Steve Hackett played on all the best Genesis albums and is touring his version of the classic Selling England By The Pound. GARY STEEL chatted with the guitar master.
Note: This interview took place on July 23, 2019 (the day that Boris Johnson took power in the UK) ahead of Steve Hackettโs planned performance in Auckland on June 2, 2020. Except the Covid-19 pandemic meant that got postponed. It was rescheduled for Friday 21 May, 2021 at the Auckland Town Hall, but postponed yet again. Now, the rescheduled-rescheduled gig has been confirmed for Friday 17 June, 2022. Here’s hoping! (The content of the show has been changed slightly to reflect the 45th anniversary of the Genesis live album Seconds Out – Hackett’s last album with the band – which will also be performed in its entirety).
ย
Gary Steel โ Youโve got bad news this morning I hear.
Steve Hackett โ You mean what with Boris [winning the election]. Yes, thatโs extremely bad news. I havenโt been able to bring myself to watch the news today. Iโm normally fairly avid at watching the news but itโs too depressing for words.
Itโs not unexpected but unfortunately, the lowest common denominator seems to dominate the world of politics just about everywhere, so itโs up to art to fill the space, or the chasm, that politics is creating.
I like to think that music and musicians and writers build bridges instead of blowing up between nations. But hey, Iโm just an idealist, and itโs not going to stop me doing what I do, which is to go my multicultural way towards building something that perhaps lies beyond all of this morass that weโve got.
Gary โ Youโre a long-time global proponent and youโre also touring globally, so itโs in direct contrast to everything bad thatโs going on over there.
Steve โ Exactly. Yes, I like to think Marco Polo might have been quite proud of myself and my wife. Weโve been to all sorts of places, some of them easy to visit, some of them not so easy. But theyโve all been rewarding and it all somehow seems to add up to one huge picture of the globeโฆ one huge photograph that seems to encompass the whole place.
Itโs been extraordinary recently, the places weโve been to. The most incredible having been Ethiopia in recent times. I donโt mean the 18 or so countries that weโve visited in the past two months, which is as a consequence of touring, but to mount an expedition to see tribes and animals and all sorts of stuff.
Gary โ Is the travel a big passion?
Steve โ It is a big passion, and you get to not just travel globally but to be a time traveller too, because when you visit somewhere like Ethiopia youโre literally going back 10,000 years when you encounter certain people and tribes and customs and practices and what have you. Itโs โletโs visit the ancient worldโ, and it hasnโt changed much. Yeah, extraordinary, but thereโs a connection. Suddenly someone twigs and youโll find a common word that you both understand and thereโs a connection and it all goes epiphanal, and it stays with you and it haunts you and itโs lovely. Yeah, itโs been an extraordinary life so far, and itโs not over yet, with any luck.
Gary โ Iโm amazed that weโre talking today about a gig that youโre going to be doing almost a year ahead. [Note: the concert was delayed due to Covid-19 and has been rescheduled. See below].
Steve โ Yeah, I know, itโs extraordinary the way that works, but Iโm looking forward to coming back, and hopefully Iโll get to see one or two friends when Iโm here.
Gary โ I hear that last time you were in New Zealand you got standing ovations.
Steve โ Yeah that was marvellous. You guys out there are a beacon of hope, politically. It might just be the last bastion the way itโs all going, but we need some lighthouses out there and tolerance seems to be a dirty word these days. But hey, Iโm not sureโฆ Iโm certainly not sure about Brexit, and I hope that Borisโs attempts to foist it upon us are as frustrated as his two predecessors found it was. But anyway, what the hell.
Gary โ You seem to be going through a creative renaissance, and youโve got such an amazing audience base. I guess thatโs a positive sign because you have to assume that your fans share a lot of the views that you do about things.
Steve โ I think many of them do. Itโs extraordinary the way people seem to be prepared to give up freedoms. I think the way Brexit has been sold to the Brits has been on the level of โoh well, weโll have the freedom to control our own bordersโ, but really, it means that weโre just gate-keepers of our own cave. The fact that youโve got the right to live and work in so many EU countries seems to be something thatโs beyond the media to understand. Itโs sadly depressing, but you do have to just get on with life and do what you do, and multiculturalism is certainly the way forward.
When I speak to people who are pro-Brexit, I say to them, โoh well, the truth is that if you were at the point in the hospital where you might just lose your life because of a heart condition, would you really mind where the doctor came from that actually saved your life?โ
We should be celebrating the best, we should be looking for cures instead of pointing fingers and demonising andโฆ it does seem as if we are approaching the dark ages big-time, and we have actually got the chance to blow ourselves up quite literally the way itโs going at the moment.
Anyway, all of thatโs got nothing to do with the world of songs, although maybe the songs that Iโve been writing in recent years, particularly the ones I do with my wife, thereโs often a story behind it that might have an idea that perhaps we could present another viewโฆ that we could see it from another point of view. The track โBehind The Smokeโ, the idea of refugees and umโฆ perhaps reminding people that weโre basically all from refugee families. Mine only go back 100 years or so to Eastern European Jewish stock, but Iโm working on new material, Iโm doing a phenomenal amount of gigs, Iโm recording new stuff, Iโm practising. I do try and play every day unless Iโm travelling and itโs impossible.
Gary โ It seems to be that โ even though weโve been talking about some negative stuff today โ you come across in your music and everything that Iโve read about you, as a glass half full kind of a guy rather than a glass half empty kind of a guy.
Steve โ Yeah, exactly, I think you have to balance it that way.
Gary โ And thatโs very much the case on the At The Edge Of Light album. Beautiful record, by the way.
Steve โ Yes, I think itโs probably my best. Spectral Mornings is probably my most loved by fans, but I think my best is At The Edge Of Light. Thereโs nothing on it that Iโm not proud of if you see what you mean.
Gary โ Itโs really lovely. I canโt help but think that so many of your contemporaries have fallen by the way and of course the whole genre of progressive rock has had such a rocky time of it over the past three or four decades. How is it that youโve come through it all and come to this point where all this crap is washed away?
Steve โ Well, I like to think that itโs music without prejudice. Thatโs the simplest way of looking at it. Iโve heard people say that they like Olympic sized salvos, out from the fingers and lots of speed, dexterity and technique and all that, but I think that you can have a record that contains everything. It ought to be possible not to think โIโve got to play slow all night or otherwise it wonโt be romanticโ or โI darenโt do something too fast or it might allude too much to heavy metalโ, itโll be too testosterone-driven, or what have you. I just see it as a case of changing gears. Thereโs nothing wrong with a bit of speed, nothing wrong with a bit of romance, bit of comedy, a bit of social commentโฆ all those things. So if you start including all those things in an album, very quickly you will have an album if each track fulfils that criteria. Here comes the comedy track. The Germans will hate it butโฆ Sometimes Iโve carried on regardless, I think humourโs important, itโs an adjunct to health. Laughterโs good.
Gary โ It feels like in reading your blog and that sort of thing, and correct me if Iโm wrong, it feels like itโs a really good point in your life right now.
Steve โ I think it is, yeah. I know people have said โwill there be a Genesis reunion?โ and itโs the most asked question and I say โitโs possible, but meanwhile I honour the former work I did with them in full. I donโt do little snippets and segues and what have you. Iโm at the point now where Iโm doing the complete Selling England By The Pound plus one deleted scene, ie. a track that Peter Gabriel and I wrote together. To do the directorโs cut rather thanโฆ Hereโs a nod to what we used to do when it was all beards and pipes andโฆ weโve sleeked down a bit now, weโre all in suits and isnโt it glamorous.
I think that the bandโs work was pretty stellar in all its incarnations. You can chart the progress and see it grow from when they were school kids to whatever it became later on, so I think in all its eras it had something to say, and I particularly enjoyed it when Peter Gabriel was involved, I must say.
Gary โ Do you still talk to the other guys?
Steve โ I do, I do. I think thatโฆ I perhaps donโt talk to them in depth. I donโt think we ever did talk in depth, apart from Pete who I think is capable of a worldview that is way ahead of most people. I suspect the others have yet to return to the same place and know it for the first time. I donโt think theyโve quite made that journey, whereas I never really left that place.
I always felt that Genesis lived up to an ideal for me and Selling England By The Pound I thought was basically absolutely wonderful, and after that it was slowly downhill but still a case of better than just about everything else that was out there.
Gary โ It seems to me that a lot of the progressive era bands and musicians kind of felt the pressure to go very commercial and completely change their music in the 1980s and while you did a bit of that somehow you always had the conviction that you would do what you wanted to do and be curious about things and continue to do whatever you felt like, whether it was an acoustic album or whatever. Is it the different projects that youโve done that feed you, that allow you to come back to the Genesis stuff, the progressive era stuff?
Steve โ Well thereโs a lot of bases youโve covered there.
Gary โ Sorry!
Steve โ Er, I think to do as many different things as possible is what itโs all about and even if those things donโt necessarily put you on top of the pops or the equivalent, nonethelessโฆ at times I think youโve got to go out on a limb or tour the outer rim of thoughts in order to do something that might be surprising to yourself.
Iโve surprised myself over the years that I was able to play the blues and Bach, because they were very different things, but theyโre still player based mediums and energies and so I donโt see any contradiction, really. Yeah, the baroque master, early romantic I think of Bach, and at the same time the passion and the anger and the dexterity with which blues can be embraced and lived and played.
Love all of that, havenโt got a problem with listening to Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Mr Segovia! Havenโt got a problem with that. And I perhaps made the mistake many years ago of thinking that audiences were prepared to accept that much on an album that you could diversify and diversify and it would all be part of your own personal sampler album. So it can be a strength, also a weakness, itโs easy to praise it and criticise it in equal measure, but I think what I tend to do is steer projects broadly in one direction or another.
I think the last time I did an acoustic album I had six pieces of Bach on it, a few pieces of my own, but it was mainly other composers, and we just had a guitar on it and nothing else. I didnโt go for orchestras and what have you, although Iโve done that. I thought letโs go purist with that, and I may do the same in the future.
I think that thereโs at least one other blues album in me, somewhere, and I think most of the proggers hate blues. I donโt think they understand it. I think that theyโre often hidebound by form, thinking that lots of chords and tricky time signatures doth a good song make, but I would say no, it doesnโt. Iโm not sure that impenetrable equations are what itโs all about for me. I think that musicโs got to communicate emotionally, itโs either got to be a tearjerker or itโs got to be really exciting. Yeah. I think itโs a little bit like having a film for the ear rather than the eye. Thereโs an imaginary soundtrack going on and with each song that Iโm thinking of something, not necessarily a video, but Iโm thinking of all the images that something might conjure, including acoustic work. But the things that acoustic work tend to throw up tend to be more nature-based stuff, itโs a backdrop to in the main beautiful views and vistas and stunning imaginary architectureโฆ
Music For Fountains often presents itself as a potential title, I want it to trickle and be incredibly beautiful. Sometimes music for me needs to be authentic rather than original. Iโd rather have something heartfelt than something that was very new but not very good, not very interesting. I still trust melody, I havenโt come to the point where I donโt think melody is the way forward. Nothing wrong with atonal stuff and clusters and all the rest but I want to use it in contrast with other things. It only really works if itโs contrasted with something else.
Gary โ Itโs interesting that so many people think of progressive rock as being endless guitar solos when in fact in your work so much of it is very carefully composed and the guitar solos work in perfect accord with those compositions.
Steve โ Thank you for saying that, I think Iโm often thinking of landscaping with music, Iโm thinking of vistas, well I think of orchestras andโฆ groups can be like an orchestra too. The technologyโs there to fool people completely, but I think endless guitar solos, well, as I say, the music of Bach, played on guitarโฆ I can listen to that all night. But I donโt think of that as a guitar solo, itโs through-composed structured work from the word โgoโ. Itโs not the same as a guitarist doing the first thing that comes into his head. Although Iโm not knocking the forms that do that โ blues, jazz, and all the rest. It can be very energising. But I think if youโre talking about records youโve got the ability, or the challenge perhaps is the surprise. The art of surprise. And music is always surprising me.
Gary โ Itโs interesting that you used the word โarchitectureโ before because that was exactly what I was thinkingโฆ that some of the travel photos youโve got online go so beautifully with the music, itโs all form and structure.
Steve โ Yeah, well weโve just been to Italy. Italy the beautiful, when you see those things that are part of them but are also now โ and theyโve preserved all that extraordinary stuff… the fountains and various piazzas and town squares that weโve performed in where the lights manage to splay out onto the buildings and paint them. We celebrate all that. I like it to be immersive in that way. I like to be as immersed in their culture as much as I might present something thatโs relatively new.
I do love classical stuff. I know it makes me sound reactionary. If youโre a classicist, if you appreciate anything there, it makes you sound reactionary. I donโt want to do that, I want to welcome the new as well. I want to celebrate the best, wherever it comes from, and whenever it appears.
Gary โ Theyโre going to cut us off in a minute so Iโll say my goodbyes but itโs been great talking to you.
Steve โ Thank you itโs been brilliant talking to you, really great.
Gary โ And the world might blow up before you get here butโฆ
Steve โ Yeah well I know that yeah! Thereโs always a chance but there might be another plane of existence. I hope weโre more sensible the next time around, thatโs all I can say. More sensible than this lot.
- Steve Hackett plays his rescheduled concert, Genesis Revisited Selling England By The Pound, at the Auckland Town Hall on Friday 21 May, 2021 (if the world doesnโt blow up before then). He’ll also perform the entirety of the Genesis live album, Seconds Out!