Headstock: Steve Hackett
With a new album attracting rave reviews and a live show incorporating vintage Genesis material, Steve is a torchbearer for contemporary prog rock
Many fans of progressive music insist that the major transition in Genesis was when Steve Hackett left the band in 1977 and not Peter Gabriel’s exit a couple of years earlier. Certainly, between them, Gabriel and Hackett have both contributed to the furtherance of the ‘prog spirit’ since then, whereas their Genesis cohorts took more of a pop-rock course, both as a band and as individuals in their solo efforts.
On Steve’s new album, The Night Siren, it’s possible to hear the heartbeat of prog loud and clear. We spoke to him about how his diverse influences were pulled together for the new project and how revisiting Genesis material has become an important part of his career, both in the studio and on stage.
1 Assemble Your Ingredients With Care
“When you’re making albums, the danger is, if you are a solo act, you can spend a lot of time baking the cake and being a little bit too tired to do the icing properly. And, for me, coming from a songwriting background with Genesis where the emphasis was very much on the writing, particularly in the early days, I’ve always been aware of the power of that. Really good information to start off with means you can interpret it in a number of ways. So it starts off with a doodle in a book somewhere and then it ends up, if I’m lucky, with an orchestra, tribal drums and a rock group.”
2 Try To Channel Your Early Influences
“The very first thing I recorded was a guitar solo that happens at the end of Anything But Love. I was thinking of Eric Clapton’s playing at that time when Cream were first formed. I saw one of their very early concerts and what I liked about that era was there was plenty of room for people to stretch out, but solos were not overly long. He was absolutely on form, absolutely at peak. It seemed effortless. He had his eyes closed through most of the gig. Hardly looked at the guitar. How’s it possible? And you break it down and over time you figure, ‘Yeah, this could be done.’ So I very much played in the same style.”
3 Mixing Genres Can Create A Spark
“I remember there was one track that Eric did where he allowed the notes to creep into feedback and then yanked them back and there was this feeling of restraint. You know, ‘I’ve got a spaceship here, the stars are accessible, but we’re keeping it earthy at the same time.’ On Anything But Love, which is basically a pop song with a rock play-out, I stuck some flamenco influence at the beginning, having watched Rodrigo y Gabriela, who I thought were absolutely terrific, particularly her playing – a fabulous rhythm guitarist and nylon guitar, it’s just this fabulous percussion instrument.”
4 Never Underestimate Live Music’s Power
“Paco Peña is fabulous. The first time I ever saw him play on TV he was functioning more as a rhythm guitarist within the dance troupe. I’d seen some of this in situ, as well, in Andalusia. Seeing gypsies playing in caves and dancing was so good. It’s not the same as watching it on the box. When it’s in front of you it’s really powerful and in a smaller enclosed space it’s all hitting you – the playing and dancing. It all looked and sounded like this was the last thing they were ever going to do on Earth and it was going to be the best flat-out performance they could possibly ever do and it was monumental.”
5 Early Ambitions Don’t Always Pan Out
“I always wanted to be a Rolling Stone when I was about 14. That would have been my perfect band, even before they became the sex gods that they were. I just loved the music; that was my introduction to blues, really, and I went back and listened to the originals and fell in love all over again. It’s the opposite end of the scale from progressive stuff, which is a conversation I had with Robert Fripp many years ago, talking about form and spirit – many bands stressed form over spirit. In other words, you daren’t improvise because that might let the whole thing fall apart.”
6 Take Some Risks Along The Way
“We worked on the surround mixes of The Night Siren for two weeks, just gave it absolute priority rather than, ‘Oh well, we’ll fit that into a week.’ You can either take the attitude that you’re doing adapted stereo and use everything else for ambience, or you can use surround in a risky but adventurous way, and it was the latter that we ended up with. You could say it’s excessive. You could say, ‘Oh, it’s not minimalist, it’s the opposite end of the scale…’ But, on the other hand, the devil is in the detail. So it’s the most multi-layered of all the multi-layered albums I’ve ever done.”
7 Sometimes You Can Unexpectedly Find Gold
“When he was working with me, Graham Lilley, who was Gary Moore’s tech, brought a Fernandez Gold Top that had belonged to Gary on tour as a spare for me if anything happened to mine. I said, ‘It’s a great guitar. If at any point you’re selling this stuff off I’d be interested.’ So I bought two of Gary’s guitars and that’s what I play on stage. I play Gary’s Fernandez; it’s like a hot-rodded Les Paul with a Sustainer pickup. We used it on the last track that was recorded called The Gift, which is a little instrumental, but it’s a divine sound and it screams. It sings.”
8 Modern Tech Can Solve A Riddle
“On one of the Genesis tracks we revisited called Inside And Out, we had a combination of acoustic and electric things all chiming away together. I thought, ‘I bet I used a Strat on that…’ A Strat, probably, through one of the Jazz Chorus amps back in the day. I thought, ‘I can’t get that sound any more, can I?’ But I discovered by using the Analog Man treble booster that I could turn a Fernandez into a Strat – and sounding like a Strat through a transistor amp. So that was a stunning revelation for me, to think I haven’t got to pick up another guitar. I’ve just got to twist a couple of knobs on a stompbox and there we are.”
9 It’s Good To Go Back
“It feels very good to return to the same place and know it for the first time. I’ve had plenty of time to talk to people – friends, audiences – and have them tell me what they like. Something I’ve come to realise is that the true owners are not the perpetrators, the writers, the players. It’s the listeners. The supporters. And if you talk to enough of them you’re conducting a survey over time without even trying. People say, ‘Oh, I like it because...’ and then you get an idea of the true picture. What it really did. What the music was really all about. Why it really touched people.”
10 Prog Is The Music Of Surprise
“Musicians always feel the need to move on, but the audience want exactly the same magic. If you do something new that’s in the same spirit, you can’t go far wrong. There was nothing wrong with the spirit of early Genesis. I don’t think it was a model or an approach or an ethos that was superseded. It was the absolute zenith of this pan-genre fluid form that’s now known – unfortunately – as ‘prog’, but actually is music that’s full of surprise. And it’s music without rules: every single style is potentially honoured within the overall frame that’s completely elastic, and that’s not a bad thing.”
Supper’s Ready But 11 The Menu’s Changed
“We’ve changed the key [of Supper’s Ready] at the end to suit the singer. It was always just about within Peter Gabriel’s range, but we changed the key even when Phil took over. We do it a tone down – other bits of the song end up being a tone down just to facilitate that. We’re now in a position to do a Genesis show with full orchestra, and have them get it right. Stuff that’s fast and furious in 7/8… It means they’ve got to be as on their mettle as if they’re doing Stravinsky or Bartok or Leonard Bernstein.”
Genesis was the absolute zenith of this pan-genre fluid form that’s now known – unfortunately – as ‘prog’, but actually is music that’s full of surprise