Steve Hackett interview with Prog Magazine about the album: Wolflight
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00:00Genesis
00:18Genesis always was a hard act to follow.
00:21And I've always been aware of that.
00:23I think for all the guys in the band that's been the case.
00:27Whether you have individual hits or whatever,
00:29there's always that sort of...
00:31It's a bit like the mothership, isn't it?
00:33When I write a song, I think,
00:35would this have passed muster with the other guys?
00:38Would Phil have liked it rhythmically?
00:40Would Tony have liked it harmonically?
00:43Would it have worked for Mike?
00:45Would it have worked with Pete lyrically?
00:48And you have all of that,
00:50but at the same time, of course,
00:52you want to do your own thing.
00:54And I just thought, yeah,
00:57I've really got to push the envelope harmonically with this.
01:00You know, it's got to be as good as some of those things
01:02that I've listened to.
01:03It's got to be as good as Grieg.
01:05It's got to be as good as Tchaikovsky.
01:08You know, it's got to be as good as that first day
01:10when I worked with Phil in the rehearsal room with the band.
01:13He started playing me something.
01:15I said, it sounds fantastic.
01:17And he said, oh, that's Ringo Starr's drum solo off of,
01:21what's the one, Abbey Road.
01:24And I always remembered that.
01:26And I thought, you know, I want to do something like that.
01:28That's a little bit like Keith Moon, isn't it?
01:30You know, so it's got the bass drum going,
01:32but it's like doing fills all around that.
01:35So we had the Wolves at the beginning singing away
01:38and a frozen reverb note of that.
01:41So they hit a seventh and then the drums come in
01:45and then it's band kicking in
01:47and the orchestra and choir and everything.
02:08Every time I've done an album, I've always thought,
02:24well, I need to get orchestral perspectives in here,
02:27but how do we enlarge everything?
02:29And even if you've got a real orchestra on it
02:31or you've got several people tracked up,
02:35it's quite hard to not have the orchestra impoverished
02:40by the group because groups make a big noise.
02:43But there's this area of marcato stuff
02:48where they're playing with the edge of the bow
02:50and reinforcing some of the bass things with brass
02:55so that it's not just the sort of,
02:58the kind of definition of bass end
03:01that when you get a great bass player
03:04with a really extraordinary sound,
03:06like Chris Squire, who's on the album.
03:09There's this thing that orchestras,
03:11they have a more amorphous bass end.
03:15It's not dependent on great speakers
03:18and sharp definition.
03:21It's more than that.
03:23So I wanted to get that idea of infinite bass.
03:27So we stacked up a lot of that, you know,
03:30we have more than one thing playing basses, you know.
03:33I mean, I think on one track we had about 20 different things
03:37all doing bass.
03:39There's a lot of things on it that shouldn't really work.
03:42Orchestras with rock groups shouldn't really work, you know,
03:46because they're not supposed to be as percussing.
03:49And I wanted it to sound like an expanded rock band,
03:51but not just an expanded rock band that sounded like it had an orchestra with it,
03:55but also with world music instruments as well.
04:00So the Arabian ud, the didgeridoo, the deduk, the tar from Azerbaijan,
04:05all these various things that helped to expand it a bit, you know.
04:09And I and time on the record a little bit, and I think there's a story here about it.
04:13I don't know if anybody's singing.
04:14You know what, what are you playing?
04:16I know what happens about it!
04:18But then I just want.
04:19Like to tell you in the background.
04:20You know what?
04:22It just needs it to feel the same thing.
04:23You just need that.
04:24Right-click.
04:25It shit is information.
04:27Here you have a friend and the son.
04:29You still need it?
04:32Yeah.
04:33Like to tell you something you think
04:35does it still need something,
04:37especially with the strong band?
04:38Working with these other instruments that I'm not familiar with, working with Malik
04:47Mansirov, who plays the tar, the tar, small stringed instrument with sympathetic strings,
04:55same family of instruments as the guitar and the sitar, and Malik from Azerbaijan, where
05:0350% of the people are still nomadic, I believe. He's a little bit like, he's got the speed
05:10of John McLaughlin, and in a way, the mysticism of Ravi Shankar. He's incredible. And of course,
05:18the other instruments that might be less familiar to people, the Arabian Ud. I bought that in
05:25London, it's a fretless lute. I learned to play it a little bit. I'm not the level of virtuoso
05:31on it that Malik is on the tar, but I took some things from him, the idea of playing
05:39on one string, more things on one string than you would normally do in sliding, and so on,
05:45Dust and Dreams, that kicks off. Some of these world instruments, they often set the scene
05:51before the song starts. It's almost as if when Malik is playing on the beginning of War
05:57Flight. You've got almost like the flickering flames of the campfire. You know, the kind
06:05of music that they might have played at one time when they just sat around to entertain
06:09themselves. And I wanted to get an aspect of that. A little bit like different relay teams.
06:14So you've got the world music musicians, you've got the aspect of folk songs. So, you know,
06:22at times I wanted to build back as far as Peter, Paul and Mary. I wanted to have that. But then
06:29I wanted to have rock as well, you know, the edge of that, and then whatever orchestra could
06:33do on top of that. It's my proudest moment, to be honest, you know, this album.
06:52Of course you.
07:10You
07:13You
07:15you
07:18you