A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers
1971 song composed by Peter Hammill with lyrics by Peter Hammill performed by Van der Graaf Generator
"A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" is a song by the English rock band Van der Graaf Generator, from their fourth album Pawn Hearts (1971). It is a concept piece over 23 minutes long, which comprises the whole B-side of the album. "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" evolved in the studio, recorded in small sections and pieced together during mixing. The song has many changes in time signature and key signature, and even incorporates some musique concrète.
Recording
"A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" was recorded at intervals between gigs. It was recorded in small sections that were pieced together during mixing, and it took about three to four months to record, non-continuous. According to producer John Anthony, the track features a lot more studio experimentation than on previous albums, saying "we pushed the facilities at Trident to the limit and had involved the use of every single tape machine in Trident at some stage." The experiments included tape manipulation and Hugh Banton experimenting with Mellotron and synthesizer. According to David Jackson, one section of it features the entire band overdubbed 16 times. Robert Fripp provided a cameo appearance on electric guitar, which can be heard in a brief portion of "Presence of the Night".
Lyrics
Peter Hammill, interviewed by Sounds, said: "It's just the story of the lighthouse keeper, that's it on its basic level.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” as 1971 song composed by Peter Hammill with lyrics by Peter Hammill performed by Van der Graaf Generator. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1971 song composed by Peter Hammill with lyrics by Peter Hammill performed by Van der Graaf Generator. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4658910. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.