Every now and again there comes along some amazing musicians that write, perform and continue to do so on a regular basis until one day…they just kind of go to the wayside. Then there are those that because of their talent and most importantly, their endurance and pure “love of music”, they manage to obtain a somewhat overused term of “superstar”. Lastly, there are a very select few that have endured not only time but the cycles and trends of this crazy business we call the music industry. Steve Hackett is one of those and because of his commitment to excellence and the willingness to take musical chances and write, play and perform with a true belief in his music we gratefully call him…a legend.

Following is my interview with Mr. Steve Hackett:

Clyde: When composing acoustic-oriented material, how often will you allow the technology to aid in the composition process?
Steve: It really comes in the arrangement process, it’s not so much the writing end of things, it’s how we put it in harmony we use keyboards and computers to play it back what we think might sound good. To get an idea of a string section to do something by the time you recorded it onto Pro Tools and you got cello, basses, violins, and the others playing back what you’ve just done – you’ve got a pretty good idea of how it’s gonna sound. But its computers, computers are really handy, because you know we work on computers the whole time, it just enables us to edit everything and remember everything, correct everything if we want. It’s just an extension really of the recording studio.

Clyde: You went from Genesis to GTR. Can you bring us up to date from there?
Steve: Well, between Genesis and GTR there were a whole bunch of albums and there’s been similar if not more, amount of albums between GTR which really finished around about 1986 or 87 for me and I’ve been doing all manners of different types of things from recording in Brazil with lots of drummers, which is known as Batchacarta(?). I did an album called “Till We Have Faces” (1995), I did lots of different things, some of them have been acoustic albums, some of them have been rock albums, some of them have been on location, like the one I mentioned – the Brazilian album and I’ve done a blues album, called Blues is a Feeling, all manner of things, I even did an album called Genesis Revisited which had a number of people that have been in and out of the band plus an orchestra. So some projects I’ve done have had orchestras and that’s been my tendency where I’ve been tending towards in the future really is a combination of rock or rock band plus orchestra, I like the sound of that very much, but at the same time I like to make acoustic albums as well, sometimes they involve orchestras, sometimes they have to be stripped right back to acoustic guitar, like the show I’m doing at the moment is with an acoustic trio, my brother on flute, John Hackett on flute, Roger King on keyboards, Roger and I have collaborated on many things in the past few years, many different albums, so its an acoustic trio on the road right now doing stuff from way back from my earliest history to before that from something written by the occasional well known writer like Eric Satie or Debussy or even a tiny bit of Bach.

Clyde: How does your present acoustic playing, with midi technology, differ or compare to your electric playing with similar technology such as in GTR?
Steve: Well, when I play acoustic stuff I don’t use midi technology with it, I think the beauty of the acoustic guitar that it makes such a wonderful sound in the first place that I haven’t really used technology with it. When I do acoustic music I’m probably much more interested in the pure sound of the instruments.

Clyde: Because of the line-up with John Hackett on Flute and Roger King, both being classically trained musicians, would I be correct in assuming that you’ll be playing more of a nylon, classical style guitar during your performances?
Steve: That’s right yeah nylon, that’s right absolutely right yeah it’s instrumental and it’s nylon.

Clyde: If you had to compare your music, to anyone, who would you compare it to and why?
Steve: Oh goodness me, there are so many people and so many influences to be honest, it would be very hard to…(It’s kinda the Holy Grail of questions, it’s so open ended, everybody influences us..) I must be somewhere between Andre Segovia or Jimi Hendrix then in that case.

Clyde: What’s your normal stage set-up for your current tour?
Steve: Well, the stage set-up is ….I just use two nylon guitars, a pair of nylons, in fact, John uses Flute – Concert Flute, Alto Flute, Roger uses keyboards, uses some string samples, piano an occasional other sound, but in the main it’s pretty straight forward, like guitar, piano, flute – pretty straight forward. (That’s an amazing thing to do nowadays). Well yeah you know we’re taking it back to its roots in a way. (Well you should and I’m glad somebody finally has) Well you know I think there’s a lot to those instruments – they sound wonderful. They’re all capable of their own magic if you hit it right.

Clyde: What do you consider the highlight of your career?
Steve: Oh the highlight….(that’s another open ended question) yeah these are all tricky ones aren’t they? It’s difficult to know really…the highlight is usually the album that I’m working on currently. I am currently working on a rock album but it has a lot of orchestra in it so I wouldn’t want to say it was an electric album, it really is a mixture of the two, it combines a lot of things, a lot of different styles, a lot of different places, with different musicians. (Kinda all the musical influences that made Steve Hackett who he is today) Well yeah, I mean lots of things that I had hoped to do in the past and you know I think its this thing that Oscar Wilde said something about (he may have been referring to writers or artists), I think he said ”the artist yields to his material” and it’s true. You end up doing the things that you love because it’s tougher to do things that you don’t really love. So at the end of the day you realize ah…this is what I really love, that’s why I’m doing this (that’s so true, too) that’s why I’m doing this particular thing.

Clyde: What’s in the immediate and long-term future for Steve Hackett?
Steve: Well we have this tour, I’ve done England and I’ve done Europe, with this we’ve played in Japan with this tour, we’re about to do the states, we haven’t played a single gig here yet with this lineup and we finish up in Mexico, so we go south of the border at the end.

Clyde: I’ll see you at the Pearl Room in Mokena, IL on 10/21 and I’d like to do a concert review if that would be alright with you?
Steve: Sure, of course, that sounds great

Clyde: What closing statement would you like to leave our readers with?
Steve: Well I think I’ve been very fortunate to have music as a constant companion and for anyone who is aspiring to make that their living I would say it was well worth the risk, that you’ve got to persist, just when you think that no one is going to be interested that’s the time when it’s likely to happen, so provided you could do it and not be put off by adverse circumstance, nobody can make you give up your attempt at the summit. (That’s so well put!)

Mr. Hackett, thank you for the interview. It’s been both a pleasure and an honor speaking with you.

Steve Hackett is playing at The Abbey in Chicago on 10/19/05 and The Pearl Room in Mokena on 10/21/05 so make sure you get out to catch at least one of the shows or maybe both of them. You can log onto his site at www.stevehackett.com to get full information about his current tour.