Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Hackett, Steve
Label: Inside Out Records
Release: 2001
Rating: 5/5
“Live Archive” is the long-awaited collection of live recordings from legendary guitarist Steve Hackett. The release features four CDs covering three different eras of Hackett’s live career (the 70s, 80s and 90s) with three different lineups. With this release, Steve decided to at least clip the wings of the bootleg trade in his unofficial concert recordings, and to offer his longtime followers a selection of some of his most vivid recordings. The same concept had already been tackled or followed by some other legendary prog rock acts, among them King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Steve made an excellent move here, since most of these recordings can be heard on CD for the very first time. There’s no point in stressing that this is a great live musician with an enviable mileage of gigs behind him, who never cared much for fame and glitz and spent most of his career focusing on his incredibly loyal fan base.
The first two CDs cover recordings of Steve’s original live lineup, formed in 1978, right after the release of his second album “Please Don’t Touch” (1978). Besides Steve and his brother John on flute and guitar, the band at the time featured Nick Magnus on keyboards, John Shearer on drums, Dick Cadbury on bass and Pete Hicks on vocals. The recording comes from a 1979 show at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. It features superb renditions of mostly the best material from his first three albums (“Voyage of Acolyte”, “Please Don’t Touch” and “Spectral Mornings”), plus a few pieces he recorded with Genesis (“Horizons”, “Blood On The Rooftops” and “I Know What I Like”). The lineup was brilliantly tight and most of the performances really come off well. I’d single out “Ace Of Wands”, “A Tower Struck Down”, “Star Of Sirius” (although here I sometimes really miss Phil Collins’ original vocal), “Spectral Mornings” and “Shadow Of Hierophant”. Especially with the excellent performance of the latter, a pretty demanding symphonic epic and one of Steve’s most ambitious pieces ever, they manage to completely enchant the listener.
They’re a bit less convincing on the Genesis classic “I Know What I Like”, which, without Peter Gabriel or Collins on vocals, always lacks that sarcastic, spicy charm of the original. But they make up for it with the great instrumental section “Wardrobe Boogie”, where Steve and his mates kick off a pretty interesting jam, mostly built on a boogie that’s very untypical for Steve, and where he also treats himself to some seriously bluesy solos. Although Hicks is a pretty good singer with a certain share of charisma, I reckon he’s better suited to the more melodic rock/AOR-leaning material, which he proves with a decent vocal performance on “Narnia” and “Racin In A”, both of which feature the superb vocals of Steve Walsh (Kansas) in the original. Steve of course can’t do a gig without playing the instrumental “Kim” (it appears on two recordings here), dedicated to his Brazilian wife Kim Poor, who’s also the author of the vast majority of his album covers. Among the occasional surprises are the short acoustic instrumentals “Etude in A min” and the closing “Racing In A Coda”. The band was very well rehearsed here, the setlist is a dream and the atmosphere almost magical (thunderous applause from the crowd). In my opinion, that’s exactly why the first two CDs stand out in particular.
The third CD captures a recording from Rome’s Castel Sant’ Angelo, in 1981, during the tour for the album “Cured” (1981). Besides both Hacketts and Nick Magnus, the lineup at the time included Chas Cronk on bass and Ian Mosley on drums, before the latter joined Marillion. Steve was relatively popular in Italy back then, as the roaring ovations from the crazy Italian fans prove. For the setlist, the band moved between renditions of the better pieces from the first four albums (joined by then by “Defector”, 1980) and a few songs from the then-current “Cured”, which, truth be told, isn’t among his best achievements. On that album Steve decided to break up his existing lineup, started writing shorter and less complex pieces and sang all the vocals himself. Mostly because of the latter, where he never shone all that much (although he’s perfectly solid for a guitarist, especially compared to someone like Steve Howe (Yes), who’s usually total darkness here), the selection of songs was carefully chosen so that some of the vocally more demanding pieces disappeared.
The recording opens with the excellent, guitar-driven instrumental “The Air Conditioned Nightmare”, one of the better pieces from “Cured”. Magnus keeps backing Steve’s guitar nicely on keyboards, while the Cronk/Mosley rhythm section sounds noticeably harder than their predecessors. Besides that one, standouts include the jazz-tinged instrumental “Jacuzzi”, the always superb “Ace Of Wands” (in my opinion one of the three best instrumentals of his career), the orientally flavored “The Steppes”, the schizoid, freaked-out “Slogans” and “A Tower Struck Down”, and the lyrical classic “Spectral Mornings”. Unsurprisingly, these are all instrumentals. When Steve tries to pass himself off as a singer on AOR fiascos like “Funny Feeling”, “Picture Postard” and “Hope I Don’t Wake”, he comes across as rather pathetic, if not downright saccharine, since his voice is in no way suited to this kind of experiment, even though you can feel how hard he tried to win listeners over in this area too. He does best vocally on “Every Day”, which is much closer to his symphonic prog. All in all, another varied and well-executed set from a band in great spirits, from a period when Steve changed his sound fairly radically.
The fourth disc captures a show at London’s Grand Theatre, where Steve played with the lineup that made up the then-current “Guitar Noir” (1993) album. Besides both Hackett brothers, it featured Julian Colbeck on keyboards, Doug Sinclair on bass and Hugo Degenhardt on drums, who were no less superb musicians than their predecessors. This time the setlist is extremely diverse, since by then Steve had released a heap of quite different albums, most of them sounding considerably harder, which can partly be credited to a much harder rock rhythm section. They kick off with a fascinating “Medley”, a dizzying collage of some of Steve’s most beloved instrumentals such as “Myropia”, “Los Endos” (from his Genesis days), “Imagining”, “Ace Of Wands” and “Hackett To Pieces” (which he also liked to play in the mid-80s at gigs of the short-lived AOR experiment GTR, which he ran together with Steve Howe). A superb revival of some of the best moments of Steve’s career. Degenhardt proves himself an extremely energetic drummer on most of the pieces, and his massive hits add a different, punchier edge even to the older material.
Among the other performances, the biggest standouts are the wittily creepy “Vampyre With A Healthy Appetite”, another indispensable Steve classic, the Andean-tinged instrumental “Sierra Quemada”, the ethno-leaning “Take These Pearls” with great percussion work, the atmospheric, surreal jazz rocker with flamenco elements “Dark as The Grave”, the “Spectral Mornings/Firth Of Fifth/Clocks” medley, where they serve up some of the old favorites, the cover of Morricone’s “Cinema Pardiso”, which is also one of his best pieces for guitar in the original, and a delicious rendition of the excellent instrumental “In That Quiet Earth”, from his Genesis days, which in my opinion is the highlight of this recording and stirs up an enviable dose of nostalgia. At the same time, Steve shows he’s made noticeable progress as a singer with two good performances of the AOR-leaning “In the Heart Of the City” and the blues rocker “Lost In Your Eyes” (where he’s also well covered by the backing vocals and occasionally picks up the harmonica). Yet another superb recording of a band with a completely different energy from its predecessors, but with the eternally recognizable sound of the master’s guitar watching over them.
Steve has put together a truly enviable collection of some of the best moments of his long live career as a solo musician. All three CDs sound very good, and as far as the performances go, I’d have a hard time picking the best one. I’d probably go for the first two CDs, which capture his live beginnings and the time when, in my opinion, he had both the best band around him and the most interesting set of songs for a big fan of symphonic progressive rock. This archive collection was only the first of the collections of recordings that followed in the coming years. Since they’re not even hard to get through the Inside Out label, no Steve fan should be left without at least one of them, and “Live Archive 70, 80, 90s” is probably the best of the lot, since it captures three key phases of Steve’s development as a solo musician.
Lineup
Steve Hackett – guitar, harmonica, vocals
John Hackett – flute, guitar, bass pedal
Dick Cadbury – bass, backing vocals (CD 1,2)
John Shearer – drums (CD 1,2)
Pete Hicks – vocals (CD 1,2)
Nick Magnus – keyboards (CD 1,2,3)
Chas Cronk – bass, backing vocals (CD 3)
Ian Mosley – drums (CD 3)
Julian Colbeck – keyboards (CD 4)
Doug Sinclair – bass, backing vocals (CD 4)
Hugo Degenhardt – drums, backing vocals (CD 4)
Production
Steve Hackett
Track List
CD 1: (55:32)
Hammersmith Odeon – London 30/06/79
1. Intro (2:00)
2. Please Don’t Touch (5:46)
3. Tigermoth (3:37)
4. Every Day (7:29)
5. Narnia (4:36)
6. The Red Flower of Tai Chi (4:03)
7. Ace Of Wands (7:23)
8. Carry On Up The Vicarage (3:33)
9. Etude in A min (0:37)
10. Blood On The Rooftops (0:18)
11. Horizons (1:58)
12. Kim (2:36)
13. The Optigan (1:29)
14. A Tower Struck Down (3:30)
15. Spectral Mornings (6:57)
CD 2: (56:29)
Hammersmith Odeon – London 30/06/79
1. Introductions (1:07)
2. Star Of Sirius (10:16)
3. Shadow Of The Hierophant (9:35)
4. Clocks (7:18)
5. I Know What I Like (8:50)
6. Wardrobe Boogie (5:02)
7. Racing In A (10:15)
8. Racing In A Coda (2:06)
CD 3: (74:50)
Castel Sant’ Angelo – Rome 13/09/81
1. The Air Conditioned Nightmare (5:00)
2. Jacuzzi (5:04)
3. Funny Feeling (5:07)
4. Ace Of Wands (7:47)
5. Picture Postcard (5:18)
6. The Steppes (6:50)
7. Every Day (6:28)
8. Overnight Sleeper (4:28)
9. Hope I Don’t Wake (4:25)
10. Slogans (5:18)
11. A Tower Struck Down (3:26)
12. Spectral Mornings (5:39)
13. The Show (3:52)
14. Clocks (6:08)
CD 4: (70:54)
The Grand Theatre – London 08/06/93
1. Medley: Myopia / Los Endos / Imagining / Ace Of Wands / Hackett to Pieces (4:46)
2. Vampyre With A Healthy Apptite (6:13)
3. Sierra Quemada (4:20)
4. Take These Pearls (4:56)
5. In The Heart Of The City (5:32)
6. Walking Away From Rainbows (3:38)
7. There Are Many Sides To The Night (5:20)
8. Kim (2:25)
9. Dark As the Grave (5:26)
10. Always Somewhere Else (6:17)
11. Lost In Your Eyes (5:02)
12. Medley: Spectral Mornings / Firth of Fifth /Clocks (8:13)
13. Cinema Paradiso (3:16)
14. In That Quiet Earth (5:20)
Album length: 05:33:37
