Steve Hackett - A Brief History Chapter Five

A Brief History - Chapter Five

by Alan Hewitt

Finding A Cure

'Cured' divided Steve's fans to some degree. Many had grown used to his more melodic approach to rock and his regular band, most of whom were not to feature on the new record. Cured showed a more relaxed side to Steve and a more commercially orientated sound. Here he explains the change in emphasis ...

"Well at the time I was learning to sing and trying to develop a vocal personality which at times ran contrary to my musical leanings ... it wasn't a conscious decision to start writing commercial songs ... I think it was an album of finding my way..."

Whatever the reasons, Cured marked a change in direction with Hackett taking a much more studio based pop approach and abandoning the group feel for a high tech sound (the album features the first recording of the (then) revolutionary Linndrum), though still working with regular collaborators Nick Magnus and John Hackett.

Steve again took to the road with his largest European tour itinerary to date including several concerts in the Soviet Bloc where, as Steve was quick to point out in an interview with Rick Wakeman on the "Gastank" series a year or so later, he was actually a bigger draw than his peers in Genesis. The touring outfit included Chas Cronk of the Strawbs on bass and drummer Ian Mosely who went on to join Marillion.

Photo by Paul Cox

1982 was to be relatively quiet for Steve. Apart from writing material for the follow-up to Cured he also participated in numerous charity activities including organising a benefit concert for the "Poland Aid" charity and a gig at Guildford Civic Centre for the Tadworth Children's Hospital at which he was joined on stage by old colleagues Peter Gabriel and Mike Rutherford. 1982 also brought Steve's first appearance since leaving with all the other members of the classic Genesis line-up at a wet and windy Milton Keynes Bowl on Saturday 2nd October in aid of Peter Gabriel's cash-starved WOMAD project, a nice gesture from the current band to their former lead vocalist and one which was greatly appreciated by the sixty thousand or so wet and cold fans who witnessed this one-off event.

Early in 1983 an indication of Steve's new direction was given by the release of a single from the new album in the form of "Cell 151" which was backed by a marvellous live version of "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare". It was ironic that this release was to give Steve his best ever chart position for a single at a time when things were not going too well with his record company, Charisma, who were in the throes of a take-over by Virgin with Steve stuck in the middle ...

"A&R were starting to make comments that didn't fit the MD's ideas and so that left me in the middle trying to steer a sensible course ..."

Disagreements were not just over A&R as Steve points out ...

"There were two things that I also disagreed with Charisma at the time. Firstly, so many fans were asking for a live album and I wanted to deliver one but they were firmly against that. I felt it was the right move and I still think it would have been the best thing to do. The other was the idea of an all acoustic album which I started doing in my own spare time and with my own money as it were, which was the album that became "Bay Of Kings". I started recording that in 1980 but it wasn't released until much later...."

1983 was proving to be a bumper year for Steve Hackett fans. His 'rock' album: "Highly Strung" had been his most successful since "Spectral Mornings" almost four years earlier. Only a few months after the end of the tour for that album, Steve was back again with another album and tour. His own labours had borne fruit in the form of "Bay Of Kings " and another extensive tour of the UK followed, playing halls and theatres where the more intimate nature of the music would be better appreciated. Steve's own view of the album was as simple as it was honest ...

"I viewed it as music without props and that pre-dated 'New Age' and 'Unplugged' so the derivations from classical and Flamenco and Folk and all those kinds of areas are still there... There's also the influence of the nylon guitar because with Genesis we had specialised in twelve string extravaganzas although I felt that nylon was the area I was most interested in because it had the widest range of dynamics of all acoustic areas .. .I think it was a reaction against dependency ... the pyrotechnics of rock, the smoke and lasers and dancing girls in the wings!"

Steve's next venture from took fans off into a realm which they had never explored with him before ... the area of "World Music". "Till We Have Faces" was a rhythmically charged exploration of the percussion and samba music of Brazil, where most of the record was written. It came as quite a surprise to many of Steve's fans and the critics in the main loathed it although Steve explains it in the following terms ...

"I thought of it as a learning experience being involved with that amount of rhythmic percussion players who were ... I would meet them in the street and they would demonstrate their skills and we would put them in the studio ... the situation in Brazil was such that I could only get recording studios that started at midnight and when I got home at eight in the morning, they were doing renovations upstairs so I did that album on very little sleep! Then I brought it back to England and mixed it ... and again, it's an album that falls into two halves ... I think of the cohesive song element and the more improvised, the more rhythmic..."

As Steve pointed out in the sleeve notes to the re-issue of the album it was impossible to take a samba school on the road and so the album remained and still does remain in fact, as the only Steve Hackett album which has never been played in a live context. Steve however still thinks he didn't go far enough with the project ...

"I think with hindsight I would have gone even further with it and made it even more a world music album, if that's the term, and abandon all Western civilisation whatsoever..."

It's certain that had that project been released now, it would have been much more favourably received and that's another example of Steve being too far ahead of the game for his own good. His outlook on producing work of this type is typical of the attitude which has shaped his entire career...

"I've usually found that the best thing to do is do exactly what you wanted and then you've got a much better chance of pleasing the fans, but then you've usually got a very good chance of upsetting record companies so it's very difficult to please both the business and the public..."

Steve made his first live appearance for two and half years at a charity gig staged by Marillion at the Hammersmith Odeon in February 1986 where he joined in with a performance of the early Genesis classic 'I Know What I Like'. Rumours abounded at the time that Steve had joined an AOR Supergroup with ex-Yes man Steve Howe. Many fans were naturally skeptical after Steve's involvement with Genesis but in March 1986 the debut single from the aptly titled GTR arrived in the form of the track 'When The Heart Rules The Mind' and Steve's fans had to sit up and take notice!

"Brian Lane, who was the manager of Yes, had offices in the area where I had been living but we bumped into each other funnily enough years later in Los Angeles and he had wanted to work with me not in a solo sense but in a group and I didn't really want to work in a group but we were talking one day and he said "Steve Howe's not doing anything at the moment, he's out of Asia", so he became very excited about forming a group with two guitarists and over lunch one day Kim said "why don't you do something with two guitarists?". I said I would meet Steve (Howe) and this very quickly became the idea of forming a band because we felt that if we just made an album and didn't tour it we wouldn't give the album the best chance so the group really grew up to facilitate the liaison between the two of us. Brian's association with Geffen Records was in the ascendant - at that time! - and they became very interested in the band, which I had always seen as a project. They were on the boil and then went off and Arista got involved. It was something that initially was going to take three months to record and ended up taking nine although it became a big success in the States. Not as well received over here though ... I don't think of it as the best record I've ever made..." ...

The creative output between the two guitarists was evident on the first single 'When The Heart Rules The Mind', co-written on their very first day together, which went on to be a huge success in the States and achieved a respectable chart position in the UK and Europe as well. A tour ensued to promote the album and culminated in sell-out shows at Hammersmith Odeon. The show was divided into three sections, the two Steves performing separate acoustic sets prior to the main event with GTR - as one review of the show at Hammersmith said 'three bands for the price of one'.

Photos by Richard Nagy

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