DURING THE 1970S, GUITARISTS FROM ALL SIDES OF THE MUSICAL SPECTRUM WERE LOOKING FOR NEW WAYS TO COMBINE ELEMENTS OF JAZZ, CLASSICAL AND ROCK. STEVE HACKETT, ALONG WITH THE GENERATION THAT INCLUDED JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, PAT METHENY, JEFF BECK, BILL CONNORS, STEVE HOWE AND LARRY CORYELL TURNED THE “FUSION” OF ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS INTO AN ARTISTICALLY EXCITING AND COMMERCIALLY VIABLE GENRE. WITH HIS GROUNDBREAKING GROUP GENESIS, HACKETT TEAMED WITH PETER GABRIEL, PHIL COLLINS, MICHAEL RUTHERFORD AND TONY BANKS TO TURN OUT CREATIVELY CLASSIC ALBUMS LIKE FOXTROT, SELLING ENGLAND BY THE POUND AND THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY THAT DEVELOPED A FAN BASE OF GUITAR DEVOTEES FROM JAZZ, ROCK AND CLASSICAL SPECTRUMS.
HACKETT DID NOT REST ON HIS LAURELS; DURING HIS TENURE WITH GENESIS HE BEGAN RELEASING SOLO ALBUMS, AND ONCE DEPARTING FROM GENESIS HE HAS CONTINUED HIS ARTISTIC JOURNEY WITH A SUCCESSION OF CREATIVE AND EXPANSIVE ALBUMS, MOST RECENTLY THE CD/DVD PACKAGE CALLED THE NIGHT SIREN.
WE RECENTLY CAUGHT UP WITH STEVE HACKETT, WHO WAS KIND ENOUGH TO TALK ABOUT HIS EARLY MUSICAL INSPIRATIONS AND CURRENT PROJECTS. AS WITH MANY BRITISH GUITARISTS, HACKETT DISCUSSES HIS EARLY LOVE OF THE BLUES AND GIVES INSIGHT INTO HIS UNDERAPPRECIATED HARMONICA PLAYING, WHICH RETURNS ON THIS RECENT ALBUM AFTER YEARS OF DORMANCY.
WHAT IS IT WITH THE ENGLISH AFFECTION FOR AMERICAN BLUES?
It really happened in the world of guitars. It happened with blues, first of all. Guitarists learned to sustain and scream, and emulate the human voice with the blues. That’s where it first happened, where it first started to change from the idea of a percussion instrument into something much more animated. I think those early guitar sounds were pretty much what you would call “surf guitar,and I think that all of those “cowboy” tones or “spy movie” guitar tones goes “thunk” or “twang” rather than something that sounded like a 747 coming down in a field.
LIKE SO MANY BRITISH GUITARISTS, YOU STARTED PLAYING BLUES, BUT YOU MOVED ON EVENTUALLY. WHAT MADE YOU DECIDE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE WITH IT?
I would say that the blues boom in England really died on me during the end of the 1960s, and I suspect I wasn’t really that great at it. I was looking around in a number of different genres, and I was lucky enough to work in a number of styles, and then find a band that was like-minded in Genesis.
Certainly, when we were a five piece, we were pulling in several directions at once, and you get that “pan-genre” approach; nothing is off limits.
Genesis wasn’t much of a blues band, of course. We had European roots in a way, but there was also a love of blues from my end, but also Tamla/Motown from Phil’s (Collins) and Peter Gabriel’s point of view. Then you had all of the classical composers, Vaughan Williams, Tchaikovsky and Bach as well as all of the folk music. Mike Rutherford loved Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell (as we all did) and Buffy St. Marie (in my case), so much of it came from America, of course. Also the gorgeous songs of Jimmy Webb, probably the greatest American writer of them all.
YOU GAVE AN INTERESTING QUOTE IN YOUR AD LOOKING FOR MUSICIANS IN WHICH TO FORM A BAND. YOU WROTE ABOUT BEING “DETERMINED TO STRIVE BEYOND THE EXISTING STAGNANT MUSIC FORMS”. WHAT WERE YOU LOOKING FOR?
I wanted an experimental band that was able to turn on a dime and bridge the generation gap. One minute it could sound like a pop group and the next sound like an orchestra. Be able to “genre hop” in a way. That was terribly important to me so that we had the element of surprise, or at least that we would potentially have the element of surprise. Almost as if you could do long form pieces and communicate almost as if by telepathy. “How did they come in out of the blue like that? Who was counting? Where did he come from? Cueing on the side; lots of little tricks that you really didn’t have an idea of how it was done unless you’ve got the code. All of that. I suppose it was a code-driven music without it being too complicated.
I never tried to make it with impenetrable melodies and rhythms. I always wanted to communicate and I never really wanted it to be that complicated, which I know must sound like hypocrisy. I just wanted it to be surprising.
DURING THAT TIME THERE SEEMED TO BE A MAJOR CROSS POLLINATION OF STYLES, WITH GENESIS, YES AND THE MOODY BLUES ON THE ROCK SIDE, AND YOU HAD RETURN TO FOREVER, WEATHER REPORT AND MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA ON THE JAZZ SIDE. WERE YOU GUYS ALL FEEDING OFF EACH OTHER?
It’s a very strange thing. When I worked with (drummer) Alphonso Johnson from Weather Report , he said that they were aware of what the British were doing. They were aware of what we were doing. We just thought it was one way traffic; we listened to them and they’d never heard of us. But it did mean that each side was listening to the other.
And there was a lot of great stuff in jazz going on at the time. You mentioned Return to Forever. Of course, Stanley Clarke. And great melodies; I loved the radical thinking that came with Miles Davis. I was thinking of Joe Zawinul’s “Directions” and so many things like that: Black Beauty and Live-Evil. It came out of a jazz sensibility, but it was a different way of looking at it. It was a different way of improvising.
It’s a bit like working with the Hungarians. They’ve got improvised stuff, but they’ll do it to drones. They’ve got gypsy improvisations to fall back on and there’s klezmer. Music can grow up in all sorts of different ways; it all depends on who’s saying “What are we going to do? What are we going to improvise on tonight?” Are we going to improvise on whole tones or are we going to keep in pentatonic?
I really don’t want to have that much theory. I’m instinctive as a musician. But, I have worked with jazzers, and I have worked with classical people, pop people and blues people.
IT’S LIKE THE OLD STORY OF THE 5 BLIND MEN FEELING AN ELEPHANT AND BEING ASKED TO DESCRIBE WHAT IT IS. IT’S THE SAME ANIMAL, BUT FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE.
Indeed. That’s a very, very good way of looking at it. Because, when you say the man is blind, to some extant I think that all music making is blind. All writing, and any gesture that is done in music is going to be done in the dark. It’s all shot into the unknown, and if it finds its target audience so much the better.
But there is wonderful stuff out there that’s firing off and who knows whether it will be warmly received by people at the right place at the right time, or does it just implode or explode into some alien civilization.
I must say, that in the early days of Genesis, we used to play to audiences that were absolutely baffled as to what we were trying to do. They didn’t get it at all, and it took quite some time for it to find its mark. I think that familiarity was part of it. We seemed to be over the heads of much of the audiences. I guess we made them suffer and they gave it back to us! (laughs)
AS A SAXOPHONE PLAYER, I GET MY SOUND BY SELECTING A REED, MOUTHPIECE AND USING MY EMBOCHURE. AS A GUITARIST HOW DO YOU DETERMINE WHEN TO USE A “REGULAR” SOUND OR TO TRY SOMETHING WITH ELECTRONICS AND PEDALS? AT THE MOMENT OF PLAYING OR DURING A COMPOSITION STAGE?
I’ll tell you what I do; when I was rehearsing today and was trying to come up with the right sounds for something on our recent album, and I realized something. You mentioned the word “reed” and I sometimes look for a guitar sound that is “reedy.” In other words, the electric guitar equivalent of something that might be like an oboe, that is very nasal sounding, for instance. A normal guitar sound won’t necessarily do it.
I may put the sound through a yellow box that will have that sound that is rich enough for me and doesn’t have the other overtones that might be a little too fat for it. So I do think like a reed player at times.
You know, ten years before I was playing guitar, I was playing harmonica. I did chromatic harmonica as well as blues harmonica, and I spent a little bit of time with Larry Adler in England. I was also a great fan of not only his style, as well as Tommy Reilly and Toots Thielemans, but also of Paul Butterfield. He had that amplified distorted harmonica with fabulous and perfect vibrato. It made me realize that this instrument that I had been playing for years was being completely reinvented totally by this guy who seemed to have complete mastery over it. I was lucky enough to see him with his extraordinary band in 1966 with Mike Bloomfield, who was dominant on guitar, as well as Elvin Bishop. They were all fabulous instrumentalists.
They had such fire; and they weren’t doing just straight blues either. They were wandering off into raga-like improvisations. It was pretty heady stuff. It’s the way something’s organized, isn’t it?
SO, YOU BROUGHT YOUR HARMONICA PLAYING INTO YOUR GUITAR PLAYING.
I think so. I think there’s nothing more exciting than an amplified harmonica, distorted with vibrato. If you get the sound right, it’s like being run over by a ten ton truck. Pleasantly, of course!
When it’s coming towards you, I’ve been flattened by players, believe me! Occasionally, when I hit that tone myself, it’s like “Oh, I’ve arrived!” It’s lovely; it’s the perfect instrument is probably the perfect combination of the two.
AND YOU RETURN TO A JAM WITH THE YARDBIRDS AND HAD YOUR OWN BOX OF FROGS
Yes, I got to be with them, and I got to be on an album with Jimmy Page and many more. Back in the day, the Yardbirds were kind of a School of British Rock. Fabulous guitarist. You’d be in that band and come out on the other side.
I didn’t play my harmonica with them. At the time they had Mark Feltham playing. I played my harmonica mainly on an album called Blues With A Feeling which was a blues album (from 1994). I’ll some more of that at some point as well. The harmonica is such an incredible thing, and a surprising number of progressive rock people ask for it.
WHICH TWO GUITARS DO YOU OWN THAT ARE YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS?
Probably my nylon guitar and my Fernandes electric. It’s got a sustainer pickup that enables the notes to go on forever. I just acquired one from the late, great Gary Moore; it used to belong to him. My nylon guitar I probably play more than any other, I would say, is my 1974 Yairi.
EVEN WITH ALL OF THE ELECTRONICS ON A RECORDING, CAN YOU HEAR YOUR ALBUM AND STILL SAY, “I HEAR STEVE HACKETT IN THERE”?
I don’t know if I look for personality when I play; I keep wanting to discover a new side of it. I’m always groping for something that I haven’t quite reached yet. I’m playing outside of my capabilities all of the time, and the older I get the more dangerous my playing gets.
Another thing is that I gave up the idea of looking for perfection. Just look for excellence.
IN THAT ASPECT, MUSIC IS A LOT LIKE RELIGION. YOU HAVE A FINITE BEING, TRYING TO REACH THE INFINITE.
Yeah, that’s true. I remember hearing David Sanborn on that Paul Butterfield album In My Own Dream. There’s a fabulous solo that he does; he comes in sounding like a violin. So, you’ve got a wind player sounding like a string player, and it’s the most delicate mood and smooth tone. It will change your mind again what a saxophone can do.
It’s almost orchestral. You hear a saxophone in the middle of Ravel’s “Bolero” and you don’t recognize it as such.
On this current album The Night Siren I worked with a guy who played violin and trumpet, a Hungarian guy named Kovacs. He plays a trumpet on a track called “Fifty Miles From the North Pole.” When he comes in, he’s playing this trumpet, and it’s very under-blown. It’s almost like a baby gurgling until he opens up and then you recognize it as a trumpet. It’s extremely characterful, but most people don’t like that; it’s like an alien got hold of a trumpet.
ARE YOU MOTIVATED OR INSPIRED BY ANY RELIGION OR PHILOSOPHY?
Somewhere between Confucianism and Buddhism. The idea of peace; I cannot knock it as it’s more of a philosophy than religion. That appeals to me more than some of the other religions that are a tad more militant. It’s not God that worries me, it’s His interpreters.
YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS LOOKING FOR SOMETHING. IS THAT HOW YOU CAME UP WITH THE STRING TAPPING AND SWEEP THAT CAUGHT ON WITH YOUNGER GUITARISTS, OR DID YOU SEE SOMEONE ELSE DO IT AND PICKED IT UP?
I didn’t see anyone else do those two things. I was just looking for a way to play a line differently. These things just come about naturally when you’re looking for the shortest way between two points. Sometimes you cross the strings and other times you play a whole phrase on one string, which means you must do something with enormous speed. And when you connect all of those things up with the other strings you are playing faster than anything can actually record.
You can be the “fastest gun in the west” but that lasts for five seconds, because there’s always going to be someone who will be faster. There’s going to be someone who can shave off more nanoseconds off of the sprint than the last guy for the world record.
But these sounds are nothing new for classical players. Bach probably would have said, “I don’t know why tapping didn’t exist in the first place anyway.”
All of the things you can do with a piano, just as Jerry Lee Lewis. Go for it!
YOU PLAYED WITH YES GUITARIST STEVE HOWE FOR AWHILE. DID YOU EVER COMPARE YOUR SIMILAR RESPECTIVE ROLES, BEING THE GUITARIST FOR A PROGRESSIVE ROCK BAND WITH A FRONT LINE VOCALIST?
I know that he felt that Jon Anderson is a very good singer, and that he liked Anderson’s approach with Yes. I assume they got along very well, but I know that they were a very competitive band, as was Genesis.
Yes, we compared notes when we worked together. I also worked with (Yes bassist) Chris Squire, who was a great guitarist in his own right. He just happened to play four strings instead of six. But he could play very economically, not so much as a bass part, but more of a counter-melody on the bass that would fit perfectly. He wasn’t anchoring the song in the way that a regular bass player would do so.
Steve Howe and I have been in touch recently. He just sent me an email and said “I wonder if you’ve thought about all of the awards that we got back in the day. I’ve got all of these guitar award things somewhere. I wonder if they knew that when we were doing acoustic guitar things that we were just playing “Classical Gas.” (laughs) We just played the opening lines of “Classical Gas” basically; we both orientated towards the same things.
It’s a great melody. And nylon guitar is one of the things that we both share a passion for.
ALL OF THE GENESIS FANS THAT I KNOW WONDER IF IT BOTHERS YOU THAT YOU SEEM TO GET THE LEAST ACCOLADES FOR THE BAND’S SOUND AND SUCCESS
No. I think that of all of the members of Genesis, I’m the one that’s carrying the torch and the legacy. I know that’s too big a word in a way; I’m honoring the early work that I think is tremendous and has sold in huge quantities. But that’s not the proper reason for doing it, really.
I love doing the early stuff, and I know that the other guys are dismissive of the earlier work. But that stuff was so big and it sold billions. I think there are perhaps three guys who carried on the Genesis name and they think everything about the band is The Invisible Touch. I think that it was partly about that but also so much more.
It was about Peter Gabriel. It was about all of the individuals; it was about myself, you could say. It was about tapping; it was about lasers; it was about all sorts of things. Having hit pop singles was part of what it was all about, but before that it was about having extraordinary songs that really shouldn’t work.
Things based on science fiction, Greek mythology, pantomime like moments and surprise, surprise, surprise! A Pandora’s Box of tricks.
WHEN YOU HEAR THE OLDER MATERIAL. WHAT COMES TO YOUR MIND WHEN YOU HEAR YOUR SOLO ON “DANCING WITH THE MOONLIT KNIGHT,” ETC?
Well, I’m playing “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” again in my “live” set because it’s my favorite Genesis tune. I think that’s because it goes through so many changes, from the influence of Scottish Plains songs in the beginning to something that is something like a national anthem, Elgarian. It has a hope of land and glory about it, and then it goes into something that was later named “fusion,” but we didn’t know what it was called then, back in the day. Something that was a cross between Mozart, Prokofiev, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and tapping galore. Lots of changes, and fabulous drumming from Phil (Collins) make it all swing.
And, there’s the quietest jam that any rock band ever did, right at the end of it. Where everyone is so restrained and is using space in such a wonderful way of working. Everyone was playing non-competitively. It was better than jazz at that point.
YOU WERE SERVING THE MUSIC
That’s right! It’s not a sport at that point anymore. It’s playing at a kind of rock minimalism, which is not an over-subscribed club. You don’t want to be a one trick horse.
STEVE HACKETT’S RECENT ALBUM DEMONSTRATES THAT HE STILL HAS MANY HORIZONS TO DISCOVER. AS WITH ALL PILGRIMS, BE THEY MUSICAL OR SPIRITUAL, THE JOURNEY ON THIS SIDE OF ETERNITY NEVER ENDS. STEVE HACKETT CONTINUES TO SEARCH FOR NEW SOUNDS AND MUSICAL VISIONS, TAKING ALONG HIS LEGION OF FANS WHO ADMIRE HIM FOR BOTH HIS EARLY WORK AND FUTURE PROJECTS. CHECK OUT THE NEW RELEASE, AND LOOK FOR HIM TOURING THIS YEAR.