Selling Steve Hackett by the Pound

Steve Hackett is not a man who could ever be accused of possessing idle hands. Ever since he stepped away from his role as the lead guitarist in Genesis in 1977, the veteran British musician has released over two-dozen solo and collaborative albums, along with numerous live recordings. Hackett has also made a point of establishing himself as an international touring force, supported by a top-shelf backing band that has the collective chops required to expertly tackle the more progressive-leaning entries his always challenging setlists cull from the prime 1971–77 Genesis era that bore his compositional stamp—not to mention handling his own highly experimental solo material.

In fact, over just the last half-year alone, Hackett has seen fit to release a three-disc (2CD/1BD) live collection, Selling England by the Pound & Spectral Mornings: Live at Hammersmith (InsideOut Music)—one that bookends multiple onstage performances from a beloved benchmark Genesis album with choice selections from one of his own best solo efforts—as well as publish a long-awaited autobiography, Genesis in My Bed (Wymer Publishing), plus serve up an all-new acoustic-driven, isolation-inspired travelogue, Under the Mediterranean Sea (InsideOut Music). 

In his autobiography, Hackett observes that “music doesn’t exist in splendid isolation,” which makes the scope of Mediterranean Sea that much more poignant. “I think what I was hinting at there was the idea that people design music in order for it to be received by others,” he clarifies. “If you were just doing it for yourself, it may well be that you would come up with a very different kind of product.”

Hackett’s pastoral sound leanings often hearken back to another era entirely, something he equates to his admiration for the legendary Spanish classical guitarist, Andrés Segovia. “His music is very poetic and very symbolic. There’s something about the way he bends the rhythm and takes time over a phrase, holding it because of the barre chord,” Hackett explains. “It’s a bit like an embrace. You get the feeling someone’s making love to the instrument, rather than just reading off the dots. It’s much more engaging. I’m told it’s a romantic, 19th century approach—and I’m just a 19th century guy, really. I like the way people played at that time, with lots of hammering on and hammering off to get different tones, and not articulating every note to the benefit of getting those varied tone colors.”

Classical elements permeate much of Hackett’s work—but it goes even further than that. “There are a lot of classical influences,” he allows, “but it’s a bit like classical meets blues. Blues was really the genre where guitar came alive, sonically. And then, of course, it was transmitted to all these other styles. I guess progressive music really attempts to bridge the gap between all these various genres. It’s also a generation gap that’s being bridged as well. The best progressive music certainly takes you places.”

The blues burble underneath the surface of everything Hackett does. “I think it’s what I’ve been all about. Certainly in my professional life, I wanted to be a blues guitarist and harmonica player. I wanted to be Blind Willie Hackett, actually,” he says with a laugh. “But I ended up doing something else, which was joining Genesis. And I found all the other guys were into very different things from each other—but everybody was pointed in the same direction.”

It was up to Hackett to ensure any Genesis composition’s more adventurous guitar elements made their presence known in the overall production mix. “Guitar didn’t always get an enormous look-in with Genesis,” he agrees. “Yes, there were certainly moments on [October 1972’s] Foxtrot—well, I guess on all the albums—but with [October 1973’s] Selling England, when the others were running out of ideas, the guitar ran with the ball. I guess it was an embarrassment of riches in Genesis, in terms of the richness of ideas—and we always seemed to have a lot of ideas.”

One latent Genesis idea that was rescued from the outtakes bin has been the live favorite “Deja Vu,” a track mainly penned by Peter Gabriel that initially surfaced during the Selling England sessions but was never completed until Hackett picked up the songwriting mantle on it decades later. “I just filled in the rest of the gaps of the lyrics to what I thought Pete might’ve said, with his blessing,” Hackett confirms. “I felt that justice was served 40-odd years plus after the event, and the fans have responded to it in a fresh way.”

Many Genesis fans (this writer included) feel Hackett’s soaring, elegiac solo on Selling England’s triumphantly majestic “Firth of Fifth” is a definitive career moment. While Hackett concurs that particular solo is indisputably “iconic” and a key element of a song he still loves playing onstage to this day, he’s actually more partial to what he did on “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight,” the album’s opening track. “I think that’s the most influential one, because it has great jamming, sweep-picking, and an octave jump,” Hackett believes. “That’s the modern pyrotechnic guitar solo. It has some fast stuff, some slow stuff, and a catch-me-if-you-can aspect to it. It’s a Scottish song meets Mozart’s Requiem meets fusion, and confusion—in a good way.”

Translating such heady material to the live stage can be quite the daunting task, especially given the individual characteristics of so many different venues across the globe, but Hackett has a secret weapon in that his front of house engineer, Benedict Fenner, is an empathic guitar player in his own right. “When you’re onstage, you’re not always the best judge of your sound,” Hackett explains, “so I have to ask Ben things like, ‘Am I too toppy here? Is it going clunky? Is it hurting the ears?’ And he’ll say to me, ‘Yeah, you can afford to lose some tonight,’ or ‘You could give it a bit more.’ Or he’ll say, ‘Don’t worry about giving me top. I can always brighten you if necessary.’ That says it all. Ben understands guitar, and all the other instruments. He happens to be a great sound mixer.”

That said, it’s also the comfort factor of playing well-known rooms on a regular basis, such as the aforementioned Hammersmith (a.k.a. Eventim Apollo) in London, a venue Hackett has performed at numerous times as a solo artist, as well as with Genesis. “It’s a very live room,” he notes. “You get a lot of slapback off the back wall and the balcony—two balconies, in fact. Sometimes, if you’re just using regular monitoring as opposed to in-ears, you get the sound of a band coming back at you, and you’re thinking, ‘Which band am I going to stay in time with—the one I’m hearing off the back wall, or the one with me onstage? Which one am I going with?’ It can be a tricky room that has its challenges as many theaters do, but I know it well.” 

While Hackett does have both new and rescheduled dates on his 2021 touring calendar, it’s still quite up in the air as to exactly when he and his ace band will get the official green light to go back out and perform for audiences again. Either way, Hackett plans to continue following his own instincts when it comes to the trajectory of his career path. “There’s an invisible or silent voice perhaps implying that it’s up to you,” he concludes. “You’ve got to go out there and forge it. Search within, rather than without, to be impressive.”