Steve Hackett: On The Waves Of The Mediterranean
Music takes you places, anyone can tell you that. Who hasn’t inhabited the grotty bars played by the Sex Pistols and been spat in the face by ‘God Save The Queen’? Or walked the streets of New York City with Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel or Grandmaster Flash? Perhaps you’ve graced a world-famous stage on Max Yasgur’s dairy farm with Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin? Music takes you places, and in a world where travel between countries is both hard to come by and frowned upon, never has this been more important. To that end, guitarist and composer Steve Hackett has crafted an album of music to take you on a journey around the Mediterranean with an ensemble of brilliant musicians – he’s called it ‘Under A Mediterranean Sky’.
Image Credit: Jo Hackett
The year 2020 was a busy one for Steve Hackett. After wrapping up his U.K. tour at the end of 2019, he began touring Canada and the U.S., which was unfortunately cut short due to you-know-what. Indeed, plans for the whole year were upended as Hackett’s ‘Seconds Out’ tour of the U.K. scheduled for the end of 2020 was also cancelled. Seconds Out being the live album he released with Genesis in 1977 and the last release that was put together while he was in the band. Not only this, but trips across Europe and Australasia have had to be postponed, with tour dates now extending into 2022.
But it’s not all cancellations and unfulfilled dates, I did say it had been a busy year for Steve Hackett. In July he released his autobiography entitled ‘A Genesis In My Bed’, an endeavour that took fifteen years to put together in between touring and making records. As well as writing about Genesis, Hackett also discusses the long and interesting solo career he has committed to since leaving the band. Later in September, he released a live album ‘Selling England By The Pound & Spectral Mornings: Live At Hammersmith’, which we had the pleasure of writing about here. A single night at Hammersmith Apollo at the end of his 2019 U.K. tour, featuring the entirety of the Genesis album ‘Selling England By The Pound’, both available in film and audio counterparts. Finally, Steve Hackett has been spending time in the studio.
Under A Mediterranean Sky follows his much-loved 2019 release ‘At The Edge Of Light’, though the two albums couldn’t be more different. The latter is a progressive rock masterpiece that fits well alongside Hackett’s ‘Spectral Mornings’ album of 1979, with numbers from both being performed live in 2019. The former is entirely instrumental, the writing centres around classical guitar and dabbles in that overly broad term ‘world music’. On top of that, Hackett bandmate Roger King provides excellent orchestration, making this body of work both intimate and grand. Why don’t you see for yourself?
‘Mdina (The Walled City)’ wastes no time in taking the lead on the grand side of things, with Roger King’s orchestrations dominating the introduction with heavy percussion, woodwinds and deep brass before being cut off by the stark playing of Steve Hackett on nylon stringed guitar. Subtle strings breathe behind the guitar during a pause. Hackett’s playing is warm and exotic and equally shares the spotlight with King’s orchestra in the album’s longest track.
Roger King is a mainstay in Steve Hackett’s live band, having been his keyboard player since 2001, but has been contributing to Hackett’s studio output since the recording of ‘Genesis Revisited’ in 1995. Other artists King has worked with include Gary Moore and Snoop Dogg, as well as receiving credit for mixing and production on the soundtrack to the 1993 Sylvester Stallone film ‘Cliffhanger’. Also a regular co-writer with Steve Hackett, Roger King receives writing credits on six of the tracks on Under A Mediterranean Sky.
Image Credit: Geographic Guide
Mdina is quite literally a city that exists surrounded by a wall in Malta. Like London, Mdina also has a cathedral dedicated to St. Paul. Around 250 people live within the walls of Mdina where the total area is less than a square kilometre. Mdina is also known as The Silent City, where visitors are expected to keep the noise to a minimum, even limiting the use of vehicles within the walls.
Image Credit: Jo Hackett
‘Adriatic Blue’ begins immediately with acoustic instrumentation and continues throughout as a solo piece. Not only does Steve Hackett play more traditional western instruments such as the nylon and steel six and twelve string guitars, he also plays the charango and Iraqi oud on this record. Charango is a South American instrument, which evolved from the stringed instruments brought over by the Spanish in their conquest. Though its existence is firm by the 19th century, there is much debate on exactly where and who refined the instrument prior to that. The Iraqi oud (pictured above) is similar in size to a modern lute, and typically falls into one of three categories – Arabian, Turkish and Persian ouds, with the Iraqi oud being a part of the Arabian category along with Egyptian and Syrian ouds. The title for Adriatic Blue refers to the Adriatic Sea, which is to the right of Italy where Venice sits at the top end. On the other side are Balkan countries Croatia, Montenegro and Albania.
A low drone sounds under crisp guitar playing as strings create a haze around it in small pockets, before an array of percussion brings rhythm to the piece and strings sound in an Arabic flavour. This is ‘Sirocco’. It’s unclear who is playing the percussion, but the force is felt equally with lush orchestration from Roger King, nylon stringed guitar and Iraqi oud from Steve Hackett, and tar played by Malik Mansurov, who hails from Azerbaijan.
Hackett has played with Mansurov in Hungarian band Djabe, who Hackett has toured with as a special guest many times. In fact, a run of dates affected in 2020 have now been rescheduled for this summer. Malik Mansurov also played on Hackett’s 2017 album ‘The Night Siren’. The tar is another stringed instrument belonging to the lute family and is played in Arabian countries. It’s unclear if this is a Persian tar or an Azerbaijani tar, the latter being developed from the former in the 19th century and having eleven strings, whilst the Persian tar could have as few as four strings and as many as six.
The word ‘Sirocco’ is the name given to the south-easterly wind in the Mediterranean, bringing up the dust and sand from the Sahara Desert, which has the ability to reach hurricane speeds. The video features images taken by Jo Hackett during the couple’s visits to the region, where Steve Hackett was inspired directly by his surroundings. Jo has also been Steve’s co-writer since his 2009 album ‘Out Of The Tunnel’s Mouth’ – Under a Mediterranean Sky features five co-writes from Jo, including this one.
Image Credit: Jo Hackett
‘Joie de Vivre’ is the fourth track on the album and a beautiful solo guitar piece from Hackett (with writing shared with Jo), which breaks up the album well in terms of pace. Though Joie de Vivre may refer to a particular time and place for Hackett, the phrase (translated helpfully by Google) means ‘exuberant enjoyment of life’, and the uplifting feel of this track totally reflects that.
‘The Memory Of Myth’ is inspired by the history of Greece and begins with the haunting violin of Christine Townsend, a melody written by Jo Hackett. Christine has appeared across Steve Hackett’s works, going back at least to ‘Wild Orchids’, released in 2006, where she plays viola and principle violin. Hackett’s playing is gentle early on in The Memory Of Myth and joined once again by Roger King’s orchestrations, though I feel the track ends prematurely in a swift fade-out.
‘Scarlatti Sonata’ is the only piece on the album not written by Hackett. It was written by Domenico Scarlatti and is presented here as a solo guitar piece. Scarlatti was an Italian composer born in 1685, writing classical music in the Baroque period. When you really examine the playing in this piece, it isn’t hard to see how this playing comes out in the more progressive music Hackett plays, even in some of the Genesis songs with more of Steve Hackett’s influence.
There are more familiar faces in ‘Casa del Fauno’ with Steve’s brother John and Rob Townsend on flutes. Their contributions have such a natural air about them, which are complimented by Roger King’s more restrained and mournful strings in this piece. King’s writing really sets the mood here, like the soundtrack to rainfall, though is brought out more by Steve Hackett’s rhythmic playing, the flutes acting more like the lead instruments.
John Hackett has worked on Steve’s solo material from the very beginning, contributing flute, bells and synthesizer to Steve’s debut album ‘Voyage Of The Acolyte’. As well as working on film, television and game soundtracks, Rob Townsend has been a part of Hackett’s live band since 2001 and first contributed to his 2003 album ‘To Watch The Storms’.
Casa del Fauno translates to ‘House of the Faun’ and is situated in Pompeii in Italy. Prior to the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, Casa del Fauno was a luxurious household and ironically was preserved by the ash of the great eruption where otherwise it would’ve fallen into decay.
‘The Dervish And The Djin’ is an all-star piece featuring Rob Townsend on soprano sax, Malik Mansurov on tar and Arsen Petrosyan on duduk, along with Hackett and King on their respective instruments. Arsen Petrosyan is a renowned duduk performer, having played all over the world as a soloist in the Armenian Traditional Music Ensemble as well as in his own Arsen Petrosyan Trio. Petrosyan has released his own solo works, and is also a teacher of duduk in and around Armenia. In contrast to the heavy use of stringed instruments on this record, duduk is actually a woodwind instrument, resembling a recorder, but with a double-reed as part of the mouthpiece.
The dervish is a person of the Islamic faith who has surrendered to poverty in admiration of the values of love and seek to be closer to God. Specifically, Hackett here refers to the ‘whirling dervishes’, a dance that has become somewhat of a tourist attraction in the form of worship. A djin is a supernatural being that is neither good nor evil, and isn’t strictly of Islamic origin, a spirit that could be borrowed from other cultures. In this case, Hackett is referring to a Genie.
Beginning again with a drone, unnerving strings lay the foundation for the woodwinds, where Mansurov joins on tar and Hackett on Iraqi oud. Percussion returns, both Eastern and Western. The Dervish And The Djin is cinematic, music made for a film that is yet to exist with many influences woven together by the virtuosic players inhabiting the piece.
Image Credit: Jo Hackett
‘Lorato’ is the shortest piece on Under A Mediterranean Sky and both a solo composition and performance piece from Hackett on acoustic guitar. This is the most Steve Hackett strays into the region of folk on this album with a clear difference between his playing style on this one and Scarlatti Sonata. Lorato translates to ‘love’ in the African Tswana Tribe.
The music video for ‘Andalusian Heart’ features Hackett on location in some scenes while in others we see him performing the track on nylon six stringed guitar. Andalusia is located in the south of Spain, really making this a full circular tour of the Mediterranean. Christine Townsend returns on violin and viola while Franck Avril contributes oboe. Avril is an award winning soloist who has played across the United States and Europe. He’s also a prize-winning nature photographer, whose works appear in Hackett’s ‘Under The Eye Of The Sun’ music video released in 2018.
Andalusian Heart begins immediately with Hackett’s playing and Roger following the melody with woodwinds and strings. The addition of both live strings and woodwind bring out the subtleties respective of those instruments. This is one of the few tracks that is a writing collaboration between both Jo and Steve Hackett with Roger King. Strings seesaw in moving chords in between Hackett’s solo spots.
It might be taken for granted that the sound is so clear and precise on this record, but improperly recorded nylon stringed guitar could result in clouded notes that blend together. Of course, there is no such problem here due to the combination of skilful playing and pristine sound recording. Production here is credited to both Steve Hackett and Roger King, while King is responsible for the recording and mixing duties.
How else could you finish an album that centres around a large body of water? ‘The Call Of The Sea’ begins with the gentle plucking of strings from Hackett, fitting as this is a sole write from the man himself. Gracious strings take the lead before Hackett returns and the pair see out the record together like a musical rendering of a ship sailing into the sunset.
The journey doesn’t have to end there though - continue reading for my telephone conversation with Steve Hackett. We discuss the writing and recording of the album, Steve’s favourite place he’s visited in the Mediterranean, the use of sampled orchestrations in the recording process, his current touring commitments and Steve’s future endeavours…
Image Credit: Jo Hackett
Teri Woods: So your new album ‘Under A Mediterranean Sky’ is quite a stylistic shift from your previous album ‘At The Edge Of Light’. What inspired this creative direction?
Steve Hackett: Something like once every ten years I tend to do something that’s more acoustic. Something that favours the nylon guitar, the classical guitar, and the lockdown just seemed to provide the right time to be able to do this. So I was working on two projects, this acoustic orchestral one and a rock album and I thought, after two months, this one seemed to be ready, so erm, I thought that I’d go with this one first. The idea of something that conceptually focused on areas around the Mediterranean. I just thought when people can’t really travel with complete conviction and safety, erm, perhaps there was a journey that could be made with this, a little bit like musical landscaping.
I do get influenced quite a lot by people like Borodin, writing stuff like ‘In The Steppes Of Central Asia’ and you think that it’s about a location, and erm, yeah it’s funny isn’t it? It’s romancers place, in a way, and it gave me a chance to have a variation from track to track. There’s one track that sounds arguably Spanish, another track arguably Greek, French and so on. And do a little sort of imaginary tour of the region, where the sky is brighter, the colours are richer, and try and convey that musically.
TW: Oh I mean it sounds wonderful. Was there no temptation to add lyrics to any of them?
SH: Er, not with this one. No I mean I do write songs and in the main sing them myself these days, but I think it’s horses for courses. Something like this, I’m quite strange with this. Ever since I heard Segovia, erm, you know fifty years-plus ago, I had this idea that the guitar was this marvellous unlimited palette of colours and if you could function with the same degree of complexity and pull off that miracle that he managed to do for me when I first heard him in 1965, when I heard him playing Bach.
That was the thing so although I’d worked with Genesis and we’d had multiple guitars going, lots of twelve-strings all chiming away together and electrics and, you know a lot of the guitar stuff, guitar-based tunes tended to be acoustic with Genesis back in the day. I had this idea that you could push the envelope and be more adventurous and do it virtuosically, aim towards a standard that I only aspired to, you know back then, and erm, try and do with one guitar perhaps what people do with a whole guitar team.
The thing that impressed me so much when I first heard classical guitar was that it sounded like- previously I thought that you know keyboard is probably the better composition instrument and, erm, but then hearing Segovia, it seemed like the fretboard was just as unlimited as the keyboard. I think you had to try harder to try and make it sound unlimited but a lot of those pieces that Bach wrote were written for unaccompanied stringed instruments, violin, which he played, and cello. So as well as being a brilliant keyboard player, erm, in a way it was a bit like, you know music aspires to the condition that Bach’s music had already reached back in the days when he was born in 1685. Same year, funnily enough as Scarlatti, and I’ve got one of the Scarlatti pieces on this album, there’s a Scarlatti Sonata. Erm, a little piece, but very kind of ornate and he tended to do lots of typically Baroque things, Scarlatti. It was very ornate music, lots of trills, and, erm, a late, great friend of mine, classical guitarist called Theo Cheng, from a Chinese family, he, erm, I think he was the one who developed from this style of doing cross-string trilling, and he showed me this technique and it took me, I’m not so sure if it took me months or years, but it was a four-finger exercise with the right hand. And I eventually managed to pull it off, and erm, so it’s perfect for Baroque music because you can make the trills really stand out, whereas when you’re hammering and hammering off, the trills tend to be a little bit on the quiet side. Whereas you know you can make a real feature of that. So I’m a bit of a right hand fanatic, really.
TW: (laughs) So the places in the Mediterranean, you visited a lot of those. And there are a lot of photographs of you in these places, but what’s been your favourite place to visit in the region?
SH: Well, I absolutely loved the recent visit we had to Egypt. We- my wife and I, Jo, we did this trip down the Nile and it was fantastic, absolutely wonderful, from the Aswan Dam, you know back to Cairo. And, erm, that was just extraordinary, stuff looks like it was painted yesterday, and so much of it is in such immaculate condition, you cannot comprehend that this stuff was built thousands of years ago, but it’s made in sandstone which gets toughened by the wind and rain, unlike limestone which gets eroded. And I was there at one of the temples and a guide said ‘How long would you like, because I’m with a bunch of people from the boat?’ And he said ‘Will half an hour do?’ And I said ‘Yeah I could do with a lifetime, but we’ll make it half an hour.’ I just absolutely loved it and when I’ve been to Egypt a couple of times, for some reason, I get tonnes of musical ideas. So I was writing them down in a notebook, and many of those ideas have surfaced on the track called ‘Sirocco’, of course the wind that blows through the desert.
And, erm, not just that area, but Morocco and Jordan, which we visited in previous years and had fantastic holidays seeing stuff that was extraordinary like Petra, a fantastic place, or Wadi Rum where we got to stay with the Bedouin People. And, erm, saw the ruins of the house that Lawrence of Arabia had lived in, erm, Lawrence himself.
And so, you know, this is heady stuff, it’s great and the first time I was opposite the Sphinx, on a day-trip years and years ago, that was extraordinary, I didn’t spend so much time looking at the Sphinx as writing in a notebook, and, melodies seemed to happen. Maybe it’s just the thing about the majick of the Old Kingdom, and arguably the most exotic place on Earth. Erm, it just seems to scream music at me, so I had to get it down and my preferred method is not to, erm, use an electronic device but old fashioned pen and paper! I write down melodies, that’s what I do. I’m old school like that.
TW: Well that’s refreshing in this day and age (laughs).
SH: Yeah it’s weird isn’t it? It’s funny, erm, most people, most modern musicians you know prefer to get it down on tape or something like that. I was never really like that, you know? Once I’d sort of developed my own sort-of short-hand for writing down music, erm, it’s terribly simple - arrows up and down, erm, and yeah that’s worked very well for me. So, yeah can’t help it! Lots of what I do is influenced from the past, so I probably make less concessions to the modern world when I’m recording this type of album. I think I’m trying to bridge the gap between progressive stuff and classical stuff.
TW: Well with this one, you- So Roger King wrote a lot of the orchestral arrangements but-
SH: That’s right, yeah!
TW: -but were these done with software rather than live instruments because obviously of the pandemic…?
SH: Yeah, well we used a mixture of both, both real and sampled, and we’ve got some incredible virtuosos on the album who we’ve tracked up. Jo and I tended to write the melodies, and then we’d take it to Roger, and then he would expand on them and we would negotiate the notes and he would come up with the arrangements, so it’s a combined effort, all of that.
So you’ve got three writers on it in the end, and some extraordinary performances from people like Christine Townsend playing violin and viola, erm, wonderful stuff from her namesake, Rob Townsend, who plays in our band, but you know he’s playing soprano sax and flute. And my brother on flute, John Hackett, erm, plus one guy from Armenia, another guy from Azerbaijan on separate instruments.
And so whilst we were putting that together, there was a conflict going on between those two regions over disputed area, erm, that seems to have settled down now. But these guys had no idea that they were gonna be on the same record, indeed on the same track because we stitched it together after the event. I guess it’s a little bit on a need-to-know basis, you know? If you’ve got someone playing duduk to a virtuosic standard along with a very flexible accompaniment, he doesn’t necessarily know what’s gonna follow.
And in fact when I’ve recorded things for other people, they only usually send me the bit they want a solo from me, and I go ‘ok, fine, yep’. You know all you need to do is send me that bit. If someone sends me the whole story, then, fine, you know? But I can work within those confines. Erm, and I think duduk’s particularly good at conjuring bleak landscapes, it’s become a very cinematic instrument in the past twenty-odd years or so.
TW: Well talking about the mix of the album, ‘At The Edge Of Light’ actually had a surround sound mix in a DVD edition of the album but- so what was the reason for just sticking to a stereo mix this time for this album?
SH: The idea was, erm, we thought that because there were less instruments and lots of acoustic guitar, I thought that maybe it wasn’t gonna be a great idea to surround people by it. And I think that stereo works very well with something like this, much as I love surround! I absolutely adore it, we knew that it was gonna take that much longer to do that and we were gonna have to, erm, destroy the furniture to do that this time. And also to be able to access stuff, you know in the midst of the pandemic, erm, my surround sound system is usually in lock-up. And then to get that out and do that- I mean I suppose I could’ve worked with my pal, Steven Wilson, who did a surround for my most recent live album we did. And he did it literally in about two days! Uh, but you know he’s gonna be set up for that, the whole time. Whereas you know we’d tend to sort of deconstruct to do that, so I didn’t think that you were gonna get much more out of it for having this thing in surround. I thought it was gonna sort of break the integrity of it to do that. In other words, what are you gonna do? You’re gonna have guitar in front and orchestra behind, you know. Whereas I think coming from the same place roughly in stereo, that’s fine. Of course if anyone wants to hook up four speakers and have it like that, erm, I would be interested to hear that! I think that often works very, very well. I’ve heard that when people have had set-ups where they’ve just got expanded stereo, erm, but I think keeping it simple, and keeping it pure, it’s- it’s- I’m looking for a word here, the purists.
TW: Yeah I understand.
SH: But I think I guess I’m a bit purist with something like this. I think it’s about the music. It’s not so much about the production, even though I think that it’s been beautifully produced as it happens. I think it’s the best acoustic sound I’ve ever, ever had. I’ve been trying to get this kind of sound for years. I mean I’ve done these sorts of albums before, but this one also has lots of world music influences. It’s more exotic, in places more rhythmic than I do normally when I do acoustic stuff.
TW: Well it’s very beautiful and it’s been a joy to listen to.
SH: I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it! Yeah, I’m still in love with this album and that’s saying something you know because we started work on this in about March, and then two months later we were finished, so I’ve had this sitting there raring to get it out in front of people, but I’m still listening to it. So that’s gotta be a sign of its value for me, so I’m very proud of it and I know Roger is, it’s starting to get good reviews, which is very nice because it’s been sitting there for a while, ready like a Cinderella in the wings. And I’m happy that it’s starting to pick up notice, you know? I mean it’s a funny thing but Europeans seem to really like it! I suspect it may well baffle America, where, you know, I mean it could be heresy to say this, but I struggle when I listen to Buddy Holly but I’ve got no problem when I listen to Tchaikovsky.
TW: I suppose it’s a manner of taste?
SH: I’m not trying to be snobby here because I love rock and roll, I mean I absolutely love it and blues is a passion for me as well, it’s a guilty pleasure most of the time even though I’ve done one blues album in my time. Somehow I like to play basic stuff, I like to hear people who can really play, and you know people are always saying, ‘Ooo you know, what do you think of this group and that group?’ And it’s, you know, modern stuff, and I struggle not to sound reactionary. Although I do like some modern bands, I do like what I hear of Muse and Elbow, but I struggle to find bands who are as broad-based as that. Erm, a lot of the time I find the ideas a bit thin on the ground with a lot of these bands.
TW: I think, like, these days people are pigeon-holed into a genre or whatever and people don’t necessarily branch out as often as musicians used to.
SH: Yeah well that’s true! And I think ever since the 1970’s, things started to expand in the ‘60’s, erm, the shackles were off in the ‘70’s, and then radio formatting, particularly in America- Erm, experts were saying to stations, ‘if you want to be successful, just play Top 40’. And so that really killed college radio and you know the music of the people, and the young people at that time. I mean the very stations that broke acts like The Beatles and latterly some of the more progressive acts, that radio just wasn’t there anymore after a certain point. So you know the need to conform, erm, ‘don’t be a heretic! Keep it simple!’ You know, and I can hear bands that were doing, you know, great records but it was within a very tight format. Erm, I can think of two bands that changed totally over the course of the years, you know – Fleetwood Mac. Completely different from their inception, the ethos was completely different. And equally interesting but completely different, the same thing with Genesis I think. You know the ‘70’s and the ‘80’s era – two very different eras, two very different requirements from the media. And people will be divided forever into separate camps saying ‘no this is the real thing! No that’s the real thing!’
TW: (laughs) Well, speaking of, you know, Genesis and touring, I’m not gonna talk about the reunion tour, I promise. Erm, so if all goes to plan, you’ll be performing a lot of this year and next year. In your VIP performances for the ‘Seconds Out’ Tour, you’re gonna perform a special set of ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’. What made you select this specific material, and is that a precursor to performing the album in full?
SH: I think that it’s a strange album, ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’. We had the idea of doing the VIP package where people could get a small set and get to meet the band and get things signed and talk to the guys about what they do, their techniques and their equipment etc. So we thought that might appeal to other musicians, of course you know all of this is pre-pandemic where the world has turned on its axis a few times since then. I think that you know, The Lamb is this kind of clash of cultures, you know a huge collision of disparate ideas from the world of classically inspired keyboard work to proto-punk, vocals, and it’s a very strange album. Lots of different kinds of music on it, but I do really like some of the things on The Lamb. I think that some of the best of The Lamb I think is stellar.
So we had an idea of, you know taking some of this stuff in front of people, whereas I’m supposed to be, and I’ve advertised doing the whole of Seconds Out. Like I just said, pre-pandemic that seemed to be a very simple thing to do and we had shows booked, etc. Sixty shows were cancelled, erm, we still have an intention to do that album in its entirety, and full-length versions of those tunes as well. Not just the segways and little short snippets. So I wanted to give people the full works, so we can give them that in total, and in part we can give them some of the stuff from The Lamb. Those who decided to go ahead and get the package.
So with as much certainty as I can come up with, I am looking forward to doing the whole thing, and if there’s time to do solo work as well, won’t that be wonderful? I mean if this album takes off, I mean I have had situations like this before, you know promoters want me to do a Genesis show, then I have a hit album, like ‘At The Edge Of Light’, which went top 20 in about 13 different countries and so, the world of live work and the world of selling records, you know can be two very separate propositions. But I will do some solo stuff, it’s what I’m basically saying, and who knows we might do some stuff from this album as well.
TW: I mean that would be wonderful. Have you considered the possibility of playing this album with an orchestra because of all the orchestral arrangements on it?
SH: Well I have been out with an orchestra from time to time, and we did a British tour with The Heart Of England Orchestra a couple of years back, and that went very, very well, had a great album from that, which was recorded at the Palladium and I sometimes play with orchestras, sometimes I’m a guest with someone else’s orchestra, or sometimes the band is a guest with someone else’s orchestra. Particularly in Germany it seems to be the case, but I haven’t taken out a band playing, in other words, a trio or a quartet playing acoustic stuff with an orchestra. That has yet to happen, and, erm, I think it’ll take quite a bit of planning to do that. You have to have the arrangements written out which sounds simple, but it’s not the same as working with a group or a trio. Even someone who’s technically adept and classically trained as Roger King, on a nod we can come up with something, whereas the agreement that has to be something with an orchestra, requires quite a bit more complexity. You know sometimes I set the pace! Erm, with this, whereas the conductor’s baton, you know, erm (laughs), brings in all those soldiers with it! That’s rather more tricky, you know? Where does the ‘one’ start? Is it on the nod from the guitarist? Is it, you know, the conductor’s baton comes down? But, you know, we worked with a very interesting conductor a couple of years ago, Bradley Thachuk, and he said ‘we’ll follow you’ and I was mightily relieved that it wasn’t a case of- because not all conductors are the same. And then suddenly you’re in this sort of rigid thing! And erm, rock bands don’t work too well like that.
TW: No, I can appreciate that (laughs).
SH: Yes!
TW: Right at the very beginning of our interview, you mentioned doing two albums at once, and so are you able to tell us more about the rock album?
SH: Yeah I’m about forty-five minutes into a rock album. I make my publicists mad saying this sort of stuff. But it won’t come out until the latter half of the year. I’m always anxious to sort of stress the breadth of the work that I’m interested in. Erm, whereas in fact, you know, most of the time, you should be selling one thing.
I mean if I said I thought that this was the best album I’d ever done, I would be being honest but I realise it’s not a rock album and therefore, someone might well say “yeah but what about such and such, what about ‘Selling England By The Pound’, what about, you know, one of your own, what about ‘Spectral Mornings’ and all of that?” And, you know, live, I can say, yep, yep, those are my favourites too, but, you know, currently, in terms of recent work, I loved the last rock album we did, At The Edge Of Light, and that seemed to be charmed, because it seemed to go through a lot of things that I’ve been trying to do for years. I’m not making this up. And it just happened to work. You know when you try and take stuff as broad as what’s covered on that album, erm, you’ve got the influences of Indian stuff, and a team that’s from all over the globe, and it’s ambitious, I think.
Erm, but then I grew up in an experimental era. When I was in my teens it was the 1960’s, the 1950’s was much more constrained, jazz was jazz, blues was blues, pop was pop, Mario Lanza was Mario Lanza and Elvis was Elvis. Progressive music meant free jazz. It meant going out there without a script. Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, brilliant players, and though they are, and you know I love that for it’s out-there freedom, it’s a bit sort-of, your equivalent of Jackson Pollock. It’s the birth of the abstract, but, the other side of things, for me is that even though I never had a formal classical training, I’ve orientated towards it. So I’ve come to it myself, I’m a volunteer, you know, I’ve never been pressganged into it.
Erm, so I find myself marvelling at Anne-Sophie Mutter for instance, playing with the Berlin Philharmonic when she’s only seventeen years old playing Bruch and Mendelssohn. And erm, you know, that standard of super-human playing is an absolute marvel, and, I can’t help this thing, this sort of aspiring to the virtuosic, the whole time. When I hit it or whether I fall short in the eyes of those who have gone through the rigors of classical training, that’s a whole other matter, but then- We mentioned Mario Lanza who, as far as I know, never actually sang a whole opera, he never did, he just sang the arias, just sang the hits. But then, he was an influence on people like Pavarotti who was gonna go the more conventional route and, erm, probably suffered under the lash and did his lessons, but music was never that for me. I never wanted to be graded, erm, I never wanted to be de-graded by, by masters and experts who knew better. Erm, I’ve always gone my own route here. I don’t like to be criticised, I’m already a very- I can be very self-critical. And I think there’s such a thing as constructive criticism too.
My wife, Jo, who writes this stuff with me, she said with this album, ‘you know perhaps you could, you know, broaden it, this acoustic album, it doesn’t have to be something that’s based solely on nineteenth century romantic music or baroque music’. And I tended to favour those two eras in the past when I was doing acoustic stuff, but she said you know ‘it could be more ambitious than that, the exotic locations that we visited, the instruments that we’ve heard, you could incorporate that into it’. And of course by entering into that, it becomes more rhythmic in places where I’d always had to sort of- this idea of adagios for the guitar and music for siestas and music for fountains has always been a thing with me. But she wasn’t spoiled with that, and she was right to give me a gentle push in that direction.
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