Steve Hackett’s Genesis Masterclass Makes Grown Men Weep at the Winspear

Posted on February 28, 2020 By Caleb Bradley Entertainment, Front Slider, Music

“Progressive rock” is that quintessentially English breed of music that you either love or hate. There’s not a lot of middle ground.

It’s safe to say that for the 600 people who attended Thursday night’s show with Steve Hackett of the band Genesis at the Winspear Centre, it was pure magic.

It was a criminally undersold and under-promoted show. Ticket holders were upgraded to the floor, and there were still empty seats all over the place. You could pretty much sit wherever you wanted, bringing a very intimate vibe to the whole deal.

For those who don’t know, progressive rock came out of the mid-60s blues and psychedelic scene in Britain, with groups like The Soft Machine and Pink Floyd paving the way for what was to become the juggernauts of prog, the Big Four: King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, and then Genesis.

Genesis was a group of English public school boys, led by Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks. They released two tepid albums before they started to discover their sound on their third release, Nursery Cryme – a sound that relied heavily on the addition of Phil Collins on drums, and the textural guitar of one Steve Hackett. This line up remained consistent for four albums, including the landmark Selling England by the Pound, before the departure of Peter Gabriel.

This particular tour has Steve Hackett performing two sets: One of his assorted solo material, and the entire Selling England by the Pound album making up the second set.

He’s joined onstage by a cast of heavyweights in the modern “prog” genre: keyboardist Roger King replicated Tony Banks’ iconic piano and ARP passages perfectly. Drummer Craig Blundel, while lacking Phil’s dynamics, took the drums in a much more assertive, aggressive vein and was a powerhouse. Super bassist Jonas Ringwald juggled the obligatory Rickenbacker bass with the (also obligatory) double-neck bass-12 string guitar combo with absolute perfection – this guy was beyond incredible. Rob Townsend was the “all-sorts” guy, juggling backing vocals, saxophones, flutes, percussion, and bass pedals. The impossible task of covering Peter Gabriel’s unique delivery fell on vocalist Nad Sylvan. While not sounding at all like Gabriel (he sounds more like Phil Collins singing Gabriel), Sylvan managed to do fantastic justice to some of the most bizarre vocal parts in rock ‘n’ roll, with his own voice, style and delivery – pirate shirt and all. Definitely a high point.

The show began, on time, with a set consisting of songs from Hacket’s two best known solo records, Spectral Mornings (1979) and Defector (1980), with two numbers from his 2019 release Edge of Our Light – just because. The band went back and forth between instrumental powerhouse workouts and vocal-driven songs sung alternately by Hackett and Sylvan. The sound was depressingly muddy, but listenable in the bottom end for this exhausting set. Hackett was in charming form with some very casual, witty banter. He definitely noticed the half-empty room.

After a 20-minute intermission (you know it’s a prog gig when the men’s bathroom is lined up out the doors), the band reclaimed the stage for the main event. The a cappella pun-laden intro to Dancing With the Moonlit Knight brought the first real enthusiastic applause of the evening. They proceeded to do almost picture perfect renditions of every track from Selling England, in sequence, with fun embellishments at every turn. Both Hackett and Townsend took extended solos at the tail end of a funked-up I Know What I Like. The iconic guitar solo in Firth Of Fifth brought tears to grown men’s eyes, and the Phil Collins ballad More Fool Me was perfect. Things really heated up to absolute bonkers in The Battle of Epping Forrest, with musicianship on display showing these guys for the true pros they are. The deep cut After the Ordeal – never played live by the original Genesis – was a revelation, with the saxophone taking the harmony guitar parts and counter-melodies before the epic conclusion of Cinema Show. From the lush harpsichord-12 string guitar opening verses to the classical-jazz fusion mash-up instrumental second half, the entire house was at the edge of their seats, all the way to the reprise of the opening theme in Isle of Plenty, a roller-coaster epic classic.

Lyrically, the themes are very … English. This was Genesis’s “protest album” – a very polite protest against the British class system (a common theme of a lot of the British prog rock; it wasn’t all about elves and fairies), and the themes still hold up today. The set ended with the classic The Musical Box, and was capped off in fine form with a blistering encore of Watcher of the Skies.

The audience was mostly the over 50 male crowd, white ponytails, mullets, leather jackets, bellies, along with assorted wives, sons and girlfriends – and the whole lot devoured every second of this class act with reverence.