This interview is a combined interview from Backstage interviews conducted at The Robin 2 In Bilston and The Assembly at Leamington Spa with a catch up interview conducted at Steve's home in Twickenham, Along with other questions asked of Steve via email just to round things off nicely. We hope you enjoy reading through the Interview and we thank Steve Hackett and Jo Lehmann, and finally the most considerate tour manager I have ever met Mr Brian Coles
The setting for the interview (Courtesy of Ben Fenner)
Steve Hackett Leamington Spa 1st Dec 2009
I Catch up with Steve this time about a fortnight later in Lemington Spa as part of a long interview graciously Steve is able to give me some more of his precious time in between the Sound check and the mini party that is about to commence back stage with band members and family members present. We make our way to Tammy Wynette’s Pink Gypsy Caravan and interview number two commences.
SH Steve Hackett
MK Mark Kenyon Interviewer
MK You started the tour in Cornwall
SH Right
MK and your winded/ending the tour up in Leamington Spa how has the tour been for you?
SH WONDERFUL, I cannot tell you how crazy it is to be up playing in front of people with this band obviously we have a lot of fun in rehearsals and we seem to have the same amount a of fun in public, as a lot of bands usually have fun in private. Its been a blast you think about the passing of time when your on stage and the audience is loving it, It always feels like the first time you got up on stage and did it and it was going right I’m mixing up a lot of things here but it does feel kind of timeless.
The tour has been wonderful I couldn’t possibly put it into words it seems like an incredibly colourful chalk box of memories. a way I just get an idea of. Its so many things friends/family camp repartee hysterically funny moments some of which have been on stage some of which happened backstage. It’s extraordinary surreal that we are now sitting in Tammy Wynette mobile home with chrome white and pink sofa’s and mirrors covered in this protective plastic wrapping which I imagine was supplied at the factory and has been that way ever since.
SH Nick Beggs said you imagine that Marylyn Monroe got changed in something like this on the set of Some like it hot perhaps.
MK Oh it is incredible luxury, I think its only you (Steve) that has the strangest gigs with regard to venues or backstage areas because I remember seeing you on the Acoustic Trio tour of 2005 when you played the Carnglaze Caverns.
Top, outisde of Carnglaze Caverns. Bottom, the stage of the Caverns with Steve playing
SH Yes that is a strange gig
MK Yes it was awfully nice
SH Yes it was nice, and awfully cold I had a heater blowing on me because I think it was the coldest gig I had ever done
MK Had it been August instead of April I think it would have been much much better
SH Well I wonder? I suspect it’s still probably cold in there because of the nature of playing in a deep inner cave unless it’s a centrally heated cave but none the less that was a good gig. It it was an acoustic one wasn’t it.
MK On this rock tour you all seem quite upbeat and happy as a band
SH Yeah it is
MK Without suggesting otherwise but you as the band leader seem to be much happier than you have appeared for a long time.
SH well that’s true and it’s been a difficult period to get to the point where we could mount shows again and release records. It has taken a lot of effort by a lot of people to get it to this point but that isn’t the point the point is the older I get the sweeter it gets because you realise that if I look back and I think twenty years ago I was almost 40 and as I am nearly 60 as I will be in the next two or three months and whether there is another 20 years is anyone’s guess. it does get all the sweeter because you realise that the clock is ticking but I come back to this issue that I feel as though there has been no passage of time inside and I still have incredible hunger for it.
SH So I think it is special and not just for me, Maybe what I am trying to say is that people imagine that I take it all in my stride as it were a bit like the lyric from Serpentine Song. But I don’t. I’m always taking stock and thinking yes this is my element but I always want it to be better and when we are improvising I always want to remember more phrases I could have put that little bit in or I could have done that there’s always the next night and its just an expression of your spontaneous enthusiasm.
MK I have seen two shows already on this tour and the two previous rock/electric tours that you did in 2003 and 2004 I think you would be hard pressed to improve on what you have got at present.
SH I’m glad you think so!
MK I don’t think unless you jumbled around the set list every night I really don’t think you could improve too much more. Generally I think it’s quite easy for people to improve on the nought to the 90 percent but to improve on the 90 percent to 100 percent is the hardest part that final 10 percent to improve on. I think you and your band are there now.
SH A lot of people have been saying that they like this set particularly and the characters on stage.
SH I’m doing things because I really like them there aren’t too many agendas going on I’m not being someone else’s version of what they think I ought to be. Now that might seem like a sort of strange thing for someone to say in my position.
MK Is it almost a suggestion that you have more control over your own destiny these days than you have done previously?
SH Yeah I think there is that, I mean I always had artistic control over what I have done but I don’t get too much of people saying to me that are involved in my career “I don’t think you ought to do that” or “You shouldn’t do that” and I did have a lot of that in past and its nice to know that I am working with people who are functioning without agenda and who just like to be doing it I mean for instance Amanda (Lehmann) she comes alive on stage the sheer joy coming off her when she is on stage performing every now and again I hear the vocal balance and you only catch glimpses of that when your on stage it’s a microcosm going on your own little tempest of things that’s going your monitoring yourself and your not really getting the overall balance, you get a sense of it but nobody on stage really knows what’s going on out front you get an idea of the level of enthusiasm from people and even if I am not wearing my glasses and I’m pretty much blind as a bat without them I can still sense and I can still see or I think I can see the whites of peoples eyes and see them lighting up like Christmas trees I can see them moving even if they don’t think they are moving sometimes.
MK Would you say you have been well received on this tour and that you receive a good vibe from the audience
SH Yes! All of that, it’s been wonderful and very emotional in many ways.
MK As though music has become a hobby or pastime rather than your work?
SH Yes almost as though music has become a hobby by comparison.
MK Coming out of that “DARK” period which I think is the only way to describe it can you tell us as to whether you have been recording the tour at all? With regard to releasing a live album further on down the road?
SH Further on down the road, we are recording shows now and I have not heard a single note that we have played so there will be an awful lot of assessing what was recorded whether every last note of every gig got recorded I doubt it, its never happened before because there is always Ah sorry missed the front of such and such and although it was a good performance of so and so that you really wanted that was the night the machines went down so you have got all those aspects of hair in the gate stuff to go through before I can really say to you it would be lovely to release that gig in its entirety so maybe I will work with highlights I don’t know.
MK Well it’s always nice to have something other than the memory
SH Yes
MK So that you can go back to the recording and go ah I remember that was the gig that something extra or interesting happened during Mechanical Bride or that Los Endos was maybe a bit longer. Like the night that John Paul Jones joined you on stage for Los Endos.
SH have you got a version of that I would be most interested in hearing it
MK I’ll see what I can do.
MK You have become a lot more accessible recently
SH Oh yes that’s for sure!
MK Previously there seemed to be a chain of people you had to go through in order to finally get to you (Steve). But now it’s just Steve.
SH I have to say that Jo (Lehmann) has made a point of making sure when emails come in that I see them so I can then respond to them, where as before so much of this stuff was deliberately being withheld and that makes a big difference. I am not operating Steve Hackett dot com.
MK I am aware of that!
SH OK! The domain name is owned by Kudos Management, People are still writing to that I know, but I have no access to them.
MK That’s sad
SH Yeah sad! But coming back to the positives, yes I am more accessible now via www.hackettsongs.com and if somebody writes to me I get to read it.
MK So good and positive things have been happening then?
SH At the end of the day and at this point in time we seem to be going up and up to be honest it’s a different world audiences have been wonderful been there and have been great, tours have been possible I’ve managed to put a Rock band back on the road
MK which is no mean feat
SH Well again you know because I am in the driving seat it means I will know if something is going to work or not so life is very different now and yes people can contact me directly and I am only to happy to do it. I go out and sign items at gigs, I’ll go out and meet people at gigs depending on what’s going on backstage. Sometimes friends and family or colleagues whom I have worked with over the years come by and I have to entertain them. At the Salford Lowry for instance two different rooms were full of guests. Chris Squire and some of the Yes guys showed up at the same time. I was trying to sign stuff in theatre as well as in the lobby and trying to be in four places at once!
MK It’s not possible to compartmentalise yourself like that!
SH NO! But I did try, I will try after a gig to get out and meet people and sign things people will say to me you look really shattered Steve you know and when you do a gig some of these shows are now two and a half hours
MK Which is a long time
SH Yeah it is a long time so I come off stage and ideally have a cup of tea!
MK Darjeeling is nice
SH It doesn’t always work out that way but I love doing it even though at the end of the show I can play guitar and do all those things but incredibly I lose my ability to be able to do the simplest things like tie my shoe laces! I’m punch drunk after a gig but it’s nice.
MK it’s just probably you coming down from the adrenaline of the performance
SH Yes there is an awful lot of adrenaline and excitement going on, that’s why I rarely drive on gig days I can be an unsafe driver coming away from rehearsals and I know that doing a rehearsal is almost like doing three gigs back to back especially for a live show.
SH it is an energy drop and like an altered state of consciousness?
MK Well not only are you the guitarist in the band but your also band leader as such these days more so you have to have the businessman hat on as well. Maybe that is why it is an overwhelming experience for you?
SH If I am a businessman it is very broad strokes, I’m not good at working gadgets other than guitars
MK I’m not very good at working Guitars but not so bad at working with gadgets, so you have skills that I don’t and vice versa.
SH As a very dear friend of mine John Acock used to say it’s the age of specialisation. You don’t have to be that. You can choose to be a renaissance man and work every gadget going and I’m amazed that people can, perhaps it is to do with my approach to music I find I need to dream or to be on cloud nine or even a meditative state in order to come up with things. Alpha (the sleeping state) is very important to me
MK Do ideas come to you in that way?
SH I need to leave the channel clear I know that in the days when I did try and engage with technology more fully, I would end up invariably wiping something which I had spent three hours trying to get one phrase and that’s just quite sad.
SH I like someone to work the knobs which is normally Roger King if it is something musical and in business Jo (Lehmann) works far harder than I do but we confer on everything and the point is its all under one roof.
MK With 2009 drawing to a close what are your next plans
SH more creativity and more shows as well as more music as they say on radio more recordings. I do have a number of unfinished projects which need to be resolved there is little point in discussing these as they’re not ready for delivery
MK Is the project with Chris Squire tied up by the same issues?
SH We have got a number of songs, funny enough I was listening to some of that stuff today at home and I was thinking how good it sounded and how good it can eventually sound again maybe an extra 20 percent that makes all the difference. Its not just about a song is it, its about the details I have been a detail freak for ages now with music and I have realised that is what it is all about whether your listening to one instrumentalist playing extraordinarily well its still about the details and what’s happening in production is the icing on the cake.
MK Your recent album “Out Of The Tunnel’s Mouth” is FULL of detail there isn’t one song on it that isn’t
SH Replete with detail
MK Yes replete with detail, there is no moment where it is bare but the detail is like a cherry on an already iced cake.
SH Good way of putting it
MK Much like your current touring band the previous tours you were all climbing a hill of talent and effort now your band along with you are getting very near the top of it. You have also taken a gamble playing the majority of a new album.
SH I haven’t done that for years, I thought lets bite the bullet and go for it because it felt like it was a time for a change otherwise I was going to be playing a set that was safe obviously they are many more songs that I could choose to play. But who’s to say that in the future I could go back and pick songs to play from various things as there is a lot of music out there, far more than I could possibly do in my life time I would say.
MK News has reached me that your playing your first rock date in a number of years at Nearfest in the USA are there any plans at present to play more dates whilst your there in June?
SH the truth is I do not honestly know I hope they’re will be other dates around that date, I had a chance of doing the Rochester Jazz festival with John Nugent at the time but there are complications with that because it was offered as a Djabe gig with me being involved them.
MK That’s a very different Animal
SH Yeah it is a different Animal it’s a way of jamming and being totally spontaneous throughout the course of the whole evening a different vibe again.
MK It was quite interesting to learn about the news of your involvement with Djabe through your new website where as previously the fans may not have been aware of what you were getting up to, which takes us back to your new found accessibility and you have been writing these travelogues of your adventures similar to Michael Palin’s around the world in 80 days especially with your recent journeys to Serbia and Thailand.
SH I have had chances to visit those places when it seems as though it is almost an extension of the Italian tour thinking where you have a number of experiences and music is part of that experience almost as if it’s a meal with an extended family with a gig thrown in that’s the Italian experience. Admittedly visiting these other places is almost like that not quite an extension of the social scene but in the wider sense of which music is involved in it but that’s part of it.
MK Like in a Michael Palin kind of way?
SH I think so I expect that when Michael Palin visits places he films them but that might only be a part of his day
MK An hour perhaps
SH Might be an hour of his day. I’ve no idea but the equivalent is this diary going on in my head. I do try and write back as though I am corresponding. It’s almost as if you feel like your out there as a correspondent in a sort of news story of your own life that’s breaking news at that point in time. It has made me more aware and more observant. It has also meant that I have been able to articulate my feelings more fully about these places and experiences that go on. Of course with the written word when you have got time to edit your words into something that is a little bit more polished I find I am very comfortable with that. Whereas I find when I read back an interview where I have spoken I don’t always manage to convey properly what’s in the old grey cells.
MK Sometimes I have the same issue when asking questions
SH it is hard to come up with the perfect prose isn’t it? When you’re speaking out loud it’s a sort of verbal jazzing.
MK It can be hard, especially if you look up to that person or really admire there work I was doing some research for the interview today and I watched some of your live DVD’s and its hard to imagine that I am interviewing you I was even more humbled when your offered to make me a cup of tea backstage.
SH Yeah well of course we are all human at the end of the day and we often forget that I was a bit like that with Buffy Sainte Marie. I listened to her records so much when I was young I had an idea of her life being so packed with emotion and I realised when I met her very breifly that she is very down to earth and not cosmic. Funnily enough I just got hold of a DVD of her at home feeding her goats and I was thinking...
Laughter
MK This is very down to earth
SH Yes indeed very down to earth. She likes to be at home working with the earth and I thought that was very very nice. What any artist cannot possibly realise is just how much their work means to other people probably more than it means to the artist and that is saying something if you do it for a living.
Brian Coles tour manager comes in to inform Steve about the time (they both are responsible for tonights show)
MK moving along quickly Steve tell us more about your show
SH Well I don’t think of it as just my show, there are a number of people in this band who are all magicians in their own right and they thrill me with the amount of rabbits they can pull from their own personal hats. That is what it’s all about for me.
MK With the success of this tour which appears to have been a success
SH Oh its been a huge success
MK Will there be a tour next year (2010) of the UK
SH Every chance we will do that. We might go to other venues as I am not entirely sure of the wisdom of going back too often to the same places.
MK Well it will be nice to see you out on tour again
SH My priviledge!
With that I left Steve and his band backstage and I made my way into the Hall for the start of the gig!
Steve's official website can be located here