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No need to mention it, John Hackett is Steve’s brother, and featured Hackett albums like Voyage of the Acolyte (1975), Please Don’t Touch (1978), Spectral Mornings (1979) or Defector (1980) to quote a few. He just released his fifth solo album Moonspinner, the third of a series of albums dedicated to the transverse flute that John took up, as he says, in order to not being compared to his brother. So sorry for these comparisons I will also do some in this review interview. Written for guitar and flute, John plays both in Moonspinner and so accompanies oneself on the nylon guitar. Indeed, John is a complete artist, he sings as well as he plays flute, electric or acoustic guitar, and even experienced the Moog Taurus Pedal earlier in songs like Steve’s Clocks, he uses the piano as well to write his songs. John appeared three times at the French Steve Hackett Event 2010 in Werentzhouse / Alsace, mainly for his own set with Steve’s ex keyboarder Nick Magnus (who is also composer and producer). He also played there with the Steve Hackett Trio along with Steve and Roger King. But he also contributed on The Watch’s Blue Show, having worked with them several times. In relation with this event John appears a year later on Franck Carducci’‘s debut album Oddity. This Alsatian trip, as John says, was a major part of Moonspinner to which he contributes the song The Prince of Morimont. This album I think, will please all prog fans who loved Steve’s first albums, not only because of the sound, but also in the way it is written, without cloning anything, Moonspinner has his spirit as well, rich textured and inspired. In this review interview I lgive some impressions about each song and invite John to leave us his comments about the story behind and the way he worked on them. Furthermore, John tells us also about his contributions to Steve’s songs and to…Genesis!!!! His album Moonspinner was released last autumn on his own label Hacktrax Records:
I just come back from another whole listen to this .... I would call it “Moonspinner Suite" ? I asked that mainly because the whole organization of the song order, I assume it's not a concept album, but it sounds very like as you wanted us to tell a story. As they are different moods, some progish, folkish, baroque era, even some latino, are these supporting a story of your travels? You are right - it is not a concept album as such, but it benefits from being written mostly in a roughly three week burst of creativity. Certainly, my own tastes are very eclectic so this tends to be reflected in the way I write, the biggest influences, of course, being progressive and classical music. I do like to have some kind of image in my mind when I writing, whether that is a place, a person, or perhaps just a particular mood. When and where did you compose and record the album? I wrote it in May 2010, either side of the Genesis France-Steve Hackett event in Alsace. It was a very happy time as I had been itching to get the opportunity to do some writing. We had a great time in Alsace so I came home inspired and feeling very positive - so thank you, Genesis France! It was recorded at my home studio. Having already done Prelude to Summer, it was much easier as I knew how to place the mic etc to get the sound I wanted. The final editing and mixing was done at Nick Magnus' studio. Will you play some of this material for your next live acts? It's certainly possible, but at the moment I am concentrating on recording the follow-up to my rock album Checking Out of London. Let’s have a look at it: I'll begin with the two interpretations, the bonus tracks from two different authors, JS Bach and Debussy. You play Andante - JS Bach from BWV 1034 there with guest guitarist Andy Gray, it's the only track who has another musician, can you tell us the story behind? I've known Andy since hearing him on his first gig with ReGenesis here in Sheffield. He was fantastic to work with on the gigs we did with the John Hackett Band to promote Checking Out of London. I wanted to get the album finished quickly, so I asked if he could arrange the Bach piece for me - I was delighted with the result. Syrinx is the famous Debussy piece, played with flute only, a bit like the beginning of Steppes, with these particular Debussy-like scales giving a mysterious climax to flute sound, who of you both - Steve or you - is the most fond of these composers like Debussy, Eric Satie or Russian composers ? I've been playing Syrinx for solo flute since I was 17 so I guess by now I know how I want it to sound. It was originally written as incidental music to a play and meant to be played off-stage which can give a very haunting effect. I have performed it like that a few times in concerts and it can be very dramatic. I can't say whether Steve or I are the most fond of Debussy & Satie, but certainly Debussy understood the capabilities of the flute perfectly and wasn't afraid to write for its low register which can have an almost velvety quality, like an oboe. The other Debussy piece which features similar flute writing is his masterpiece L'apres midi d'un faune. As for The Steppes on Steve's Defector album, I guess this could be an influence though I had not thought about it in that way before. Let's have a talk about the songs you composed on the album : Witchfinder The opening track sound a bit like Jazz in a Summer's Night, the one you played with Steve in recent live acoustic trios with more time signatures, you play there with accents of Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, was that wink to his flute style ? Yes, there is a nod to Ian Anderson, or at least to that Roland Kirk driving style of flute playing. I wanted to kick the album off with something that gave it a bit more edge than a genteel flute & guitar acoustic serenade. I was pleased that a friend of mine, hearing it for the first time, thought it was a band, when in fact it's just 2 flutes & 2 guitars. Apart from the 2 flutes, what also drives it along is the variation in time signatures - it uses lots of 5/8 bars. Having played pieces like Steve's Jacuzzi which has some similarly uneven counting, it's a style I am very comfortable with. Appassionata It's a piece close to some of what prog composers like to do: long motives, repetitive, interlaced, played synchronized, I don't know if it is such prevalent in classical music, but it adds a nice pulsate dimension to what some of us can imagine out of a guitar-flute duo. Some to say about this piece? This begins with the same suspended chord shapes that I'd been experimenting with when we recorded Ace of Wands on Voyage of the Acolyte all those years ago. It's accompanied by some furious double-tonguing on the flute, as in Jacuzzi before we head into the main theme which tells a tale of unrequited love, somewhere hot & sunny! The second section has a syncopated kind of feel and by rights shouldn't belong with the first section. I couldn't believe it when I put the two sections together and they seemed to work. I then wrote some fiendish variations on the second theme using a triplet rhythm which, as it happens, is often used in progressive rock. My wife, Katrin, came up with the title Appassionata and I thought well, if it's good enough for Beethoven... I noticed some nice chord progressions as well, is it the melody helping you finding them, or is it the melody first that comes in mind that guides you to find the chords ? It's a bit of both really. Certainly being a flute player, you normally have the tune, so whatever I'm writing, whether it's an instrumental or a song, melody is always incredibly important. But I don't often write using the flute. I wish I were gifted enough to compose entirely in my head, but usually I use guitar & piano. If I get stuck for ideas on one instrument, I switch to the other, all the time singing melodies and writing out lines when they feel fully formed.
Red Hair: A song between some classical and latin groove, is it a combination of the lyrical and the sensual aspect in music ? The title is an allusion to Vivaldi, whose nickname was the Red Priest due to his red hair. I had the dance-like opening theme accompanied by strumming guitars and wanted to do something a bit different. So I had the idea of writing something like you might find in one of Vivaldi's brilliant flute concertos. It does the typical Baroque thing of modulating to the dominant key and back. Overnight Snow First reminiscences of the "old times" of the first Steve Hackett albums, in particular of Kim, or is it this 3/4? Sometimes broken in dreamy evocations, what are your best recollections of this era? Yes, absolutely, it is very much in the style of Kim and Erik Satie's Trois Gymnopedies. The title was suggested by Max, who engineered much of the album, and perfectly captures the wistful reminiscence that the piece evokes. As for the "old times of the first Steve Hackett albums", certainly I was more involved in his first two solo albums Voyage of the Acolyte and Please Don't Touch than later projects. For Voyage I had bought a Tandberg tape machine with sound-on-sound facility, so we could experiment with harmonies and backwards tapes. It was fantastic to find myself in the recording studio and watch the album take shape with many of the ideas that we had kicked around at home. If I remember correctly, the first thing we recorded was Hands of the Priestess and I couldn't believe how well that first session went. Moonspinner The title track, easy going and enchanted melodies does the main part of this piece, merging in a very nice middle part that sounds a bit like those moments of Camel, another British prog band of the 70's that was always in a confidential but solid reputation. It's Andy Latimer, who did give some life to flute solos in prog music as well, did you hear some of this band back then ? I can't say I was ever consciously influenced by Camel, but like many people back then, I had a copy of The Snow Goose which I liked very much. Certainly this is another track which uses varied time signatures of 4/4, 7/8 and 6/8 to keep up the energy. What is a Moonspinner ? The album title was again suggested by my friend Max. I've always liked the idea of the moon and the flute going together - silvery, sometimes distant and mysterious maybe? I gather there was a film called The Moonspinners years ago with Hayley Mills, but I've never seen it. The cover painting is by another friend, Peter Rudden. I saw the painting on the wall in his house near the New Forest and was delighted when he gave me permission to use it. Windhover One of my favorite of this album, and as for the previous track has some of Camel and Steve Hackett romantic in it, perfect to chill out, even if it's a rather short piece, like almost all tracks of this album. Did you deliberately chose a shorter format without the possibility to develop these themes ? Yes, this is one of my favorites too! A Windhover is a kestrel, so I always had an image of a bird gliding high up when I was writing this. I tried to combine the dreamlike nature of some of Debussy's music with the chilled-out mood of something like Joni Mitchell's Hejira. Green Shoes Being taken back in history, this song has kind of two movements, one medieval, another part more relaxed, why Green Shoes ? This is really a thumb-nail sketch of my father, Peter. It was the enormous guitar that he brought back from Canada in the 50s that first set Steve and me off on our musical journeys. He has always been a gentle man, in both senses of the words, and still retains some of his wit (he used to do a fantastic impersonation of Ronald Reagan). His health is not so good these days. We took him to Bakewell (an old market town in the Peak District near us) where he said he wanted to buy some shoes. "What sort?" I asked. "Green Shoes," he replied. The Shepherd Wheel Wow! I never heard you doing so many arpeggios in one song :-) Is this what you like in baroque music? This has the perpetual motion feel of many baroque pieces, like some passages of Bach where there is nowhere to breath! The Shepherd Wheel is a water-driven grinding wheel that is being restored in a park near us in Sheffield (http://www.simt.co.uk/news/categories/shepherd-wheel-workshop). No Going Back A magical song and marvelous way to make sound the flute complaining romantically in the lower range, it's a very relaxing sound, theses lower notes, and with a nice support of dosed delay effects, the kind of song that could last for hours: is it as relaxing as for the performer to make sound lower tones on flute ? The complaining flute - now there's an album title! Actually, my wife says I do complain a lot, so maybe it's come out in my playing. This track is recorded on the alto flute, which is a favorite of mine. Steve says the sound is "stentorian" - I'm not quite sure I know what that means, but it sounds very dignified. Certainly I love the low notes on the flute for their rich quality and after years of using my beloved Roland Space-Echo in Steve's band, I'm not shy of using plenty of delay effect if it is needed. The Great Including A very rich and inspired folk song, with lots of moving melodies, the kind you want to sing along, do you sometimes sing to find your melodies or do they happen to you while playing ? Yes, I usually write by singing out loud while I'm strumming the guitar or thumping the piano. Often, if I get completely stuck, I'll go off and make a cup of tea, and then I may find myself humming the melody I've been seeking for the last half-an-hour! One moment while listening, it made me think of a song of The Lamb Lies Down called Cuckoo Cocoon . I remember you told me that the guitar intro to this song was a contribution by yours, where there other bits you contributed to Genesis or to Steve’s? I wrote the short guitar introduction to Cuckoo Cocoon and the little guitar figure on Get 'em out by Friday which begins at "After all this time". My main writing credits with Steve are Tower struck down and Jazz on a Summer's night. The suspended chord pattern in thirds, just before the middle of Ace of Wands, was a figure of mine, but back then I had no ability to develop what were just fragments. More recently I was thrilled when Steve recorded his own version of Ego & Id from Checking Out of London. Aftermath Here again the magnificence of this lower range played flute melodies, with a very dreamy, very relaxing almost movie like atmosphere, remembering some sequence of Anthony Phillips. If I'm right, I also noticed that most of the pieces have two or more guitar tracks, allowing you to have a lot of choice in a bunch of "chord voicings". It seems to my ears that Steve use to build up his chord sequence a bit in a similar way, is it right ? This one uses the deeper sounding alto flute again. It is certainly a very reflective piece. I wrote it the morning after the mass shooting that had taken place in Cumbria. The working title was Cumbria but I changed it to Aftermath to make it more generally reflect how we try to come to terms with some of the dreadful things that happen in this world. Some tracks like Appassionata or Aftermath just use one guitar, but many have 2 or 3 guitars in, which gives a richer texture. On Prelude to Summer there was a track called Tomorrow which had 2 guitars played by me - but I was never quite happy with the early versions. Then Steve came and added a few high flourishes and the track suddenly burst into life. Two Daughters This time it's the nylon guitar, very much remembering Steve's accents, and a two way melody on flute, as "opposed" to the preview song flute/2 guitars. The thing that surprised me is that you play acoustic guitar with the same easiness as your brother, I remind the guitar parts you did here and there in Steve's gigs in the end of 70's and those you play on your rock album Checking Out of London from which you played some songs live, why not having done more guitar work since Moonspinner? I also had trouble making the guitar accompaniment on this track work until I tried using a syncopated rhythm at the start. The influence here is actually Elgar's Chanson de Matin though I hope the melody is all mine. Again, it's a family portrait. I'm the guitar and our 2 lovely daughters are represented by the flutes. I've often said that I took up the flute in order to not spend the rest of my life being compared to my brother. I think I'm done with that idea now and I would like to develop my guitar playing in future. But, in fact, the thing that interests me most these days is writing and that is what drives my performing. Trying to be a top performer on a instrument no longer interests me as such. The Prince of Morimont Again a nice acoustic prog ballade, that guides the listener through different landscapes, what is the story behind this Prince of Morimont ? Is it a coincidence, the place where you stayed during our Steve Hackett Event in Alsace was called Hotel Le Morimont.... No, it is absolutely no coincidence that we stayed in the lovely Hotel le Morimont. I wrote this when we returned from Alsace and was feeling very happy at the time. Amazed at everyone's kindness at the Genesis France event and thrilled by the audience response to the set Nick Magnus & I had played. I also had in mind the little dog, Bebop, at the hotel where we stayed, who had delighted us all. I've no idea if there really was a Prince of Morimont, but in my mind it was Bebop!
Thoughts Turn Homeward "originally appeared on Marco lo Muscio's Book of Bilbo and Gandalf. New arrangement for flute and guitar" Listening to all those melodies and movements, there are some really soaring melodies in the class of that what misses to some prog bands ideas, but they dare to exist very well like you played it! I'll come back on that point a little later, could you imagine these themes to be worked out by a band or an orchestra , or even sung? It has been my great pleasure to play several concerts now, both in Italy and the UK, with Marco Lo Muscio. In a way, we are kindred spirits, both with a love of progressive and classical music. I was delighted to write Thoughts turn homeward for Marco's excellent album Book of Bilbo & Gandalf. When the creative tap ran dry, after three weeks or so (as it always does) of writing Moonspinner, I was looking for a track to finish the album and it seemed this fitted the overall mood and style. The original is for flute & piano, so it was not too difficult to make a new arrangement. They sound very inspired, some of them as they just were composed with this feel of the seventies, did you work a lot more than usually, or was it just a strong muse behind you that inspired you such way ? Thank you for saying that, because as I mentioned earlier, I have to be convinced that the melody is strong before I can get excited about writing a piece. I can't actually imagine turning any of these into songs as such, but funnily enough there is an instrumental track from Velvet Afternoon called Next Time Around which Nick Clabburn has written some lyrics for. I was amazed when he told me, but I think it works well and it may find a place on my new rock album, the follow-up to Checking Out of London which should be out next year. I guess with my background it is inevitable that there is a strong seventies feel to my material - and not just the 1770s I hope! Thank you for your time, John Thank you.
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