“BETWEEN stood and still stands for the simultaneity of things that are really mutually exclusive” (Peter Michael Hamel, 2005)
“Originally we wanted to call the project B.A.C.H.,” Peter Michael Hamel re-calls, when, in 1970, they were looking for the most unusual name possible for a extremely unusual formation. “Naturally we chose in it in part in allusion to the immortal baroque composer of that name, but above all the letters stood for “Between All Chairs.” That’s exactly how we thought of ourselves. But when we discovered that the idiom doesn’t even exist in English, we dropped it.”
What was left was the word “between,” and the four original members of the group finally decided on that as the band’s name. And even this slimmed version says a great deal about the way we saw this project, which was both originary and original: “We always felt our music was something ‘in-between,’ nothing comparable had existed previously,” Hamel is still convinced. “Above all, our sound existed between the categories of serious and popular music. You could never pin us down to a particular category. That still pleases me today!” |
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