George Harrison of the Beatles

George Harrison (February 25, 1943 – November 29, 2001), the Liverpool-born British musician best known as the lead guitarist for the Beatles, would turn 70 this February 25th if he were still alive today. Harrison, having started playing guitar several years earlier, was recommended in 1958 by his schoolmate Paul McCartney as a prospective member of the Quarrymen, the band led by John Lennon that McCartney had joined the year before. Lennon initially refused to allow Harrison to join as he thought he was too young, but eventually relented due to Harrison’s guitar playing skills. By 1962, the group had become the Beatles. With the addition of Ringo Starr on drums, they went on to become the most successful popular music group in history.

George’s main role in the early years of the Beatles’ recording career was that of lead guitarist and backing vocalist for Lennon and McCartney. However, he did at least one lead vocal on each of the group’s albums. At first these were covers or songs written for him by Lennon, but soon he began writing his own songs. In the group’s later years, he also occasionally played other instruments such as organ and bass. Most famously, he played sitar on a number of tracks beginning with Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood”, doing perhaps more than any other musician to introduce this instrument to Western audiences, merely by virtue of his immense fame as one of the Beatles.

Harrison’s first songwriting efforts were relatively slight, with his tracks on With the Beatles and Help being among the weakest ones on those albums, though “I Need You” from Help was decent and even his first song, "Don't Bother Me" from With the Beatles, was okay. His writing improved fairly quickly, however, with his songs on Rubber Soul being quite solid, and his three songs on Revolver were only slightly outshone by the incredible brilliance of the best of McCartney and Lennon’s contributions to that album full of amazingly good music. “Taxman”, the first Harrison song to feature as the opening track on a Beatles album, exhibited Harrison’s sardonic humor and “I Want to Tell You” made interesting use of dissonance. The third of Harrison’s songs on Revolver, “Love Me To” was his first Indian-style composition, a direction he further pursued with his sole contribution to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the excellent “Within You Without You”. Two other songs written around this time but only released in 1969 on the Yellow Submarine soundtrack were the tongue-in-cheek “Only a Northern Song” and the chaotic “It’s All Too Much”, both of which were solid efforts. While “Blue Jay Way” from Magical Mystery Tour was a tad monotonous, Harrison’s third Indian-flavored song, “The Inner Light”, was another very good composition, and the first to appear on a Beatles single, if only as a B-side.

Four of Harrison’s songs appeared on the double album The Beatles (aka The White Album), the greatest number to be used on any of the group’s albums (though in terms of ratio, Revolver had the most Harrison songs). These included the classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, which featured Harrison’s friend Eric Clapton on electric guitar, and the biting social comment of “Piggies”. The bluesy songs “For You Blue” and “Old Brown Shoe” were released on Let It Be and as a B-side respectively. Another Harrison song to appear on Let It Be was “I Me Mine”, which was the last Beatles song to be recorded (though Lennon wasn’t present), since it was recorded after Abbey Road, unlike all the other tracks on Let It Be (some overdubs were done to the title track at the same recording session). Other than the session at which “I Me Mine” was recorded, the last Beatles recordings were those that appeared as Abbey Road, and it was on this album that Harrison demonstrated beyond question that he could equal Lennon and McCartney as a songwriter, with his songs “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun” being among the best on the album. “Something” was the first Harrison song to be the A-side of a Beatles single and has reputedly gone on to be the second-most covered Beatles song after McCartney’s “Yesterday”, while “Here Comes the Sun” is widely regarded as one of the group’s classic songs.

Harrison had briefly left the Beatles in early 1969 during recording sessions for what became Let It Be after arguments with McCartney and Lennon, and in this period he started working with other musicians (having already contributed one of his compositions to Jackie Lomax, he also co-wrote “Badge” with Eric Clapton for Cream’s last album, playing rhythm guitar on the recording). When the group finally broke up in early 1970, Harrison immediately embarked on his solo career. In the last few years that the Beatles had been together, Harrison had built up a backlog of unused compositions, so he decided to record a triple album (though the third record consisted of fairly routine jams and tends to be ignored). This album, All Things Must Pass, was released in late 1970. It featured the hits “My Sweet Lord” and “What Is Life” as well as numerous excellent album tracks, such as “Isn't It a Pity”, “Wah-Wah”, “Beware of Darkness”, “Art of Dying” and the beautiful title track. The album was a massive success both critically and commercially, and is still regarded by many (including myself) as one of the best solo albums by a solo Beatle. “My Sweet Lord”, which topped charts in the US and the UK as well as many other countries, did receive some negative notoriety in later years when Harrison was successfully sued over the song’s similarity to the early song “He’s So Fine”, but this has done little to tarnish the album’s legacy. In the year following the release of All Things Must Pass, Harrison made history by organizing the first large scale superstar charity rock concert, The Concert for Bangladesh.

Harrison’s first studio album following All Things Must Pass was 1973’s Living in the Material World. While not quite the artistic and commercial success that his debut was, it sold well and contained a lot of good songs, such as the US No. 1 hit “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” and the excellent “Don't Let Me Wait Too Long”. His next album, 1974’s Dark Horse, was marred somewhat by the laryngitis that Harrison was suffering from during the recording and by slightly weaker material. His next few albums, Extra Texture (Read All About It) (1975), Thirty Three & 1/3 (1976), and George Harrison (1979) are generally regarded as hit and miss, with a fair amount of average material mixed in with some high quality songs such as Extra Texture’s "You" and “This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)”, Thirty Three & 1/3’s “Crackerbox Palace” and “This Song” (a humorous reflection of the plagiarism case surrounding “My Sweet Lord”), and George Harrison’s “Blow Away” (the latter album also contained the first formal release of the White Album outtake “Not Guilty”, though the Beatles’ rough but harder-edged version recorded in 1968 and released in 1996 on Anthology 3 is superior). After John Lennon’s murder in 1980, early the next year Harrison released “All Those Years Ago”, a tribute to Lennon that Starr and McCartney also appeared on. This was included on Somewhere in England that same year, though that album contained few other notable tracks and didn’t sell particularly well. Harrison’s next album, 1982’s Gone Troppo, was the poorest selling of his career, and he stopped recording for the next few years to concentrate on other interests, such his movie production company Handmade Films (originally founded to help fund Monty Python’s Life of Brian), which produced films like Time Bandits and Shanghai Surprise.

Harrison made a comeback in 1987 with his album Cloud Nine, produced by Jeff Lynne of Electric Light Orchestra. This featured a surprise US No. 1 in his reworking of James Ray's“Got My Mind Set On You” and a second hit in his excellent Beatles pastiche “When We Was Fab”, as well as some good album tracks like “Devil’s Radio”. The year after Cloud Nine was released, Harrison formed the Traveling Wilburys with fellow superstars Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and Tom Petty. The group released a pair of albums (though Orbison was only on the first, as he died soon after its release) in 1988 and 1990, with each Wilbury credited under a pseudonym (Harrison was variously known as Nelson Wilbury or Spike Wilbury). In 1989 Harrison also released a compilation album, Best of Dark Horse, which included a couple of new songs. But subsequently, other than occasional guest appearances, Harrison pretty much stopped releasing music for the following decade. He underwent surgery for throat cancer in 1997 and in 1999 he was stabbed by a psychotic “fan” who had broken into his house and only survived because his wife Olivia succeeded in knocking the attacker out by hitting him with a lamp (it was no doubt fortunate for Harrison that he lived in the UK, so his attacker did not have a gun – unlike the psychotic “fan” who shot Lennon in the US). Despite these difficulties, Harrison had continued to work on and off on a new solo album. Unfortunately a recurrence of his cancer eventually proved fatal, with Harrison succumbing in late 2001. His final album, Brainwashed, was assembled by Jeff Lynne and Harrison's son Dhani and released in late 2002, a year after Harrison’s death. This proved to be his best album since All Things Must Pass, with virtually all the tracks being good and several being excellent, including “Any Road”, “Stuck Inside A Cloud”, “Looking For My Life”, and “P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)”.

Harrison, like the other Beatles (except possibly McCartney), was not necessarily technically the best at his instrument, but was nevertheless innovative and highly influential. His slide guitar playing in particular was highly regarded. Harrison was as essential to the group’s chemistry as any of the rest, and his deadpan humor was an important part of the group’s charisma. In fact he may have ensured that the group got a recording contract when, after George Martin said to the group “Is there anything you’re not happy about?” and Harrison responded “Well, I don’t like your tie,” cracking Martin up and convincing him that they were worth taking a chance on. That same droll humor appeared in many of Harrison’s songs over the years.

As noted above, Harrison’s songwriting improved rapidly over the Beatles’ career. His very best songs with the group rank with the best by Lennon and McCartney, and by the end he was become more prolific as well. However, his solo career seems to indicate that he had difficulty writing top-notch material at the same rate that Lennon or McCartney could (though Lennon actually released slightly less material in the last decade of his life than Harrison did in the same period, many would argue it was somewhat more consistent than Harrison’s; McCartney, despite having a fairly large proportion of mediocre songs, released so much that even if the weak tracks are discounted he had about half a dozen albums worth of good songs in that same time period). One reason for the success of All Things Must Pass was that he had a backlog of unused songs from the last years before the Beatles broke up; it also helped that he hit a peak as a writer in this period. While he was able to more or less keep up the pace for a couple of years after the breakup, his writing fell off as the 1970s wore on, so that while he still wrote some very good songs, most of his albums were a mixed bag. It is almost certainly no coincidence that his last two albums, especially the final one, were marked improvements over those from the late 1970s and early 1980s, as they came after long breaks in which he had more time to come up with great material. Nevertheless, Harrison’s very best solo albums, All Things Must Pass and Brainwashed, and to a lesser degree Living in the Material World, are among the best Beatle solo albums. Harrison also wrote some great material for others, particularly Starr, with “Photograph”, the song he co-wrote with Starr for the latter’s best solo album Ringo, ranking among the best Beatle solo tracks.

The first list below includes all of the songs Harrison wrote for the Beatles. Not all of these were great and I originally intended to list only the best of them, but only two or three were less than very good and so I ended up just listing them all. The second list includes thirty of Harrison’s best solo songs (plus one by the Traveling Wilburys). Though I’ve heard all of Harrison’s solo albums at one time or another, the only ones I have copies of are All Things Must Pass, Living in the Material World (which I only acquired recently), and Brainwashed, plus his Best of Dark Horse compilation covering 1976-1989, so my familiarity with some of his material is limited. It’s possible that some of my choices might change on further listening, and as usual with such lists even my favorites among the more familiar songs are not set in stone.


George Harrison with the Beatles
(All songs written by George Harrison and performed by the Beatles)

Don’t Bother Me
I Need You
You Like Me Too Much
Think for Yourself
If I Needed Someone
Taxman
Love You To
I Want to Tell You
Within You Without You
Blue Jay Way
The Inner Light
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Piggies
Long Long Long
Savoy Truffle
Only a Northern Song
It’s All Too Much
For You Blue
Old Brown Shoe
Something
Here Comes the Sun
I Me Mine
Not Guilty


George Harrison Solo
(All songs written and performed by George Harrison except where otherwise noted)

All Things Must Pass
What Is Life
My Sweet Lord
Beware of Darkness
Art of Dying
Isn't It a Pity
Wah-Wah
Bangla Desh
Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)
Don't Let Me Wait Too Long
The Day the World Gets Round
Dark Horse
You
This Guitar (Can't Keep From Crying)
Crackerbox Palace
This Song
Blow Away
Faster
All Those Years Ago
Life Itself
Gone Troppo
When We Was Fab (Harrison/Lynne)
Devil's Radio
Got My Mind Set on You (Clark)
Handle with Care (Traveling Wilburys [primarily Harrison]; performed by the Traveling Wilburys)
Cockamamie Business
Any Road
Stuck Inside a Cloud
Looking For My Life
P2 Vatican Blues (Last Saturday Night)

Honorable Mentions: Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp (Let It Roll), Apple Scruffs, Sue You Sue Me Blues, Hari's On Tour (Express), The Answer's at the End, That's the Way It Goes, Wake Up My Love, Cloud Nine, Heading for the Light (Traveling Wilburys [primarily Harrison]; performed by the Traveling Wilburys), Cheer Down (Music: Harrison; Lyrics: Harrison/Petty), Pisces Fish, Marwa Blues, Horse to the Water (George Harrison/Dhani Harrison; performed by Jools Holland's Rhythm and Blues Orchestra featuring George Harrison)

Peter Gabriel: From Genesis Frontman to Pioneering Solo Artist

Peter Gabriel (born February 13, 1950) was a student at Charterhouse in England when he first met Tony Banks and began playing music with him. The two of them joined with Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford to form Genesis, with Gabriel become the group’s lead singer. After the band’s first album, From Genesis to Revolution (1969), they began to move in the direction of what was then known as art rock and is now commonly called progressive rock. Soon after the release of their second album, Trespass, they added Phil Collins on drums and replaced the departed Phillips with Steve Hackett, creating what is commonly considered the band’s classic five-man lineup.

In live performances, Gabriel began telling stories to fill the gaps between songs while the others were tuning their instruments. He began to experiment with stage makeup, and in 1972, he appeared on stage in a fox head mask and a red dress. This and other elaborate costumes helped the band get attention from the music press and contributed to their growing popularity. On the downside, the increasing focus on Gabriel began to create some tension in the band, as they felt the music and their own contributions were being ignored. At the same time, Gabriel felt increasingly constricted by working in a band format, since he often found it difficult to persuade the others to go along with his ideas. These tensions came to a head during the recording of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974), and during the tour to support that album, one that featured an elaborate stage show in which he played the album’s protagonist, Gabriel made the decision to leave the group.

As noted earlier, Gabriel’s stories and costumes played a major role in raising the group’s profile. On record, aside from his vocals, he played flute, oboe and some percussion, though generally his instrumental contributions were limited (he was a capable keyboardist and also played some drums, but those roles in the band were more than adequately filled by Banks and Collins respectively). However, he contributed a great deal to the songwriting. Determining exactly how much is somewhat tricky, as on all the albums released while he was with the band the songs are credited to the group as whole (some sources do give individual credits for From Genesis to Revolution that seem to be accurate, though that is their least significant album). The band has talked about who wrote what in various interviews, though there are quite a few songs that they have not talked about, so there is still a lot of guesswork involved in parsing individual contributions. Gabriel certainly wrote a lot (though not all) of the lyrics, and he is known to have written or co-written the music for some tracks as well.

In their first two or three years, Genesis tended to write most of their songs in pairs, with Banks and Gabriel forming one pair and Phillips and Rutherford the other. Banks and Gabriel, for example, wrote the A-sides of the band’s first two singles, “The Silent Sun” and “A Winter's Tale”, as well as many tracks on the group’s first album. It seems likely that on these songs Banks tended to write more of the music and Gabriel more of the lyrics, though on many songs they seem to have shared responsibility for both. One track on From Genesis to Revolution, “Am I Very Wrong?”, is credited to Gabriel/Banks rather than Banks/Gabriel, which if accurate would seem to indicate that Gabriel was the main writer. On Trespass (1970), Gabriel wrote the opening section of “Looking for Someone” in addition to the lyrics for that track, and he and Banks wrote “The Knife” together (Gabriel said in the interviews the band did for Trespass that he started the song on his own and Banks helped him finish it). On Nursery Cryme (1971), Gabriel wrote “Harold the Barrel” mostly on his own, except for some help on the lyrics from Collins (who also sang in unison with Gabriel on the track), and he wrote lyrics on several other tracks. On 1972's Foxtrot, he wrote the lyrics for the group’s 23-minute opus “Supper’s Ready” and he wrote the music for the “Willow Farm” section of that song. He also wrote the lyrics for “Get 'Em Out by Friday” and contributed musically to “Watcher of the Skies”. On Selling England by the Pound (1973), he wrote the opening section of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” and parts of “The Battle of Epping Forest” as well as the lyrics for both of those tracks. Since "Aisle of Plenty" is musically a reprise of the opening section of “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”, it can also presumably be attributed to him. He also wrote the lyrics for “I Know What I Like” and he and Collins wrote the melody for the verses. On the double concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Gabriel wrote the story and all the lyrics with the exception of one track, and wrote the music for “Counting Out Time” and most of the music for “The Chamber of 32 Doors”. He and Banks wrote the music for the title track together. Gabriel also wrote the melody for “Carpet Crawlers” based on a chord sequence by Banks and Rutherford. He probably contributed musically to other tracks here and there, both on The Lamb and elsewhere, but detailed information is lacking.

A look at the songs that Gabriel wrote on his own or mostly on his own for Genesis indicated that he specialized in somewhat quirky, humorous pieces like “Harold the Barrel” and “Willow Farm”. On other tracks like “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” he came up with the initial ideas that were expanded into a longer song by the rest of the band. While he didn’t compose as much for the band as Banks, he seems to have composed at least almost as much as Rutherford, and more than Hackett or Collins. Lyrically, he was the biggest contributor, though Banks and Rutherford in particular also wrote many of the group’s lyrics. He was also arguably the band’s best lyricist, though the others also wrote some good lyrics and he occasionally wrote some that weren’t so great, or were at least overly obscure. But ultimately, despite his important role in Genesis, Gabriel’s departure was probably a good thing. The group went on to make a lot of music that was just as good as anything they did with him, and he was free to embark on a solo career free of the restraints that the band placed on him.

After leaving Genesis in 1975 and taking a short break from music, Gabriel came out with his first solo album in 1975, titled simply Peter Gabriel (it’s also sometimes referred to as Car, for the picture on the album cover of Gabriel sitting in a rain-covered car). It included the hit song “Solsbury Hill”, inspired by his departure from Genesis. He released his second album, again labeled simply Peter Gabriel (it is also known as Scratch, for the scratched picture of Gabriel on the cover) in 1978 and a third, again untitled (generally called Peter Gabriel 3 or Melt, for the melting image of Gabriel on the cover) in 1980. Phil Collins, who had taken over as lead vocalist in Genesis after Gabriel’s departure, played drums and percussion on several tracks on Gabriel’s third album, and together with engineer Hugh Padgham and producer Steve Lillywhite the two of them developed the gated reverb drum sound that Collins further popularized on his own solo albums. This album featured the hit “Games without Frontiers” and the anti-apartheid anthem “Biko”, which heralded Gabriel’s increasing interest in human rights issues (he became a prominent supported of Amnesty International) and world music. He cofounded the world music festival WOMAD (World of Music and Arts) in 1980, with the first festival taking place in 1982. It was initially a financial disaster, and Genesis performed a reunion concert with Gabriel to help pay off the resulting debts, but since the festival has become one of the world’s most prominent international arts festivals.

In the meantime, Gabriel continued his solo career, with his fourth album (titled Security in the US) being released in 1982 (he also released German versions of both this and his third album). “Shock the Monkey” from this album became Gabriel’s first US top 40 hit. Following the release of the soundtrack for Birdy in 1985, Gabriel released his most commercially successful album, So, in 1986. This featured the hits “Sledgehammer”, “Big Time”, “Don’t Give Up” (a duet with Kate Bush), “In Your Eyes” (later prominently featured in the movie Say Anything) and “Red Rain”. “Sledgehammer”, which featured a groundbreaking video that became the most played video in the history of MTV, was Gabriel’s first and to date only US No. 1 hit, ironically knocking “Invisible Touch” by his former band Genesis off the top spot. In 1989, Gabriel released Passion, his soundtrack for the movie The Last Temptation of Christ, which featured music inspired by the traditional music of the Middle East. He also co-wrote “Shaking the Tree” with Youssou N'Dour, a version of the song appearing on a 1990 greatest hits compilation of the same name. In 1992, he released Us, his first standard studio album since So, featuring the hits “Steam” and “Digging in the Dirt”. It was not until 2002 that Gabriel, a famously slow worker, released his next studio album Up, though in the intervening period he’d released the soundtracks OVO (2000) and Long Walk Home (2002). He has not released an album of new material since, but in 2010 he released Scratch My Back, an album of orchestral covers of songs by artists ranging from Paul Simon, David Bowie and Randy Newman to Radiohead, the Magnetic Fields and Arcade Fire. He had the innovative idea of pairing this with an album in which those same artists covered his songs (to be called I’ll Scratch Yours) but unfortunately some of the artists declined to participate so the second album was put on hold, though some of the tracks recorded for it have been released on iTunes. In 2011, Gabriel released an album of similar reworkings of his own songs called New Blood.

Peter Gabriel has without question had the most pioneering and adventurous solo career of any past or present member of Genesis. He has said that he is happiest when he is trying new things and pushing the boundaries, and he has shown it in his solo work. Aside from his wide-ranging musical explorations, he has produced groundbreaking music videos, nearly all of which are included in the video collection Play. On the downside, Gabriel’s work is not always very accessible, as he has a tendency to produce music that is somewhat abstruse and requires repeated listening to get into. Partly for this reason, I don’t necessarily prefer his solo albums to the best ones by his erstwhile bandmates; in addition to the sometimes difficult nature of Gabriel’s music, I prefer Collins’s voice, at least for certain types of songs, and I think Collins and Banks in particular often come up with melodies that are stronger than many of Gabriel’s. But Gabriel’s music remains very enjoyable, and while Genesis and the solo ventures of members like Collins deserve greater critical respect than they generally receive, Gabriel’s work deserves all the critical plaudits it has received.

The first list below includes the Genesis songs that Gabriel is known to have had a hand in composing (according to quotes from him and other band members and in some cases secondary sources such as books on the band), though there are no doubt others, and there are certainly many more that he wrote the lyrics for. The second list includes a selection of thirty of his solo tracks. As I don’t have every one of his solo albums (I have his first and third albums, So, Passion, Scratch My Back, and Hit, and I once had Security on cassette tape), my choices are slightly biased towards the tracks I am more familiar with, though I have included selections from all his major releases of new material. In any case, most of these appear on the compilation Hit, which is an excellent overview of his solo material.


Peter Gabriel with Genesis
(All songs performed by Genesis)

Am I Very Wrong? (Gabriel/Banks)
Looking For Someone (Music: Gabriel[opening section], Banks/Gabriel/Phillips/Rutherford[closing section]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
The Knife (Gabriel/Banks)
Harold the Barrel (Music: Gabriel; Lyrics: Gabriel[primarily]/Collins)
Willow Farm (from "Supper's Ready") (Gabriel)
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (Music: Gabriel[opening section]/Banks/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)
I Know What I Like (Music: Hackett[basic riff], Banks[chorus melody], Gabriel/Collins[verse melody]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
The Battle of Epping Forest (Music: Gabriel/Banks[primarily]/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Aisle of Plenty (Music: Gabriel[primarily]; Lyrics: Gabriel?)
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Music: Banks/Gabriel; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Counting Out Time (Gabriel)
Carpet Crawlers (Music: Banks/Rutherford[chord sequence], Gabriel[melody]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
The Chamber of 32 Doors (Music: Gabriel[primarily]/Banks/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)


Peter Gabriel Solo
(All songs written and performed by Peter Gabriel except where otherwise noted)

Solsbury Hill
Moribund the Burgermeister
Down the Dolce Vita
Here Comes the Flood
On the Air
D.I.Y.
Games Without Frontiers
Intruder
I Don't Remember
Family Snapshot
Biko
Shock the Monkey
San Jacinto
Wallflower
Sledgehammer
Red Rain
In Your Eyes
Big Time
A Different Drum
Zaar
Shaking the Tree
Digging in the Dirt
Steam
Blood of Eden (duet with Sinead O'Conner)
Washing of the Water
Father, Son
Signal to Noise
Growing Up
I Grieve
Cloudless

Honorable Mentions: Modern Love, Slowburn, Mother of Violence (Peter Gabriel/Jill Gabriel), No Self-Control, And Through the Wire, I Have the Touch, Don't Give Up (duet with Kate Bush), Passion, Kiss That Frog, More Than This, The Drop, Burn You Up Burn You Down (Gabriel/Sparkes/Wallinger)

Steve Hackett of Genesis

Steve Hackett (born February 12, 1950), formerly a member of a group called Quiet World, joined Genesis in 1970 after the departure of Anthony Phillips and soon after the addition of Phil Collins on drums. He remained with the group for six studio albums and two live ones, departing in 1977. Along with Collins and founding members Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, and Mike Rutherford, he was part of the classic five man lineup of Genesis that produced the group’s most well-received early albums.

To more casual fans of Genesis, Steve Hackett is probably the least familiar of the group’s longer-serving members. Peter Gabriel left the group earlier, but aside from having a much more prominent solo career, his role as former lead singer is usually mentioned in even the briefest biographies of the band and Gabriel himself. Even those who are mostly familiar with the 1980s incarnation of Genesis will generally know that Gabriel was once with the group, but many of them may not even have heard of Hackett. On the other hand, to a rather vocal group of fans, Hackett was, along with Gabriel, what made the band great, to the extent that they will claim it was no good after his departure.

Hackett certainly played a very important role in Genesis in its art rock heyday in the 1970s. His guitar playing created a distinctive atmosphere that was very important to the group’s sound, and this was something that they lost with his departure. Mike Rutherford soon became a solid lead guitar player, but his strong point was always writing great riffs that songs could be built around, rather than atmospheric guitar solos. After Hackett was gone, Genesis had to rely much more heavily on Banks’s keyboards for atmosphere. This was not a bad thing, as Banks’s keyboards had always been at the center of the group’s sound, but Hackett had complemented Banks well and so there was still a noticeable change when he left.

On the other hand, Hackett’s importance to Genesis is sometimes overstated. By his own admission, his songwriting contributions were fairly minor, at least for his first few albums with the band. With some help from fellow new member Phil Collins, he wrote the song “For Absent Friends”, which appeared on his first album with the group, 1971’s Nursery Cryme. He wrote the brief Bach-derived classical guitar instrumental “Horizons” that served as a prelude to “Supper’s Ready” on Foxtrot (1972), and he recently stated that he was the main writer on “Can-Utility and the Coastliners” (presumably the opening song section, as the instrumental sounds like a group composition, and Rutherford has said it was written in the rehearsal room). On Selling England by the Pound, he was the main writer of the instrumental “After the Ordeal” and a guitar riff he came up with served as the starting point for “I Know What I Like”, though much of the final song was written by other members of the group. A better illustration of Hackett’s role in Genesis is seen on “Firth of Fifth” from the same album. Hackett’s guitar solo on this song is justly praised as one of his greatest moments with Genesis. But the song itself was written by Tony Banks and even the solo itself is, as Hackett said, “Tony’s melody, which I tried to interpret in kind of…[a] Middle Eastern way.” On this song as well as many others from this period, Hackett’s main role was to add color, which he did very effectively. In terms of actual composition, he remained in a role subordinate to senior members Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford. On 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Hackett is known to have composed the music for “Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist”, and he probably was also the main composer on a few others such as “Cuckoo Cocoon” and “Hairless Heart”. However, he still composed less than Banks and Rutherford, though his playing on tracks like “Fly on the Windshield” was obviously vital to the sound.

It was only around the time of Peter Gabriel’s departure from Genesis and the release of Hackett’s first solo album Voyage of the Acolyte in 1975 that Hackett became more prolific as a writer. In addition to writing almost all the music for his solo album, on the first post-Gabriel Genesis album A Trick of the Tail he was the main writer of the song “Entangled” (he wrote the music for the verse sections and all of the lyrics, while the music for the chorus was written by Banks). On Wind & Wuthering, he made significant musical contributions to “Eleventh Earl of Mar”, and with Mike Rutherford he co-wrote the instrumental “Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers…” and co-wrote its companion piece “…In That Quiet Earth” with the rest of the band. But his biggest contribution was “Blood on the Rooftops”, of which he wrote the music for the verse sections and all the lyrics, with Collins contributing the music for the chorus and the song’s title. However, despite his substantial compositional input, Hackett was discontented at this point. He had a lot of ideas at this point and felt he should get a larger share of the songwriting. In 1977, during the mixing of the live album Seconds Out, he quit Genesis for a solo career.

Most of Hackett’s early songwriting contributions to Genesis were pleasant interludes rather than major compositions. While tracks like “For Absent Friends”, “Horizons” and "Hairless Heart" were lovely little pieces of music, they were largely overshadowed by the longer tracks the band did. None of the songs that Hackett played a major role in writing while Peter Gabriel was still in the band are among the more widely cited tracks on their respective albums. The only possible exception would be “Can-Utility and the Coastliners”, though it’s not clear how much of this should be attributed to Hackett. On the post-Gabriel albums, however, Hackett contributed two very significant tracks in “Entangled” and “Blood on the Rooftops” (though it shouldn’t be forgotten that Banks and Collins respectively wrote the choruses to these songs). “Blood on the Rooftops” in particular is a great track, one that I consider the best song Hackett wrote with Genesis, followed by “Entangled”. Though Hackett didn’t write many lyrics with the band, both of these songs have very good lyrics, with “Entangled” displaying some of the sardonic humor he has shown in interviews (for instance, in talking about his first gig with Genesis, he said, “I felt so humiliated doing that gig, I just wanted to die. I think dying would have been easier. I’ll let you know once I’ve died.”).

So how much of a loss was it for Genesis when Hackett left? I think they really did miss his playing at first, as their first post-Hackett album …And Then There Were Three… really could have benefited from it. He had also given the band an extra dimension with his songwriting. But by the 1980s, Banks, Collins and Rutherford developed into a very tight musical unit, and while they produced music that was quite different from what they would probably have done if Hackett had stayed, it was in my opinion just as good. In any case, given the different directions they were headed in, Hackett’s split from the group was probably inevitable, and it freed both sides to do what they wanted to do without any of the tension that had existed while they were together. Speaking of which, much is made by some of the supposed conflicts between Hackett and Banks. It is true that on his departure Hackett complained about Banks having too much control in the group, and that Banks didn’t like some of Hackett’s songwriting contributions, such as “After the Ordeal”. But Banks praised Hackett’s songwriting on “Entangled” and “Blood on the Rooftops” as well as his guitar playing, and noted that in some areas they were in greater sympathy than others in the band, such as a liking for more complex, romantic music (also Hackett, like Banks, occasionally opposed Gabriel’s singing over instrumental passages). For his part, Hackett seems to have gotten over any hard feelings, and even approached Banks about playing on his Genesis Revisited project in the late 1990s, though Banks, after being initially receptive, turned him down due to fears of a conflict with Calling All Stations, the Genesis album they were working on at the time.

As for Hackett’s very prolific solo career, unfortunately I have only heard a relatively small proportion. The only album I have is his first, Voyage of the Acolyte, which featured contributions by Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins, and Hackett’s brother John. This is not bad, though some of it seems a bit undeveloped, and a few tracks use keyboard sounds that I don’t care for (particularly “Star of Sirius”, the song Collins sings on). I’ve listened to Please Don’t Touch (1978) and Spectral Mornings (1979) a couple of times each, and my overall impression is that they are quite good, and noticeably better than his first, though there are a few weaker tracks. Interestingly, these two albums also have a lot of songs that don’t really fit the “art rock” or “prog rock” classification, despite Hackett’s popularity with prog purists. For these early albums Hackett used guest vocalists, though he sang on a few songs (regrettably in some cases with annoying vocal effects, like on his one vocal on Please Don’t Touch). I’ve also listened to most of his two albums that are said to be the most “pop”, Cured (1981) and Highly Strung (1982). These made less of an impression on me that his late 1970s albums, though they have good moments and he does do the vocals himself on these. As a singer, my impression is that he’s better than Mike Rutherford and not quite as good as Tony Banks (who has a more interesting voice), though of course none of them come close to Gabriel or Collins. Still, it’s always interesting to hear the writer sing his own songs. Finally, I listened to a few (very well done) tracks from his classical album Bay of Kings (1983) and the 1986 hit song from GTR, his collaboration with Steve Howe, the rather formulaic “When the Heart Rules the Mind”. Several of the albums I listened to I liked well enough that I may make an effort to get them, though I don’t think I’m likely to end up preferring them to most Genesis albums. A couple of them do have the potential to end up ranking among my favorite solo albums by members and former members of Genesis, though probably not in the top few spots.

The first list includes all of the Genesis songs which Steve Hackett is known to be or at least said to be the primary songwriter, or which he made significant writing contributions to. The second list is a sampling of his early solo work, though it’s by no means comprehensive.


Steve Hackett with Genesis
(All songs performed by Genesis)

For Absent Friends (Music: Hackett; Lyrics: Hackett/Collins)
Horizons (Hackett/Bach)
Can-Utility and the Coastliners (Music: Hackett[song?]/Banks/Collins/Rutherford/Gabriel; Lyrics: Hackett[primarily?])
After The Ordeal (Hackett/Rutherford)
Fly on the Windshield (Music: Banks/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Cuckoo Cocoon (Music: Hackett[?]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Hairless Heart (Music: Hackett[?]; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist (Music: Hackett; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Entangled (Hackett/Banks)
Blood on the Rooftops (Hackett/Collins)
Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers... (Hackett/Rutherford)
…In That Quiet Earth (Hackett/Rutherford/Banks/Collins)


Steve Hackett Solo
(All songs written and performed by Steve Hackett except where otherwise noted)

Ace of Wands
The Hermit (vocals: Steve Hackett)
Racing in A (vocals: Steve Walsh)
How Can I? (vocals: Richie Havens)
Hoping Love Will Last (vocals: Randy Crawford)
Icarus Ascending (vocals: Richie Havens)
Every Day (vocals: Peter Hicks)
The Virgin and the Gypsy (vocals: Peter Hicks)
Spectral Mornings
Hope I Don't Wake (vocals: Steve Hackett)
Cell 151 (vocals: Steve Hackett)
The Journey

Honorable Mentions: Shadow of the Hierophant (Hackett/Rutherford), Clocks - The Angel of Mons, Can’t Let Go (vocals: Steve Hackett), Camino Royale (Hackett/Magnus) (vocals: Steve Hackett), When the Heart Rules the Mind (Hackett/Howe) (GTR; vocals: Max Bacon)