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Liner Notes: Four Night Stand

In 1978, Genesis was to begin a new tour, but also a new phase in Genesis history. Steve Hackett was gone, determined to continue his journey through music as a solo artist. After leaving Genesis, he treated his fans to no less than nine solo albums in 15 years, including two made up entirely of instrumental acoustic guitar pieces. Despite the success of his early solo albums "Please Don't Touch", "Spectral Mornings" and "Defector", Steve seemed to intentionally avoid playing Genesis songs on stage, including only very short segments here and there, along with the occasional “I Know What I Like” and the unavoidable "Horizons". But then in 1996, there was word of a new album, “Watcher of the Skies - Genesis Revisited by Steve Hackett”, much to everybody's surprise. Steve explains how the project developed….

“That one got started as a result of an Italian tour with Julian Colbeck. The story is that basically there was a fan who said "I've got a few albums I'd like you to sign" So I signed them, he had just about every solo album I've ever made. I signed them all for him, and he turned to his wife and asked "Do you have the other bag?" and he pulled out another stack of albums, all Genesis ones, and very sheepishly asked if I would sign those. It seemed as if he expected a reaction of "The hell with those ..." and I didn't have that reaction at all. It brought it home to me that people's perception was that I had discarded all of my past and I was trying to expunge it or exorcise it and all the rest.

As Julian and I were traveling back from Italy (December 1994) we were talking about that, and Julian made the remark that when he played with ABWH (1989) there were two versions of Yes doing Roundabout. He said the fans perception was that any version of Yes without Steve Howe in it wasn't the real thing, that Steve Howe was considered to be "the heart of Yes". And he said that could be the case for some people with myself and Genesis. We started talking about doing a show where we would play Genesis numbers, and we would try to involve a number of people from bands with sympathetic fans, all those bands like Yes, King Crimson, and the other bands that are mentioned in the same breath in the progressive field, if you like. The idea came up at that moment in time. There were quite a few tracks that Genesis had done which had great ideas and were great pieces of music, but I didn't feel that they sounded as good on record as they did live. So I ended up redoing them and spending a year and a half on it …. I even spoke to Tony Banks and he said he would like to get involved, ...... and then changed his mind. Probably due to his work schedule …..” (Sept. 1996)

To bring this album to life, Steve recruited some of the finest musicians in rock music, including Ian McDonald, John Wetton, Tony Levin, Bill Bruford, Chester Thompson, Paul Carrack and even added the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. With the success of this album there was the inevitable pressure for a tour. Hackett had not performed in public for two years. When asked about this in September 1996 Steve replied:

“…. I have been very busy recording, with not much appearing in public. It's possible that I might end up playing (this material) in Japan very shortly. I don't want to say who's likely to be in the band, but it's potentially an all-star lineup ….”

Steve was true to his word. Three months later he gave his first performance ever in the country of Japan and used the opportunity to present his new work. For these shows, he recruited some of the best known musicians in progressive rock. Ian McDonald and John Wetton, both from King Crimson fame, Julian Colbeck, Hackett's friend and current keyboard player, and ex-Genesis tour member Chester Thompson on drums. The set would be composed of many of the rejuvenated Genesis songs, some of Steve's own classic solo works, as well as tracks from John Wetton, Asia and King Crimson.

With four sold-out concert, two at the Sun Plaza Hall in Tokyo on December 16^th and 17^th, one at the Castle Hall in Osaka on the 19^th, and the last at the Rainbow Hall in Nagoya on the 20^th, "Steve Hackett and Friends" re-lived some of the greatest musical moments of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Sadly, the limited availability of his new band mates as well as financial concerns prevented these magical nights from growing into a full-scale world tour. These four concerts would be the only ones ever performed by this amazing quintet. Luckily, the December 17^th show was captured on film for Japanese TV and later became a commercial release. For years, this footage stood as the only testament to these four amazing concerts but, much to everyone's delight, audience-recorded audio tapes of all four nights have recently surfaced. We at PRRP are proud to bring you the full third and fourth nights of this amazing concert series. Enjoy!

PRRP Staff

Notes from the Re-Master

Digital versions of the master tapes for both of these shows recently became available. Both shows appear to have been recorded by the same person because the same equipment was used for each recording. Sonic Microphones and a Sony TDC-D8 DAT provided great dynamic and frequency range for both recordings.

Osaka: This is really an outstanding recording. The dynamics did require extensive adjustment because of extraneous peaks and audience noise but otherwise all frequencies were well balanced and very little recorder noise was found. Some segmental tone adjustments were made but no universal changes to the tonality were needed. The show did require some balancing and was re-tracked. As a show identifier, it seems that John Wetton forgets some words to Watcher of the Skies and Heat of the Moment because he stops singing. He also stops playing bass for a few seconds during Watcher.

Nagoya: This recording was a bit more of a challenge. The acoustics of the room, or location of the taper, made the bass frequencies excessive and gives the recording a muddy sound. Both static and dynamic bass cuts were used to correct this problem as much as possible. There as also noticeable hiss with this recording that was not present on the Osaka recording. Hiss and other noises were reduced as much as possible. Dynamics required extensive re-working because of the effects produced by the bass excess. Many microphone bumps and other audience sounds needed to be removed or mixed out as much as possible. Finally, this show was also re-tracked to be consistent with the Osaka tracking.

PRRP Staff

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