Legendary rock guitarist Steve Hackett just released his new studio album, ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’. A rite-of-passage concept album with a young character called Travla at its centre, ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’s’ 13 tracks have an autobiographical angle for the musician, who shares about his 30th solo release: “I love this album. It says the things I’ve been wanting to express for a very long time.”
‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’ marks Steve’s first new music in over two years. Recorded between tours in 2022 and 2023 at Siren Studio in the UK, with guest parts contributed from Sweden, Austria, the US, Azerbaijan, and Denmark, the lineup for ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’ includes some familiar faces alongside Steve on electric and acoustic guitars, 12-string, mandolin, harmonica, percussion, bass, and vocals. Roger King (keyboards, programming, and orchestral arrangements), Rob Townsend (sax), Jonas Reingold (bass), Nad Sylvan (vocals), Craig Blundell (drums), and Amanda Lehmann on vocals. Nick D’Virgilio and Hugo Degenhardt return as guests on the drum stool, engineer extraordinaire Benedict Fenner appears on keyboards, and Malik Mansurov is back with the tar. Finally, Steve’s brother John Hackett is present once more on flute.
Summing up ‘The Circus And The Nightwhale’, Steve describes it as: “A delightful journey that starts with a gritty, raw, and smoky feel, gradually transforming into something heavenly and divine. How could you possibly resist?”
Montreal Rocks caught up with Steve Hackett at his home in England to chat about the new record and how he’s just trying to “stay on the horse.”
Watch the full interview below:
You just released an album on Friday. How was your weekend?
Well, it was an interesting weekend. In London, on Friday night, there was a launch for The Circus And The Nightwhale, the latest album at HMV on Oxford Street, which is London’s busiest street basically. There aren’t too many record stores around anymore. I think it was the first one ever, HMV. It looked like it was going to go to receive the ship at one point. Then they managed to pull it back from the brink. So very happy to be there. Then there’s another HMV in Birmingham. They were both immensely enjoyable events.
Has anything surprised you about the reaction to the album?
Yes, this one’s been extremely surprising. It’s been getting front covers and stuff in the paper written about it, and incredible reactions. I don’t know why, other than maybe the fact that it’s common knowledge that it’s my 30th. I think that goes out in the blurb with it, that it’s my 30th album. So I don’t know whether people are giving me more respect, the older I get, just in case I fall off the perch. Or whether they genuinely like it. I don’t know. It’s a very weird thing.
I’ve been making albums for years. But something seems to be right about this one. If only the fact that it’s semi-autobiographical and starts in London in 1950 with music from the 1950s. So it starts with seven bites from the BBC at that time when England was in post-war recovery, and very busy, very polluted. Hence the smoke as a nickname for London. People love the smoke. London is in a certain time that I grew up.
Maybe it’s that right at the beginning that gives people a portal into it, where it’s less to do with the way the music I make sounds. And just the general overview of this is what it was, folks. Maybe a little bit like a Disney film.
When you come into an album like this, after this long career of making albums, what’s your goal from the very conception of it?
Well, I think that if I was a literal circus performer, I would say it’s just to literally stay on the horse. That’s it for me at this point in time, to keep going and to defy time and to please people. That’s the goal with this album. There was an intention to try and tell a life story in as much as it was possible in song, as opposed to in words, which I did a few years back with a book. But this is a companion piece to it. Although as it progresses, I defer to a third person who’s called Travela. The idea that it could become more symbolic and metaphorical as time moved on, because I never did perform in a circus.
Are you somebody who trusts your gut when you’re making decisions in life?
I’m not sure I trust myself. Well, I think that when I’m making musical decisions, I do trust myself and I make those decisions much more quickly than I used to. I mean, I think one of the earliest pieces I wrote for Genesis was only 90 seconds long, an acoustic piece called Horizons. And I agonized over it for about a year.
Do you consider yourself to be a perfectionist? And if you do, has that changed over time?
Well, I think Phil Collins, who I worked with, had a very good answer about perfectionism. He said that I’m a realistic perfectionist within the given time. I think it’s more a case of the pursuit of excellence because perfection doesn’t really exist. So, you know, that’s a difficult one.
How does it make you feel when somebody like Steven Wilson says you wrote his Sergeant Pepper? Obviously, he’s a person who’s taking progressive music into the new generation.
Well, I think, you know, all musicians are forced at some point to become historians because you always have to look back in order to be able to move forward. It seems to me that you’ve got to have a leg or a toe in the past, at least. And I think that his approach is essentially this contradiction of experimental retro. That’s him. What’s his favourite keyboard? It has to be the mellotron, surely. So, you know, it’s very interesting.
It seems like you’re in a really good place in life. And this album is fantastic. So congratulations on it.
Thank you very much.
STEVE HACKETT ‘THE CIRCUS AND THE NIGHTWHALE’ IS OUT NOW via InsideOutMusic
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