Steve Hackett
Genesis Revisited

The guitarist Steve Hackett left Genesis in 1977, feeling suffocated by the Tony Banks/Michael Rutherford dyarchy in terms of compositional space, and especially musical direction. Their distinct careers demonstrate this: his two ex-bandmates, much more gifted composers than he, grappled with a deliberately commercial repertoire, largely hollow and ingratiating, while he became the author of a slew of albums sincere and consistent with his musical visions, all therefore respectable but decidedly far from unmissable, given his inherent limitations in songwriting and conceptual brilliance and depth.

Hackett was certainly an inspired and personal performer, but not a complete musician, more suited to being the exquisite cherry on a cake essentially cooked by others (as was the case with Genesis) rather than a bandleader. This role came with additional duties of musical direction, composition, selection of tracks, collaborators, and everything. In light of this, "Genesis Revisited" appears as one of his most consistent albums, if only for the five or six confirmed gems picked from his old group’s "good" repertoire and scattered throughout the work, forming its main structure and stimulating fans' curiosity.

In fact, the record also contains a handful of songs that only tangentially relate to a revisiting of Genesis, if not at all, as is the case with a couple of them. But let's proceed in order: the opening is "Watcher Of The Skies", rendered considerably similar to the original ("Foxtrot," 1972) without actual surprises. The sounds clearly reflect over two decades of technical evolution and thus appear significantly more refined, dynamic, and clean, but the track remains: structure, melodies, and rhythms. The orchestra replaces the glorious mellotron in the first, famous two-minute intro, and the vocals are entrusted to John Wetton (Family, King Crimson, UK, Uriah Heep, Wishbone Ash, Asia...). One is to think the best of him, but must conclude that Gabriel was a different story... John's voice is strong and hypermelodic, but it seems like he's doing the bare minimum compared to Peter's heartfelt original interpretation. The same goes for Bill Bruford on drums: he has always struck me as one of the most evolved rock drummers; he's so technical and perfect (early in his career with Yes he had much more swing) that he resembles an electronic drum. The jazzy groove of vintage Phil Collins was much better, breathing life into the track with his ever-varying and deftly rolling hits.

Following this is another recognized colossus of the Genesis catalog, "Dance On A Volcano", which opened their last perfect album, "A Trick Of The Tail" from 1976. Here, Hackett indulges in an unnecessary rock-blues (!) guitar prelude, making us wait a good minute and a half before the electric 12-string guitar cues the characteristic, inspired initial breaks. He then continues to sin a bit of pride and narcissism by reserving for himself the vocal part that was Collins'. Imagine... his limited and poor voice, forced to juggle an octave below the original and embellished with impromptu electronic effects, literally kills the triumphant and orgiastic pathos conveyed by the track's lush rhythmic conception, here rendered at its best by Chester Thompson (the legendary "live" drummer for Genesis, who knows it well from having performed it thousands of times) and Alphonso Johnson (ex-Weather Report, once considered to replace Hackett in Genesis before they opted for Daryl Stuermer).

The third song, "Valley Of The Kings", is completely unreleased and thus unrelated to the title and purpose of the album in question: it is an instrumental, essentially a resounding and intense electric guitar solo over a cadenced and martial rhythm, Habsburg-like in its rigidity and resolve. Steve draws on all his knowledge in the creation and control of his celebrated distorted and extra-long sounds, sinuous and swollen with harmonics, fiddling with the tremolo arm and playing with the amplifier's valve saturation to overwhelm the listener with electrical barrages. The track has since regularly entered the setlists of his live performances, often serving as concert opener.

"Deja Vu" that follows is written by Gabriel/Hackett and dates back to the "Selling England By The Pound" era (1973). The Genesis singer composed much of the airy and mournful vocal melody characterizing the piece and the band had started working on it, but never completed it. Here Hackett resumes, completes, and refines everything, entrusting its interpretation to Paul Carrack (Mike & The Mechanics), whose clean and controlled voice, although satisfying, also makes one miss the incomparable fervor of Gabriel's, who would have done wonders with such a typically melancholic and evocative melody.

Regarding the reproduction of "Firth Of Fifth" (masterpiece of "Selling England By The Pound"), the considerations made for "Watcher Of The Skies" apply more or less. John Wetton is again behind the microphone, but at the same time the updates to the original arrangement are more pronounced. The famous piano intro is initially rendered with an (electronic) glockenspiel and then orchestrated with the orchestra, which then plays along with the album’s guitar owner in the long central instrumental section in a contrast of chiaroscuro and melodic/rhythmic variations on the well-known song structure. This flows into the mythical, romantic main guitar solo, the pinnacle of Hackett’s career, played in a manner substantially faithful to the original.   

The rendition of "For Absent Friends" is inarguably disappointing: the folk jewel from "Nursery Cryme" (1971, and Hackett’s first effective compositional contribution to the group) is blandly arranged for voice and orchestra alone at a new (too) slow waltz pace, losing its compactness and its medieval charm, without Colin Blunstone’s (Alan Parsons’ Project) interpretation making it take off.

Surprisingly, "Your Own Special Way" (retrieved from "Wind And Wuthering", 1976) is included, defined in the liner notes by Hackett as one of his former bandmate Rutherford’s best compositions. But wasn’t it precisely the progressive slide toward trivial tunes like this that led to his decision to leave Genesis? Nonetheless, the original's insipidity is faithfully replicated in Hackett’s rendition, once again entrusted to Carrack’s rounded voice, which at least edges out the thin falsetto of Phil Collins from those years.

In position 8 comes my favorite of the work, the visionary "The Fountain Of Salmacis", which was at the time a great closure of "Nursery Crime". The introduction entrusted to Steve’s skillfully plucked nylon strings is truly beautiful, upon which then descends the deadly, epochal absolution à la King Crimson that immediately characterizes the piece. The central instrumental romp, already intricate and changing of its own accord, is further elaborated, extended, complicated, and refined by Hackett, who at the time of the original recording of the piece had only recently entered the band and was therefore not yet sufficiently attuned to its music and his role in it, thus succumbing quite clearly to the ideas and performances of the group's other soloist, the keyboardist Tony Banks. He thus gets some payback here, lavishly garnishing the original score of this Genesis gem with guitar interventions and variations, crossing with the orchestra, his brother John’s flute, and his keyboardist Julian Colbeck’s contributions, erring only in reserving the vocal part for himself, inevitably weak and inadequate.

"Waiting Room Only" is inspired, somewhat distantly, by the instrumental with almost the same title, included in "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" (1975). It progresses rather awkwardly and effectually in the early minutes, then takes on a curious elastic aspect between rockblues and techno, finally flowing into an "I Know What I Like" (again and always from "Selling England By The Pound") distorted in a jazz/blues/swing style, complete with harmonica (in which Steve is a recognized virtuoso), vibraphone, sax, and snare brush strokes: not bad.

For the grand finale, nothing better than the resurrection of the classic "Los Endos", the rousing closure of "A Trick Of The Tail" as well as hundreds of Genesis concerts, with or without Hackett. The guitarist reinterprets it by enriching it as expected with guitar parts (even a gratuitous excerpt of the infamous tapping solo from "Dancing With The Moonlight Knight", just... in a new, small fit of ingratiation...) while essentially respecting the sequences.

Steve Hackett, consistently and proudly, has never given in to the temptation or possibility of rejoining Genesis. That doesn't change the fact that those six years and as many studio albums with the band deeply marked his style and musical sensitivity. With this work from 1996, he aimed to confront his past, have fun with those old scores (some of which always kept warm in his concerts) and, why not, take a moment to benefit from the enormous popular following that the recent Genesis still had in those years.