Posts by ACatchAtTheTables

  • RIP Richard Macphail

    Tony has just posted a nice tribute on the Genesis official social media accounts.

    I was so sad to hear of the death of my dear friend Richard Macphail. Genesis owes him so much, he was a crucial part of those early years, and without his support and encouragement the band would have struggled to survive. However more importantly, for over fifty years, he was a wonderful, kind and loyal friend, our families shared so many happy times together. We will always remember his larger-than-life personality and uncontrollable enthusiasm, no one could shout or clap louder than Rich when the situation demanded it.

    He called only last week, and it is unbelievable to think that is the last time we will hear from him.

    We will all miss him so much.

    — Tony Banks

  • Article in Sunday Express 18th August

    From Pressreader. Last few paragraphs are corrupted in Pressreader but I've tried to fill the gaps.


    ‘We got in a revolution ...I think we kicked it off'


    Aug 18, 2024


    HE SOUNDS REMARKABLY chipper for a man who was warned he was taking his life in his hands just by playing live in April. “I had a blip on the American tour,” Steve Hackett tells me. “I was over-prescribed medicine for a chest infection which sent my heartbeat up to 190 bpm. Paramedics told me if I went on stage, I was risking a heart attack.”


    But after one night in hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, the former Genesis guitarist soldiered on and finished the tour anyway.

    “It’s all been fine since,” he says cheerfully. “I’m very fit, I feel good, the European tour went well, my fingers are working wonderfully.”


    Hackett was far more unnerved when Genesis toured Europe in 1974, promoting their sixth album, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway.


    “We got caught up in the Portuguese revolution,” he says. “I think we kicked it off…”


    The English progressive rockers were headlining a stadium in Cascais, twenty miles west of Lisbon.


    “They’d oversold the gig and there was a riot going on outside. Three people died, including a policeman. Vehicles were overturned. We heard gunshots. It was very hairy. I went on stage in fear of my life. The atmosphere was like a tinderbox.


    “You couldn’t tell the difference between the gunfire and the firecrackers. The audience was very volatile. It was extremely unnerving. There was a power cut at one point and there was no backup generator. We barely managed to pull off the show.”

    Enough drama for one day, you might feel. But no. “We got to the airport with much relief, but our flight was aborted during take-off and the plane skidded sideways across the grass…”


    Italian shows were just as stressful, recalls Steve, who is touring to celebrate the Lamb album’s half century. “We had to stop playing Italy for a while; it got so hairy. The idea that gigs should be free had become widespread, so every gig was a flashpoint. People broke down doors, people got hurt. The Italian Communist Party were at their peak.”

    The worst trouble they had in England was when a belligerent biker clambered on stage at Leicester University to bash bassist Mike Rutherford mid-show. It was a long way from Charterhouse public school where Rutherford, singer Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist Andy Phillips and original drummer Chris Stewart formed the band.


    But like drummer Phil Collins, who eventually replaced Gabriel on vocals, grammar-school educated Steve had a humbler start. He spent his first three years in a poky south London flat near Vauxhall before the family moved to the Churchill Gardens council estate in Pimlico, which had the unaccustomed luxury of hot running water.

    Hackett joined Genesis at 21 after placing an advert in Melody Maker which said: “Imaginative guitarist-writer seeks involvement with receptive musicians determined to strive beyond existing stagnant musical forms.”


    Intrigued, Gabriel invited him to audition…and Hackett spent seven productive years in the band, co-writing classic albums including Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England By The Pound and The Lamb Laid Down On Broadway.


    His bandmates nicknamed him “Hackett of the Yard” because of a black raincoat he wore once, but nobody mocked his musicianship. He wasn’t just an imaginative guitarist. He was intricate, inventive, and influential too.


    Guitar techniques Steve pioneered include tapping (inspiring Eddie Van Halen) and sweeppicking, later popularised by Yngwie Malmsteen. Joining Genesis changed his life overnight. “I went straight to sell-out gigs in city halls because Charisma Records put bills together with many bands from the label, so we’d be on bills with Lindisfarne and Van der Graft Generator.

    You got to see a sizeable chunk of the label’s roster for rock-bottom prices.”


    Hackett was unusually shy for a rock guitarist– no pictures of him appear on early Genesis albums. He didn’t show off on stage either, and felt uncomfortable with the band’s “pathological” Charterhouse-bred ultra-competitiveness.


    Steve was never interested in fame or its lurid trappings. He writes about his brief involvements with American groupies in his 2020 memoir, A Genesis In My Bed, including a burlesque dancer and a female wrestling champ.

    “I remember a girl I’d just met shouting out ‘A Genesis in my bed!’ at an inappropriate moment. I wasn’t me, I’d become ‘A Genesis’...”

    The encounters gave him a catchy book title, but left him with “deep feelings of emptiness”.


    NOW HAPPILY married to his third wife, writer Jo Lehmann, Steve lives in Teddington, south-west London, 11 miles south-west of his childhood home, and still just a short walk from the Thames.

    His musical education had started early.

    “I was two when I had my first harmonica. By the time I was four I had a repertoire – God Save The Queen, Scotland The Brave, The Yellow Rose of Texas, Oh Susannah, Davey Crockett...”


    His father Peter – an ex-paratrooper with a Mensa-level IQ – gave Steve his acoustic guitar when he was 12 and bought him his first electric one on HP three years later.

    Young Hackett was in awe of guitarists; not just blues greats like Peter Green, John Mayall, and Eric Clapton, but also Spanish classical maestro Andrés Segovia. He came from a musical family. dad and my grandad played the harmonica; maternal uncle played the piano rather wonderfully.” His mother June, a telephonist at Notting Hill e station, came from showbiz stock. Her maternal aunt was Music Hall comedienne Saxon s who performed as ‘Gertie the Pride of the [Thirties?]’, hoisting up her skirt and proudly displaying her bloomers… my mother met her as a child and fell in love showbusiness. Mum’s 94 now and comes to my London gigs. We lost my father a few years , he made it into his late 80s. Mum’s side were originally from Poland; a tribe of musicians who escaped the pogroms and went to Portugal and then the East End of London where they anglicised their name to Davis and worked like crazy to eke out a living.” Genesis eked too. They sold more than 150 on albums, but took them years to break . When Lamb went gold, the band’s nineth promo tour with its elaborate stage show them £250,000 in debt. mb sprang from fraught times. Steve was working too much, his first marriage to Ellen e ruptured after the birth of their son, Oliver, “Pete was on his way to his solo career but t quite know it; his wife had a difficult pregnancy and he was trying to be around for l.” Genesis were on £15 a week when Hackett joined and £100 a week (about £555 today) when he left in October 1977, after the Wind & Wuthering tour. Within months, they had begun to morph into platinum-selling pop stars, sing hits like Follow You Follow Me, Mama Invisible Touch. But Steve has no regrets. His ambition wasn’t to make millions but to make music – in particular, c “that sounded English and wore its political influences proudly”. Apart from a brief turn with Yes star Steve Howe in the mid-80s supergroup GTR, Hackett has ploughed his own furrow effectively ever since. His new tour includes ‘Lamb highlights’ – but half of it, nine tracks that have relevance he guitar” – plus other Genesis classics, and s from his latest solo album, The Circus & Nightwhale (his 30th). Touring still excites him. “I come off stage with my ears ringing. I want it to be loud! I’m old ol, I need noise. And I enjoy playing.

    it’s a great life if you don’t weaken.”

  • ReGenesis - The last Supper

    Saw them at Stockton last Saturday - apart from a wobble during the first song (Back in NYC) where the keyboards didn't work for most of the song - it was a great gig. A particularly storming performance of Giant Hogweed followed Back In NYC.