Steve Hackett may be one of prog’s best-loved guitarists, but how much do we really know about him? In his entertaining new autobiography, he sheds light on the friendship between his former Genesis bandmates and even lets Prog in on a few backstage secrets.

Words: Johnny Sharp Portrait: Joseph Branston/Future Owns

Locked down in his London home, Steve Hackett is missing the roar of the crowd… if not the smell of the proverbial greasepaint. And when talking to Prog over a temperamental phone line about one particular show, he still has fond memories. It was the last time he trod the boards alongside all four fellow members of Genesis’ classic line-up.

The occasion was October 2, 1982 when, in order to raise money to bail out the seriously debt-stricken WOMAD festival, the event’s curator Peter Gabriel asked his old bandmates to reform for a benefit show.

“It was done for all the right reasons,” says Hackett, “and I was very happy to be a part of it. And apart from my own role in it [he didn’t have time to rehearse, having rushed back to the UK from Brazil, but came on to play the encore], how lovely to see Genesis playing Solsbury Hill and stuff like that, as well as all the rest of the old material.”

Hackett’s book, named in reference to a groupie. That’s not very prog!

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“London was an unruly place back then, very polluted, and as a kid it was very dark and grey. On the rare occasions I’d be taken out into the country I’d be thinking, ‘This is interesting - trees and sunshine!’”

His new book recounts how, afterwards, “Pete broke into Auld Lang Syne as we all linked arms. No stiff upper lips that night!”

These fond sentiments continue when the 70-year-old talks about the subsequent friendly relations that continued with his former bandmates. “Not long after that I did a benefit gig for Tadworth Court, a children’s hospital, and Peter and Mike both said they would like to be part of that, so we did get these partial reunions, coming together for all the right reasons, and it was nice to play each other’s songs… even for five seconds.”

These episodes are also referenced in Hackett’s new autobiography, A Genesis In My Bed, where his attitude to the band, and the musicians that helped make him famous, is consistently magnanimous and forgiving. It contradicts the perception in some quarters that he doesn’t get on with Messrs Banks, Rutherford and Collins, and still holds historical grievances.

“There’s been a lot of great music that has come out of that team,” he says, “and it went around the world a few times, and I’m proud of that, pleased they’re still doing it and so am I.”

Any lack of harsh words doesn’t make A Genesis In My Bed a dull read, though. For a man that once used to sit studiously onstage, behind Peter Gabriel, like an Open University lecturer pondering his next lesson plan, Hackett writes eloquently and entertainingly (seemingly without a ghost writer) about his career. When you learn that the title was uttered by an American groupie of his acquaintance in the mid-1970s, you realise that his relatively undemonstrative stage persona isn’t for want of a sense of humour, while an observant eye and long memory benefit his account no end.