From Genesis To Revolution: STEVE HACKETT TELLS ALL

From Genesis To Revolution: STEVE HACKETT TELLS ALL

FEATURES

Toby Goldstein

Last year, Steve Hackett was having night dreams about erotic adventures with elephants and daydreams about leaving Genesis. Whether or not his nocturnal visions have since cleaned up their act is a matter known only to him, but in the light of day, he is indeed a free man, having cut the ties which bound him to a group for over seven years. A slim figure clad in the inevitable black, Hackett broke away from a particularly tasteless episode of The Gong Show to set the record straight on why he split the group and, of course, to give his second solo album, Please Don't Touch, a lift.

"The idea of me continuing to dp solo albums while remaining a member of Genesis was a less than popular idea with my colleagues," he said. "I just feel that, provided I'd stayed with the band and did my job and played, didn't give anyone too much shit, I'd do pretty well for myself in terms of my recognition. But I decided I'd rather play to a smaller audience, knowing that everything they'd be hearing was by design rather than by accident. People would compliment me for having done things which I didn't play!

"I had a book of notes at one time, and I was dividing—well, this song will be for the band and this one will be for me, then I'd switch 'em round. I was forced into givingthem ultimatums like, 'either I get proportionate REPRESENT tation of the writing or it's no deal.' And I couldn't get that and I also couldn't get the freedom of the solo albums, so either way I was gonna 'be forced to place my material elsewhere or ditch it. To me, the best part of the time I spend as a musician is writing, so it's the best part of my work that wasn't going to be seeing the light of day."

"I've always been critical of Genesis. I've never been afan..."

There are just enough echoes of Genesis on Please Don't Touch to call up the band, but in no way is Hackett perpetuating the outstretched ephemera that's become their trademark. His preoccupation with black vocalists has finally been satisfied, with Randy Crawford and Richie Havens prominently featuredon the album's second side. If the idea of Havens and Hackett seems unfathomable, what Steve has done with him is nothing short of amazing. Without removing Havens' mournful intonation, Hackett got the man to control that damnable stuttering which makes him grate on the nerves. What's left is a Richie Havens dipped in honey, singing so purely that Steve's grandmother could trill, "Ooooh, hasn't 'ee got a beautiful voice." Hackett simply declared: "I felt that Richie never had the kind of setting which befitted the quality of his voice. Doing the unobvious has always appealed to me. Why should you open a book and know what it's gonna be like from beginning to end?"

The absence of Steve's guitar as the

album's leading instrument is unexpected, but Hackett now prefers pressing controls to frets. Whatever guitar is there is his, as well as some of the vocals and lots of harmony. Yet add Steve Walsh and Phil Erhardt of Kansas, former Genesis drummer Chester Thompson and bassist Torn Fowler (both of whom used to play with Frank Zappa), and you realize that having a touring band is not high on Hackett's current priority list.

"I've proved it to myself that I'm able to stand on a stage and not blow it; at least I played some very good gigs with Genesis. Much to the chagrin of people who have dug what I've done in a live sense, I would say that the most personal statement I could possibly make to anybody is by doing an album for them. I'm there in body and spirit, in every way possible. I can't tell you how many times I sat there and recorded each violin note. There is no way I can go onstage and be anything as precise as that.

"I was even thinking of calling the album Steve Hackett Live In The Studio. It's where I really live. You've seen me onstage; I'm there feeling tired, I'm thinking the lights are too hot, my boots too tight and I kinda grin my way through it. But underneath it all, I don't play for myself onstage, I do that for other people. Now if this album sells remarkably well, I might decide to put a self-sufficient unit like a band together for the next album, whereas this one is five or six different bands. I can't take that lot on the road with me."

Hackett has a lot of time on his hands these days and is open to possibilities, as long as they don't commit him to anything permanent or exclusive. Commenting that working with a band felt like military training—"life in the modern group"—Hackett's carefully nurtured fastidiousness makes him very, very selective.

"I've heard Genesis's new album," he said reluctantly, "and it struck me that there's something missing. Of course that's personal, it's subjective, I'm bound to think that. But some other people have said it too, and so I think to myself, well maybe if I'd been there, it wouldn't have turned out the way it did. I heard it under the worst possible circumstances—absolutely neurotic, teetering on the brink of an armchair, listening to it with my ex-manager . But I found myself being critical as ever. I've always been very critical of Genesis. I've never been a fan of them-. That was my function, to criticize, basically, and say no, I think it could be better. So a lot of my function was—it sounds pompous—to update the quality of their performances.

TURN TO PAGE 67

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 28

"When I first joined the band, I saw them live and thought their live show was a shambles. Things were tied together with pieces of string, the stage was cluttered. I felt'what they were doing was potentially very original, but it lacked a hell of a lot of punch. I remember Pete used to prance around the stage ineffectually kicking the bass drum—it looked like an apology of what the Who were doing five years earlier. And I thought, for Chrissake, if you're gonna wreck something, well really go to town on it, let everyone join in. And he'd kind of spend ages destroying one microphone cable. And I know why everyone was so mean... they were saying, 'Peter, you know we can't afford to break microphones!'

"I know I'm being bitchy when I talk about those times," he sighed.

But without regret.