LIFE IN A FAIRGROUND DREAMLAND
A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE HACKETT (GENESIS)
Steve Hackett turned 74 on February 12, and he is perhaps at his creative peak. Since leaving Genesis in 1977, Hackett has recorded and released 30 solo studio albums. Add to that total over 20 live albums, and one can see that he is having a brilliant and substantial solo career.
“I always think that there is no such thing as a solo album, it is a team,” Hackett told me during a recent conversation. “The only reason I didn’t call it a band or band’s name is because the band’s name is less well known than mine right now. I have always been talked out of it because I was always told ‘it’s not going to sell’. It is a business, and as much as I am an idealist, you’ve got to honour that line, the economics.”
His new album, The Circus And The Nightwhale is a phenomenal album, and perhaps his strongest and most adventurous yet. It is a concept album, based around the character Travala. But the album is also about Steve Hackett as well.
The album opens with the song “People Of The Smoke”, which opens with an incredible sound collage that sets the stage for the album. “I had an idea of conveying 1950, not with doing something that sounded like a vaudeville act from that time. But rather taking snippets and examples of the way The BBC sounded at that time, so there is a little bit of the Ovaltine ad, there’s something from Pathé newsreels, and the next bit from Listen With Mother, a British show aimed at children. Where the famous opening line is ‘are you sitting comfortably?’ long pause. ‘And then I’ll begin’. The patronizing tones of the BBC. I wanted to evoke what it was like being a child at that time. When I was a child, listening to that at school, I was aware we were being talked down to. We didn’t need to be told ‘are you sitting comfortably?’. We weren’t running around at the time.”
Hackett takes his memories and turns them into an incredible introduction to the album and story. And he does all with sound. “But there’s the contradiction. There’s the baby hearing this, of course the baby is not sitting comfortably and begins to scream, that becomes a train whistle. The train starts up, steam train, because they were all steam trains in those days. When it gets up to full speed it becomes a string orchestra doing something that is kind of Baroque, a little Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” with Big Ben chiming, and very quickly becomes a rock band. The guitarist joins in and we are off on the rest of the tour, having trolled through something that sounds very old-fashioned, very retro. It sounds so old, that you think of it, not of 74 years ago but you think of it as it could be 200 years ago. It sounds so long ago. Radio was so crackly, that is what it was like. The word distortion hadn’t been invented at that point. It was a slice of life at that time, a cross section, really of what was 1950 like. It was polluted, London was heavily bombed, I grew up playing on bomb sites, streets falling apart. Life was very different. Food was rationed, right into the 1950s. Pollution was rife, we grew up opposite Battersea Power Station, it was spewing fumes, and it was the largest building in Europe and it powered half of London, but there was a price. Smoke coming out of the giant smokestacks. Today they have been rebuilt because they had been considered dangerous. But it is considered an iconic landmark, now you can take an elevator up in one of the chimneys, take right up. I have been there, and I looked over the housing estate opposite to where I grew up. Over the river, the other side. Of course, the building is forever associated with Pink Floyd with flying pigs, but that was from my bedroom window from 1953 onwards. I saw this giant thing and marveled at it but was appalled by it at the same time.”
THE CIRCUS AND THE NIGHTWALE ALBUM REVIEW
Hackett was influenced by The Beatles in making The Circus And The Nightwhale. And even though the album is well over 50 years, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band helped Hackett shape his new album.
“I wanted to convey a carnival atmosphere. I was thinking of circuses meet fun fairs meet carnivals, all that stuff that has its roots in vaudeville. Well before rock ‘n’ roll, there were these marvelous organs that played themselves before the invention of the Wurlitzer. I have to lay the blame or congratulations, at the feet of The Beatles around the time of Sgt. Peppers. It has been so compelling ever since there was “Mr. Kite” meets the “Walrus”, the Lennon tunes. I suspect the McCartney tunes were more romantic, fly on the wall documentary. Flash points in people’s lives, whether it was “Elanor Rigby”, an old lady just about at the end of her life. And “She’s Leaving Home”, which is a counterpart in a way. It is about a young girl leaving home. “She’s Leaving Home” is my mother’s story. She did a runner in the middle of the night. She is still alive, my dear, sweet mother and she will be 94 on March the 9.
“I’m glad that it’s got a contemporary feel, but you know everything is instinctive. You can talk these things over with people you work with. My wife, who works with me, Roger King and I honed it down, and then recorded humans live at shows where we were in down time.”
The recording of the album is very interesting as well. Unlike most albums, which are recorded in studios, this album was recorded while the band toured. “Just after soundchecks, and there was time just before the shows were due to start. There’s normally an hour or two of time and, so, we were kind of using the live halls for their ambience and availability of time. Time was precious if one wanted to finish this within a two-year period.. So necessity being the mother of etc. etc., that’s why we went at it this way. It makes it stronger. I am kind of proud of it.”
“I think it is a very good way of recording, and I realize that I could have gone further. But most of the time, I am kind of reluctant because I am aware that the guys on stage, your total day, you are killing yourself to manage to deliver what is on the ticket. If you are asking them to be creative geniuses the same day, it’s a bit like ‘this guy wants the blood and the bones’. But it is made for a superior product.”
Hackett keeps on making interesting and inventive music. And he does not seem to be running out of ideas.
“It’s a funny thing, but I travel a lot, my wife Jo, we write together, she’s taken me to places that are off the touring map for musicians. We just came back from Zimbabwe, seeing Victoria Falls. And ever since we’ve been back, I have been wanting to describe that in music. It is so powerful and mystical. It’s not just the waterfalls, it is what the spray does. She shot film of it. It is all set to do a water themed thing with rippling arpeggios, nylon guitar and even tapping. Tapping from one string to another. We used that on The Circus And The Nightwhale on “The Nightwhale” sequence. I wanted to have the effect of water. So, I am always inspired.”
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