Steve Hackett: Reprises & Recapitulations Revelations

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Steve Hackett

In the Something Else! article “The Beatles’ ‘Abbey Road’ and Prog Rock: Reprises & Recapitulations,” I discussed how those were the hallmarks of progressive rock, only briefly touching on how Genesis and its one-time member Steve Hackett (both in the band, and as a solo artist) probably took those tenets further than other artists. This follow-up focuses on a conversation I had with Steve with a goal to dive into those aforementioned items throughout his career. Note that this conversation has been edited for clarity:

MIKE TIANO: This article is centering on how reprises and recapitulations are key components of progressive rock, particularly with longer songs. You with Genesis, and as a solo artist, have embraced this more than really any of the other artists I can think of in rock music. For Genesis, a prime example was at the conclusion of “Supper’s Ready.” Let me start with Selling England by the Pound, because it was the first time Genesis used the reprise as a separate composition, where “Aisle of Plenty” reprises “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight.” How did that piece initially relate to the first track when it does reprise? How did that come about?

STEVE HACKETT: You know, I’m trying to remember this. All I know is that I played it on electric on the first track, and it seemed like a good idea to bring it in at the end to bookend the keyboard extravaganza, which is the end of “Cinema Show.” It seemed like a nice way of winding down the album. And of course, you’ve got Pete’s very interesting take on vocals, lots of different vocals all going at the same time and almost like vocals that voice over, echoing what we used to hear in British supermarkets, where they would talk about things that were on offer and it would be in a slow kind of, almost a kind of Mogadon-like voice. It’s something that they don’t do anymore, but they were doing at that time; it was very much the sort of thing that you’d hear in Tesco, which was the British equivalent of a chain like Safeway [in the USA] – that was just starting, in a way. There was a Safeway, which was in King’s Road in London, and then they started to take off in other places.

So, I think that it gave the album a loose kind of concept, and I think the idea of reprises in general, concertos and symphonies are full of this sort of stuff – like the three-movement concerto would contain something like that. So, really, classical music got there first. But we were borrowing from so many different genres, and I don’t think we were the first band to do it. I think [the Beatles’] Sgt. Pepper got there first. The idea of the recapitulated theme to bookend an album worked very well. You can certainly justify it, I think, in any form of music.




MIKE TIANO: As far as “Aisle of Plenty” goes, do you remember whose idea was to reprise it?

STEVE HACKETT: You know, I’m not sure. It may have been probably somewhere between Peter Gabriel and Tony Banks. I know that Pete felt that by the time the album was done that it didn’t really have the right amount of ponderousness. And I’ve thought about this so many times and thought that in a way, it sounds almost like a sort of classical motif where you’ve got the possibility of doing it like a kind of march past little bit if you took it a stage further, you’d have [Modest] Mussorgsky orchestrated by [Maurice] Ravel, or [Ottorino] Respighi, with “Pines of Rome,” the advocation of fallen heroes and the legions coming back to life and marching through. And you’ve got “The Great Gate of Kiev” with Mussorgsky a bit, way before ELP did it. But the idea of heroes of old being the kind of avocation of that, with a slow, eerie, kind of ghostlike thing, as if as if their deeds should be looked at again. It’s almost like a kind of Cenotaph, isn’t it? Cenotaph, it’s when the war heroes are [memorialized when] people lay a wreath at the Cenotaph, which is in Whitehall in London. It’s to commemorate the dead from two world wars; it’s this white obelisk. And every year the queen goes there, and heads of state go. They all then lay a wreath. And there’s usually two minutes silence. And I guess, you know, you get this equivalent in music.

MIKE TIANO: I want to move on to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. I recall that when it was released Tony Banks was quoted as saying that it was really much closer to the Who’s Tommy – probably the first major band that used the reprise in a meaningful way — than Tales from Topographic Oceans [from Yes, which was released not long before], and I think that’s a true statement. The title track is almost like an overture, because you hear parts reprised in other songs, including “The Lamia,” “The Carpet Crawlers” and of course, “The Light Dies Down on Broadway.” Which one of those reprises were you and others, besides Peter, responsible for? Or was it all his idea?

STEVE HACKETT: There are some reprises I was responsible for – the piece of music that you hear I think at the end of “Cocoon Cocoon.” There is something which is there at the end of “Lilywhite Lilith,” as well. I can’t remember exactly off the top of my head exactly where those things are. I know there’s one at the end of “Lilywhite Lilith,” Mellotron flutes recapitulating something that I wrote on electric guitar played very, very high up with three chords, and Tony was playing Mellotron strings behind it. So, when you first hear it, you hear it with electric guitar and Mellotron strings. And then as the album progresses, it comes back again with this thing at the end of “Lilywhite Lilith.”

I sometimes use it myself these days, that device. But I think the idea of songs visiting each other is another way of looking at it, so you can see the reprise as a kind of a stalwart of classical music. Or you can look at it another way: Here comes an old friend who’s strayed into another scene, a character that you thought you wouldn’t see again – straight into another scene. And it’s as soon as that starts to happen, people use the word concept album to pigeonhole it. And of course, if you’re talking about concept albums, then you have to talk about Frank Sinatra, Come Fly with Me, as the first concept album.

MIKE TIANO: Moving on to Trick of the Tail, “Los Endos” was the first time that [Genesis used] one single piece that reprised songs from the same album. And those songs were, of course, “Dance on a Volcano” and “Squonk.” As you said, this is what’s called the “recapitulation,” in symphonic terms. Can you speak to how “Los Endos” came about? Was it basically just to revisit the ideas in a different format or, like you said, to revisit an old friend?

STEVE HACKETT: Well, I seem to remember that we all wrote “Los Endos” together, and I was particularly responsible for the really fast 7/8 stuff at the end of that. I think when you’re writing long-form stuff – and I was the one who I remember saying to Genesis, I’d seen King Crimson live before they’d recorded “In the Court of the Crimson King” and they segued to a whole bunch of songs — and I remember Greg Lake saying at the time, if anyone’s got any idea what we can call this, please send your answers on a postcard to such and such. And he was making light of it and joking about it, when they were playing at a tiny club. And I remember saying to Genesis, look, I’ve seen this done where it seems like a band is playing perhaps a piece of music that might be 20 minutes long, and I think it works very well, indeed. We started work on “Supper’s Ready,” which was a collection of very separate songs. But again, this idea of revisiting certain ideas certainly made it possible. You know, a couple of things to my mind are recapitulated in that. It starts out as something very personal and ends up being something very universal, and alluding to 666 and then the Book of Revelations and things that in a way it was a sort of a chance for Genesis to mythologize themselves, or re-mythologize themselves, with the title of the very first album they ever recorded – which was called From Genesis to Revelation. So, you had a lot of that stuff, the kind of the omen-type imagery, the number of the beast, and all the rest.

MIKE TIANO: Right. And in the case of “Supper’s Ready,” as you said, it seems like a series of songs just connected one into each other. Having those items at the end, which recapitulates the two or three of the themes early in the song, brings it full circle and kind of brings it all together, and really provides an emotional wallop that a series of songs with no recapitulation wouldn’t have.

STEVE HACKETT: Yeah. It makes it a cohesive whole because you get the disparate parts. You have to remember that it was a group-written song, and you can’t either praise or blame any one individual. There’s a group soul that puts that together, and it’s still hugely popular with fans.

MIKE TIANO: You’ll be playing it again on your next tour.

STEVE HACKETT: I will be playing it not the tour that I do at the beginning of year, but later in the year, I’ll be doing it with Seconds Out. So, I’m [currently] still doing a lot of stuff from Selling England by the Pound and Spectral Mornings and At the Edge of Light. There’s a little bit of crossover with those sets. Seconds Out involves some things from those other albums.

MIKE TIANO: Moving on to Wind and Wuthering, one reprise there [toward the end of the album] is in two sections. The “Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers…” portion doesn’t seem to really reprise anything [from earlier in the album], but I’m sure I hear a passage from “Ripples.”

STEVE HACKETT: I think there are a lot of Genesis things that, you know, had similar style stuff. It’s hard to get my head around exactly how that worked with them with Wind and Wuthering. I think it’s less obvious. I think stylistically you could say that there were similarities whether or not it was, you know, a complete recapitulation. I think it’s probably less of that. [Author’s note: I interpret this to mean that what sounded to me like a recapitulation of “Ripples” was actually more of a stylistic passage.]

MIKE TIANO: In the second half [“…In That Quiet Earth”], you definitely hear “Eleventh Earl of Mar.”

STEVE HACKETT: Yeah. I’m not sure. I probably set up some things. There’s quite a bit of “Eleventh Earl of Mar” that I wrote, and I was rather hoping that we might use what I think was the stomp section in something heavier, perhaps. But, you know, it is it is what it is, the group makes group decisions. [Author’s note: Although we didn’t discuss it, “Wot Gorilla” recapitulates a theme from “One for the Vine,” both from Wind and Wuthering. The April 2017 edition of Prog Magazine includes a 1984 quote where Hackett says “Wot Gorilla” was “a very inferior instrumental … a real doodle of an idea.” The article goes on to quote Hackett stating in 2017 that “‘Wot Gorilla’ was good rhythmically, but underdeveloped harmonically,” and that his song “Please Don’t Touch” — which was passed on in favor of “Wot Gorilla” — had “both rhythm and harmonic development, which is more exciting.”]

MIKE TIANO: After you left Genesis, interestingly, on the album Duke they recapitulated the opening pieces [in “Duke’s End”]. Were you aware of that, and have you any thoughts about that?

STEVE HACKETT: I remember being more enamored with that material when they were doing it live. I saw them do it live, and I thought it was very strong live. On record, it had passed me by. But it’s often a case that a band, when something is done very well live, you get the feeling that when people are playing something live, they’re living the song and they’re selling it to you.

MIKE TIANO: That to me was the only interesting part of the album. I remember the opening and the ending pieces, but for the life of me I can’t remember any of the songs in between. As a Genesis fan, after you left my interest really waned with each passing album. At some point, I just stopped listening to Genesis and I was full-on Steve Hackett, myself.

STEVE HACKETT: Well, thank you for that. It was difficult to get excited about what they were doing subsequently. But I think that a lot of the stuff was increasingly well-produced with monumental drums. Yeah, but you know, the reason I left the band was because I wasn’t allowed to pursue a solo career whilst I was a member of the band. And I thought, no. Nobody employs me. Nobody owns me. Yeah, I’ve got to be my own secret weapon here.

MIKE TIANO: Let’s jump backwards [from Duke] to Voyage of Acolyte [Hackett’s first solo album], and when you were in Genesis. There are lots of reprises within that album; “Star of Sirius” has parts from “Ace of Wands,” for instance.

STEVE HACKETT: Right. Yeah. It’s a while since I’ve heard it. But you’re right. There was that.

MIKE TIANO: So, on your first solo album you pretty much took the reprise concept and ran with it.

STEVE HACKETT: Yeah. I mean, I think that it was very much a concept album in terms of lyrically and the title of pieces, all based on tarot cards, which gave it a cohesiveness, and gave it its kind of mystical quality. And I would say it probably has a kind of Gothic quality, really. And at one time, of course, Gothic meant something else. But then suddenly the idea of Goth has become a kind of an addendum to fashion, some kind of fashion accessory, and I think it was certainly very much an album in a minor key and pretty intense in places – and certainly, yes, there was recapitulation of themes going on, the idea of “Hands of the Priestess, Part One” and “Part Two” relating to each other.

MIKE TIANO: I thought it was interesting that you would take an idea and be able to re-use it in a different way. Most artists create a song and that’s the end of it. In this case, it’s almost as if you thought, “Well, this part of it sounds really great; what if it resolves in a different way?”

STEVE HACKETT: Yes. Well, it’s an interesting way of thinking, because you do tend to think in terms of, you know, the way the world works. You come up with an idea as quickly as you can and if it sticks, if you’re haunted by it sufficiently. You do a song. But the idea of taking something and slowing it down and making it heavier, perhaps more orchestral or more chorale. That’s something I was I was using in recent years with At the Edge of Light. One particular track, “Those Golden Wings” uses a lot of that.

MIKE TIANO: One other one I want to focus on is from Highly Strung: “Camino Royale,” which has a very dynamic recapitulated ending, “Hackett to Pieces.” Can you speak about how that came about?

STEVE HACKETT: Yes, I think that there were various themes kicking around between myself and Nick Magnus, he came up with a really lovely theme and I felt that it was harmonically very beautiful. In many ways, it was very much in the spirit of Genesis, in that it used the idea of what some people would describe as lead chords. So, when your chords and your lead line are one and the same, that was very much a Genesis trademark, and Nick Magnus was employing that, too. Of course, again, this sort of stuff goes right back – classical music uses this. You get this sort of stuff with [Jean] Sebelius. You get it with William Walton. And very powerful, it is too. Often it might be something over the same bass note, but the chords are changing over the top of it and it can be really, really powerful. So, as [Antonio] Vivaldi said, it’s the trial between harmony and invention. It is the mother lode, to quote Genesis again, to be able to come up with something, one bass note that doesn’t change and a fantastic melody driven by chords over the top is kind of what it’s all about.

MIKE TIANO: Are there any other songs that were separate reprises we haven’t discussed that you want to call out that you’re particularly proud of?

STEVE HACKETT: They’re probably masses of examples of it throughout Genesis and throughout my stuff. I cannot recall them off the top of my head, but – oh, I think there was one. The melody on “The Hermit” on Voyage of the Acolyte was recapitulated in an unlikely way. I used the same melody backwards. In other words, the melody is played on the oboe on “The Hermit,” but then it gets recapitulated as a short piece called “The Lovers” – and it’s the same melody but played backwards. So, I used the same thing. Funnily enough, the “Camino Royale” riff I used that on an album called Till We Have Faces, on a track called “Matilda Smith-Williams Home for the Aged,” it is actually the same melody played backwards. And yet you’d never recognize it, if you hadn’t accidentally heard it that way. So, when things were being recorded on tape, sometimes people would thread up something the wrong way, and you’d accidentally get to hear something played backwards – and it would turn out to be just as engaging backwards as it was forwards.

Now, I know that you mentioned Abbey Road [prior to this conversation] and of course, the famous “Because” stuff. I believe the story might be apocryphal; it may be true. But I believe that John Lennon heard Yoko playing “The Moonlight Sonata” and he said to her, what does that sound like if you play it backwards? And I believe that may have been the idea for “Because” in embryonic form. Again, incredible piece of music. Greatly, a great influence, I think, on Genesis.

MIKE TIANO: I have to tell you, I was laughing when you spoke about “Matilda Smith-Williams” because I was going to bring that up originally but I thought, “No, it was just a coincidence” as I thought there were some similarities with “Camino Royale.” it’s really great to hear you say that. One thing that came out of this conversation is that for fans, it makes the music all the more dense to where you want to revisit it. It’s not just a bunch of songs. Maybe they were really great songs, but now I know I’m going to go back and listen to that stuff with a different ear, and when people read this I hope that they do, too, because that’s what’s wonderful about your music. Thank you for the conversation. I really appreciate this and what you had to say, because reprises and recapitulations in progressive rock music are pretty much large components, and I think it will open people’s eyes to how important they are.

STEVE HACKETT: Yeah, an interesting take on it all. Thank you, Mike.

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Mike Tiano