This is a milestone in any albums or musicians lifetime. For fans of the earlier era Genesis, Steve Hackett has been touring and playing this older, more prog, Genesis for fans intermittently, scattered among his solo stuff for a considerable while. If you have the back catalogue rights then, as far as I am concerned, why the hell not. ‘Nursery Cryme’, ‘Foxtrot’, ‘Selling England By The Pound’, ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ and ‘A Trick Of The Tail’ all have his mark on them. Whilst many of the tracks are played in part by the remainder of the band, and indeed were during the ‘Last Domino’ tour, (which was a lifetime highlight for me, irrespective of Phil Collins’ frailty), many of my lifelong favourites come from these five albums and often get omitted for the post ‘And then There Were Three’ work.
However, whilst part of gig revisited ‘Foxtrot’ at 50 (I’d love the last three to see such a tour and god willing I’d be there too), there is a huge body of solo work that Hackett frequently tours with that is highly influenced by this early stuff. This was an opportunity to join these together and if it wasn’t for the interlude you could barely see where one ended and the other started. With a back catalogue as varied in genre and stylistically as the ÜK weather, there is the opportunity to play a different set every night of the tour, but this was a similar set to the Swansea gig last night.
Events of the past three days have taken some of the gloss off many events. However, the crowd soon warmed to the opening track, ‘Ace Of Wands’, which Steve said they haven’t played that much. A bit more conversation and explanation of the meaning of the song before going into ‘Devils Cathedral’ with Nad Sylvan on vocals. Whilst there was no doubting Steve’s ability on guitar, the rest of the band are accomplished musicians too. Rob Townsend played just about everything, from alto sax to flute with some pretty mean keyboards and vocals thrown into the mix. Roger King did a damned fine job on keyboards whilst Jonas Reingold played bass, guitar, double neck guitar and, just for the hell of it, bass on pedals too.
The first half of the set was all Steve Hackett original music. It was well performed by all the band members. Whilst the order changed from the previous night, the additional banter from Steve helped to explain some of the tracks’ themes. There was some significant variation the music, but this should be expected from a body of work that spans 50 plus years and 21 albums. From the opener to the instrumental part of ‘Shadow Of The Hierophant – which Steve explained had been written (and performed apparently) by the “other band that we won’t talk about” – it just carried on building to a huge crescendo just before the outro. This was a spectacular opening to the evening.
After the 30 minute interlude the crowd were treated to the entire uninterrupted version of ‘Foxtrot’, including the 23 minutes of ‘Suppers Ready’, where the crowd joined in with the line “Narcissus was turned to a flower… A flower!”.
Whilst I have read comments about Nad being “relegated” to the back of the stage I have to say it worked well with him changing positions to facilitate the lighting show from front to back. He had elements of both Phil Colins and Peter Gabriel’s voice to his tone but had more flamboyance along the lines of the latter in his mannerisms.
After a brief walk off stage they came back on to do ‘The Firth Of Fifth’ and ‘Los Endos’ as an encore, although the latter was punctuated by some more guitar solos from Steve’s back catalogue in ‘Myopia’ (from ‘Till We Have Faces’) and ‘Slogans’ from ‘Defector’.
‘Foxtrot’ was played how an album should be…beginning to end with no interruption, just how us oldies used to do it, no comment, no additional noise, just the music. This was an exceptional musical performance by excellent musicians. If you get a chance to see it and like early Genesis you really won’t be disappointed, now where can I see ‘The Lamb Lies Down…’ performed live?
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