Steve Hackett's career has been an on-going love affair with music. Over the last 24 or so years has continued to amaze and delight both his fans and his critics with the breadth and depth of the music that he has produced.
It began with various bands in which he was very much a
session player
- Canterbury Glass and Sarabande to name but two. Steve's first foray
into
the world of recording came however, when he joined the band Quiet World
in
1970. In a recent interview he recalled the circumstances in which the
album came to be recorded ...
-
"It was
three South African brothers, the Heathers, who wrote the stuff.
Their father was a medium and they had lived in England and then moved
back
to South Africa only to return again later. Their father stayed behind
in
Africa and he used to send them tapes of various characters speaking
through him and it was very strange as we used to sit down and listen
to
these tapes and one of these characters was called Kutumi who claimed
to be
the spirit of music ... it depends whether you like that album; I think
of
it more as a product of its time rather than a great album but ... he
described the way in which the music could be written and he described
it
in visual terms ... he said what was going to happen ... there was
going to
be a mixture of cultures ... the white and black races as it were, were
going to merge and there was going to be a kind of hybrid and modern
music
would include the sounds of the street and I still use it as an
influence
... those were some of the things he said."
This album, titled 'The Road', was released in 1970 by Dawn
Records and was
also reputedly re-issued by that label in Japan.
Photo by Armando Gallo
