GTR - A 1* album

It's sh*te. I probably haven't listened to it since the day after I picked a copy out of a bargain bin for something like £1.49 not that long after it came out. Certainly not going to spend time listening to it again to determine exactly how bad it is!

I'd give it a 3 stars, I like it, good melodic rock. The vocals are the weak point.

A pretty lackluster album that had a lot of potential initially, but certainly not 1 stars. I'd say it's borderline enjoyable.

I think it's possible for albums to be neither great nor terrible.

Anyone around at the time of the release of GTR knows how big it was.....or tried to be.  MTV, FM radio and record shops pushed "When the Heart..." to be the next "Owner..." or "Heat of the Moment"....Top 20 single all over the radio over the summer of '86.  But it all faded quickly - Howe wanted Top 20; Hackett wanted a guitar collective - a band that featured guitars over keyboards to explore, push, make cash, invent new sounds....Hackett stuff.  A tour fizzled and GTR was only seen again in the cut out bins.  There' s a King Biscuit live album out there - abrasive, rushed versions of songs done better on other albums.  I had my old cassette copy out a few weeks back....glad it's there but probably won't see the light of day again.

^I felt the singing was repugnant too. It was an 80s type of vocal, almost seems like a caricature of the 80s vocal style now. I liked Hackett to Bits, though it was too short. I think Cured was a better pop oriented solo album from the 80s. His own vocals were even better. BTW, I was once among some of the fans greeting Steve Hackett after a small concert in the 90s. One of the other fans told him that the only thing he didn't like was GTR (which struck me as a bit rude). Steve said, "it sounded good in rehearsal." He didn't say anything else. I always found his comment somewhat curious.

Edited by HackettFan - August 24 2014 at 00:45

yep. The only half decent stuff on the album was a hideous 80's keyboard slathered rendition of a piece already released on Steve Hackett's Defector. Just garbage.

I've found another nice review.

Dean wrote: Evolver wrote: octopus-4 wrote: Do you mean this? JD's Review of the GTR Album:  "SHT"   Yes.  Some say the review was "TTL SHT".  Either way, very funny. And just gose to show that with 500,000 copies sold you can gold-plate a trd.

octopus-4 wrote: Do you mean this? JD's Review of the GTR Album:  "SHT"