Steve Hackett - Leaving Genesis [The Man, The Music] 

Amen

He really is quite likeable. I saw him in concert last year and he was quite gracious on stage.

He is an absolute gentleman with all his fans.

@Nelson Robert Willis so true !

whistler8 I totally agree - you shouldn´t forget he´s a guitar player! I always hated to play with guitarists who lived the attitude of Jimmy Page and othe "guitar gods". That´s a nightmare especially for keyboard players. And Steve Hackett was always the opposite of that. He embodied music, not attitude - and I really like him for that.

It may be all great to you , but not to thousands of other Genesis fans . You can be a huge fan of any band or artist without having to like everything they did .

Gerard Convie and that’s fine, it’s your opinion. But in my opinion post-Hackett Genesis just isn’t the same, it’s not nearly as good to me.

I'm with you Gerard. I like the whole ball of wax!

Yes there were a couple of kids with their dads, trying to see what Steve's guitar pedal setup was after the gig at Leicester UK in October 2022.

Plus you can see Steve 3 or 4 times for the same money.

And Then There Were Three is very good, Duke is fantastic. After that, THEN it went to crap

Couldn’t agree more. Steve was Genesis’s secret weapon.

I do like Duke but agree about Steve's departure as a pivotal point.

Absolutely agree! Met him outside Coventry Theatre in 1980.... very genuine and humble!....a good man!

He played the "new' Friars in 2022.

Spot on.

That was for Genesis not Steve! oops

You know you could've tapped on his name in the replies and told him

Abacab had a handful of decent tracks, and the subsequent albums each had a good song or 2...but yeah Duke was the last time Genesis actually made a good album.

Interesting......kinda agree!

MARIO GMK True

The decline started when Peter left, and it was not slow.. from a 5 star band to a 4 star is pretty steep and it just got steeper when Steve left too.

I think "A Trick of the Tail" and "Wind and Wuthering" stand up pretty well as very good Genesis recordings. But after that, it started going downhill rapidly. This is a clear indicator of how important Steve Hackett was to the band.

Tony Banks was the major contributor of Genesis in terms of musical composition. When he changed style Genesis went downhill. Hackett composed little in Genesis but had a great influence in term of sound

Korrekt, ich denke genau so. Gabriel war für mich zu der Zeit bei Genesis schlicht ein Spinner, (In gutem Sinne). Als Hackett dann ging war Genesis aussagemäßig, für mich, tot!

No, I think it was the changing musical climate of the times that led them towards pop. Prog rock just wasn't fashionable in the late seventies. It happened with most of their peers as well.

He is definitely not underrated, has influenced many generations of guitarists/musicians and was a pioneer of experimental music. fatally, steve never appears in the popular top 100 lists of the best guitarists of all time. What blindness and ignorance on the part of those compiling these lists. For me he is at least in the top 10!

Yes he's still going all right.🤣

Jerlin Vinso that's not really the case, Rutherford and Banks were like Lennon and McCartney in Genesis. They wrote most of the music and a great deal of the lyrics i.e. Watcher Of The Skies and The Light Lies Down On Broadway are Rutherford Banks pieces, music and lyrics. TOTT is more a continuation of what Genesis were doing before TLLDOB if you listen to their catalogue. Some of The Lamb really isn't that great, all of TOTT is sublime, they hit some new highs with TOTT.

Why do people always assume the lead singers are the main driving force of a band ffs? Banks and Rutherford wrote nearly everything on all the 70s Genesis albums.

He married before Kim so it's someone else. Maybe even before his first marriage, which was when he was very young. Maybe 19 or 20. He met Kim after The Lamb I think. She was around at a Cambridge gig back in 1988. A very glamorous woman.

Then what was The Knife and Musical Box?

Proper guitar solo? There were many great guitar solos that Hackett played on Genesis records. And then there was all of that doubling up with the keys. Add to that Steve's impressive classical guitar technique. His effects and ornamentations on electric guitar that created tons of atmosphere. His use of tapping 7 years before the Van Halen explosion. Sound effects not too much unlike what Vai would do 12 years later. Hackett orchestrated with his playing. He had more imagination than most rock guitar players I could think of. He is right there with Page, May and Howe. On top of that Genesis used LOTS of guitars to create their trademark early sound. Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford. Even Tony Banks played acoustic guitars to add counterpoint accompaniment to what Ant, Mike and Steve would play. Listen to Trespass, Nursery, Foxtrot, Selling England, Trick and Wind. If you want solos by Hackett, listen to Musical Box, Salmacis, Hogweed, Suppers Ready, Can Utility, Moonlit Knight, Firth, Dance on a Volcano and more. His playing on Wind and Wuthering and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is absolutely brilliant.

IndiaRubber Man Steve’s solo albums were quantity over quality I’m afraid. His first three albums were class but his 80s output onwards mehhhh🤮

I went into the new, huge HMV in Newcastle in 1995 and there were at least 14 CD albums under Anthony Philips alone!

Is that a joke? Lol.

Eu sigo Genesis desde o inicio incrível o conhecimento de musica para aquela época Sul do Brasil

Why do you think he did a solo album? Because Tony and he argued so much. Banks had too much say and often stymied Steve's contribution.

@@swinetrek Again, that is imo, a history rewriting exercise. They came from the Lamb where the main frictions where still between Tony and Peter. I would concede that the keyboards often buried Steve's guitars but up to that point Steve was not much of a songwriter. He has said it so many times himself, in a string of interviews throughout the years. When they recorded Trick, he was a bit barren of ideas, having just released his album, again, straight from the horse's mouth and on W&W he was finally more involved as a songwriter. To be clear and again, according to band members' statements, it wasn't only Tony, neither Phil, nor Mike were particularly crazy about the material he would bring in.

To this day, Hackett remains humble about his contributions to Genesis. The proof is in listening to the music. There is no doubt that Hackett added much needed depth to their music. Steve is grateful for being a part of the musical legacy of the band. Genesis was not Steve's baby. It was Peter, Tony, Mike and in the 80's, Phil. I don't blame anyone for Steve leaving the band. It was bound to happen. Just like Peter needing to leave. They were following their own muse.

If people want to pay for it , there's no problem. And since royalties are paid, nobody complains. For my taste only a couple of songs have been re-worked to sound better than the original, but as much as I love this music, I'd have no problem paying the full price for just those two (Horizons and Blood on the rooftops).

Well the other Genesis guys have no interest in playing these old songs. The old Genesis is what people want to hear, not the 80s pop stuff. Hackett's Genesis Revisited tours have done pretty well. Plus he releases more new original material than the rest of them combined.

As both a huge "old" Genesis fan and also a big Steve Hackett fan, I think both camps should be thankful that he is still working so hard. Whether he is doing his original material, or classic Genesis music (of which he was an integral member and songwriter, after all) it all spells some of the most superlative and transcending music in the world.

tony banks in fact does not complain :). Would you go to Steve concert if you knew he played only his stuff from 2000 and after?

Yes but as an artist he goes on and makes concert mainly because he plays old stuff of the band he wanted to leave because he was not free. At the end he is still a former member of Genesis and not Steve Hackett. He was not able to build a new audience on his own. His audience is mainly old Genesis fans disappointed by the fact Genesis turned into something else, disbanded etc. Glad he is still on the road.

i know you are

Idiot

Sorry I didn't get your name or repertoire!

I take it you haven’t been listening to Steve since 1975. He earned his place in rock history.