Steve Hackett On His New Live Album Celebrating Genesis’ Classic LP ‘Selling England By The Pound’

By late 1970, the members of the British progressive rock group Genesis – Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford – were in search of a new guitarist following the departure of Anthony Phillips. Upon seeing an advertisement placed in the British music publication Melody Maker, they eventually found a relatively unknown guitarist named Steve Hackett. Both he and Collins made their debut on Genesis’ album Nursery Cryme in 1971, and the band’s fortunes changed forever after that. Subsequent records such as Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering heightened Genesis’ popularity.

More than four decades after his departure from Genesis, Steve Hackett is still maintaining a prolific solo career with numerous studio and live albums under his belt. For several years now, he’s been performing shows featuring the music he made with Genesis from 1971 to 1977. “It doesn’t seem like 50 years when you look back,” Hackett says about first joining Genesis. “I think one changes over time. I was extremely introverted when I started. I have learned to express myself both in song and in different styles, and also the ability to be able to talk to people and not feel self-conscious about that. And so, I think self-esteem went up proportionally with the amount of work that I’d been involved in, and of course the amount of people who want to work with me.”

His latest release is Selling England by the Pound & Spectral Mornings: Live at Hammersmith (due out this Friday via Inside Out), recorded from the guitarist’s 2019 Genesis Revisited tour featuring songs from Genesis’ classic 1973 album Selling England by the Pound and Hackett’s 1979 solo recording Spectral Mornings. The new release—which also contains material from Hackett’s recent album At the Edge of Light—features his touring band: keyboardist Roger King; bassist Jonas Reingold; woodwinds player Rob Townsend; drummer Craig Blundell; and singer Nad Sylvan.

“When Selling England came out,” says Hackett, referring to the original Genesis album, “John Lennon said that Genesis is one of the bands that he was listening to. For my money, that made Selling England an absolute monument—that was the current album for us at that time. It happens to be my favorite Genesis album.”

The original Selling England by the Pound album includes a number of beloved Genesis tracks such as “I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe),” “The Cinema Show” and “Firth of Fifth”—the latter being a showcase for Hackett’s iconic guitar solo. To him, Hackett says that Genesis’ Selling England by the Pound captured a then-young band trying very hard. “The main thing is that what you see is what you get. It’s a band going straight from a rehearsal room to playing this stuff virtually live in the studio with a minimum of overdubs. I think it’s probably the quality of the writing, and the fact that you have five writers, all of whom were vying for supremacy. That competitive edge was Genesis’ strength but also its vulnerability, which is why it started to hemorrhage members beyond a certain point.

“And don’t forget the hit single Genesis ever had [“I Know What I Like”] was on that album. It is something that is a most unlikely lyric, something that is idiosyncratic, very British obscurantist.”

He also cites Selling England by the Pound‘s musical diversity, even though it mostly falls in the progressive rock genre. “I have a lot of pride in what I brought to Genesis, and I do not feel like discarding that very early model that combined so many different aspects, that kind of pan-genre aspect of songs, like “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight,” which we obviously include in the live show—the song that kicks off this Revisited extravaganza. It has got a hint of a Scottish plainsong, and then something that refers to Edward Elgar, that kind of anthemic song. And then we’re off into fusion, heavy metal soloing and all the rest. That was way back in ’73, so you get prototype guitar solos, you get sound combinations I don’t think anyone has ever really looked at: moments of Prokofiev-meets-Stravinsky-meets the atonal stuff,  the Romantic all side by side, finishing off with a jab that is very, very slow and resigned.”

To this day Hackett still feels very strongly about the 1973 album. “There were many iconic songs on it, and the fact that it was bookended by practically the same riff that kicks it off, so that sense of a journey and having come full circle perhaps at the end. The band was very good and working fluently with time signatures. But you have the simple direct songs “I Know What I Like,” “More Fool Me”—the first love song perhaps Phil Collins was ever to sing on his own with the band. It was lovely to be able to do that, but give it a slightly larger arrangement, in other words, to have a couple of guitars and keyboards to give it a little more sparkle and support.”

After leaving Genesis in 1977, Hackett embarked on a solo career that culminated two years late with his third record, the brilliant Spectral Mornings. It contains a number of standout tracks including the often-performed “Every Day,” the gorgeous ballad “The Virgin and the Gypsy,” and the soaring title track. “I was really pleased with [Spectral Mornings]. It was my first touring band under my own name, and the album did very well. I somehow felt that it was a kind of breakthrough,” to have a band that had a sound, and had many variations within that sound, the pan-genre approach that was already knocking on the door, this world music right back then. It’s something that still feels current in many ways. It’s been wonderful doing those again in front of a live audience.”

Coinciding with the new live release, Hackett recently unveiled his memoir, A Genesis in My Bed, making him the third member of the band along with Collins and Rutherford to write a book. The idea was suggested by Hackett’s wife Jo. “To write a book does require a major commitment,” says Hackett. “It really wasn’t going to work speaking into a tape recorder, it really wasn’t gonna work if someone else wrote it. I wanted it to be in my own words. And that was important to me.

“I had a rich, full and varied life. It hasn’t been all plain sailing, but in a way I think weathering those storms has been an important part of writing the book. I hope I explained my motivations for doing certain things and answering questions such as: ‘Why did I join the band?’ ‘Why did I join Genesis?’ ‘Why did I leave Genesis?’”

Revisiting the music of his former band has given him an appreciation of his involvement all these years later. “I’m terribly proud of all the Genesis stuff. I don’t dismiss it. It is great to be able to take that stuff to people again—the many people who never heard it the first time around—and to be able to do it with [my current] band, I think is extraordinary.”

Hackett was slated to tour the rest of this year until the pandemic forced him to reschedule dates for 2021; he and his own band were planning to perform the music from Seconds Out, Genesis’ 1977 double live album, which was the last band release Hackett appeared on. But he’s not exactly staying still, as he’s currently recording new material. “I don’t like sitting around twiddling my thumbs, so I have a number of different projects that are in various states of near completion. As soon as the world is open for business, we’re open for business.”