"To re-mix or not to re-mix?" - In conversation with Steve Hackett about Genesis' Carpet Crawlers '99 single and other things. Interview conducted by Alan Hewitt and David Beaven on Saturday, February 19, 2000 at the Richmond Hill Hotel, London.

TWR: It must be difficult for you sometimes when you listen to some of your older recordings and performances to take the nostalgic blinkers off, and listen to them in the clear light of day...?

SH: I tell you what... what happens is... I have been talking to people recently about wanting to re-master things from the past and not having the rights. It can be a thorny question, this whether people want to hear you re-record things that you had done at one time. And so the jury is really out on that one but I wonder what you think...? Is there anything that you personally are against re-recording...?

TWR: I think, some artists; they take a piece and reproduce it almost exactly the same way an that is pointless, really. Madonna has just done American Pie, hasn't she and that is not a favourite song of mine anyway but her version when I hear it is just a female singing along to the original. Basically it is what has gone before and maybe just adapted the tune a little differently...

SH: I meant covering their own material, for instance I bought a Gerry Rafferty album and one or two of the engineers I was talking to said; 'I think he has re-mixed this stuff.. and it is brighter and I prefer the originals...' I wasn't that familiar with this guy's stuff; I just knew that I liked his voice and I realised with hindsight, that the arrangements were very good on these records; very good. And I played the two side by side and I preferred what were the... re-mixes; the re-sung; I don't know what was re-done but I preferred the later stuff.

It would be hard to put together exactly the same cast of characters and have them sound like that but it gets very hard to do a really great compilation; best of when you can't access those originals, you know there is no response from Virgin to even licence a single track I played on in the time-honoured way you pay a percentage for the use of a certain track from a certain album that may not be in wide circulation. So, as there is such unwillingness there, you know the dichotomy is there...

TWR: Is there a series of songs that you would want to try again and what would be your motivating reason..? Is it just that you feel you can do more justice to it the second time around.. or would you like to try them a different way...?

SH: Well, some of them I feel I could do more justice to second time around, some of them. I think that I am definitely more accurate as a player and I think I am more focussed than I used to be you know, twenty five years ago doing the first solo record. I was just pleased to have done a whole record and I was totally in love with it and on a complete high about the fact that I had managed to do a whole record whereas up to then I would get the odd bit on the odd Genesis album and I had managed to do it and turn the tap on and keep it flowing. If I listen to it now, then I think... 'well, that bit came from that influence and that bit came from there.. and that bit's too much this and that bit's too much that...' There are one or two other moments that I go back to and I think 'That was a good idea, and it has stood the test of time' Such as A Tower Struck Down where there are guitar noises that I have never heard anyone else do. Funnily enough, one of the best riffs on that was my brother's and he had no writing credit on that one.. a really angular riff in that that spiraled upwards as it were and I am not necessarily saying that I would re-record that but I feel that the whole recording of albums these days has become such a science compared with a complete shot in the dark! (laughter).

Nobody was thinking like a producer and you would probably have to go right back to some of the early Elvis Presley recordings again, on things like Hound Dog before you hear things like drums that are truly ambient. In the Seventies of course, drum sounds gradually got smaller and smaller and more and more dry. I suppose everyone was going for clarity because they thought, everyone had allowed the drums to be too big and gradually people were starting to think; 'Why does live sound so good? When studio sounds so small?' And it had taken a long time to get drums automatically sounding good. Most records you hear these days, very boring musically but they usually have a very good drum sound. People will spend about a month wondering which bass drum they are going to use or which sample ... what the ambience is going to be on it...'I don't think that is going to be quite right...' There are Marathon sessions spent on the drums these days. But great drum sounds are commonplace now which they weren't in the...

TWR: In the golden old days? I think in terms of re-recording some of your own stuff I think the haze of nostalgia has been removed somewhat by the Revisited project and that has opened the door and shown what can be done and I think if you had talked about doing this BEFORE you had done that project; I think the bulk of fans would probably go 'Yeah' but it wouldn't be an enthusiastic 'Yeah' it would probably be a 'Hmm. Ok then. Yeah'. The fans have a lot more food for thought now...

SH: And we sell the old albums intact. I would like to re-master them but they won't let me do that. I would like to get rid of the hiss that is on Voyage Of The Acolyte for instance, because they did it from a copy master and not the original.. They; the record company. I know, and I realise that these things can be done and there is a noise reduction system which I can use to clean that up and take away some of the brightness which exists because in the old days you automatically brightened it because it was going to vinyl. Vinyl would make things sound less bright for the very fact that it was going to plastic and you had surface noise to deal with. So, the goal posts have shifted somewhat. So, yes I would love to do it, or even to re-mix some stuff, I would be very happy to do that but |I think I am on a sticky wicket legally, there.

TWR: I think that when Virgin finally got round to re-mastering the Genesis albums, that finally opened a lot of people's eyes because at long last people could HEAR those things that had been missing from the vinyl, the range...

SH: They were improved. It may well be that Virgin will be talked into a re-master but they are absolutely deaf to the unsatisfactory state of play at the moment. There is no response, they are just not interested in returning our calls and there is total disinterest. Their reason is probably that it wouldn't sell enough but ... I just know that if I bought an album at some time of an artist that I liked, that I would want the best possible version. The Japanese versions of the Genesis albums were amazing, the attention to detail and the fact that they got all the details absolutely right.

TWR: While we are on the subject of the "other" band... Box set two?

SH: I know nothing about it. There was a proposed track list but I can shed no light on that one. If I had the answer; if it (a) if it was ever going to emerge and (b) what the tracks were going to be I would tell you. I suspect it will be presented as a fait accompli. It is a mere contractual thing really.

TWR: We can't resist, especially after the feature in Classic Rock asking about Carpet Crawlers... What went wrong? SH: Well, I would like to go on record as saying that I think the article in Classic Rock magazine, slightly mis-reported what I said. I said that I thought the album when I said 'it is a bit guitar light' I DIDN'T mean the album; I said the version of Carpet Crawl that I played on because Trevor left off most of my guitar and I think that is probably why I have a pathological aversion to producers going anywhere near my work. Because I find that in general, they may not... TWR: Well, half the picture is missing... SH: Well yeah. I would much rather like pushing out a version on the Internet with my guitar part restored which I have got the technology to do although whether or not I am likely to do it, I don't know. You see, what happened was Trevor mixed it and unless you are actually there at the time it is very difficult to control something artistically and this is, in general, why I think reformations are a bad idea because people don't follow it and they can never get the five of them to agree so why even bother? They all record separately in different places; which we did and somebody else mixed it and it becomes entirely corporate. TWR: Surely that takes away the whole point of it in the first place?

CC99: More guitar, please

SH: So, amazing really. You know where you are if you have some control even though someone out front is mixing it just leave that thing up no matter what the politics are. But it becomes political and I think that music is hidebound by too much politics. I personally don't think there are enough recognisable ingredients of the band on it. I heard that at least one other keyboard player was involved on it; for instance: Andy Richards re-did Tony's work and I don't know if that is true or not I have no idea... But once you hand something over... I have no idea if the other guys were there for the mix or not and that is the truth of it. They think that Trevor did a good job or at least Tony said to me that he thought Trevor did a good job. You tell me. I was roped into that on the understanding that it was going to be used with the box set so it was going to make more sense as a retrospective that featured me and Pete as well as the other three. They held on to it in order I suspect to give the hit single making three man team, some connection with perhaps their roots. I feel very uncomfortable about it going on an album where it is a cameo appearance at best and most of that is on the cutting room floor. And people say; 'well; when did you all get together?' And this probably answers the question why I suspect it would probably be a tremendous disappointment if we did because I don't like working corporately. I don't think it works. I think corporate music is something that reached its zenith in about 1980. And twenty years later, one should have seen the writing on the wall...Christ, I DO sound like a fifty year old! (laughter). All I can say is; rest assured if I hire anything between a trio and an eighty piece orchestra; every single fucking note on it I will have personally approved and stamped. And it won't be anyone else' "idea" of the way I should sound. Because that is the whole point for me; the fine detail not Board saying; 'That's good enough, we will hand it on to someone else...' I care passionately about every note; every single bit of the detail, that is what it is all about for me. Sometimes more so than the song itself I will embrace kitsch if only to show you... it's REALLY plastic here because it is really meant to be awful here! (laughter).

I delegate a lot in my life, in terms of business but the music I will NOT delegate. I will not do that. I will not let someone play on it and see what it sounded like later. Sure, I will invite all their input; give people tremendous freedom on any project that I am working on but at the end of the day, I am the person who approves it and says... and I sound like a control freak.. but it is the only way. I am the one who says...'Oh, that's a really interesting patch you have got there..' Or 'I think we could correct the tune slightly, there...' If somebody doesn't already say it to me along the way 'We could get that phrase a little bit more.. couldn't we, Steve?' and I will go; 'Yeah, why not?' or if they have already worked with me for some time; they may say; 'I have already done it, Steve' it is an unspoken thing and they know I am going to say it. That something is out of time or out of tune and they know that I am going to want to stretch it; compress it; whatever. I get immense pride out of sitting there seeing it take shape, not just brick by brick but the very sand and mortar that it comes from and see it gradually being built and sometimes it is on slender supports and threads and to see unlikely constructions take place - things that shouldn't really work; things that are too big or too small. It goes right back to when I was a child, wanting to stuff things that were too big into things that were too small! (laughter). Trying to enlarge music itself and I may sound over the top saying this; but I try you know. Maybe something like acoustic guitar is up front and something like an orchestra that is much larger; sounds much smaller but it seems to be coming out of the guitar out of that sound hole because, really what I want is just the ambience of it, or maybe the echo of that and in that vast quantity of small details I sit back and say: 'Yeah, I think that is a record. I am proud of that'. If I can feel that it is really good, and you can sleep on it and feel that it will stand the test of time and come back and say: 'that's good' and things don't always get an immediate reaction and people will often say... I have learned not to expect the immaculate conception with no mess. In other words, the first person you play something to who may be somebody really close to you and they may not like it; but if you feel it is good; stick by your guns and if you feel that you can use any of their criticism to help what you have got then do. But you are the master and pupil of that particular exercise - you learn; you teach and the process unfolds.

There is one more thing I wanted to set the record straight about which was also in that article which was when somebody wrote recently and said; 'oh, I thought it was a pity for Steve to say that he thought it would be a good idea for the present Genesis to knock it in the head...' What I ACTUALLY said at the time was not that but I said that if there was going to be... let's put it this way; there would need to be a natural cessation of activity of the PRESENT band in order to facilitate a comeback of the five man team live. They would have to stop in order to do that or it wouldn't be credible and I am not saying they should knock it on the head... Hey, no maybe Genesis will continue recording in some shape or form for the next twenty years; and some of us will be involved; maybe we won't but what I find very, very difficult when talking to the press is that things are taken out of context and it can make one seem like a real bitch and I have learned to be constructive over the years and say what I say very carefully. I have got tremendous affection for the guys and tremendous admiration for their work; the stuff that we did together AND the stuff that they have done since. I know that it is crafted in a superior way . I hope that there won't be more attempts at totally corporate thinking because I don't think it actually sets the world alight. Hopefully they will come round to my way of thinking; I can't guarantee it but we all do the best we can we are all human at the end of the day. I can only bring my experience to bear.. and I am sounding quite staid here... on the things I do in the present. I can try and stop people making the mistakes that I know I have made and I think that happens once you step outside the confines of the band that you grew up in. You know, I had a TREMENDOUS amount of time to make mistakes; get things right and sometimes get it wrong but I am still trying to get it right, that is all I can say. All I know is that when I hear a really wonderful musician it is like real treasure or something; I have thought about this and a song doesn't really live on its own it is a whole sort of Pandora's Box sort of thing that unlocks a whole lot of memories, some of them painful and the fact that they find an echo in someone else's music is a great cosmic clue that we aren't that much different - you are only you and I am only me at the moment and we aren't that much different...

And there you have it folks, I am sure you will agree, an extremely interesting series of thoughts from Steve. Our thanks as usual, to Steve and Billy for organising everything and to David for his input and tea making!