or pop concerts in Greece by foreign artists until 1980 when The Police played in Athens. After that, more artists started coming to Greece and in fact I attended my very own first concert in 1981 by East German rock group City, and the second one a year later by The Boomtown Rats, the band fronted by Bob Geldof. By 1985 we had our first rock festival, Rock In Athens 85. And of course, at some point Peter Hammill did come and play in Greece. And his more recent appearance was last March at Gagarin which was when I at last saw him.

The setup at Gagarin was different compared to usual concerts: There were seats! (One cannot expect to dance at a Peter Hammill gig). And the gig itself was sold out.
Peter Hammill appeared all by himself (no band) taking turns between playing the piano and the guitar.