Pete Atkin

Mr Pickwick sat at first taciturn and contemplative, brooding over the means by which his purpose could be best attained. By degrees his attention grew more and more attracted by the objects around him; and at last he derived as much enjoyment from the ride, as if it had been undertaken for the pleasantest reason in the world.

Great Expectations? Pete Atkin has enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership with Clive James. There is something almost Dickensian about this duo’s ability to capture quintessentially English mores and picaresque characters. Not only that, it is an authentic voice that speaks to the heart as well as the head; at least it does if you are a man of a certain age, living a life of quiet desperation, perhaps as a session musician, secret drinker or a Mafia Don.  Lest I start making further, perhaps spurious analogies about Philip Pirrip and Abel Magwitch (I’ll leave you to decide who’s who) I’ll begin.

It begins, as a lot of music does, with John Peel. At least, this story begins for me with that champion of things brilliant but ill-considered. It was an album called Secret Drinker. Peel played it, several tracks, more than once.

Who were they? A latter-day Flanders and Swann or the progeny of Tom Lehrer, but gone to the dark side? Tom Waits or Randy Newman?

The lyrics, provided by Clive James were perhaps more along the lines of poems set to music. Or were they lyrical poems? Pete Atkin could write in any style from East Coast Soft Rock to a slidy, smoky tuxedo bourbon-stained jazz style. There were songs of love that could not fail to resonate with those who love, songs of paranoia for anyone who really does have people watching and waiting, songs of lament and elegy for the tiny dead of the concentration camp but also songs of parody and satire, largely about the hand that momentarily fed them. They were “eclectic” – but more on “eclectic” later. Their star shone for longer than might have seemed possible in the days when you had to have a deal and you had to have a hit. 

INTERVIEW

PA: With hindsight, I can easily see that we never did fit in, although at the time (late 60s, early 70s) I think we thought that we might be able to barge in and occupy an interesting corner. It's hard to remember now, but in those days the album was only just beginning to be thought of as something in its own right, something more than a collection of singles and fillers - thanks mainly to Dylan, even more than the Beatles.

One of the things that Clive and I had in common was a sense that pop songs could be about pretty much anything at all, certainly more than we were hearing most of the time - hardly a radical view, even then, but don't forget there was as yet no Randy Newman, no Tom Waits - and that there was no reason why the words shouldn't be just as interesting as the music. It may be our downfall that we have always written songs that needed to be listened to. I don’t think any of our records work particularly well as something that’s playing in the background. It’s always been a case of writing music that presents the lyric in the best possible way and makes the most sense of the lyric. That doesn’t always mean following the mood of the lyric. Sometimes it means going directly against it. Early on, in our early days of writing, Clive would hand me a lyric and say “I think this one is a this or that sort of song.” What it suggested to me rhythmically was something different, but if the rhythm works for the words it almost doesn’t matter what the tune and the harmonies do. An early example of me going against it was The Last Hill that Shows you All the Valleys. He handed it to me as a kind of lament and I thought, ok but when I started out looking into how I could work with it rhythmically it became something quite different – a heavy, R&B rhythm. Clive stopped making those suggestions after that point and let me get on with it!

The more our writing relationship went on, the more to and fro we got with it but usually we would start with a lyric and sometimes I would simply go away and write the tune and that would be that. I might suggest a repeat of a line or shifting a chorus or asking Clive for a middle eight. With the later songs there might not be a song at all – the shape of it was too raggedy, too irregular and then I would look at it and find that actually there was a song. Sometimes a lyric is a poem rather than a song because of the grammar and syntax. Or it might be just too personal to Clive and I can’t find a way into it emotionally. I have to imagine myself singing it.

I was never aware of writing in any particular style. It’s a bit of a handicap. It’s handy to be able to tell people what it is you do, but I treat each song on its own merits. That ends up being easy to describe as “eclectic”, which is often used as a pejorative term.

On the other hand, because of that our stuff was never trendy at the time. It never fitted in.

RL: Well it was critically acclaimed. Kenny Everett played it and John Peel played a lot of the songs and recorded sessions with you.

PA: We were on the verge of getting somewhere with it. We were very economical with recording. I knew early on that I was never going to command big studio bills. I knew I had to get the album done in four sessions.

RL: So did RCA just lose interest in you?

PA: Well the first albums were done through Essex Music and they leased them to Phillips and Fontana. Then A King at Nightfall was leased to RCA and that was enough of a success that they took on the re-issue of the first two. Then I signed direct to RCA for another three albums.

The Road Of Silk was my first (direct) RCA album and I put together a band and rehearsed and went on a month-long university tour only to discover afterwards that they hadn’t pressed enough copies so that they'd all gone in the first week and we were touring with nothing in the shops (it took 3-4 weeks to re-press LPs, unless you were Jim Reeves or David Bowie). RCA promised this wouldn't happen again, but exactly the same thing did happen again with Secret Drinker, the next album. (The re-recording of the single version of I See The Joker in order to re-promote it was RCA's kind of an apology.) And so I didn't believe their further protestations, and Clive and I decided not to give them our next bunch of 'proper' songs, but to record the jokey things that we'd been accumulating over the years (and which there was a certain amount of audience demand for, I have to say) as a kind of contractual fulfillment album. That did give the two of us the chance to tour relatively cheaply and to cash in a bit on Clive's growing media fame, but in recording terms and with hindsight it probably wasn't that great an idea.

We had all the songs ready for the next album and the idea was we would go somewhere else. This was 1976. Punk arrived like a hurricane. Punk had more of an effect on the record companies than we now remember. We were still in thrall to the record companies. You had to have a deal. They didn’t know what to do with anything that wasn’t Punk. Nobody could see what more they could do with our stuff than had already been done. That was coloured by the fact that what was happening was something quite different. Punk was a good thing, not only for the business but for music in general. Stiff put out material that still stands up today. It was a very much needed, huge infusion of energy. The rocky bits had become staid and lacking in imagination and safe. The general feeling was that something needed to happen.

RL: Your back catalogue has since gathered an enormous amount of interest, with copies of albums on eBay and hundreds of pounds.

PA: It’s frustrating that some of it wasn’t available so I was really pleased to see Demon records do such a good job on the re-issues but I can’t be bothered to put huge amounts of energy into keeping it available. I’m glad that it’s there but much more interested in now.

RL: Do you think we are on the cusp of a very profound change in the way people hear music?

PA: We’re not on the cusp, we are already there, I think. Our generation probably covers what will prove to be the only time in history where music was a primary source of home entertainment. I don’t think people sit and listen to recorded music anymore, the way they would have done twenty, thirty or forty years ago.  It’s not that people don’t do it, but people have music on, or they are listening on personal players, but the days of actually sitting in your living room and putting a record on as if you are in a concert, are pretty much gone. Music has receded to be a much smaller part of home entertainment.

RL: Vinyl is the only growth area in audio currently. HMV have said they are going to stock it again.

PA: I can’t believe that is going to be a major factor again. For most people, that doesn’t matter very much. At one time the industry was all about getting better and better quality, from 78s to LPs to CDs; it was all about increasing the quality. What the MP3 revolution has shown is that most people don’t care about that. We have reached a peak and we are sliding down the other side.

RL: Does that mean that performing live has become much more important?

PA: Performing live continues to be something that is different from all the other elements. There is still, I am pleased to say, an appetite for it. People still recognise that there is something special about it. In the broadest sense it is theatre and it is unique event and that sense you get of liveness and actuality is something you can never get from a recording. People respond to that. They don’t necessarily think about it in those terms, but the big stadium bands – the live gigs, that is where people make money now. There is no big money to be made from selling CDs. Plenty of bands give the things away at gigs.

RL: A while ago you did a live gig with Clive James at St George’s Brandon Hill, Bristol. How did that set the scene for your performance format of words and music?

PA: Clive and I did a sort of proto-gig there. I was on the board of trustees due to my BBC connection and managed to persuade them to let me and Clive do a gig. We’d done a few ad hoc things where I would give Clive a list of songs and he would introduce them and out of that came the two-man show. In those days he wasn’t doing any readings or anything. It was the reason we brought together some musicians and that led to the Midnight Voices album. It was great playing there with the trio, not the least because of how liberating it was not to have to sing and play at the same time. When I’m singing and playing I am neither quite playing as well as I can or singing as well as I can. It splits your attention. Classical pianists are amazed that anybody can sing and play at the same time and yet singing and strumming a guitar is seemingly one of the most natural things in the world.

….

For those who want to know more, this writer suggests getting “Clive James & Pete Atkin Live in Australia” or indeed “Secret Drinker” The first has readings from Clive and notes about the songs as part of a live performance. The second is a studio album. Not a word wasted and never a tune out of place. James and Atkin have secured their place in the rock legacy.

POSTSCRIPT: Although Clive James was unavailable for comment for health reasons, he has maintained an interest in this article and has linked to it on his own website. Clive, I wish you well; you are and always will be a writer whose phrases I plagiarise with glee.

http://www.peteatkin.com/

The Emporer's New Clothes - a tale of the modern music industry

It is not often I permit myself a comment but I have mulled it over and I will. I became aware of an incident that to me sums up the parlous state of high-end commercial music product.

There is an artist called Lana Del Rey. It is a made-up name. She was probably called Cynthia Mole but hey, Harry Webb and Reg Dwight did it to great advantage but they had the talent to live up to Cliff and Elton. Lana/Cynthia has had a hit single and won several awards already. Her latest album has just been released with a lot of dollars behind it.

The latest news is that a 30-date tour has been cancelled. Why? It is all down to an appearance on Saturday Night Live which, to say the least, did not go down well.

Saturday Night live goes out on a Saturday night and it is, well you guessed it, LIVE. Not a good move for someone who is the essence of a commercial music construct, for Lana's deficiencies were laid bare.

I don't really blame Lana. She is not what her management have made her out to be. She even admits she looks nothing like the image in her videos. All of a sudden the suits are backtracking. There are no longer any big stadium tours planned and Lana herself wants to concentrate on small intimate gigs.

I wish her well. I don't think she realised what the business was going to do to her. To me, the baddie in this is the management, who saw a million bucks plus in the Next Big Thing and failed to understand that at the heart of music is - music.

John Wetton

A player who can bridge the gap between ABBA and King Crimson,via Roxy Music. That is the high-fidelity first-class traveling section; that elite group of artists who will figure in your album collection if you have been buying them for the past four decades or so, He has been in Family, Uriah Heep, Roxy Music, King Crimson, Asia and a lot more. Prog Archives says, with a very reasonable claim to being accurate,  There is hardly any other progrock musician with a more impressive curriculum vitae than John Wetton!  His solo output, together with a number of significant collaborations, has guaranteed that Mr Wetton is a part of the fabric of our Rock Legacy, as will become clear from what follows. John Wetton has been on a life-journey like that of a spring tide - high highs and low lows. He is coruscating and frank about both, but as with many interviews of this kind it is right to begin with asking about musical influences. In some ways, I found his knowledge of music and favourites surprising, and then again, not really because all musicians who last as long as he has approach music with an open, inquiring mind and a delight in the work of their peers. 

JOHN WETTON - INTERVIEW

JW: God Only Knows turned a light on in my head, not only for the lyrics but sonically it is absolutely beautiful. I could see me thinking in colour instead of monochrome. The Beach Boys, vocally, are absolutely fantastic. It seemed to me that all of the good stuff, up until about 1972, was coming out of Southern California. Obviously there was a lot of good stuff coming out of this country, with The Beatles, etc., but the Californian sound was absolutely sublime. Joni Mitchell changed the way I thought about lyric writing. On Blue, it was the confessional lyrics. Then there was Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”.  I felt that rock music was completely one dimensional up until then, with no substance and two chords. The Beatles were fantastic because they wrote their own songs and played their own instruments and they didn’t have one bloke stood at the front.

I came from a church music background. My brother is a church organist still. Everything I heard musically came out of a church. The Beach Boys were coming at music from a completely different angle. We had post-war austerity; they still had rationing when I was growing up and it was grim up North. I never realised, until I got to California, why Paul McCartney wrote songs like Back Seat of My Car. I heard that on the radio, driving down the Pacific Coast Highway and I thought, “Ah ha, I get it!” And that was what you got from The Beach Boys; another world. You can hear classical music and church music in Brian Wilson’s songs. 

I had a choice in the early days. My brother was already leagues ahead of me in the church music department and I was never going to catch up. The alternative of rock music did not appeal because there was nothing there that was going to give me any kind of satisfaction. Then The Beach Boys, The Beatles and Procul Harem started working for me.

RL: Your last album, Raised in Captivity begs a lot of questions about your early life.

JW: It concerns absolutely my upbringing – really the first ten years of my life in the Midlands of post-war Britain. There was no emotion shown in my house. Everyone was grim and tight-lipped. No one ever mentioned love and no one was ever touchy-feely. It was like that game, Asteroids where you are floating around in the same space and only when you collide with someone is any emotion shown and it’s usually anger. I would then run off and sit in my corner for a while; go to my room or go for walks and commune with nature. Looking back on it that was my glimpse of a higher power. I wasn’t getting anything from my home life.  My grandmother lived just across the street and going into her house was different. It was a little cottage full of love and she adored me. I dawned on me that it didn’t have to be like it was at home. Battle Lines was a story of how I would have liked it to have turned out.

Hold Me Now from Battle Lines (1994)

Here ends another day

My emotions locked away

And my darkness is complete as the midnight sky

You steal my confidence

My smile is my defense

And I turn my face, so you won't see me cry

How can you be so cold, and so out of control?

As you pour salt into my deepest cut of all

My shattered heart, in pieces now

And I'm gazing at the fragments of my life

Hold me now, maybe just pretend I could be someone that you might have loved before

Hold me now, and let me believe in a kiss that means nothing to you…

'Cause it means the world to me

I didn’t speak with my mother for 15 years but we are closer now. At any rate it is considerably better than it was.

(In the early 1970’s George Martin took John under his wing and presented him with a variety of projects.)

JW: I needed some cash. He kept suggesting things for me to do, and Larry Norman was one of the albums I worked on, which went on to be the Number One Christian album of all time (Only Visiting This Planet, 1973).  I worked with George for about a year.

RL: You have this belief in a higher power – I can’t think of anything that exemplifies that more than God Walks with Us.

JW: Absolutely. I was just starting to glimpse that again when that song was recorded. There is no doubt in my mind that when you pick up a drink, you un-plug yourself from that. Your drink becomes your higher power. It seems to do all the tricks to start with; even for years and years it works and then your best friend turns its back on you. The last two years before I stopped I was physically addicted to the stuff and it wasn’t working. If I stopped all Hell would break loose and I was insane, literally round the bend.

RL: When was your point of decision?

JW: I was going to die and I chose life. It was a fairly simple decision but not an easy one. Giving up was horrendous and I never want to be in that position again.

RL: Were there relationships that had to be repaired.

JW: Absolutely. One of my main focuses is to try and make amends and repair relationships with people that I had just pushed out of my life. Some people don’t want to know but I try and make things better.

RL: Where did you draw your inner strength from?

JW: I ran out of ideas. I had nowhere left to go. It brought me to my knees before whatever I believed to be the God of my understanding.

RL: Going back, you were thrown out of Asia.

JW: That was 20 years before. Such is the arrogance of the functioning alcoholic that it was unthinkable that they would want to get rid of me. The fact is I was a liability. The way it was done was really unpleasant. Part of believes now that I deserved it but I wouldn’t treat someone else like that.

RL: It is not as if you had the confidence to change anything at that point. Your upbringing didn’t provide you with the capacity to deal with it, did it?

JW: It’s probably why I drank in the first place. The drink took away my inhibitions and enabled me to do what I could not do. Alcohol was the piece of the jigsaw that was missing from my life.  When it wasn’t doing what I wanted it to, then I was in trouble.

RL: I don’t want to harp on about it too much..

JW: Well, it’s good to get it out because it possibly only then that one can understand God Walks With Us and Raised in Captivity. Raised in Captivity is all about that. In fact the last 6 or 7 albums are in some way about celebrating what I have now. Phoenix is about creating a new life out of the ashes of the old.

(John Wetton’s life came into sharp focus once again when he was deemed to need major heart surgery)

JW: They did the angiogram and the next morning it was done. A six-hour operation. One side of the hospital looked out over Abbey Road and the other side over Lord’s cricket ground and I thought that this is a fitting place for it all to end if it does end. The surgeon came round the night before and said that I might die and how did I feel about that, and I said “I’m ok with that”. If I finally meet my creator I’ve got a lot less explaining to do than I would have done five years ago. When I meet my maker I hope I shall be meeting an old friend, not saying “Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting this!”

RL: This year you were guesting with Steve Hackett, no responsibility, you just turn up!

JW: I can’t go wrong. I go on and I sing Firth of Fifth. The audience are die-hard Genesis fans. Steve and I have history on that song anyway. It’s preaching to the converted!

RL: You have this incredible dialogue on your website’s guestbook.

JW: Not that many people know about it. I will talk to anyone on the guestbook. Some have been there for fifteen years and I sometimes bump into them. They introduce themselves and I place a name to a face. Sometimes people come on to the Guest Book and they are drinking too much and they ask, “How did you get out of that one?” I’ll PM them and try and refer them to someone.

RL: King Crimson?

JW: Fantastic, it was like going to university. It was extremely demanding in terms of mental alacrity and actual muscle. We did an awful lot. We’d play a two-hour set of which about 70% was improvised. You had to think on your feet. I was surrounded by people who were extremely good players and I had to hold my own. Robert Fripp is actually a really good friend now. He comes round for tea and we just talk and talk and talk.

RL: I have heard stories of people who couldn’t cut it with KC because of the discipline.

JW: Yes, it’s a pretty high bar. For me, nobody could knock my musical credentials after I came out of that.

RL: Returning to The Beach Boys, if I may, there are a couple of songs on the latest album which are kind of drenched in the Beach Boys sound, such as in Goodbye Elsinore and New Star Rising.

JW: If I get the opportunity I always put in a little paean to Brian Wilson. There’s one on an Asia Record, Voice of America – a complete lift in fact, from Good Vibrations. There’s a vocal chord and it’s so Beach Boys it’s ridiculous! I don’t mind that because I am just saying, “Thanks, Brian”.

RL: Did you ever meet any of the Beach Boys?

JW: I met Brian. He was almost asleep. I was sitting next to him and there was a long boring monologue going on and by the time I had plucked up the courage to speak to him during the break,  about how much he had influenced me, I turned around and he was asleep.

RL: And then there is ABBA!

JW: I’m a big fan of Agnetha – Anna – as she is known to her friends. I did write a song for one of her solo albums. Geoff (Downes) and I went over to Stockholm to record it. It’s called We Move As One, on Eyes of a Woman. She’s lovely. Absolutely adorable. Geoff and I were huge fans of ABBA and we still are. As good as they are they would have been nothing without her voice. I just melt every time I hear Name of the Game.

RL: You enjoy Classical Music?

JW: I rarely listen to anything else. One of the best experiences for me was that I hopped on a plane to Copenhagen and then on the Helsingor – Helsingborg Ferry. I was on my way to see Vilde Frang. She is fantastic. We have been waiting for a superstar violinist for a long time now, and she is the one. Out of that came Goodbye Elsinore which I began to compose on the Ferry.

Thankfully, John is alive and well and still gigging after all these years. For details about his  extensive 2012 diary, please visit and bookmark

http://www.johnwetton.com

Here's a track from Raised in Captivity. John is in remarkably fine voice throughout the album, but here he is sharing the work with Dutch Goth Rocker, Anneke van Giersbergen:

 

Nick Beggs

 

It can sometimes be depressing when interviewing rock stars. Occasionally one gets the impression that they are only interested in themselves. Moreover, they do not listen to other music and they really have no concept of a bigger picture. Not so Nick Beggs. Beggs is articulate, musically literate and passionately interested in sharing his experience. Nick Beggs moved on from the Smash Hits stardom of Kajagoogoo in the 80s to becoming a man whose stage presence and virtuosity you have to have if you are going on the road. His CV is a Who's Who of Rock and Pop aristocracy. Of late Beggs has become a player of the intriguing instrument called the Chapman Stick. He seems to be perpetually on tour with one band or another and is currently working on a prog rock album with such luminaries as Steve Hackett and Thijs Van Leer. His credibility extends to reeling in Robert Fripp to guest on his albums.

INTERVIEW

RL: Looking back on your career of over 30 years, being in so many bands and the fact that you can articulate it so well, it struck me that you are the kind of person who could share their experience with those who are just coming into the music business. Do you feel comfortable with that?

NB: Well actually it’s what I do. It’s part of what I do. One of the secrets to being in the music industry, most of all of being a player, is diversity. You cannot make a living from one aspect of the music industry, not unless you are inordinately successful.  I worked out very early on, after being, in brackets, a “successful pop star” that even after that I had to look at being something else. Either a session player or a teacher or a lecturer or an A&R man – I was an A&R man for Phonogram for a period of time. Then I was a producer and then a writer and all these things. That’s why it looks as though I have had a very busy career. The diversity is the secret for me.

RL: A guitarist called Ray Fenwick, who also lectures to college kids said, to paraphrase him, not to go for lead guitar but to play something else. He told me that he knew cello players who were never out of work.

NB: He was in the Gillan band and is a very influential player. I hear what you are saying but try and play as much as you can. Part of the reason I play the Chapman Stick is because nobody else plays it and if I had an opportunity to use the Chapman Stick on Top of Pops in the 80’s, in Kajagoogoo, - you get noticed, as a session player, if not a pop star. I was trying to create alternative revenue streams and avenues to work within.

RL: There are obvious reasons why people might pick up the phone and want you to be in the band. One of them is the incredible look!

NB: You are very kind.

RL: Let’s be fair, it upstages some of the people you play with.

On tour with Kim Wilde

NB: I have never been one to shrink from a challenge and I think that when people want me in the band it is usually because they want me to bring something to the stage presence. That’s one of the first things they consider and if I am lucky they want me to play on the records too.

RL: Going back to the academic side of things, you have a lot of experience lecturing to young aspiring musicians. What appeals to you about that?

NB: First of all and to be completely mercenary about it, there is an income to be generated. A small percentage of my income comes from teaching, although I have not had any one-on-one students for years because it is very time consuming. But actually talking to 21 year-olds or teenagers about their future is quite a responsibility. When I started out I was a very vulnerable, painfully earnest individual who was dreadfully concerned about how I was going to make my way in the world. I had fallen on very difficult times. My parents separated when I was ten and my mother died when I was 17 and I had a 15 year-old sister who I had to look after. I knew I wanted to be a professional musician even though I had acquiesced to everybody else’s directives and taken a degree course at art school. There is a sense that is if any of the kids are going through adversity, and some of them do, there is an element of counselling involved. The sense of responsibility is something I take quite seriously.

RL: Well, let’s face it; there are a lot of casualties. Do the students just want to be famous?

NB: If they have actually applied to getting themselves into a position within the college these days they are a lot more thoughtful. The zeitgeist is “fame” is the vehicle. Well, fame isn’t the vehicle, it is a very destructive thing without the accompanying capabilities and it is true to say that a lot of people think they can become famous for being famous. The kids I talk to at the ACM (Academy of Contemporary Music) and the AMS (Academy of Music and Sound) are more savvy than that. They know they are there because they have talent or a talent they want to develop. They are still children – I had massive responsibilities when I was still a child but I see them at the ACM or the AMS and they have a lot more savvy about them because they have bothered to enrol and take exams. They are thinking it through. So I empathise with them.

RL: How do they react to you? Presumably they are not really aware of Kajagoogoo?

NB: No. Not at all. Most people aren’t really, to be honest. It’s a bit of an anachronism. But I start off by saying “My name is Nick Beggs and the reason I am here is because you are where I started and I can tell you what you can expect and maybe I can give you some advice after 30 years of doing it.” There are things you must do, things you absolutely must do and if you don’t do them you are going to be in trouble. First of all, develop and accounting head-space. You have to work out how much money you are going to be paying in tax. That’s one of the first things. Working with people you can trust and getting a good overview and sense of who a person is, judging characters and trying to work out whether this person is going to rip you off or whether they are trustworthy. I tell people they have to get a job, outside of the institution, to work and do anything - I did. I left Art College to bring up my sister and run a band, but I was a dustman, a rubbish collector. I could then go on to automatic pilot and earn money whilst conceptualising the future. So all the time I was collecting rubbish bags from 5am to 12pm I was thinking about the project I was working on which was the early stages of Kajagoogoo. So I tell the students they must have a job. First of all your parents will respect you more for that and then you will learn about the ethos of working outside the music industry.

RL: Did this early experience of being a dustman etc., set you up for Kajagoogoo and the attendant stardom?

NB: It’s hard to quantify that but I am sure it did because I knew what I wanted because I had no choice. In the band we were very unified in our overall goals. We were singing from the same hymn sheet. I remember we entered a competition to get a deal with a record label and we won this competition. It was in a local radio station. Once we realised we won it we thought, well hang on what have we done? We don’t want this. If we take this it is going to stop us being taken seriously further down the line. So we turned it down. Every step of the way we considered what we were doing. In retrospect Kajagoogoo was a cheesy pop band that had a relatively short shelf life but when I think about that material we wrote, nearly 30 years ago, it’s still selling! And it sold nearly 3 million in the first year and it has sold more than that since. So that material is still paying for five families.

RL: Kajagoogoo is still current...

NB: We had an EP out a little while ago and we did stuff but there are no plans to do anything right now because I have other plans that are keeping me quite busy.

RL: Care to elucidate?

NB: I have my own project which I am doing very stealthily which is quintessentially a progressive rock band.

RL: Well, you were in Iona and I gather Robert Fripp contributed to it.

NB: Robert Fripp contributed to two of my projects, as a guest and as he put it, as a “gift”. One of them was Ellis, Beggs and Howard and the other one was Iona. He played on a few tracks and contributed soundscapes and came into the studio with us and did some recording.

RL: Iona was quite a departure from Kajagoogoo.

NB: Yes, but so was Ellis, Beggs and Howard. It had to be. You can’t really repeat yourself. Iona wasn’t my project as such – I was asked to join the band. They had already done an album. To me it sounded like an amalgam of Yes and Clannad. It was an amazing hybrid which I loved. I thought it was important musically so I did three albums with them and I loved the people.

RL: Let’s return to this project of yours, which sounds a bit under wraps, so perhaps I can wheedle it out of you!

NB: It’s got a working title of Lifesigns at the minute. I don’t know if it will stay that, it may do, it may change. It’s basically me and another guy called John Young who has a very good pedigree as a progressive keyboard player. He actually plays keyboards in The Strawbs at the moment. He played for Carl Palmer and was in Asia for a while. He played keyboards for The Scorpions and is a solo artist. I think his day job is playing keyboards for Bonnie Tyler! We are neighbours and good friends and John has been trying to get me to do a project with him for a long time. About two or three years ago he played me some material that he had come up with and I said it was really strong and he said do you want to develop it with me and make a band. As time went on we were file-sharing and I’d do a bit and he’d do a bit and then we would go in the studio and do some recording. We got Frosty Beedle on board, the drummer from Cutting Crew and he loved it and said it was some of the best stuff he had heard in years. So we spent about four days recording Frosty’s drums on our tunes and he did such a manful job. Then I played it to Steve Hackett and Steve said he would really like to play on this. Of course I said I would be honoured. So Steve played some guitar on it and then a good friend called Jakko Jakszyk .

RL: What is the state of play then?

NB: Thijs Van Leer is going to play some flute on it for us. He’s going to come over and do some of that. We still have some vocal parts because John and I are sharing the vocals and there are some additional bits of tweaking. I don’t know how close we are yet but we’ve got some very strong rhythm tracks done but it’s the nuance that is waiting to be added which will make all the difference.

RL: Presumably the Chapman Stick features on it somewhere?

NB: The Chapman Stick has got some very nice features on it. There is one track that opens with a searing Chapman Stick solo.

RL: What’s your introduction to the Chapman Stick when you explain it to students?

NB: I say, “If you want to play this instrument it will change your life.” Because it changed mine, and I say it’s a self-accompanying stringed, tapping fret board. It’s got ten strings and you hammer on to it with the tips of your fingers. There is very low action which enables you to get good articulation on the frets – imagine a piano technique but transposed into an upright fret board where you are tapping on to the strings. You are arpeggiating melody and bass lines with separate hands and you can play counterpoint or lead lines with the right hand.

RL: When did you first hear about it?

NB: About 1977.

RL: It seems as if your original technique lent itself to it?

NB: I would agree in as much as my percussive technique involves slapping and because I have always said that the Chapman Stick is a percussive instrument in the same way that a piano is – you are using something to hit. But I had to develop a technique for playing the Stick as anyone does. You have to find your own voice on it. Few Chapman Stick players as there are, everybody plays it in such a different way because it is such an idiosyncratic instrument.

RL: It seems versatile.

NB: Mine is retro-fitted with a Midi set-up so when I played for John Paul Jones I was playing orchestra and Hammond organ and brass patches.

RL: As an instrument it is at the beginning of its evolution.

NB: Tony Levin has done a tremendous amount of work in creating a public understanding of what the instrument does. Having said that I think it’s going to be mind-blowing what people come up with later on. We are just about circling the Earth with the Stick and I think we are going to populate the solar system with it!

http://www.nickbeggs.co.uk/

John Hackett

John Hackett (born 1955) is the younger brother of Steve (see below). He has not only been lucky enough to be in London at time when creativity and energy made it the centre of the universe, but he has lived and grown up around the best musicians in the business. Even given that, it is perhaps surprising that a classically-trained serious flute player can deliver a rock album that I cannot begin to praise enough.

We talked about John's career, his association with some crucial musicians, and the way to succeed at being both a classical and rock musician at the same time. John Hackett has indeed succeeded. There's a new flute and guitar record out and he tells me that work has started on a  new rock album.

John Hackett

JH: It was a very exciting time to grow up. I remember being at school when Sergeant Pepper came out and it seemed to be the most exciting thing on the planet.  Steve was five years older than me. He was always listening to lots of blues albums and guitarists, so I started guitar when I was about 12. There were a lot of excellent players who at the time were very young – Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that.  My memories are of listening to those guitarists and then later on, Hendrix. You could feel an energy. We lived very close to the King’s Road though it might have been just as exciting had we lived somewhere else. I look back on it as a very optimistic time when you thought that everything was possible, both in terms of music and politics. Now of course you see the world with a perhaps more pragmatic view.

RL: This conveniently leads us into Checking Out of London.  It’s the best album I have heard all year.

JH: Really?  It was very much a group effort. A very close friend of mine, who I was at school with, Nick Clabburn, wrote the lyrics for all but one of the songs. They inspired me. Obviously we are different people and we come at life from different angles but I found there were things in his lyrics that led me off down creative paths I didn’t  know I had.  I have spent most of my life playing the flute and a bit of guitar and have done some writing before, but it was the first time I had attempted a rock album. Nick Magnus did a tremendous amount of work on the album; a lot of arranging and production work and did a fantastic job on that and then of course my brother came and played some stunning guitar solos. Tony Patterson took on some of the lead vocals on the album and also did some great harmony work. You get inspired by other people. I envy someone like Nick Magnus, who has tremendous production and keyboard skills and can produce highly polished professional stuff himself.  Also, Nick Clabburn’s lyrics. If it was left to me I’d probably write lots of drippy love songs.

It’s a direction I would like to explore much more and I do have another rock album in the pipeline.

RL: Checking Out of London seems to have appeared fully formed, as if all the influences over the years were ready, just at that moment, to arrive as an album.

JH: I do have very eclectic tastes. I am from two backgrounds, the Rock background, in that I started off playing blues guitar, then growing up with Steve and going to all the Genesis concerts and then playing in his band. Then there is also the classical side. I studied classical flute playing and did a music degree.

RL: Presumably you started on a transverse flute and then went over to the vertical flute?

JH: That was only in recent years. I had a car accident and after that I found it very painful to play a normal flute. I nearly gave up because it was just so bad. The vertical flute has been an absolute life-saver  for me because it is just so much more comfortable.

RL: The flute doesn’t appear on Checking Out of London.

JH: Nick Clabburn thought it would be a good idea not to include flute. I didn’t take him at his word, in that I did try some flute on some of the tracks but really it was almost like a different side of my personality. Generally the flute is a sweet-sounding instrument and on Checking Out of London, and particularly numbers like Ego and Id, which is much more of a rock number..

RL: You didn’t go down the Jethro Tull route?

JH: I have done that at other times. With Steve we do a piece called, “Jazz on a Summer’s Night” where I do do that scat singing through the flute and there is a little bit on my latest disc, Moonspinner.

RL: The riff on Ego and ID – did that just come to you?

JH: I do sort of thrash around. I’ve got a Telecaster. It’s incredibly simple; harmonically it’s probably the simplest piece on the whole album. The other ones have more complex chord changes and more structure and Ego and Id, in a way is just a bit of a blow.

RL: Moving forward to Whispers. When I heard it it reminded me of Genesis!

JH: I consciously wrote that in the style of Genesis, there is no question about it. And it’s got Tony Patterson on it.

RL: I think you are playing them at their own game and winning!

JH: I don’t know about that. (mutual giggling ensues)

RL: Choosing a favourite on Checking Out of London is like choosing children but I forced myself, and it was More. That’s got you singing on it?

Track 10 - More


JH: Yes, I sing on that and Tony does the choruses.

RL: It’s a sort of Rock/Reggae/Baroque..

JH: (Laughs) The Reggae, there’s no question about that.

RL: It has all the hallmarks of a Bond Theme to me.

JH: I would be very  pleased if it was. The Reggae feel was there right from the beginning. But of course, Nick Magnus was able to realise that for me. I gave him my sketches of it and he did a lot of the arranging to bring it to life. And of course, coming towards the end of the album I wanted something that was quite grand, so it does have a big landscape.

RL: How would you react to the “concept album” label?

JH: It’s not a concept album as such but it was written in one go. From that point of view it does all hang together. If you look at the lyrics there is a theme of alienation.  The lyrics are quite poetic at times in that it is not always absolutely obvious what they are about.  The title track is a kind of hidden joke in that I moved out of London some years ago and I think that was Nick Clabburn having fun with that. The lyrics are quite dark at times.

RL: Let’s move on to Moonspinner – something completely different.

JH: The thinking behind it was to do something pretty much self-sufficient. Checking Out of London was a big project and I wanted to do something that was easy to produce and something that took the classical style and the kind of things I was doing with Steve.

Moonspinner has a classical style but also it is an album with a bit more edge to it, in terms of the rhythm. What I have always loved in both classical and rock is the virtuoso style – someone like Steve or Jeff Beck, playing the guitar really well. I have always loved flute concertos – somebody like Jean-Pierre Rampal, my flute hero when he was alive.  What I wanted to do with this album, and in a sense it is a classical album, I wanted to give it a more rock edge so I used a bit of scat singing through the flute, which is the signature of someone like Ian Anderson.

RL: Witchfinder comes to mind.

JH: Certainly, and tracks like Appassionata – they use the classical technique of double-tonguing but the chord sequence is one we used on Voyage of the Acolyte. Then it goes into some uneven time signatures. The track after that, Red Hair – I was trying to push that into a slightly different area, influenced by a Vivaldi flute concerto using typical Baroque devices.

RL: It brings me back to a question I asked Steve which was the relationship between classical music of the 19^th Century and symphonic prog. What’s your feeling on that?

JH: There are some tremendous similarities. With bands like Genesis, what I have always liked about their music is that they don’t always go for the straight C Major chord. It may have an added 7^th or a 9^th in there and that’s what it has in common with the music of people like Satie or Debussy.

RL: In another interview, you quoted Holst, who said, “Never compose anything unless the not composing of it becomes a positive nuisance.” You said that you knew exactly what he meant by that. Care to elucidate?

Track 1 - Witchfinder

JH: It’s absolutely true and in fact, Moonspinner is very much a case of that. Apart from the classical tracks and Thoughts turn Homeward, it was all written in about three weeks. I’d been busy doing other stuff and been wanting to do some writing and it was just bursting to come out. When I finally got the opportunity and cleared the decks and took the phone off the hook, it came pouring out in virtually one go – or over three weeks, which is a relatively short space of time I think.

RL: You are doing another rock album?

JH: I am about to start on it. It’s been written for some time actually – been sat there in the can, but of course it isn’t a can anymore! Most of the songs I wrote in about 2006 after Checking Out of London and it never got done. Now it’s a bit like what we were saying; the dam is about to burst and it’s got to come out. I have already talked to Nick Magnus about recording it and that will be happening very soon.

RL: Do you have a method of working that you apply every time?

JH: I am not very good at multi-tasking and dipping in and out of projects. When I did Checking Out of London we set aside a certain amount of time and went for it. Generally speaking it has to be done without too many breaks. I can’t work piecemeal – I can’t hold it in my head.  One of the problems I have is that because I am a flute player, in order to keep your standard of playing up, you have to practise regularly and it’s quite difficult to switch from playing the flute to picking up a guitar and then singing. It can be done but I find it difficult.

RL: Is there anything  that popped into your mind while we were talking that we never got around to?

JH: When we first had a conversation you were talking about the influence of classical music on  progressive music, and I was looking back at some of the albums I did with Steve, such as Voyage of the Acolyte, where he was using orchestral instruments such as the oboe and the cor anglais  and cello and of course me on flute.  I’m very proud of that work and Steve did some fantastic work in producing those albums because there are some unusual combinations of instruments.

http://www.hacktrax.co.uk/ 

Roger Chapman - In His Own Time

Roger Chapman

On stage, swaggering and occasionally a bit frightening, Roger Chapman might have to be handled with care. With a reputation for not suffering fools and not mincing words, I have to admit to being a little nervous about doing the interview. And yet, I found that here was a man with no big ego, funny and straightforward. I felt included. As Roger has been known to yell from the stage on a good night, "Everybody's on the Shortlist".

For those who don't know, Roger Chapman was the front-man and writer with Family. Their debut album Music in a Doll's House (1968) is generally regarded as a rock masterpiece. It is an album you should not miss. Family came to an end too soon. Music in a Doll's House is ahead of its time and still feels fresh and alive 44 or so years later. Its place in the Rock Legacy is assured.

The interview revealed Roger to have a rich, raconteur's sense of humour, his answers often peppered with a piratical laugh. A follow up request to explore his forthcoming album was met with an almost apologetic message that he was busy working out tour details and that he would do the questions, but (and quite without irony, I think) "In my own time". And suddenly that unmistakable voice sounded in my head.

INTERVIEW

RL: Did you imagine that you would still be performing today?

RC: I have tried retiring over the past ten years or so but I just get really bored! I’ve never really done anything else anyway. I still wake up every day and I’m writing. I never tried to get into the music business. We got into competitions at the local Palais and we won one or two things. We sang as a vocal group and we used to call ourselves “The Searchers” because we loved The Coasters and all those great records such as Searchin’ and Young Blood. And you are white kids, about 16 years old. Then one time we came off stage and some chap asked me if I wanted to join a group. I didn’t really know anything about groups to be honest. So I joined his group and we were playing at a pub once a week. I never tried to get into the business, people just used to ask me. I get to my twenties and realise that I am actually in the music business.

RL: Did you know what kind of music you wanted to do?

RC: I only knew the kind of music I didn’t want to do, which was that I really wasn’t interested in the English version of Rock and Roll because I didn’t consider it was Rock and Roll. I was a complete and utter snob and it was great! Cliff Richard and the Shadows were all shit as far as I was concerned. In retrospect, you grow up a bit and realise they weren’t. Saying that, I liked Billy Fury – anything with a little bit of meanness on the side.  All my heroes were American, like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent. That was the real stuff. They were almost invisible because although they did come to the UK, America was a land of fantasy. I was glad to see Jerry Lee Lewis, during the tour he got slung off. Fortunately I caught him before he got married to a fourteen year-old. I saw him at Leicester and at the end of the show. They had this really high stage but somehow I clambered onto the stage and ran through the side doors and got his autograph. I wish I’d still got it. I was lucky to see Eddie Cochran because he died the following year. I went to see the Rolling Stones and I have always been a big fan of the Stones. I still buy their records now.

RL: What did you think when The Beatles came along?

RC: Not a lot, actually, but I got to love them. Again, it was just snobbery really. I think, Revolver – probably when I found drugs – Revolver was what really got me into The Beatles. Then of course you backtrack and realise that they did some very very nice stuff.

RL: Do you get nervous before you go on stage?

RC: Every time. It’s just not a natural thing for somebody to get up and show off in front of a crowd of people.

RL: Is there a Roger Chapman who goes on stage, and then comes off, and then is another Roger Chapman?

RC: Very much so. It’s the heightened sensibilities. I’m quite a perky person really but when I get up on stage I go up the ladder a few rungs. It’s bravado and the confidence I have to give myself and I can’t do it any other way. It looks like big-headedness but I don’t think I am a big-headed person. It’s something I have to do to give myself confidence to get on the stage.

RL: I don’t get the impression that you are aggressive in real life but seeing you on the stage is another thing!

RC: As I said, it’s what I have to do. Sometimes I come off the stage and if it has been videoed I can’t bear to watch myself. It’s like taking tablets. I know when I have done it right and I know when I have done it wrong and when I have done it wrong I just cringe. A lot of my performance is made up on the spot. I am so rampant and all my guys are almost walking on eggshells. I don’t mean through aggression, just musically – they are waiting for me to do something they have never heard before. They live in hope that they know what’s coming next.

RL: Do you have a set list that you stick to?

RC: Not at all. I have a list of song titles and then I will start with two or three that are generally always the same and then I go off left-field or right-field. It has everything to do with the mood I’m in. If I am upset or if I am happy it is quite blatantly obvious. The way the audience reacts has an influence on my performance.

RL: From what I have seen of your performances, you were having a jolly good time.

RC: That’s the object isn’t it? I am not out there for the audience I am out there for me and my band. It has to be the priority. I know that if I am up there pleasing myself the audience are going to get off on it anyway. The guys in the band are all good friends because I don’t work with people I don’t get on with. We go up there to have a crack and make the best music we can.

RL: Have you changed your wild and profligate ways during the fifty years you have been performing?

RC: Of course! I’m nearly 70 years old – come on! Not out of choice.

RL: On the subject of the business, as a business, I noticed you described all managers as “scumbags”

RC: It’s not that they are all bad, it’s just that I’ve never had a fucking good one.

RL: You really do keep up to date with what’s going on in music right now. You name-checked Kasabian, for example.

RC: Well, Kasabian – I am so devoted to Leicester because I am from there.  When I heard that there was a decent band and they were from Leicester I was really pleased for them.

RL: I did notice the Leicestershire accent coming out while we were talking.

RC: Oh it does.

RL: What advice would you give to new artists just coming into the business. How would you advise them on managing their careers?

RC: That’s difficult because unfortunately they are going to meet so many arseholes who have no other intention but to try and make a few quid and rip them off. Try not to follow trends. There have been a lot of great bands over the last ten years and some of that is down to technology. You don’t need a studio. If you’ve got a thirteen inch laptop you’ve got a studio.

RL: Many folks don’t go down the old route of being signed and then going into a studio.

RC: They are online. They are so inventive and they are very good at promoting themselves at that is revolutionary in itself. They invented it, the kids, not the fucking record companies. Rock and Roll was invented by kids.

www.chappo.com

Steve Hackett

Dulce Domum

The writer’s chief problem when approaching  Steve Hackett is knowing where to start. Ten albums and six singles with Genesis, two albums and two singles with GTR, 24 solo studio albums and nine live recordings, his latest studio piece being Beyond the Shrouded Horizon (2011) and you have to think hard or Steve may die before we get to discussing track two of album 19. Not only that, Steve surrounds himself with some of the best musicians in the business, and they really deserve a whole article on their own. (Well, I have done Nick Magnus already and Steve’s brother John has kindly agreed to do another soon, so I sort of have my work cut out).

Where does Steve Hackett fit in to the rock legacy? Well first of all there is his crucial contribution as  a member of Genesis, at a time when some, including me, believe that the band was at its creative peak. Then there is a truly prolific and herculean “solo” output, which, as you will read, takes in some incredibly talented players and at times becomes an ensemble in the best sense of the word. Next there is his love of touring and not resting on his laurels – in other words Hackett sees part of his brief to share his music and by association himself.  And then there is his love of music and a perception that here is a craftsman and a virtuoso who is steeped in musical tradition of all kinds, but who has done something rather important, which is to extend the frontiers of what is possible on his chosen instrument, what is good and what is emotionally satisfying as a composition.

Why Dulce Domum? Hackett’s home is on the road. As I write he is on yet another leg of a European tour. He’s a journeyman musician who finds himself at home in the natural situation of a live performance, and also because it is the title from a chapter of Wind in the Willows, which, though not mentioned, or indeed another title chapter – The Piper at the Gates of Dawn – seems to redolent with the poetry and place of the life of Steve Hackett.

Whilst researching for the piece I spent time listening to Please Don’t Touch, Hackett’s first post-Genesis solo album. It brims with energy and creativity and it makes good listening.  So some of the limited space allowed is used to explore it. I wanted to know about the kind of things a young musician should know if he or she wants to make their way in the business and on the road. I was also fascinated by the way that classical music had informed his work almost from day one…

TALES OF THE RIVERBANK

RL: The thing that made me smile when I was looking at some of your videos was your version of Tales of the Riverbank. Do you remember the original TV series?

SH: The music was based on something by Giuliani, called Andante in C and it has that feeling of lullaby about it.  I do remember the original series and funnily enough someone recently bought me a video of it because I wanted to see what it was like. I didn’t remember much other than that the narrator was Johnny Morris.  It was the music that I found arresting. Some of the episode titles are really quite poetic too, such as, “The night the moon came down to bathe”. I thought it was all going to be very childish but actually it was very poetic and poignant; obviously very low key and not much happened but it seemed as if Johnny Morris was able to throw the story around something that stretches credibility when you look at it now from a technical point of view. Whenever I play that piece it goes down well and it seems to strike a chord and cast a spell.

At the time when that was recorded – it’s almost got that same sound that the Segovia records had – where there’s not a lot of bottom and not a lot of top and that seems to create a kind of sweetness. Many years later I recorded an album called, “Tribute” (2008) which had six pieces of Bach. I was originally going to make it a tribute to Segovia, but we tried to give the recording that kind of sound. It’s a very gentle and restful sound and it harks back to the time when things were hardly hi-fi. It’s a kind of lo-fi heaven.

Tales of the Riverbank is full of whimsy and it spoke to children and it still speaks me to an adult now, as do the Rupert stories. And I am obviously not alone because otherwise Paul McCartney wouldn’t have done Rupert and the Frog Song.

Childhood re-lived through music can work in the same way, I suspect, in perhaps a taste or a smell can evoke something forgotten. Childhood can be re-kindled and for those of us who rely on music to be a portal into that forgotten world I would say that the combination of Johnny Morris and Giuliani and Black and White BBC does it admirably.

RL: From what you have said I shall have to zoom ahead a bit on my agenda, because there is a kind of child-like, whimsical but fun quality to Carry On Up the Vicarage (from Please Don’t Touch. 1978)

SH: I was thinking of a composite of a number of Agatha Christie stories and of course the film comedy series. In a sense the track is all things British. It was a joke tune, it was meant to be throw-away and when I listen to it now I am slightly embarrassed, but the joke tracks are things I have been meaning to do.

TOURING

RL: What do you like about touring?

SH: It’s the sense of all the various responsibilities in life, washing up, phoning the bank and the multi-tasking that we all do in life – it suddenly ceases the moment you get into a tour vehicle. You wander off – in more ways than one – you show up somewhere that’s entirely alien to you, you make it your magical home for the evening if you have done your job properly and you kind of transform the place into a miniature of your own brain and it’s a mind-meld with everyone who is listening.

It’s a great purge. For all the feelings of inadequacy and all the feelings of guilt that you may have of all the things you haven’t done in your life, when you have done a gig and you have completely exhausted yourself it has gone remotely well it is a great feeling. Whatever my failings in life (and they are numerous) as a musician, if I have fulfilled the brief for that particular night; left people excited, played moderately well it’s a great feeling.

RL: Talking about personal responsibilities, you got married this year!

SH: That was beautiful. I married Jo who is very much my other half. We were married on June 4^th and it was one of the last of the really sunny days.

AUDIENCES

SH: British and European audiences are equally appreciative. The audiences we have had in England, on the current tour have been fabulous. I have had one or two special guests: John Wetton and my brother, John. The European audiences have been really quite amazing for at least the past 20 years, if not 30. I think in the early days when I was touring with Genesis audiences weren’t sure about us. They hadn’t made up their minds that they liked us. I know it seems strange but we were playing a lot of tracks that are considered to be classics but people would wander off to the bar. It took a long while for it to stick and it wasn’t instant. Music isn’t always instant – even with The Beatles, you forget that they were trying to get that together since 1956. Those six years or so of trying to hone it down and working very long hours played a part. Being tired I think helps. It might not be very good physically but once an act gets to the point when you are too tired to be nervous you start to get to the real meat of it. For instance, playing in America; I did gigs where we were doing two shows a night and by the second show you were too tired to be nervous. And you’d think “Oh, Sod it” and you’d often give some of the best performances.

CLASSICAL GUITAR

RL: Clearly what runs through your repertoire is the Classical Guitar. Did it start with Tales of the Riverbank?

SH: I’ve got a feeling that it probably did but I wouldn’t have been aware that it was a nylon string or gut string guitar but when I heard Segovia in 1965 – Segovia Plays Bach – I was 15 and from the first note it was “welcome to the world of magic”. It sounded impossible that anyone could play with that degree of dexterity! Not just that, the music was out of this world and I realised that the guitar did not have to be a poor, second-cousin to the keyboard. What I hadn’t realised was that many of those recordings were performed in the 1920s and 30s. It was miraculous that one man could do that with a guitar in one go. I had been playing guitar about one year. If you had wanted to sound like that you would have immediately taken lessons for it but the guitar was always a symbol of freedom for me and I was tired of being graded at school for various things and I decided to go my own way. I never thought I would be good enough to play that stuff but hoped that one day I might be able to write things that were influenced by it. If I am at home I invariably play nylon guitar and not electric. In fact very often I will write electric lines on the nylon guitar if I want the melodies to be good.

RL: You surround yourself with classically-trained musicians such as Amanda Lehman and John Hackett and you even did a Satie Album (2000). It’s not as if this is all on the periphery.

SH: It is central and one of the most wonderful combinations of sounds is nylon guitar and orchestra. I have done a couple of albums; once with the Royal Philharmonic, doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1997) (or my version of it) and the other album is Metamorpheus (2005) with ten or eleven classical players tracked up and I called them The Underworld Orchestra.

RL: History also informs your work. I notice you wrote a song whilst sitting by the Pyramids.

SH: I did. I mentioned Rupert Bear earlier: I was in Cyprus for a holiday with Jo and there was a trip advertised where you could fly to Cairo for a day and do the Pyramids and do the rest and it sounds like a Rupert Bear Trip! In the excitement of that I had a note pad and was at the foot of the Sphinx thinking, “This is the most exotic place on Earth”. It’s something that seems to be literally made from the desert. I just couldn’t put the pen down.

RL: So it’s fair to say that your music is informed by history and classical influences and that being the case it brings me on to something that is always going to be controversial and that is that if what you do, and I suppose for the sake of argument you called it symphonic prog, is it the natural successor to the kind of classical music of the 19^th Century?

SH: A very good friend of mine, Richie Havens, said to me, when he listened to Please Don’t Touch (and his participation in that album was crucial) “I think I am listening to the classical music of tomorrow.”

It was a very detailed album but I wasn’t at all sure about it because I thought maybe I had gone a bit too far

RL: Well I wondered if we should talk about Selling England by the Pound but as I listened to Please Don’t Touch I thought that it was inventive and bursting with energy.

Please Don't Touch

SH: I was on a roll with the songs. I was still in Genesis when I was writing it and I wasn’t going to get most of that material done by the band. There were enough ideas (with Please Don’t Touch) that I felt I could step outside the band and build a career and that was going to be the cornerstone or the flagship. Ironically it did less well than its predecessor, Voyage of the Acolyte which I did in 1975. By the time I did Please Don’t Touch, suddenly I didn’t have the band to fall back on and it was an uncertain time indeed.

Steven Wilson, of Porcupine Tree, whose music I’ve got a lot of time for because I happen to think he’s brilliant – he loves that album and he said to me that this is really my Sergeant Pepper. The heroes I grew up with – obviously The Beatles – obviously Revolver and Sergeant Pepper, where doodles became mountains and contained perfect arrangements. . If you read interviews you get the impression that The Beatles thought they had gone a bit too far with it. I didn’t know what “arrangement” meant. What it means, I think, is the clothes that surround the figures; the details. As far as Sergeant Pepper is concerned, it was received rapturously but maybe in a parallel world that might have been perceived as the end of something rather than the beginning of something. Luckily the world went with them.

Rob Townshend, a brilliant wind player who I work with says the devil is in the detail. It’s about everything: it’s about the singer, about all the inflections and nuances and the spirit that moves it. Please Don’t Touch took quite a bit of time to make. I did six weeks or so in Los Angeles and then came to England and started working on it. I got sick and ended up in hospital. I didn’t want to be ill and I had colitis. With both that album and its successor, Spectral Mornings (1979) I think I just pushed myself too hard. These days I don’t work all night. In those days I was doing the kind of thing you do, which was still working and wondering why you can’t sleep.

RL: It’s full of intricate detail, together with the inspired choice of Richie Havens for some vocals.

SH: I wasn’t singing myself, other than the jokey track, Carry On, Up the Vicarage. I felt I had great singers such as Randy Crawford, who had not had anything released in this country. I wouldn’t say I felt she was a star, but that she was unique and of course she became a star. Steve Walsh of Kansas has a very bell-like, extraordinary range. When I worked with him on Racing in A he wasn’t comfortable with the words so much of it he ended up re-writing. I went along with that because I needed him to be comfortable. I was starting to learn to be flexible.

There was a lot of detail and we used a computer to mix it, except that the console that existed at that time (a Rupert Neve desk with the Necam System of moving faders) you could work on a mix for hours and then suddenly it would just dump everything. We worked with that at De Lane Lea. The Voice of Necam was titled because of that. It was a very good sounding desk, a very sweet-sounding desk and it meant that although it was an analogue album it was noise-free and we recorded it at 30 ips for the first time. But of course this is very much Oldspeak, dealing with the equivalent of box brownie cameras.

RL: Is there a particular track on Please Don’t Touch that you still play live?

SH: I’m still fond of the title track. We did quite a bit of it live but I think the one that stood the test of time is Please Don’t Touch. Much of the second side works as a kind of musical continuum - atmospheric tracks like Land of a Thousand Autumns.

RL: And then you’ve got Kim, which brings us back to Satie.

SH: Yes, the influence of Satie – the original title was going to be Quatre Gymnopédie! I was going to use an orchestrator called Mike Gibbs, who had done wonderful stuff on a Mahavishnu album with George Martin. But somewhere along the line that idea was dropped because I think I had run out of dosh.

RL: There is an element of play and child-like exploration in the album that appeals to me.

SH: I think you have come to the nub of it. Being free enough to do that. When you take fear aside – children don’t have jobs. They don’t know they are not supposed to do certain things. Children are dreaming with open eyes. 

ADVICE AND CAUTIONARY TALES FOR ASPIRING MUSICIANS

RL: What’s the worst commercial decision you ever made?

SH: To leave Genesis. If you view it purely as a commercial decision you would say it was a disaster. But if you view it from the point of view of the music and the way it works with me, in other words that music is its own currency and has its own reward – it is the very oxygen that sustains me – I don’t owe allegiance to any band or any style I felt I had no choice. It was the issue of autonomy. In a sense Genesis tried to control me and although I loved the music it was important for me to make sure my songs were being performed.

RL: You must have self-belief?

SH: Yeah, somewhere between megalomania and total lack of self-confidence and I swing between the two. I am either rubbish or I am wonderful on any given day.

RL: What was the worst gig you ever did?

SH: The worst gig was the first one I did with Genesis. The fuzz box that I had being using in rehearsal that belonged to Tony, was replaced with another one and it fed back through the course of the entire gig. I couldn’t remember any of the notes. I died a thousand deaths that night, but a professional was born out of the ashes.

RL: What do you always take with you on tour that is essential, apart from the obvious things?

SH: I take my wife Jo with me. She has become essential – we don’t spend any time apart and I know that she will take care of all the people I can’t take care of. She cares desperately that everyone is happy, both backstage and out front and in the foyer. Provided she has time she will always stop and take down names and numbers or direct them to the website.

RL: A young musician comes up to you and they have ten or fifteen thousand pounds to spend on doing a proper album. They are good, they have done their stuff but they are going into a professional studio for the first time. What is your advice to them?

SH: I think the advice is the same we were talking about earlier, about a sense of play. It’s very important to enjoy what you do. Music can be a very exacting business but the thing that is conceived in joy, if you can get that idea across it is always going to communicate to people, because what is most personal is what’s most universal. So allow yourself dream time. Allow the music to talk back to you and indulge the things that others tell you you shouldn’t. Listen to yourself.

RL: Low points in your career?

SH: You can either look at them as low points or as obstacles to be overcome. I left school at sixteen and it was five years of adverts in the back of Melody Maker before I got a call from Peter Gabriel, who I had never heard of.  There was five years of menial jobs before that, but if you keep playing the tables, in other words, you don’t give up and it’s only a matter of time before you will get lucky.

RL: You seem remarkably level headed. You have seen friends go by the way for the usual reasons, how come you have kept it together for so long?

SH: I have been very lucky. My parents are very receptive and supportive. I have been able to stay healthy. My father was musical and he bought me my first harmonica and guitar. I was very determined and driven and that might be the Jewish background. There is showbiz in the blood and there is music there – everything but the ukulele.

http://www.hackettsongs.com/

So, from Please Don't touch, a wonderful, uplifting track from an album that never disappoints: