Steve Hackett - The Making of Wolflight | Prog. | Louder - video Dailymotion

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Steve Hackett interview with Prog Magazine about the album: Wolflight

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00:00Genesis always was a hard act to follow and I've always been aware of that. I think for

00:23all the guys in the band that's been the case. Whether you have individual hits or whatever

00:29there's always that sort of, it's a bit like the mothership isn't it? When I write a song

00:34I think would this have passed muster with the other guys? Would Phil have liked it rhythmically?

00:40Would Tony have liked it harmonically? Would it have worked for Mike? Would it have worked

00:46with Pete lyrically? You have all of that but at the same time of course you want to

00:52do your own thing and I just thought yeah I've really got to push the envelope harmonically

00:59with this. It's got to be as good as some of those things that I've listened to. It's got

01:04to be as good as Grieg. It's got to be as good as Tchaikovsky. It's got to be as good as that

01:10first day when I worked with Phil in the rehearsal room with the band. He started playing me something

01:15and I said it sounds fantastic and he said oh that's Ringo Starr's drum solo off of Abbey Road

01:24and I always remembered that and I thought you know I want to do something like that. That's a

01:28little bit like Keith Moon isn't it? So it's got the bass drum going but it's like

01:33doing fills all around that. So we had the Wolves at the beginning singing away and a Frozen

01:40reverb note of that so they hit a seventh and then the drums come in and then it's band

01:46kicking in and the orchestra and choir and everything.

02:10Every time I've done an album I've always thought well I need to get orchestral perspectives in here

02:27but how do we enlarge everything and even if you've got a real orchestra on it or you've got

02:34several 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

02:49the edge of the bow and reinforcing some of the bass things with brass so that it's not just

02:57the sort of the kind of definition of bass end that when you get a great bass player with a

03:04really extraordinary sound like Chris Squire who's on the album there's this thing that orchestras

03:11they have a more amorphous bass end. It's not dependent on great speakers and sharp definition

03:21it's more than that so I wanted to get that idea of infinite bass so we stacked up a lot of that

03:29you know we have more than one thing playing basses you know I mean I think on one track we

03:35had about you know 20 different things all doing bass. There's a lot of things on it that shouldn't

03:41really work orchestras with rock groups shouldn't really work you know because they're not supposed

03:47to be as percussive and I wanted it to sound like an expanded rock band but not just an expanded

03:53rock band that sounded like it had an orchestra with it but also with world music instruments

03:59as well so the Arabian Ud, the Didgeridoo, the Diduk, the Tar from Azerbaijan all these various

04:06things that help to expand it a bit you know.

04:18So

04:43working with these other instruments that I'm not familiar with working with

04:47Malik Mansirov who plays the Tar. The Tar, small stringed instrument with sympathetic strings

04:54same family of instruments as the guitar and the sitar and Malik from Azerbaijan where 50% of the

05:04people are still nomadic I believe he's a little bit like he's got the speed of John McLaughlin

05:11and in a way the mysticism of Ravi Shankar he's incredible and of course the other instruments

05:19that might be less familiar to people the 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 more things on one string

05:42than you would normally do and sliding and so on dust and dreams that that kicks off some of

05:48these world instruments they often set the scene before before the song start it's almost as if

05:54when Malik is playing on the beginning of War Flight you've got almost like the flickering

06:01flames of a campfire you know the kind of music that they might have played at one time when they

06:07just sat around to entertain themselves and I wanted to get an aspect of that so a little bit

06:12like different relay teams so you've got the world music musicians you've got the the aspect of folk

06:20songs so you know at times I wanted to delve back as far as Peter Paul and Mary I wanted

06:26to have that but then I wanted to have rock as well you know the edge of that and then

06:32whatever orchestra could do on top of that it's my proudest moment to be honest you know this album

06:56so

07:05you

Steve Hackett - The Making of Wolflight | Prog. | Louder

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