Steve Hackett

Pimlico, a classified advert, and six Genesis albums

Stephen Richard Hackett was born in Pimlico, London, on 12 February 1950. He picked up a guitar at twelve and taught himself, drawing on Bach and the British blues players rather than on formal study — a combination that still explains most of what he does on a fretboard, where classical fingerstyle and sustained electric lines sit in the same arrangement without apology.

He joined Genesis in early 1971 after answering an advertisement, and stayed for six studio albums: Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972), Selling England by the Pound (1973), The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) and the two records that followed Peter Gabriel's departure. His playing on those albums — the tapping passages, the volume-pedal swells, the sustained melodic solos on 'Firth of Fifth' and 'The Musical Box' — became part of the vocabulary other guitarists borrowed from for the next half-century.

He left in October 1977, saying he needed autonomy. The split was about room to work rather than acrimony, and it has stayed that way: asked in an October 2025 interview whether he would ever play with the others again, his answer was 'never say never'.

A solo catalogue built before and after the exit

Hackett had already stepped out before he left. Voyage of the Acolyte appeared in 1975 while he was still in the band, recorded with Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins helping out, and it remains the record that defined his solo identity as something distinct from Genesis rather than an offcut of it. Defector followed in 1980 and reached No. 9 in the UK, his highest solo chart placing.

The 1980s brought a commercial detour: GTR, the duo project with Yes guitarist Steve Howe, whose 1986 self-titled album reached No. 11 in the United States and produced the Top 20 single 'When the Heart Rules the Mind'. It did not last, and Hackett went back to a solo path that has since taken in blues records, classical guitar albums, and world-music-inflected progressive rock. Guitar Noir (1993) marked the point at which that restlessness became the plan rather than a diversion.

The Genesis Revisited project started in 1996 and became the engine of his touring life after Genesis Revisited II in 2012, which reached UK No. 24 and brought guest vocalists and players to material Hackett had not performed for decades. The live records followed: Live at Hammersmith (2013), Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2014), Seconds Out & More (2022), Foxtrot at Fifty + Hackett Highlights: Live in Brighton (2023) and The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal Albert Hall (2025).

The recent run of records

The 2010s and 2020s have been productive by any measure. Wolflight (2015), The Night Siren (2017) and At the Edge of Light (2019) all placed in the UK top 35. Under a Mediterranean Sky, a nylon-string and orchestral record, arrived in January 2021 and was followed the same year by the heavier Surrender of Silence. His autobiography, A Genesis in My Bed, came out in 2020. The Circus and the Nightwhale, a loosely autobiographical song cycle, reached UK No. 30 in 2024.

The most recent release is a collaboration that took a very long time to land. The Roaring Waves, made with Marillion's Steve Rothery, came out on 28 August 2026 through InsideOut Music and reached UK No. 24 — his best solo-credit chart position in over a decade. It is seven instrumental tracks on a sea theme, running from 'The Storm' through 'Sandsend', 'Red Dragon', the title piece, 'K-129' and 'The Black Sea' to 'Pacific Coast Highway'. Rothery traced the idea to Whitby, where he lived as a boy: in winter the waves could be heard roaring through storms. Hackett described the working method as unhurried and informal, mates in a garage playing and hanging about, which is roughly what eight years of fitting sessions around two touring schedules looks like from the inside. Riccardo Romano added keyboards and bass, with Daniele Pomo and Leon Parr splitting the drumming.

Reviewers treated it as atmospheric and cinematic rather than a technical showcase — music built to generate images rather than to demonstrate speed, with the two guitarists' tones distinguishable throughout.

Where things stand in October 2026

The current tour is called Best of Genesis & Solo Gems, and the significant thing about it is that it is not a single-album show. Hackett spent recent years performing specific records in sequence — Foxtrot at fifty, then The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 2025 — and this run is the first time in thirteen years that he has gone back to drawing freely across his whole Genesis tenure. He has said the format gives him flexibility: he can honour requests for 'Supper's Ready' and 'Spectral Mornings' and still leave the arrangements loose enough that harmonies shift from night to night.

Two seats in the band changed for this cycle. Roger King, his keyboard player and production partner for years, has stepped back from music; the Swedish keyboardist Lalle Larsson has taken the chair, and Hackett has compared his mix of classical and jazz training to Keith Emerson's approach. German drummer Felix Lehrmann has replaced Craig Blundell. Jonas Reingold (bass), Rob Townsend (saxophone, flutes and reeds) and Nad Sylvan (vocals) continue. Amanda Lehmann guests on selected UK and Italian dates.

The UK leg ran 17 dates from Cambridge on 2 October 2026 to a sold-out Royal Albert Hall on 26 October, with a large number of the shows in between also sold out. Five Italian dates follow between 12 and 17 November 2026 — Turin, Legnano, Bassano del Grappa, Florence and Rome. Three acoustic nights at Trading Boundaries in Fletching, East Sussex, are booked for 5–7 February 2027, followed by Cruise to the Edge from Miami on 2–8 April, then 16 North American shows between 10 April and 6 May 2027, taking in Atlanta, Washington, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City. Lisbon, Porto, Madrid and Barcelona are set for October and November 2027.

A new solo album sits behind all of that. Hackett has roughly 38 minutes of material recorded, has talked about scoring keyboard parts for a symphony orchestra, and has been playing a new piece called 'The Sea Inside' on the current tour ahead of a February release.

The show as it is being played now

The structure has been consistent across the European and UK legs. Roughly an hour of solo material, a twenty-minute interval, then the Genesis half, and two encores. The solo set has opened with 'The Devil's Cathedral' and taken in 'Every Day' and 'Ace of Wands'; the Genesis half has opened with 'Dancing with the Moonlit Knight' and worked through 'Firth of Fifth', 'The Cinema Show', 'Selling England by the Pound' and the full 'Supper's Ready', closing out with 'Dance on a Volcano' into 'Los Endos'.

Reviews of the 2026 shows have been consistent on two points: the band is playing at a very high standard, and the lighting is doing real work rather than decorating. A reviewer at the Eurogress in Aachen on 22 May 2026 called it a magical musical evening and rated the band as highly as the headliner. At a sold-out Aylesbury Waterside Theatre on 11 October 2026, the write-up singled out the theatrical staging and lighting design and noted that Hackett, at 76, is still showing energy and musical curiosity rather than coasting. Audiences have also noticed him singing more than in previous years, with Sylvan handling the bulk of the Gabriel and Collins material.