Steve Hackett - The Story Behind Wolflight | Louder - video Dailymotion

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Steve Hackett on the making and ideas behind Wolflight, his 2015 album that he called "my proudest moment".

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00:00Genesis

00:18always was a hard act to follow and I've always been aware of that. I think for all the guys in

00:24the band that's been the case. You know, whether you have individual hits or whatever, there's

00:29always that sort of, it's a bit like the mothership, isn't it? You know, when I write a song I think

00:35would this have passed muster with the other guys, you know, would Phil have liked it rhythmically,

00:40would Tony have liked it harmonically, would it have worked for Mike, would it have worked

00:45with Pete lyrically and, you know, you have all of that and but at the same time of course you want

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

00:59harmonically with this, you know, it's got to be as good as some of those things that I've listened

01:03to. It's got to be as good as Grieg, it's got to be as good as Tchaikovsky, you know, it's got to be

01:09as good as that first day when I worked with Phil in the rehearsal room with the band. He started

01:14playing me something, I said, sounds fantastic and he said, oh, that's Rego Starr's drum solo off of,

01:21what's the one, Abbey Road and I always remembered that and I thought, you know, I want to do something

01:28like that, that's a little bit like Keith Moon, isn't it, you know, so it's got the bass drum

01:31going but it's like, it's like doing fills all around that so we had the Wolves at the beginning

01:37singing away and a frozen reverb note of that so they hit a seventh and then the drums come in

01:45and then it's band kicking in and the orchestra and choir and everything.

02:15Every time I've done an album I've always thought, well, I need to get orchestral perspectives

02:26in here but how do we enlarge everything and even if you've got a real orchestra on it or

02:31you've got, you know, several people tracked up, it's quite hard to not have the orchestra

02:39impoverished by the group because groups make a big noise but there's this area of

02:47marcato stuff where they're playing with the edge of the bow and reinforcing some of the

02:52bass things with brass so that it's not just the sort of, the kind of definition of bass

03:01end that when you get a great bass player with a really extraordinary sound like Chris Squire

03:08who's on the album.

03:09There's this thing that orchestras they have a more amorphous bass end, it's not dependent

03:17on great speakers and sharp definition, it's more than that.

03:24So I wanted to get that idea of infinite bass so we stacked up a lot of that, you know, we

03:30have more than one thing playing basses, you know, I mean, I think on one track we had

03:36about, you know, 20 different things all doing bass.

03:39There's a lot of things on it that shouldn't really work, orchestras with rock groups shouldn't

03:45really work, you know, because they're not supposed to be as percussing.

03:49And I wanted it to sound like an expanded rock band but not just an expanded rock band that

03:54sounded like it had an orchestra with it but also with world music instruments as well.

04:00So the Arabian hood, the didgeridoo, the deduk, the tar from Azerbaijan, all these various

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

04:13There's a lot of things that weren't there.

04:22I love you.

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, same

04:55family of instruments as the guitar and the sitar.

04:59And Malik from Azerbaijan, where 50% of the people are still nomadic, I believe, he's a

05:07little bit like, he's got the speed of John McLaughlin and in a way the mysticism of Ravi

05:14Shankar, he's incredible.

05:18And of course the other instruments that might be less familiar to people, the Arabian Ud,

05:24I bought that in London, it's a fretless lute.

05:28I learned to play it a little bit.

05:30I'm not the level of virtuoso on it that Malik is on the tar, but I took some things from

05:37him, the idea of playing on one string, more things on one string than you would normally

05:42do in sliding and so on, Dust and Dreams, that kicks off.

05:48Some of these world instruments, they often set the scene before the song starts.

05:53It's almost as if when Malik is playing on the beginning of Warflight, you've got almost

06:00like the flickering flames of a campfire.

06:03the kind of music that they might have played at one time when they just sat around to entertain

06:09themselves.

06:10And I wanted to get an aspect of that, a little bit like different relay teams, so you've

06:14got 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, I wanted to

06:26have 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.

06:35It's my proudest moment, to be honest, you know, this album.

06:50Yeah.

06:53Yeah.

07:10Yeah.

Steve Hackett - The Story Behind Wolflight | Louder

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