Steve Hackett – Uber Rock Interview Exclusive
Written by Eamon O’Neill
Sunday, 29 March 2015 03:00
Legendary guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Steve Hackett needs little introduction. As a member of Genesis during their expansive Peter Gabriel-fronted prog years, he helped shape the genre, coming up with pioneering techniques that have been copied and reproduced ever since. Since going solo in 1977, he’s produced an astonishing amount of solo releases in both the rock and classical genres, as well as continuing to revive his past with his own Genesis Revisited shows. With new album ‘Wolflight’ due for release, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee is in a philosophical mood; “whatever you plan is only part of the outcome, and what makes up the rest, are these great surprises.” He says. Selling England by the pound: Eamon O’Neill.
How are you today?
I’m very good. I’m in Norfolk right now and then we’ll be off to London as I’ve got various promo things to do. I’m off to Italy tomorrow to do a bit of promo and then at the end of the week I’m off to South America, to Brazil Argentina and Chile to do some shows.
That sounds ideal given the current cold spell we’re having here at the minute.
Yes it does sound exciting doesn’t it, but I’ve been to Iceland so I’ve been somewhere colder than this in recent times. Nowhere is as cold as Iceland where I’ve ever been before.
It sounds like you are extremely busy right now.
Yeah, it’s been extraordinarily busy. I wouldn’t want to get any busier than this, but I’m sure it probably will get busier than this. Now that the wolves have heard me, I will get busier. I’ve been living out of a suitcase now for about eight months, so it’s a little bit of a strange life.
You mentioned ‘the wolves’, in reverence to your new album ‘Wolflight’, which is your first album of original material in almost six years. Are you excited to get it released?
Yes I am, I’m very happy to do that. I had been busy doing exclusively work with the Genesis shows and Genesis material, which has been wonderful bringing that dream back for people. But showing people that there is a Genesis afterlife with my name on it is equally important. I will be playing shows in the UK and in the States towards the end of the year, but at the minute I’m going to South America doing the Genesis thing again. It’s been a little bit too popular for its own good.
So would you say it’s a bit of a double edged sword doing those Genesis Revisited shows?
Well, for my fans, yes, but for fans of Genesis, who are obviously not exclusively Hackett fans, they would probably be happy if I trotted out everything that I’ve ever done once before. But you know, musicians feel the need to move on, to write and do whatever else they do.
‘Wolflight’ is a diverse collection that includes a rock band and an orchestra, along with elements world and folk music. Are these natural bedfellows for you?
Well I think they are because they are all related in some way. If you take a pan-genre approach and you borrow from every style, just like we find that DNA might be the same from the Aborigines to the ones that are found in the Hebrides, that’s the way the world works through cross-pollination. Nowhere ever gets ‘discovered’ does it? The canoes have always been there first, let’s face it, and people get washed up on the shore, and flotsam and jetsam and multi-cultural diversity is what it’s all about for me.
There’s an immense depth to the album, with plenty of surprising twists and turns. Did you deliberately set out to construct it this way as such?
Yeah. I like musical ambushes. I think they’re part of what make the journey interesting, much like life itself. Whatever you plan is only part of the outcome, and what makes up the rest are these great surprises. And musical ambushes help to assist those that are bored easily; “oh, I didn’t expect that! I didn’t expect just a couple of bars of Symphony Orchestra to kick in. I didn’t expect that to be followed by a harmonica and I didn’t expect the lute to appear there, or the tar from Azerbaijan”, all that kind of stuff. It’s like all-in wrestling really.
This whole album is inspired by the ancient tribes who helped to shape Europe. What was your inspiration for that concept?
Part of it was visiting some ancient sites; Ancient Greece and also some of the stuff in Mexico from various places, and it made me think. There’s nothing ‘new’; there’s nothing new in ritual and magic and music. The tools have changed of course, but essentially the idea of making a noise, whether it’s for a living or just to entertain the folks back home, somehow the similarities seem greater than the differences.
One of the songs that stands out on the album is ‘Love Song To A Vampire’, which is particularly expansive. Is the story based on any particular events?
Well basically the song is symbolic of abusive relationships, and I’m thinking of the Stockholm Syndrome, where people held captive by others start so show some Patty Hearst-like sympathy for their captors and abusers. So there’s a certain amount of that in there, there’s a certain amount of acquiescence, of Palov’s Dog-style; where the dog can even get out of the kennel or the cage and not get an electric shock, yet he decides to remain inert. Many people stay in abusive relationships just because it becomes habit forming. Even though they realise it’s probably going to kill them in the end, they think “Oh, I’ll just stick with it”. But, I think it’s important, everyone should have joy and happiness in their lives and there are far too many controllers and not enough people getting the maximum out of life, and it’s a hard fight sometimes to get away from controlling people. We’ve all been there, we’ve all met controllers, whether that’s a work relationship or love relationship, we’ve all got to stand up and be counted. In the end, it’s the only way.
The album’s press release states that ‘Wolflight’ highlights the versatility of sounds that the guitar is capable of making and the emotions that that can create. With that in mind, would you say that it’s a guitar album?
Well, I always think leave the guitar albums to the guitar heroes. I mean, I hear guitar heroes doing their thing and it can be wonderful, but I’ve got a problem which is I love all the other instruments as well. I love them all, right down to the triangle, and the washboard and the kazoo. We use all these things and they don’t always get a mention on every sleeve. But music can be done wonderfully by symphony orchestras, rock groups, pop groups, jazz, all that, but equally, there ought to be a place for Skiffle, and I think I should do ‘Psychedelic Skiffle’ in future and forget about the rest.
Last year you were, along with your former bandmates, the subject of a high profile documentary (and companion compilation album) ‘Genesis Together and Apart’. Did you enjoy being part of that?
It was great fun making it. I spoke hours and hours to camera, and then a few seconds were used in the end, so what can I tell you? I wasn’t in control of the edit, so the final outcome was very disappointing. We are all very different still, the Genesis guys, but we’ve got an open line to each other, and I had letters of condolence from the guys in the band about it. But it’s not really a definitive documentary, it’s merely another document about the band. As for the album, it’s the whole of the history of the band and everything that it achieved. It’s got thirty-seven tracks on it, and it’s got the hits of Genesis and various hits that the individuals did; it’s part solo material and part band, which I never thought would ever happen. It’s been very well received, whereas the documentary I’m afraid has been universally panned.
Did you all go out for a drink afterwards and argue over which was the best line-up?
Well, we all did have drinks afterwards, and it was very very nice to see everyone and they’re all very open with each other these days. It’s extraordinary, and I think that maybe the fact that we don’t work together anymore means that we can be more honest with each other, frankly.
You earlier mentioned your Genesis Revisited shows, where you’ve been celebrating your early work. You obviously still have a lot of love for that period of your life.
I have, and I’ve enjoyed every one of those shows. It’s been wonderful and I love doing it. I still love the songs that we wrote together, and I’m as proud of them as I’m sure Paul McCartney is of ‘Eleanor Rigby’. I’ll always love that and I’ll always love doing it, but there is an afterlife, and it’s important to do new music I think, and keep yourself fresh and keep pushing the idea of the future forward. It’s lovely to have the doors of the museum open again, with the magnificent music from the nineteen-seventies out there for all to see and here, but it’s a museum of my own making and I don’t want it to be a ball and chain. I don’t want the future to be just about that.
You do seem to be pretty good at balancing the two.
I try to balance it, yeah. I mean, It’s like Leonard Nimoy, who obviously just passed on, and I’d read his book about not being Spock ‘I Am Not Spock’, and the other one that I have yet to read is called ‘I am Spock’. I understand when you’ve done something that became that visible and sold in those quantities. Was it Holst who said “an artist should never be successful in his own lifetime”? Maybe he was talking about the success of ‘The Planets’ and that the fact that whatever else he did it wasn’t going to come close. It’s like, millions of albums later you go “here’s my latest” and you’re met with “yeah, yeah, but about ‘The Planets’, that was really cool”.
You recently guested on Marillion guitarist Steve Rothery’s ‘Ghosts of Pripyat’ album. How did that collaboration come about?
Oh I did yes, absolutely. I enjoyed it immensely. He’s a lovely guy, a great player, and we’re great friends. He’s a very non-competitive character and he just wants to get the best out of things. He’s an enthusiast and he loves music. He works very very hard, and I’m really pleased that this solo thing has taken off for him and has given him a second string to his bow. We’ve been on the same bill a few times like on the ‘Cruise To The Edge’ thing. I do like working with musicians who are cooperative; we’re all in the same boat, whether it be literally or figuratively.
When will you be hitting the road any time soon in support of ‘Wolflight’?
Well, in the British Isles it’s going to be October. I think that the European stuff is going to be before that, and I think that the American stuff is going to happen a month after that. The shows start in late summer / autumn, and will probably keep going up to Christmas.
Finally, you’ve been credited with inventing the two-handed tapping technique. Does that make you indirectly responsible for the explosion of guitar shredders that came along in the 1980s?
Guilty, your honour, guilty as charged! It’s only one of many techniques that people might choose to use that I’ve come up with, but I would say that one works very well on the electric guitar. It’s possible to play with that technique and become a human blur! – “who was that masked man?!” I’m proud of that technique. I mean, it’s the equivalent of driving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour or faster, but that’s only one speed, and I would urge everyone not to fall back on exclusively on technique but to think in terms of to do what The Beatles taught us; which is to come up with lines that are so haunting that you can’t forget them that you end up whistling in the shower. The quality of that music just won’t go away, whether it’s Bach or Lennon and McCartney or George Harrison, for that matter. It’s pretty hard to beat The Beatles I think. In a way, that’s the standard of honesty and energy that we’re all aspiring to, whether we’re classical or whether we’re jazz, rock or pop; to be able to come up with tunes that a three year old can’t forget, that’s the real challenge isn’t it? So as I say, Psychedelic Skiffle is what it’s all about!
Photographs courtesy of Tina Korhonen and Paul Baldwin
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