From paperlate-owner@atom.ansto.gov.au Thu Dec  8 01:44:10 1994
Date: Wed, 7 Dec 1994 23:35:51 -0600
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
To: paperlate@atom.ansto.gov.au
From: billbrink@mail.utexas.edu (Bill Brink)
Subject: Re: More of the Hackett interview
Sender: paperlate-digest-owner@atom.ansto.gov.au
Reply-To: paperlate@atom.ansto.gov.au
Content-Length: 10108
Status: RO
X-Lines: 176

OK, here is the latest part of that extensive interview with Steve Hackett
from the pages of THE WAITING ROOM.   Enjoy

>From the Camino Royale to the Bay of Kings

STEVE Hackett IN CONVERSATION ABOUT HIS SOLO CAREER With ALAN HEWITT.

	---There was a gap between Cured and Highly Strung of
	almost two years. Was any of this to do with the
	problem Charisma were having at that time?

	I wasn't really aware of the potential takeover at that point. It became
harder to work with Charisma Records because they wanted to become more
involved creatively with the products after that and the problem arises
when you have a company who are in disarray themselves. It can be very
difficult if you are caught between departments. In other words A&R were
starting to make comments and requests which didn't fit the ~)'s idea and
so it left me in the middle, trying to steer a sensible course. As a result
Highly Strung was a more difficult album - again, one of my difficult ones!
The circumstances around it were not as easy as I was fending for my
integrity if you like and it was it difficult time. That's why the album
took eighteen months to take shape. Charisma wanted me to have a producer
at the start and then they couldn't agree which producer it should be, so I
said, "well, do you mind if in the meantime I just try and get on with it
and start recording?", and they said, "Oh no, you should...." (laughter).
At the end of the day I was left with an album which they decided they
didn't like. They felt I shouldn't sing but I felt strongly that I should,
so we were starting not to see eye to eye on things.	
	
            ---As you continucd to sing, thc vocals on HighlyStrung	
	show how you had improvcd and how you had found	
	more of your range as it wcre. Ironically for all the	
	problems you had with this album, it includcd a hit	
	single in the form of Cell 151.	
		
	It was ironic that that was a success because it was a track that had been
re-mixed eight times! (laughter). It was always going backwards and
forwards and I would be asking, "Do you like this? Do you like that?". I
constantly had the feeling that I was auditioning with the record company
and it was an uncertain atmosphere and I wasn't sure of things. Even though
I had a success with that track, they decided that they weren't going to be
involved with me anymore. The writing was on the wall and I began to
approach other record companies. 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 that it would have been the right move and in fact I still think it
would have been the thing to do. The other was the idea of an all-acoustic
album, which I started doing in my own spare time 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.  My label was much
smaller and had a lot of enthusiasm but was to some extent a dilettante; an
expensive toy for its owner, who decided that they were going to move out
to the record business. They were in a number of areas at the time, into
cars which was the mainstay, they were into perfume, luggage, music all at
once and the fact is that I started recording albums that were occasionally
self-funded where you would need to find a ready buyer rather than working
with the comfort of a company who would fund it and expect it at a certain
time. It's a bit like a father and his children where if they don't come
out as bastards they come out as orphans but to a degree I think you are
renewing your own sense of commitment by doing that. It's that old Broadway
or Tin Pan Alley idea that you never put money into your own show. Well
there are times when if you want to stay in business, you have to do that.
It may not mean that you have a success but when it's simply a case of
staying in business so you have to do that. We have our own company now and
our own studio and at one time that would have been unthinkable. You see,
with conglomorates you will find that there will be times when you will be
in favour with them and you are the darling of the moment, but as you begin
to devlop strong ideas about HOW something should sound so you deny them
their creative input andthe albums become made to order.
	

---I think that one of the things that struck people most about Highly
Strung was that it was a lot more loose. In parts it felt a lot more
improvised and a lot more comfortable. There are tracks on the album that
sound as if they should have been on Cured but weren't, if you like, ready.
Pieces like Weightless and India Rubber Man were not quite what people
would expect to hear on what would be considered to be a rock album.

Yes, that's true. It's funny but I think at times that I am my own most
savage critic really. I would look back on that now and say that the Lyric
was just an excuse to put a by line on another song about hang-gliding over
Rio de Janeiro! In a way I felt like doing that - flying in the face,
literally, of Punk where everything had to be street crud and I thought,
"f~k all that, let's give them this!" Strangely enough Brian Eno did a
track called Weightless, which I hadn't realized he'd done on another album
afterwards although I'm not quite sure of the timing on that. In a way I've
always been interested in atmospheric music and I suppose I'm a
contradiction because on one hand I'm quite happy to approach things
through the intellect and on the other I feel that things should be
instinctive. I think that if I. look back over it, it is a fragmented album
possibly falling into two halves of the song type and the blowing type.
Tracks like Camino Royale have a lot more drive to them.

---You've mentioned the acoustic album already. 1983 was a busy year for
your fans because we had the two tours. I think that Bay of Rings was
really a surprise because an entirely acoustic album was not something that
people were expecting despite your acoustic side from the previous albums
and your live show. But to produce an entire acoustic album was a real
challenge, in particular for the rock element of your audience.

This is always a good test - you sometimes hear a track and you don't
realize it's yourself! I walked into the record company offices as they
were playing one day and my head was full of other things like probably
waiting to do another interview or something and I said to the people
there, "Who's that?", because I couldn't tell who it was. It was the fast
piece that's at the end of side one - this was in the days before CDs came
along and sides of albums disappeared. I thought I was listening to a harp.
It sounded beautiful and intriguing and what more can I say other than I
didn't recognize it! Sometimes when you listen to a piece of music and you
don't hear the beginning it can wrong-foot you and you think it's someone
else. That's happened to me a few times

---The other thing that was surprising about Bay of Rings was that you
chose to put a few of the older pieces from previous albums into an
acoustic setting. Was that a challenge for you to almost rethink them?

Yes, we wanted to include some things which were well known flute melodies
because I'd written a lot since John was so close at hand. We did re-think
them and did, in some cases, more interesting versions of them because of
the limitations.

---We had to think of them in a new light too. People were expecting the
big power chords to come and in and of course they weren't there! The shows
themselves were a revelation for the fans and in particular for the
non-album pieces that were played. One that's become almost a trademark for
you is Tales Of The Riverbank.

That one, yes; I used to play it and once again it was the b-side of a
single. It's strange how sometimes you get the greatest response from
things that are the most unlikely and are in no way proportional to the
amount of time you invest in these things! The whole reason for wanting to
do the acoustic stuff goes back years to when I first heard guitar things
that were made in the 20's and 30's and it sounded amazing to me the amount
of things you could do on one guitar. So I started writing things that were
as complex as my technique would allow but melodies were the things that
seemed to be the most important. In that area you don't really separate the
writing from the paying and you work with sound. I tend to work with reverb
and echo which enable me to play slower. So when I look back on it now I
tend to think of it as almost Siesta type music; the kind of thing where
you're starting to leave things behind and just fall off to sleep and
really become very relaxed and very tranquil. I know that that is the
reason why people do music for relaxation tapes, but at the time I viewed
it as music without props and that pre-dates New Age and Unplugged so the
derivations from classical and Flamenco and folk and all those kinds of
areas are all there. There's also the influence of the nylon guitar because
with Genesis we had specialized in twelve string extravaganzas, so I felt
that nylon was the area I was most interested in because it had the widest
range of dynamics in all the acoustic areas. I think it was a reaction
against dependency, the pyrotechnics of rock; the smoke and lasers and
dancing girls in the wings! (laughter)

And that's where we leave it for now thanks to Steve and his manager
organizing this lengthy interrogation! Our thanks to Graham Drabble and
Peter Gozzard for the cuttings. Next time around Steve will be talking
aboutTill We Have Faces and his time with GTR.