Steve Hackett is, in my view, one of those artists that have just become better and better with the passage of time. Since his early Genesis days, he was always something very special and he has thankfully taken that uniqueness through into his solo career. From a diffident start in 1970, playing guitar for Quiet World on their album The Road, he really blossomed once in the company of musicians of equal stature, when he became part of that symbiotic chemistry that created the 'classic' Genesis line-up.
Although always a wonderful technician, one of the things that marked Hackett out as a great guitarist for me, was his attention to what best fitted with a piece of music, whether it be illustrating keening seagulls and crashing waves, as on the incredible coda of Seven Stones from his Genesis album debut, Nursery Cryme; creating the illusion of bubbling lava on the dynamic drop in the middle section of Dance On A Volcano from the live Seconds Out album; or the stunning replication of the sound of running water using only his guitar, as captured on the ten minute version of The Waiting Room from the Genesis bootleg Awed Man Out, recorded during The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour in 1975.
Another great feature of Hackett's playing in this early period is his use of swell pedals, combined with that distictive golden-toned sustain, best heard on the underrated gem, Can-Utility And The Coastliners from the Genesis breakthrough album, Foxtrot. A facet of his talent that later blossomed into best selling classical albums was his skillful acoustic style, first highlighted on the evergreen Horizons that opened side two of Foxtrot and served as the perfect prelude to the band's side-long song cycle, Supper's Ready. Steve really came into his own on Selling England By The Pound in 1973, with runs of crystal clear liquidity on the opening track, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight and his ghostly, spectral, octivided solo on the glorious Firth Of Fifth. The 'hit' single from that album, I Know What I Like, was also based on a Hackett riff and The Cinema Show again highlighted his control over the swell pedal,s combined with his dexterity with the guitar volume knobs.
Although he had less to do with recording The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, having been hospitalised for breaking a glass in his hand with anger, when somebody intimated that Genesis would be nothing without Peter Gabriel, his guitar overdubs were still incisive and unique. After Gabriel's departure, the band helped out on Steve's first solo album, Voyage Of The Acolyte, a distinguished debut and the first time Steve had called all the shots. Aided by the flute skills of his younger brother, John Hackett, plus Mike Rutherford on bass and Phil Collins on drums & vocals, he created an engaging series of tone poems and demonstrated his burgeoning skills as a composer with the flute-led, two-part, Hands Of The Priestess; the sound collage, A Tower Struck Down and the side two opener Star Of Sirius with one of his lovliest compositional moments occuring in the orchestral interlude midway through this track.
When Genesis regrouped, sans Gabriel to record A Trick Of The Tail, Hackett's input as a writer was considerable, not least on the album's opening and closing salvos, Dance On A Volcano and Los Endos, two of the best Genesis tracks ever, in my opinion. He also co-wrote the ambient, drifting and dreamlike, Entangled, on which he used 12 string guitar and the combination of this with Rutherford's bass pedals and Banks' keyboard, created another of those magical Genesis moments, especially on the upliftingly beautiful coda. Another classic co-write by Steve on this album was the haunting Ripples, with a signature Hackett swell pedal performance on the instrumental interlude. For any Genesis fan who hasn't heard the recent 5.1 surround sound mixes of this album yet - you really should, it was made to be heard like this and sounds breathtaking.
Steve's final Genesis studio album proved to be Wind & Wuthering, recorded in 1976. One of the reasons instrumental in his departure from Genesis was the non-inclusion of a future studio album title track, Please Don't Touch, that got vetoed by the band (shame!) but he still makes the most telling contributions on the album with a co-write on opening track par excellence, Eleventh Earl Of Mar and the shimmering sadness of Blood On The Rooftops, where his delicate acoustic touch is again demonstrated. He was rather under-mixed on the live Seconds Out album of 1977, but a listen on cans will prove what a masterful live player he is, raising ghosts during Carpet Crawl or demostrating the heat of battle in Supper's Ready and, as mentioned previously, putting in a remarkable performance on that barnstorming closer to the Genesis concerts of that era, Dance On A Volcano/Los Endos. His departure was Genesis' loss, musically at least, although they went on to mutate into a monster stadium band, if less interestring in a musical sense. Hackett went on to fight another day and create an awesome body of work which I will probably waffle on about another day!
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Steve Hackett - The Genesis Years
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MercyfulFatesWarning wrote:
