I love the music of Genesis immensely, they have been one of my favorite bands since the early 1980’s. Their music was my introduction to progressive rock. To this day they remain my favorite progressive rock band.
I also love the music of former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett. He has established himself as a forward thinking solo artist since leaving Genesis in 1977. During his career he has put together a discography that is quite impressive. He has explored various genres including progressive rock, classical guitar, world music, blues, pop, hard rock and classical music.
As a solo artist he has always been one to be in touch with his past. Genesis music has always had a presence in his live shows. For many years Horizons, and sections of Firth Of Fifth, Los Endos and In That Quiet Earth have been pretty constant in his live set lists. Over various tours other Genesis songs have been included as well. Songs such as I Know What I Like, Hairless Heart, Carpet Crawlers, Watcher of the Skies, Fly On A Windshield and Blood On The Rooftops. The latter song was a treat because it was never performed live by Genesis. Steve Hackett’s touring drummer Gary O’Toole does a fantastic job putting his own spin on the lead vocals. From tour to tour there was a nice balance of Genesis songs intermingled with his solo material.
In 2013 Steve Hackett began his highly successful Genesis Revisited tour. This was a tour that featured a set list that was 99% – 100% Genesis songs. Some shows featured the Steve Hackett song Shadow Of The Hierophant. I believe that the popularity of this tour surprised all involved. What was initially intended to be a one off tour has spilled over two tours later. I understand the reason for the show and I understand it’s popularity. However, I now feel that the music of Genesis Is taking up far too much room in his setlist.
His last tour was titled Acolyte to Wolflight With Genesis Revisited. It was a tour meant to celebrate the forty year anniversary of his first solo album, Voyage Of The Acolyte. He also had an incredible new album out to promote, Wolflight. He played about five songs from each album and a few highlights from the earlier part of his career. This tour could have been an incredible retrospective of his solo career. Unfortunately the Genesis Revisited section of the show ate up half the set list. Do not misunderstand me, the Genesis Revisited set was absolutely great. The opportunity to hear his incredible band expertly play songs like Get ‘Em Out By Friday, The Cinema Show and Can-Utility And The Coastliners was quite an experience. But as great as it was part of me was imaging a two and a half hour set list spanning Steve Hackett’s solo career.
His recent tour just started and the timing seems a little odd. He has a new album set for release in March, so I am curious as to why the tour started now. That said, I had the great privilege of seeing one the early shows of the new tour. Steve Hackett and his touring band were incredible as always. But I must say that I left the show slightly disappointed. This was a first for me. I have seen Steve Hackett live several times over the years. I know what a full live set of his solo material sounds like. This most recent show featured too much Genesis! Once again please do not misunderstand me, I love the music of Genesis a great deal. But I also love Steve Hackett’s solo music and I wanted to hear more of it.
At this point it may be time to leave some of the Genesis songs in the past. This new tour is billed as celebrating the forty year anniversary of the Genesis album Wind And Wuthering. So I was aware of that going in. Hearing a few songs from that classic album was great, along with the song Inside And Out. Inside And Out was recorded during the Wind And Wuthering sessions but it was not released on the album. It was later released on the Spot The Pigeon EP in 1977. I was pleased with the Wind and Wuthering set list, especially Inside And Out. When that portion of the show was over I thought for sure that he would return to playing his solo material. To my surprise the set continued with Dance On A Volcano, The Musical Box, Firth Of Fifth, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight and Los Endos. The band did play sections of Steve Hackett’s songs Myopia and Slogans during Los Endos, but that was it.
I know that there are many fans who will strongly disagree with me. I feel that it is time for Steve Hackett to leave Genesis Revisited in the rearview mirror. This Steve Hackett fan wants to hear more Steve Hackett songs on the next Steve Hackett tour. He left Genesis in 1977 and he has not looked back musically. He has proven himself to be a vital artist who continually pushes himself and his music forward. He proves that with each new album that he releases. I do not have an issue with Genesis songs in his set list, just the amount. Going forward I would love less Genesis and more Steve Hackett.
Troy T.
Shades Of Noir 
Tony and the rest. I think back how fortune we are to grow up with gifted artist in music. Adrian Belew,Phil Manzera,Tony Levin, John Wetton, Brian Eno,Tony Bonerso,Steve Howe,and Chris Squire. I could go on but time and space would not permit it. Next Friday(March 3’rd) I have the honor and privedge of spending my evening. Sure compositions from his solo stuff and pre-Collins Genesis would be played. My breath will be taken and eyes will be fixed on the fingers of the master. Sorry bout the misspellings of these masters of their craft- my spell checker is not working. 🤔
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Hackett is a privilege to watch on guitar
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Phillip, Enjoy! Knowing I’ll be thinking of how great the show must be! Can hardly wait for him. To announce LA gigs, hopefully this time in warmer weather! Lol!
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Troy, I think they do, but what it comes down to is that Steve has garnered even more popularity because he’s the only one of the five, besides Ant that would love a reunion. Steve is embarassing the Three that don’t want it, want their version to live on, not the one that got them there. It’s very ego driven in that end.
I would rather Steve go on with his vision-playing certain hits from the early solo days while sneaking one or two in that we didn’t expect, like say, Tigermoth, Racing in A or Narnia! Lol!
BTW, I read your previous on Beyond the Shrouded Horizon, which I have to tell you, I loved! It’s a complete journey! We get to go in tour with a Steve & Jo as they and the band tour the globe, and they capture the history of these places in complete musical detail-you can’t get much more progressive then that, when the music tells the story and we look in with our ears and our minds!
Who hears the locomotive crossing the prairies in A Land Called Freedom? Visually, to me the album takes me to places ELP did with Tarkus in that it drags me into the storyline, not that the two are anything alike! Complete 180 actually!
Keep up the great writing though Troy! It awesome to hear other takes on it and it strengthens our bond as Steve’s fans!
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Thanks you for the kind words. Steve Hackett is a truly progressive artist and one of my guitar heroes.
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Troy,
I understand what your trying to get across, butI think this stands for something else bigger, and much more important.
You see, I consider Steve to be the Maestro. He has mastered his craft to the point of perfection and no different then the Philharmonic orchestras of our societies, he decides what we hear and its a gift that we get to hear it–especially when he is performing with more precision and skill then the original band did back in the day. Seriously, I think this is Steve’s ability to get the resect he deserves when it was afforded him–like that ridiculous and simply biased documentary, Sum of the Parts. They ignored him and the three remains members of the band did nothing to stick up for him.
In the best words, it was then, all the gloves came off!
While this may all sound sacrilegious for most Genesis fans, but the fact is that Steve and Peter both musically transcended the remaining three bandmates by quite a large margin; taking (while stealing a term from Mark Knopfler) “Love Over Gold” and the others; fame and fortune that came with it–as well as the dictatorship/ownership the band had become with themselves when originally it was a shared songwriting credit. This is why there is no full-on reunion, simply because the two who continued to progress in their musical mainstream are the two who chose to leave the band; to draw and color outside the lines.
One of my favorite Hackett solos is the last minute of “All in a Mouses Night” and you have to struggle to hear Steve’s brilliant melodic and surreal playing throughout the song because the egos within the band were at work–Steve released a solo album that simply was kicking ass on the charts on Great Britain and that, I think caused a “Professional” divide by the one member not on the album and that carried over into the engineering and production of the live album. Steve knew there was no recovery from this, yet he bravely took the step that Peter did.
So how does this add up? Very simply, its Steve’s way to get more behinds in the seats to afford to self-produce his own works so he can tour and not fade into that good night! I’m all for this, because Steve hasn’t lost his ability to create while having the throngs of fans that didn’t get to see him perform many of these songs with Genesis. He has done this in the most typical Hackett fashion too, with class and dignity!
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I wholeheartedly agree with the previous comment. Perhaps they will be regonized not only for thier instrumental but the extraordinary song writing. People used to criticize Mr. Gabriel for his theatrics, but his imagination is unparalleled to any musician or artist of recent day. Mr. Hackett has a very unique gift for his amazing guitar playing. I wonder if they are truthfully earthlike or some exterteril higher being manefesting in the gift(s)they share with us.
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Put Steve’s CD’S on your music rig and STFU.
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I grew up with Genesis, starting with wind and wurthing(sorry bout the spelling) The first album I bought was The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I fell in love with Mr. Peter Gabriel at that precious moment. I had a very dear friend who saw that tour. I would pick her brain with every opportunity bout the gift of Mr. Gabriel. I watch Nad and imagine the Genesis days of old. Granted its not the same but I will have the very good fortune of seeing Mr. Hackett live in bout 10 days. So I appreciate Mr. Hackett sharing the songs of old. Sadly a lot of my music heroes have decided to go the other way(they died) I miss John Wetton for example. Thank you Mr. Hackett for sharing your gift. A very loyal fan, Philip🤔
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Thanks for sharing your story.
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To me steve always looked unassuming and even uncomfortable fronting his own band. It worked better back in the day, when the drummer and the singer led from the front and steve could just play.
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As a Genesis fan who grew up with the Gabriel and early Collins era, I find Steve Hackett to be the guardian of the early songs and would give him more power to his elbow!
This time he’s revisiting Wind and Wuthering and some of the classics too. You also get new and old Hackett tracks to boot. What’s not to like?
As Steve said on stage during the last gig I was at “I play this music because you the fans own it” and he’s right to a considerable degree.
Keep revisiting Steve and keep bringing Nad and Amanda with you on please.
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I really liked the show, but as a big fan of his solo work I wanted just a bit more of his songs.
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Steve can play, whatever he wants, he is at this point clearly the best representative of the Genesis legend. If the writer’s journey with Genesis began in the early 80’s, then he clearly dosent understand Genesis!
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How can you say that Jaime? I began with Abacab in 1981 and than worked my way through the Genesis back catalog. I was not there for the initial releases, but the Gabriel albums have been a part of my life for over 30 years.
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Trey, I just “met” you through the Kerry Livgren FB Group page and your post on one of KL’s songs directing me to this site so after reading your excellent Song Spotlight it got me to poking around and checking out what else you’ve written about and I eventually made it to this point.
I’ve seen/heard Steve Hackett a number of times over the various decades, once in the early 80’s (1981?) if I recall correctly and three-four times in the last 10 years or so. I got into Genesis with the most excellent live album Seconds Out when I was 19 or 20 and with the exception of some perceived spottiness to my ears in the latter of the latter day catalogue I pretty much embrace the entire catalogue nowadays, loving most of it and liking most of what I don’t love and leaving the rest behind. I truly love a lot of groups but don’t necessarily love 100% of what they do/did. I can even say that about a mutual group that we both love, that being Kansas, seen/heard them over 100 times since 1976, the bulk of it starting in the 2000’s.
I’ve seen Steve on these last two most excellent tours and walked out 100% pleased with what I had seen/heard. The W&W tour last year touched on many great songs off what might be my 2nd favorite Genesis album behind Duke, which even with Misunderstood on it is still my favorite Genesis album, the other 10 songs (Duke Travels/End being my absolute favorite Genesis song then followed by Firth Of Firth) more than enough make up for that little pop ditty which when examined closely and decades after the fact then finding out what was happening in Phil Collins’ life/marriage at the time it really goes a lot deeper than a typical “pop ditty” might due to the dark shadows of a divorce clouding Phil’s perspective on life and songwriting in general.
But back to Steve and the reason I started this reply I totally get/got the point you were trying to get across. I love Heart, seen/heard them dozens of times since 1979 and had to stop because a 20 minute chunk of what was/is already a short show, an hour and 1/2 at best, sometimes less, was being devoted to Led Zep! I love them too. But I don’t nearly love them enough when attending a Heart concert. I own the entire Heart catalog and, like yourself, would have preferred Heart digging into their own most excellent catalog and feel like a disservice is being done to loyal fans like myself that has supported them their entire career. I saw Lou Gramm of Foreigner open up for someone in 1990 and with two excellent solo albums, one that i love as much as any Foreigner album and perhaps even more than and in a fifty minute set did three, only three, songs combined from his two solo albums. The majority of the set was Foreigner and I personally put forth that if I wanted to see/hear Foreigner I would have gone to see Foreigner. But I went to see Lou Gramm and all I got was mainly Foreigner as, like you, I walked out of the venue later that evening not feeling very satisfied with what I had witnessed even though the material chosen was played as well as could have been expected.
I 1st saw Genesis on the album you first got into them as a group and into progressive music in general, Abacab, 1981. I’m pretty sure I also saw Steve in 1981 and I don’t recall any Genesis songs being played then. In the interest of full disclosure I did not own any of his solo albums at that point and only own a handful of them now. His solo stuff has not tickled my ears quite as much as Genesis did but my ears tell me that he is still one of the greatest and certainly classiest guitarists that I’ve ever witnessed and I don’t recall leaving unsatisfied after that 1st solo SW show seen/heard. Yet quite frankly speaking I never felt the need to see him again until he started to tour doing the Genesis Revisited stuff and as I stated earlier I thought the last two tours were exceptionally great. I walked into them knowing that he was going to do solo stuff as well as Genesis and for this fan that never got to see them in the 1970’s it was a wonderful way to step into a time machine for a couple of hours and hear some of the greatest music I’ve heard lovingly recreated by the Maestro himself and I was moved to tears at some points of both shows.
I see where you are a much bigger fan of his solo works than I obviously yet now that I understand your frustration. Been there, done that. But i think I see, especially in this particular instance, the conundrum that exists both for the artist himself and the audience that appreciates the fact that he is the only one willing to carry the flag that is Genesis music and run with it. And not saying that you don’t appreciate what has been played, I thought you made that very clear and well expressed.
Sio this might have been a rather long winded to get to the point of why I started this reply but just as it was pretty obvious that Steve unfairly has not been stood up by the core group that ultimately continued after Steve left them I felt a whole bunch disappointed I read this:
“Jaime Rodriguez
FEBRUARY 20, 2017 AT 7:46 PM
Steve can play, whatever he wants, he is at this point clearly the best representative of the Genesis legend. If the writer’s journey with Genesis began in the early 80’s, then he clearly dosent understand Genesis!”
As unfair as I think Steve was treated is as unfair of an attack of what you clearly wrote was an opinion as to where Steve should be going with his tours moving forward. You demonstrated above in words your love for both Genesis and Steve and simply expressed that at this point you simply would prefer to see Steve to concentrate more on his solo works because it is worthy enough to be concentrated on. There was no real negativity expressed by you, only a looking for a change in direction back to his solo stuff. The replier above instead chose to go negative and rather personal on you and that was clearly uncalled for, as you yourself asked him “How can you say that…”.
I started in ’77. Does that also mean that since I technically started loving the band with Phil behind the microphone that I, too, “…clearly doesn’t understand Genesis!” Though admittedly it took me a while longer to appreciate the Gabriel era I’m there. Because greatness is as greatness does and they were indeed great before ’77. But for someone to insinuate that someone cannot appreciate a band or their catalog by their point of entry is simply hogwash. I know many fans of bands that have come in at various points of a band’s lifetime and was eventually able to appreciate some, most or all of the other parts of the catalog and not to say that you can’t love a band without loving an entire catalog, I’d love to meet someone that loves every single song of a catalog so vast and deep as Genesis, which obviously went thru its phases as many before did and many after will.
And with that said thank you Troy for the time taken to read this and for your excellent and well written opinions and look forward to reading more of it now that I’ve found this site!
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Thank you for taking the time to read a few of my posts. This post was the one that I received the most responses on, there are a lot of passionate Genesis fans out their. As I stated I am a passionate Genesis fan and an equally passionate Steve Hackett fan. At this time I an excepting of his Genesis Revisited shows. They have brought him his biggest crowds in years. I would still prefer a Hackett solo show, but I am aware of the realities. I am looking forward to seeing him on his upcoming tour to hear song from Selling England By The Pound. At this point I know that Hackett can not tour forever, so any opportunity to see him I will do my best to take advantage of. Once again thanks for reading and responding to my writing, it is much appreciated.
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Totally agree with Troy! I love hearing the Genesis songs but its got the point (like this tour) where we only get 7 solo songs, 3 of which are new and never heard before and then its all Genesis. I don’t get how is it billed as Classic Hackett either? Apart from Everyday and The Steppes there’s nothing! Classic Hackett to me are songs from albums like Acolyte, Please Don’t Touch, Defector, Cured, Highly Strung which sadly most are ignored. That said, I’ve always enjoyed the concerts and I’m going to this tour in May but I do feel a bit disappointed.
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I understand. With his history and the recent success of Genesis Revisited it is going to be hard to please everyone. I will still go to future shows, how can I not support one of my favorite musicians.
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To me his band have turned into a glorified Genesis tribute band featuring Steve, sad to say, I cannot watch it because I am not a fan of Nad Sylvan and personally feel he murders most of those songs, especially the Collins era stuff.
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Like some others are saying on here, It must have LOTS to do with how popular it is with Genesis fans, I am 100% certain he would be playing much fewer and smaller places if he just concentrated on his solo stuff.
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If he enjoys playing it and is selling tickets, then why not continue? It’s not up to anyone to tell him what to do…
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These types of replies…..Read the blog again, who is telling anybody what to do exactly?
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I fear it’s monetary ….Hackett plays Hackett, venue rock city Notts for example. Hackett plays genesis royal concert hall Notts or city hall Sheffield. Perhaps I’m just a cynical fan. Love him though whatever or were ever!
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I would agree with you. I just hope that he plays for many years to come. Perhaps he can mix it up a bit more and play smaller venues for his material and larger venues for the Genesis shows.
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You are correct and I’ve seen Steve say this in other published interviews. His tours get sponsored by Promoters who want (and pay for) the Genesis Revisited themed tours so his tours can now make money in bigger venues playing pre 1977 Genesis music. If he didn’t play this old stuff (and only played his new or own material) he probably wouldn’t be as popular as he now thankfully is. It’s a no brainer for him really. The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall or the Renfrew Ferry? You choose! His loyal fan base have always purchased his own new recordings and Steve has worked very hard to play live throughout the world over many years in smaller venues and is now reaping the rewards of building his brand, having good sales in recordings and playing live concerts. Its taken many years of hard graft though.
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He is free to play a set of all his own work. I saw him do that at Borders book store. Once was enough. I will pay to see him play Genesis music. Anything else no. So he can do what he likes.
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I agree Nick, I hope that he tours for many more years.
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Greetings Troy. I’m cross-posting this comment that I left on Facebook:
I understand where this guy is coming from. I too would love to see/hear a full show of nothing but his origial material. But Steve has to walk a fine line here, meaning that he has to offer up a set list that will likely draw enough people to the shows to make a tour profitable. He not only has to answer to his fans and his own creative juices, but the promoters who sponsor his tours.
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I agree, but it would be great if more Genesis fans embraced his solo albums
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