My interview with Steve Hackett

[Progatron]

...posted on his official website. He asked for permission to post it - guess he liked it!


http://www.hackettsongs.com/interview/interview21.html

[mozo-pg]

Congratulations!

[Flightwave]

Good stuff !!

[2steves]

great interview from one of the best---thanks

[AncientChord]

Wonderful questions, and as always, class-act answers from Mr. Hackett. Congrats on a great interview!

[Casey]

Wow, he actually mentioned The Monkees!

[flowerking]

Once again, Hackett comes through as very friendly, considerate and intelligent in his interviews. Very interesting questions and responses. Thanks for posting this.

[Progatron]

Thanks all! Glad you enjoyed it!

[Gizmotron]

Excellent interview.
I really admire the man's approach to life and to music. And I am looking forward to the CD's arrival.

Thanks!

[Baribrotzer]

Good interview. And I think his comments on continuing to be productive are interesting. Think about it: Steve continues to write good songs and put out albums on into his late sixties, as does Peter Hamill. Yet other artists - the original members of Yes most notably - burned out long ago. You wonder why.

Could it be this: Compared to some, Steve is a sort of secondary talent whose flame never burned as hot, but it seems to have kept burning quite a bit longer. Like, say Camel, he never did anything truly revolutionary on his own, but he's always done solid work within an idiom defined by others. And there isn't anything wrong with that. He's developed his own style. it works just fine, and whether it's 100% original is beside the point. Yes, he's borrowed from others - for example, it's fairly obvious that "Mechanical Bride" is a love letter to "21st Century Schizoid Man" - but maybe he continues to produce because he has no problem with doing that, and doesn't see why he should have to keep reinventing his music from scratch.

[Steve983]

Good interview. And I think his comments on continuing to be productive are interesting. Think about it: Steve continues to write good songs and put out albums on into his late sixties, as does Peter Hamill. Yet other artists - the original members of Yes most notably - burned out long ago. You wonder why.

Could it be this: Compared to some, Steve is a sort of secondary talent whose flame never burned as hot, but it seems to have kept burning quite a bit longer. Like, say Camel, he never did anything truly revolutionary on his own, but he's always done solid work within an idiom defined by others. And there isn't anything wrong with that. He's developed his own style. it works just fine, and whether it's 100% original is beside the point. Yes, he's borrowed from others - for example, it's fairly obvious that "Mechanical Bride" is a love letter to "21st Century Schizoid Man" - but maybe he continues to produce because he has no problem with doing that, and doesn't see why he should have to keep reinventing his music from scratch.

Although I've lost interest in Hackett over the last couple of albums he has always been quite a strong songwriter and Genesis was full of them. Meanwhile Yes never had such strong individual songwriters, it was more about the collaboration with them that seemed to create an almost accidental sequence of fabulous albums in the 70's. With Yes, they are not quite sure how they did it back then and have no idea of how to recreate it now. Yes and Genesis despite sharing many fans were/are entirely different animals.

[Tangram]

Excellent interview! Very interesting, I like how he remembers details about older songs. Even ones he hasn't played for years.