STORYOFTHEBAND
SECONDS OUT & MORE
CAMBRIDGE CORN EXHCANGE 15 September 2021 It’s a sobering thought that Steve Hackett left Genesis, the band for whom he was an integral part and a huge part of their rise to success, a head-scratching forty-four years ago. With this current tour, he pays tribute to the last official release the band issued with him as part of the line-up, playing the seminal live album Seconds Out in its entirety. It’s not clear if Hackett has a portrait tucked up in his attic, but he looks the same as he ever has and certainly, his performance was one full of youthful passion and vigour, the years falling away and transporting the sell-out crowd back to those heady days. Before settling into the main part of the evening, though, the guitarist and band treated the audience to a cherry-picked stroll through his solo back catalogue, from the seminal Spectral Mornings through to selections of the newly released Surrender Of Silence. Thrust straight into the drama from the first chords, the classic Clocks – The Angel of Mons hit hard, its chiming notes and dark power struck the audience bringing a mix of emotions as
the joy of seeing the performance and the serious subject juxtaposed beautifully, creating a sublime tension. Pounding new track Held In The Shadows reiterates that Hackett has never been content to let the grass grow under his feet, always striving forward. Its perfectly layered composition sees some great harmonies between the main man, singer Nad Sylvan and singer/guitarist Amanda Lehmann making her first appearance on the tour tonight. The musicianship is dazzling with the interplay between the six stringer, keys player Roger King and
In trying times, one of the finest musicians we have, Steve Hackett, certainly catches the zeitgeist 46
Rob Townsend’s sax like a firework to the synapses. Every Day brings even more harmonies, and The Devil’s Cathedral has all the makings of a future classic stamped all over it. The new track’s dramatic and cinematic quality seemingly compresses a whole film soundtrack into a scant few minutes. After the tumult, this first section closes with the pastoral beauty of Shadows Of The Hierophant, Lehmann’s vocals and Townsend’s flute painting something otherworldly and utterly captivating before the song comes to a huge crescendo. A short interval later and it was time for curtains up on the epic second act. Essentially a greatest hits set, Seconds Out caught Genesis arguably at their peak, Phil Collins move from drummer to fully-fledged frontman with remarkable aplomb, his own style replacing his very theatrical former bandmate Peter Gabriel cemented on the original live opus. Throughout this transition, Hackett continued to stamp his identity on their work, his playing soaring to new
PHOTOGRAPHY: STEVE RITCHIE
METALTALK • OCTOBER 2021
