Steve Hackett on the making and ideas behind Wolflight, his 2015 album that he called "my proudest moment".
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00:00Genesis
00:18Genesis always was a hard act to follow and I've always been aware of that. I think for all the guys in the band that's been the case.
00:26Whether you have individual hits or whatever, there's always that sort of, it's a bit like the mothership, isn't it?
00:32When I write a song, I think, would this have passed muster with the other guys?
00:37Would Phil have liked it rhythmically? Would Tony have liked it harmonically?
00:42Would it have worked for Mike? Would it have worked with Pete lyrically?
00:47And you have all of that, but at the same time, of course, you want to do your own thing.
00:53And I just thought, yeah, I've really got to push the envelope harmonically with this.
01:00It's got to be as good as some of those things that I've listened to.
01:03It's got to be as good as Grieg. It's got to be as good as Tchaikovsky.
01:08You know, it's got to be as good as that first day when I worked with Phil in the rehearsal room with the band.
01:14He started playing me something. I said, it sounds fantastic.
01:17And he said, oh, that's Ringo Starr's drum solo off of, what's the one, Abbey Road.
01:25And I always remembered that. And I thought, you know, I want to do something like that.
01:28That's a little bit like Keith Moon, isn't it? You know, so it's got the bass drum going, but it's like, it's like doing fills all around that.
01:35So we had the Wolves at the beginning singing away and the frozen reverb note of that.
01:41So they hit a seventh and then the drums come in and then it's band kicking in and the orchestra and choir and everything.
01:51and everything.
02:21Every time I've done an album, I've always thought, well, I need to get orchestral perspectives in here, but how do we enlarge everything?
02:29And even if you've got a real orchestra on it or you've got several people tracked up, it's quite hard to not have the orchestra impoverished by the group,
02:41because groups make a big noise. But there's this area of marcato stuff where they're playing with the edge of the bow
02:50and reinforcing some of the bass things with brass so that it's not just the sort of, the kind of definition of bass end
03:01that when you get a great bass player with a really extraordinary sound, like Chris Squire, who's on the album.
03:09There's this thing that orchestras, they have a more amorphous bass end.
03:15It's not dependent on great speakers and sharp definition. It's more than that.
03:22So I wanted to get that idea of infinite bass. So we stacked up a lot of that, you know, we have more than one thing playing basses, you know.
03:32I mean, I think on one track we had about 20 different things all doing bass.
03:38There's a lot of things on it that shouldn't really work. Orchestras with rock groups shouldn't really work, you know,
03:46because they're not supposed to be as percussing. And I wanted it to sound like an expanded rock band,
03:51but not just an expanded rock band that sounded like it had an orchestra with it, but also with world music instruments as well.
03:59So the Arabian ud, the didgeridoo, the deduk, the tar from Azerbaijan, all these various things that help to expand it a bit, you know.
04:29Working with these other instruments that I'm not familiar with, working with Malik Mansirov,
04:48who plays the tar, the tar, small stringed instrument with sympathetic strings,
04:54same family of instruments as the guitar and the sitar.
04:59And Malik from Azerbaijan, where 50% of the people are still nomadic, I believe,
05:06he's a little bit like, he's got the speed of John McLaughlin and in a way the mysticism of Ravi Shankar.
05:15He's incredible. And of course the other instruments that might be less familiar to people,
05:22the Arabian ud, I bought that in London, it's a fretless lute.
05:27I learned to play it a little bit. I'm not the level of virtuoso on it that Malik is on the tar,
05:34but I took some things from him, the idea of playing on one string,
05:40more things on one string than you would normally do in sliding and so on.
05:45Dust and Dreams, that kicks off. Some of these world instruments,
05:49they often set the scene before the song starts.
05:53It's almost as if when Malik is playing on the beginning of War Flight,
05:58you've got almost like the flickering flames of a campfire.
06:02You know, the kind of music that they might have played at one time when they just sat around to entertain themselves.
06:09And I wanted to get an aspect of that. So a little bit like different relay teams.
06:14So you've got the world music musicians, you've got the aspect of folk songs.
06:20So, you know, at times I wanted to build back as far as Peter, Paul and Mary.
06:25I wanted to have that, but then I wanted to have rock as well.
06:30You know, the edge of that and then whatever orchestra could do on top of that.
06:35It's my proudest moment, to be honest, you know, this album.
06:39And it was awesome.
06:40It was a significant kind of music, but it was a magical example.
06:42So I wanted to be honest.
06:43Then, yapáºy- Options team managed to be found to other people who had a greatfive years.
06:45You can sit there and put their songs in like that.
06:46And that thing people got into sometimes.
06:47And if they want to
06:59somewhere else, I wanted to paint them backfilled as inspiring times.
07:04I can find that speak some absolutely,
07:06I can, M.A.
07:07You