Steve Hackett is renowned as an immensely talented and innovative rock musician. He was lead guitarist with Genesis as part of their classic line up with Gabriel, Collins, Banks and Rutherford, that produced acclaimed albums such as Selling England by the Pound (a favorite of John Lennon and mine as well). With Steve's extraordinary versatility in both his electric guitar playing and his composing, he involves influences from many genres, including Jazz, World Music and Blues. He also was in the 80’s super group GTR with Steve Howe from Yes. 2024 saw Steve release his new studio album ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’, currently touring. A rite-of-passage concept album with a young character called Travla at the centre of it, ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’s’ 13 tracks have an autobiographical angle for the musician who says about his 30th solo release: “I love this album. It says the things I’ve been wanting to say for a very long time.” ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’ was recorded between tours in 2022 and 2023 at Siren studio in the UK – with guest parts beamed in from Sweden, Austria, the US, Azerbaijan and Denmark, the line-up is Roger King (keyboards, programming and orchestral arrangements), Rob Townsend (sax), Jonas Reingold (bass), Nad Sylvan (vocals), Craig Blundell (drums) and Amanda Lehmann on vocals. Nick D’Virgilio and Hugo on drums, engineer extraordinaire Benedict Fenner appears on keyboards.
‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’s tour hit the stage at the Dr Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in Orlando, FL in the spring of 2024. The show features brand new selections as “People Of The Smoke”, “Breakout”, “These Passing Clouds” and “Wherever You Are”. We were also treated to a wonderful array of old Genesis songs as “The Battle of Epping Forest”, “Firth of Fifth” and “After the Ordeal” from their groundbreaking album Selling England by the Pound. He even threw in the song “Horizons” from the Genesis album Foxtrot. I was thoroughly impressed with the musicianship and in particularly the guitar prowess of Steve. I had interviewed Steve for my show Guitar Trax recently and he said it was a challenging time to interweave guitar in many of the Genesis songs because it was so vocal & keyboard eccentric. However, with that said he achieved it magnificently. Hackett has been overlooked in history as a guitarist to be recognized with, but he is very underrated which was evident in his performance. For those of you who may have overlooked Steve’s ability as a great guitarist, I urged you to go see him live to witness an outstanding performance!
