STEVE HACKETT BAND
27th september 2003, O13 Tilburg, Holland
By John ‘Bo Bo’
Bollenberg
Exactly on drummer Gary O’Toole’s birthday Steve Hackett’s
European tour started at the O13 venue in Tilburg, Holland. To be correct we have to talk
about he Steve Hackett Band here because after years of pure solo concerts Steve
is back on the road with a complete band. In fact it’s exactly the same line-up he
used on his latest studio album “To watch the storms” being Gary
O’Toole on drums, Roger King on keyboards, Terry Gregory on
bass and Rob Townsend on saxophone, flute and thin whistle. Whilst most of his
musicians have been brought up on jazz there’s little room for them to improvise as
everything is based around the immortal guitarparts of our beloved friend Steve Hackett.
The concert
began in the same vein as the “Live in Buenos Aires” DVD thus with ‘The
floating seventh’ and ‘Mechanical bride’. The strobe lights
which accompanied the latter were thé visual attraction of the entire evening because if
one thing was lacking from this otherwise outstanding concert it had to be the lack of
anything visual. Hackett solo certainly isn’t the same as Hackett being
part of “The lamb lies down on Broadway” tour where the music almost
became of minor importance when compared to the visuals. Steve climbed on a high chair
when waiting for that very important first chord as played by Roger King launching ‘Watcher
of the skies’ into the enthousiastic crowd. It was nice to see that Steve
has no problem to integrate his past back-to-back with his own material. And that solo
material spanned his entire career with of course the necessary amount of new material
from his latest album “To watch the storms”. Maybe it was because Inside
Out label boss Thomas Waber was present that Steve was taking extra care of
his PR ?
  
After a good half hour the
band left the stage leaving a desolate Hackett whom in the meantime had an acoustic
guitar strapped around his waist. It was time to enjoy the intimate resting point of the
set which we all immensely enjoyed. Steve kicked it all off with a short rendition
of ‘Classical gas’ before turning towards his wellknown pieces. Roger
King and saxophone player Rob Townsend got back on stage to perform ‘Walking
away from rainbows’. I didn’t write down every single song they played
but in my mind the setlist has to come close to what’s on offer on the “Live
in Buenos Aires” DVD. The two hour long show most certainly included ‘Vampyre
with a healthy appetite’, ‘A tower stuck down’, ‘Darktown’,
‘Camino royale’, ‘Horizons’ and ‘Los endos’.
I also recognized the same black shirt as worn by Steve during the recording for
the “Hungarian horizons” DVD. Economical savings in progland ? I thought
these savings could be noticed at the merchandise stall where only a selection of Steve’s
recorded output was on sale. Manager Billy Budis later informed me that the
T-shirts and programmes had not been delivered in time and would only be available from
the dates in England onwards. However people attending the shows in Holland on 27th
and 28th september as well as everybody else of course could always get their
hands on the new merchandise through Steve’s official website which can be
reached at www.stevehackett.com
Amongst those present in Tilburg I noticed Arjen ‘Ayreon’
Lucassen for whom Hackett is a much better guitarist than Steve Howe.
‘I don’t like Howe that much. His acoustic guitarplaying is great but I
don’t like his electric playing that much. Hackett is more of the experimenting kind
when it comes down to using effects (he even uses a real billiartball to slide over the
strings, bobo) which of course I like best. I thoroughly enjoyed this concert.’ Arjen
went on to tell me he will start to record the new Ayreon album very soon but has
some trouble finding the right people for the vocal parts. As most of you might know Arjen
has been overwhelmed with metal voices but is looking for ‘other’ kinds of
voices to feature on his new album. Plenty of tapes have been send to him but he still
hasn’t found all the voices he needs. Maybe get in touch with him when you think you
stand a chance !
  
Just before I parked my car I overtook a truck with
the name Heijboer written on it. Automatically I thought of Dick Heijboer,
keyboardplayer with Ducth band Cliffhanger. Call it telepathy but who was standing
right in front of the stage ? Right, mister Dick Heijboer himself. ‘I’ve
been working on my new album which is the first for the No-Vox project. As the name
reveals this will be an all instrumental album on which I have worked with all of the
other ex-Cliffhanger members plus an extra guitarplayer. Needless to say the music
gets close to that of Cliffhanger so all of the ‘old’ fans will most
certainly enjoy No-Vox whilst of course we all hope to also reach a lot of new fans
as well.
In all the Hackett concert was once again the place to be to not only
enjoy a good slice of music but also see some familiar faces again. iO Pages writer
Antonie Deelen was there as well as Milly Kusmic. Milly launched her
very own Eddie Jobson fanclub years ago which sadly is now defunct. ‘For about
a year I no longer have contact with Eddie at all’, she says. ‘All I know
is that the UK reunion album will never happen whilst Eddie is concentrating more
and more on writing scores for TV-music and films.’ So money has taken over from
creativity once again which is something we don’t have to fear in the Steve
Hackett camp. After a sucesful start this tour will bring Hackett and band to
England, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and Poland. No doubt thousands of people will be treated
to a night to remember served by one of the world’s leading guitarists !
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