Location: Spilimbergo / Piazza Duomo / Italy
Date: Monday, 01.08.2011
This year’s Folkest, which our western neighbors put on every year between Udine and Spilimbergo (and which even brings a few world-music acts over to Koper here in Slovenia), picked the show by legendary ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett as the peak of its festival program. Steve Hackett is a guitar mastermind whose musical approach, especially the way he played guitar when he arrived on the scene in the seventies, had a revolutionary influence on a whole young generation of guitarists. Among all the novelties this genius introduced to the music crowd back in those distant days were the “inventions” of the playing techniques known as “sweep picking” and “tapping”. All the Van Halens, Satrianis and Malmsteens out there, in other words, learned from Hackett.
Freshly remarried again, Steve Hackett is going through a real creative renaissance and, evidently, a total personal overhaul, which results in some seriously inspired creativity. Proof of that is his excellent latest studio release “Out Of The Tunnel’s Mouth”, which Steve crowned with a run of live shows (including the one in Trieste on 01.08.2010) and a double live CD titled “Live Rails” (Inside Out Records, 2011). And on top of all that, Hackett’s new studio album, announced for this September, is already peeking around the corner.
Exactly one year after his Trieste show, at ten to ten the stage goes dark as the opening sounds of the pre-recorded Last Train To Istanbul kick in. After a good minute of intro the musicians march onto the stage. And what do you know, someone’s missing from the lineup: Amanda Lehmann, Steve’s rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist. So standing next to Steve is the standard foursome of Gary O’Toole (drums, vocals, backing vocals), Robert King (keyboards, backing vocals), Rob Townsend (woodwinds, backing vocals) and the flamboyant bassist and backing vocalist Nick Beggs. The latter has no shame about making generous use of the Chapman Stick on stage, either.
The venue, with 1000 seats set up, was packed to the last corner. Around the seated crowd another 300 or so people were standing. This is Italy. Home of the huge Genesis fans. That’s why Steve Hackett has enjoyed so much support here for years, ever since he went solo. The upbeat “Spectral Mornings” classic Every Day opens the show. It serves up excellent sound from the very first second, with all the instruments perfectly calibrated into a sonic balance. From the first moments it was clear this would be another magical night in the company of magical music. Of course, Every Day immediately confirmed that the backing harmonies probably wouldn’t be quite as juicy throughout the show as they would have been with Amanda on stage, but the seasoned veterans didn’t lose their compass needle and patched things up flawlessly using just pure male vocal harmonies. Extreme contrasts, strung together from all sorts of moods, keep the listener in a deeply entranced state once they step into such a unique musical world. A warm, naturally rattly, dynamic stroll along the bass lines of Beggs’ Rickenbacker, the pleasant cloak of classic keyboard sound inherited from Genesis. No worries. And Hackett, who plays without a pick, showed right in the opener who’s the master of the house. An exceptionally thin, precise sound, propped up by heavy sustain and shaped by the musician’s unique expressive character, a genuine blend of neo-classicism, Celtic pastoral and jazz, brought the classic to a superb finish in a moaning, melancholic euphony.
Hackett didn’t forget the current studio album “Out Of The Tunnel’s Mouth”. Every Day flowed dramatically into Emerald And Ash, an outstanding classic prog-rock gem created for new times, which wrapped the stage in emerald-green spotlight shades. These pushed their way through misty, silky veils. Especially magical and highly vibrant in atmosphere among Steve’s own compositions is Fire On The Moon, which the band played toward the middle of the show. It stood out for its dual face. A fragile swaying of dainty piano notes surrounds Hackett’s vocal, run through a music-box effect in the verses, then erupts into a real chorus explosion of harmonized vocal collages floating on the strong support of the mellotron in the refrain. Then there’s a third excellent track from the new album, a true lullaby, as the title Sleepers itself hints, slotted into the second part right after the Genesis classic Fly On The Windshield, where Townsend spread his wings on recorder, classical flute and finally an excellent tenor sax solo. From Steve’s solo career, the setlist surprise was the inclusion of the marching, folk-leaning Golden Age Of Steam from the album “Darktown”, which doesn’t hide its motif similarity to the opening of the Genesis track Battle Of Epping Forest. Then of course there are the standards, which are also the most famous works of Hackett’s solo career and basically a mandatory part of his live repertoire. First is the magical Ace Of Wands, which crawled especially deep under the skin during the show, since it has a piercingly compatible rhetoric of neo-classicism and Celtic pastoral that even Mike Oldfield would envy in his search for the perfect motif. Then there’s the fantastic Spectral Mornings and its relative from the same album (“Spectral Mornings”), the experimental Clocks. The band saved the latter entirely for the closing stretch. In the second half, the eerie intermezzo came courtesy of “Defector” track The Steppes, with a stretched-out intro of total jazz experimentation directed by the main “culprits”: Townsend on soprano sax, King on piano and O’Toole on percussion. Then comes a sudden switch where the rhythm line takes over, its rhythm recalling the slow, long strides of a giant. Soon enough that gets built upon by the arabesques of a one-of-a-kind interplay between the instrumental trio of Hackett, King and Townsend. This moment on stage actually conjured the feeling of listening to Ravel’s Bolero warped, melody-wise, through the tonality of arabesques. A singular mood, thoroughly hypnotic. The man also spiced up the setlist with the brand-new Prairie Angles, which will be on the upcoming studio album “Beyond The Shrouded Horizon”. In its “roughness” this track replaces Still Waters in the new live repertoire, which Steve played, for example, at last year’s show in Trieste. Here the man put on a finger pick and, with a few jerky “licks”, coaxed a destructive, over-distorted sound out of the guitar in the solo, stringing together the one track that might smell appealing even to a metalhead open to musical enlightenment.
And of course, the most important part of all this. Genesis! The music of Genesis from the period of Steve’s involvement with those giants, one of the founders of the prog-rock craft. Given the more or less well-earned “slumber” of the main faces of that pioneering band, Steve Hackett on one side and Ray Wilson on the other are really the only performers playing Genesis music on stage today. Hackett’s touch is certainly far more authentic and closer to the original, which goes without saying. In one sentence: Steve has to play Genesis, otherwise he’d draw less than half the number of people to his shows. A really tough job was handed to Gary O’Toole. The man had to cover all the vocals of Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins. Less successful in the vocal delivery of the Gabriel-era Genesis classics Watcher Of The Skies, Carpet Crawlers and Fly On The Windshield. Of course, hunting for a copy of the original is a pipe dream this time, but O’Toole’s timbre is fully compatible. His best vocal turn was Blood On The Rooftoops, which Hackett opened by pouring the motif over an acoustic piece and, indirectly, through another Genesis track, Horizons. Firth Of Fifth is a Genesis classic that kicked off the encore. It was played in full. Magic, given its atmospheric peak shine precisely by Steve’s monumental guitar motif. It’s based on just a few notes, but with an extremely enduring, moaning sustain effect that stirs up genuinely transcendental feelings. The musicians delivered a sonic approximation of the originals. If you subtracted O’Toole’s vocal, at moments it felt like the real Genesis were with us, the rustic seventies ones, of course. Even the spotlight play was rendered in the giants’ retro manner. And Los Endos? Exactly. Hard to find a more fitting closer for the regular part of the show. And O’Toole spiced it up nicely vocally. The soprano sax props up the lead guitar lines of Steve Hackett, doubling and emphasizing them.
After the Firth Of Fifth fantasticness in the encore came a totally loosened-up number that carried what was probably the biggest dose of free experimentation of the whole show. It came with deliberately broken melodic templates, unexpected rhythm switches and deliberately chaotic, jazz-based delivery of short solo eruptions from tenor sax and guitar. You could feel the concert heading toward its end. In the very final stretch Gary O’Toole crashes in with a drum solo too. A “dangerous” and almost provocative decision by boss Hackett, but on the other hand a total success. O’Toole delivered an excellent solo that didn’t come off as one of those classic “stretch it out” minute-stealers for the ears, and was worth listening to every single second. One last exit from the song and the band leaves the stage.
I’d be repeating myself if I said the show flew by. Two hours and five minutes. It’s hard to describe all the feelings the unique world of Steve Hackett’s music paints for you. Add the unique Genesis world, add a one-of-a-kind interpretation that doesn’t know even a fleeting slip-up, and an exceptional sound, full, active, dynamic, where you feel there are people on stage playing a musical revolution like the one that unfolded long ago, in the early seventies. And this music is eternal. As eternal as the universe. And if heaven happens to exist anywhere at all, then surely there’s music like this spinning in the CD players up there, of a unique character, of primal genius. A Steve Hackett concert is an experience that pulls you into a musical world all its own, one you never want to leave. Sadly, it lasts “only” two hours.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Last Train to Istanbul (intro)
2. Every Day
3. Emerald and Ash
4. The Golden Age of Steam
5. Watcher of the Skies (orig. Genesis)
6. The Carpet Crawlers (orig. Genesis)
7. Fire on the Moon
8. Ace of Wands
9. Fly on a Windshield (orig. Genesis)
10. Sleepers
11. Horizons (orig. Genesis)
12. Blood on the Rooftops (orig. Genesis)
13. Spectral Mornings
14. The Steppes
15. The Darkness in Men’s Hearts (plus Nick Beggs solo)
16. Prairie Angel
17. Los Endos (orig. Genesis)
—encore—
18. Firth of Fifth (orig. Genesis song)
19. Clocks – The Angel of Mons
