Page Hamilton is sitting beside the ocean in Malibu, the glow of the waves reflecting off his glasses. Breaking waves and dolphins diving in the distance are a dangerously easy thing to get used to, even if you have a reputation for pummeling eardrums.
Hamilton has been the principal songwriter and only enduring member of Helmet since he started the band by placing an ad in the Village Voice in Twenty-five years and seven LPs, twelve EPs, and fifteen different band members later, Hamilton really sees no point in quitting.
Helmet are celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their third record, Betty , with a worldwide tour that kicks off with a two-night stand at the Bowery Ballroom February 18 and 21 and continues the home-turf revelry by way of a Brooklyn gig scheduled for February 22 at Saint Vitus.
As Helmet set course for their home city, the New York that spawned the band and its syncopated heaviness is nothing more than a memory for Hamilton in Hamilton worked the front desk and also lived at the long-since-shuttered Clinton Arms Hotel on 99th and Broadway while he studied jazz guitar at the Manhattan School of Music.
Like tons of people who lived through the New York of the Eighties, Hamilton bore witness to some of the more bizarre facets of the urban spectacle, especially while working the night shift at the Clinton Arms. Could have torn my head off. On the next page: The Helmet connection between Mozart and moshing.
