Okay, so what can I say about Kâsdejâ’s Children that might tweak the interest of you, the casual visitor to this web-site, and persuade you to part with your cash, eh? 

I don’t know if other author’s feel the same (I’ve never met a proper one) but this is a really tough one for me.  Why?   Because I don’t actually want to tell you anything!  Really – I don’t!  Even agreeing to the synopsis that got printed on the back of the book (see here) was an issue that caused me much grief and gnashing of teeth:  My plot!  My lovingly crafted plot!  Exposed on the back cover before anyone has even read a word… the horror, the outrage!

After all, I’ve written this story in the hope that I might be able to take you away from wherever you might be in your life’s journey and send you on a completely different one entirely.  And in the course of planning your new itinerary, I’ve tried very hard (really, I have) to ensure that the release of every piece of information in the story has been carefully timed to maximise the emotional impact of its discovery, encouraging you to turn each page with eager anticipation.  In short, I would love nothing more than for you to read the book with no idea what’s about to unfold, simply relying upon my story-telling skills to bedazzle you!

But, of course, aside from the aforementioned waffle being just a tad (some might even say outrageously so) pretentious, that’s not going to get you, my potential reader, to feel the least bit intrigued, is it?  So let me put aside my own self-indulgent whims and try to show you what Kâsdejâ’s Children is all about by explaining where some of the seeds of this story were sown.

So let’s go back to the beginning.  I’ve been trying to write a half-decent story for years now, and it’s amazing how often I get the tiny germ of an idea that seem utterly, utterly brilliant (at least to me – but then I’m easily pleased), whilst stubbornly refusing to took root within the canopy of a much larger plot.  Honestly, those pesky little ideas – invading my consciousness and then refusing to play ball! What are they like, eh?

Now, I know it sounds something of a cliché, but with Kâsdejâ’s Children the various strands of the story all presented themselves for duty and fell into place in such a willing and totally cooperative manner that I’ve sometimes had to ask myself if some greater power wasn’t trying to download an existing story direct into my brain.  Setting aside the obvious implausibility of some deity manipulating the creative output of a mere mortal (although I still refuse to believe that some of Steve Hackett’s guitar solos haven’t been touched by God) let me try and identify some of those strands for you, so you can get an idea about what’s in the book.

Well, it all started one Saturday morning when I was waiting for Karen, my wife, to come out of the toilet.  Hardly the most appropriate scenario in which to craft a future legend (and possibly not a subject fit for discussion in polite company), but true nonetheless.  It was in the Star Arcade in Maidstone and, having both indulged in a sticky bun and frothy cappuccino in the mezzanine café, we had headed off to do our private business before hitting the town for some serious shopping.  Obviously, in accordance with the unshakable principles of the universe, I emerged form the loo first and, in much practised-fashion, proceeded to lean idly against the wall of the lift-lobby to wait for my dear wife.  Alone.  

Now, I do have a tendency to day-dream a bit (I always blame my “artistic” nature, but in truth I just have a ridiculously short attention span) so I could have missed her arrival, but the first time I noticed her was when I realised she was there, leaning against the wall next to me.  Who?  I hear you ask.  Well, that’s the mystery, you see – I don’t know who she was, or how she came to be standing next to me.  She was a young girl, probably no more than eleven or twelve although, to be honest, all detail about her appearance has (somewhat intriguingly, perhaps) disappeared from my memory.  I’m sure this will seem like a non-event to virtually everyone reading this, but to me this was an extremely odd situation.  Aside from the fact I hadn’t been aware of her arrival in the lobby, she was now standing right next to me – her arms almost touching mine– in a manner that would seem to indicate that we were… together.  I was confused – why would she stand there, so close to me?  But setting that issue aside for a moment, it was how I felt that affected me most – I knew this girl.  I’d never laid eyes on her in my entire life but standing there with her at my side felt both ridiculous and remarkably comforting at the same time (and those who know me will realise that I am, by nature, very uncomfortable around children i.e. anyone less than 25 years of age).

And then she spoke.  Again, I cannot remember the precise nature of our conversation (it was something to do with the fact that I was wearing sunglasses inside the building), only that she began it as if talking to me were the most natural thing in the world to her.  And once our brief discussion was over, I just can’t remember what on earth (or not) happened to her – by the time Karen had re-appeared the girl had disappeared and, as bizarre as it sounds, I just can’t remember how she had left me.

On the face of it you may not think there’s much to this incident, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  For days, it left me with an overwhelming sense of loss that she – this complete stranger, whom I had met for just a minute or two – was now gone from my life.  And yet there was an equally powerful feeling of joy: that she, whoever she was, wasn’t really gone at all.

And so it began.  The germ of an idea, based on that experience but developed further by asking the question that is at the root of every story ever written: what if….?

What if she were a ghost?  What if she were an angel?  What if she were a messenger?

I must admit I don’t usually have time for staff magazines.  I mean, we’re all busy enough at work as it without reading all that Julie-From-Human-Resources-Explains-The-New-Process-For-Submitting-Your-Request-For-Photocopying rubbish, right?  But one day, I did.  And in the reviews section, I found a small article on a book called Massacre at Montsegur by Zoe Oldenourg.  The review explained the background to the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathar religion of Southern France that took place in the thirteenth century, and how this culminated in the murder of 200 so-called heretics by the Catholic Inquisition. 

I was immediately intrigued. Looking back, I can see no good reason whatsoever as to why this book was actually reviewed in the staff magazine.  Nevertheless, I took a pair of scissors and carefully cut the article from the magazine, storing it safely in my wallet and vowing to buy a copy at the first opportunity.  Whereupon – and much to my annoyance – I lost the review and, of course, all details of the book with it.  

Several months passed and I forgot about both until a conversation with my mother lead to her asking me what I wanted for Christmas.  Now, it’s something of a standing joke in my family that I can always list any number of CDs I might happen to like but can rarely think of anything else.  CDs were boring gifts – surely there was something more interesting I might like?  Nope, more CDs would be just fine thanks….

The conversation moved on and eventually led to some long-forgotten subject that prompted me to check my wallet – and (you guessed it, I’m sure) there, folded up very neatly and tucked inside one of those spaces for credit cards, was the article on the book.  Sure enough, I handed it over to mum with the suggestion that this would make a fine Christmas present.  And so it did.

The book fascinated me.  I read it eagerly and then read it again (I hadn’t understood most of it and needed to go at it a bit more slowly).  And when I’d finished it the second time I found myself having to ask that same question: what if…? 

What if the fate that befell those poor individuals at Montsegur was so terrible and utterly inhumane that it caused something to happen that no one could have possibly foreseen? What if the consequences of that act of barbarism, carried out in the name of God, were to reverberate down the centuries, impacting time and again on the key events of the age?  And what if it was all about to come to a head here, today, in the 21st century?

On the 1973 album Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson Lake and Palmer there is a song called Karn Evil Nine.  I think I first heard it when I was eight or nine years old and to this day it remains one of my all-time favourites.  It’s one of those big epics, stretched over more than one side of an LP, and it is actually split into three parts or “Impressions”.   The first Impression is, itself, divided into two distinct parts.  In Part 1, the narrator tells of a world struck by famine, where the rich are too busy even to notice how the poor are starving and how the brutal regime under which the under-classes live has utterly betrayed them. It is somewhat ironic that, more than 30 years after this song was written, events such as Live8 are still drawing attention to the very same situation in Africa.  Within the song there is one sign of hope – the narrator’s repeated refrain that he will be there for these people – “to heal their sorrow, to beg and borrow, fight tomorrow!”

But it Part 2 of the song everything has gone wrong.  The noble aim of the narrator has now, somehow, been corrupted.  In its place everything in the world – pain, suffering, debauchery – has now been reduced to entertainment, and our narrator has abandoned his noble aims to become the showman at the centre of this sick nightmare show.

And it was here that the third strand of my story was born.  Drawing inspiration from Greg Lake and Peter Sinfield’s brilliant lyrics, I conceived the idea of a club in the West End of London – in the early drafts of the book it was called Klub Karn – where these unholy acts were to take place.  I even had a character called the Gypsy Queen who performed on guillotine and plenty of club members who laughed until they cried.  Before, of course, they died (then they died).  

Of course, the lyrics had provide me with much of the “what” and it was to my other sources that I turned to try and find the “why” of it all and bring it all together.  Originally, I had conceived that my hero, Greg, was supposed to be into dance music and go to raves, but all of that represented a culture completely alien to me. Out of a desire to get the story out onto paper (or just plain laziness, if the truth be told) I scrapped that idea and allowed Greg to share in my own musical tastes.  With his character now re-cast as a prog-rock fan, it suddenly became ridiculous to have him listening to ELP one moment and visiting Klub Karn the next, so the story evolved once more.  The function of the club, now called Club Cramatchs, took on a whole slant, and the guillotine disappeared from the storyline to be replaced by an altogether different array of acts.

As for the Gypsy Queen, however, she is still there in the book – by the time these editorial changes took place she had already become too real to me to face the chop!

The gestation of the storyline took something in the region of three to four years – a period of time in which notes were scribbled and research undertaken before I finally knew I had a credible beginning, middle and end.  I commenced the actual writing of the book on the 1 July 2002 and completed the first draft on 17 December that same year.  It was finally published on Valentines Day, 14th February 2005. 

It is dedicated with all my love to my wife, Karen.

As I continue to explore my potential as a writer, I can honestly put my hand on my heart and say that one of the biggest influences on the stories that tumble in sometimes-chaotic fashion from my head is the music that I enjoy.  Over the years a great many artists from many different genres have found a special place in my affections, from Duran Duran to Limp Bizkit, Sneaker Pimps to Howard Shore, and Sam Brown to Nine Inch Nails.  It’s fair to say, however, that my biggest musical loves all seem to be drawn from what has collectively been known as “progressive rock”. 

Hold on a minute…. PROG ROCK!!!  

Oh please, I hear you gasp, say it ain’t so!  All that pretentious, overblown nonsense, blindly confusing arrogant self-indulgence with real talent? 

Ah, yes you see… it does seem to match my personality to a tee, doesn’t it? 

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that (since the early 70s at least) there have been way too many musical abominations out there clinging to the hallowed prog-rock tag – absolutely dire bands truly worthy of the scorn so frequently heaped on this much-maligned art-form.  However, when prog is born of a genuine desire to “strive beyond stagnant musical forms” rather than merely imitate something that’s already been done before, it can (at least to my ears) become a truly magical experience. 

And so, the purpose of this page (which, in keeping with the prog theme, has developed in a somewhat overblown and totally self-indulgent fashion) is to highlight some of the artists who have provided me with such wonderful inspiration over the years. And, in so doing, to wish them all a very big “thank you”! 

There are a great many other bands that I’m extremely passionate about (most of which get in a mention somewhere in the book) but I’ve restricted my ramblings on this page to IQ, ELP, Genesis and Steve Hackett (scroll down this page to read about each), as they have undoubtedly been the major influences on my writing.

Think back – can you remember a moment in your life when you suddenly realised that something magical could somehow be sustained way above the humdrum of everyday existence?  Can you recall the day when you were suddenly moved in a way that you’d never been moved before, your emotions plucked and pulled in directions way beyond the strict dimensions you’d previously thought possible?  In short, do you remember the time when you first became truly inspired? 

I can.  For me, it was September 1983 and the night the band IQ played their first headline gig at the old Marquee club in Wardour Street. I was 15 years old, and I genuinely believe that night was to become both a defining moment in my life and the catalyst for much of what I have subsequently gone on to achieve, however small. That very evening I was, indeed, inspired by this young band. Watching them collectively deliver so much passion and energy in their epic, wonderfully structured music was certainly a joy to behold.  And witnessing Peter Nicholl’s genuinely mesmerising stage performance – his haunting lyrics and enigmatic delivery exposing a gamut of emotions within me, hitherto untapped by everyday mundanity – I discovered something that demanded from me much more than just my attention.  Certain that a new calling was awaiting me, I proceeded to take up the bass guitar and re-think my career options, ditching geography and opted for a music A-Level course instead.  The formation of my own group quickly followed, fuelled with a single-minded vision to try and write all of our own material, and an aspiration to attain the creative and emotional peaks we would witness together on those regular pilgrimages to the Church of IQ in Wardour Street.  But only when we weren’t all doing extra shifts at the local Sainsbury’s, where we’d first met.

Looking back, one might perhaps argue that the reason I had been so moved by IQ owed much to being swept along with them as they struggled both to reach a wider audience and find their way musically.  My previous experience with live music had taken me to gigs by Greg Lake, Asia and Steve Hackett – all incredibly exciting experiences, but taking place in large venues with sold-out, enthusiastic audiences. Attending IQ gigs was a different proposition altogether.  Outside London, the crowd might just about outnumber the musicians on stage, and for those of us making increasingly regular – and longer – trips to see our heroes, it seemed as if we now shared a sense of true camaraderie. This feeling was epitomised by the band christening our dedicated group as “the Youngies” and making every effort to always make us feel like old friends.  So, yes, in many ways, I was as emotionally attached to the group as I was to their music, but that shouldn’t be taken as a reason to under-estimate the quality of their recorded output and the brilliance of their live performances. They were – and still are – a stunning band. 

As IQ were whipping up a storm and becoming increasingly tipped as the next big thing, my own band was slowly progressing too. The creative juices were flowing and, at that point in my life, I was certain that I was going to become a professional musician, just like my heroes…

But things don’t always turn out the way they should, do they?

In 1985 Peter Nicholls left IQ.  I was devastated.  And there was worse to come.  Whereas I had only ever thought of music as a future, my own band-mates suddenly revealed they were all going off to university.  I was twice devastated.  I tried hard to find another band but nothing came close to matching the chemistry of the grocery boys from Sainsbury’s.  And to top it off, I later broke the index finger on my left hand in three places whilst trying to gather a sneaky ball down the leg side from a wily finger-spinner (any blushing Americans can e-mail me privately for an explanation).  Once the bones had all completed their over-enthusiastic healing and fused together to form one solid, unbending (and, it has to be said, pretty ugly) stick of a finger, I was sadly no longer able to play the bass.  Resigned to the fact that I failed to achieve my childhood ambitions, my collection of guitars were either sold off or relegated to the loft.

IQ, meanwhile, were forging ahead, still making quality music albeit of a slightly different style. I continued to buy the albums and go to gigs, but I have to admit that the evangelical zeal that had so characterised my Youngie days had rather dissipated. The band then became apparent the victims of the business side of the music business, and it looked for a while like they were probably going to call it a day.  It was sad to see how something so magical and so special could just fizzle out where once it had burned so brightly.  

But then came the news – news that I’d never dared think was possible. Not only were IQ back in action, but Peter Nicholls had returned to the fold.

By this point in the story, I’d been toying with the idea of channelling my creativity into writing fiction rather than music.  To aid this process I had found it useful to re-visit the classic IQ epics like The Last Human Gateway and The Enemy Smacks, submersing myself in the mood and the memories in order to get an instant hit of inspiration.  Slowly but surely, the creative juices were beginning to stir and, with IQ returning to form with the brilliant Ever album, they positively began to gush.  

The result of this new artistic direct was an attempt at a sci-fi/fantasy novel, dripping with imagery culled from Peter’s lyrics, entitled Who Will Catch Him Falling?.  And it was pretty awful, I can tell you, certainly falling far short of the standards set by the words and music that had so directly inspired it.  But, as is so important with every experience in life, I resolved to learn from my failings and use them as a useful platform to try again.  As such, it mustn’t be underestimated how important a stepping stone that novel was on the path to writing Kâsdejâ’s Children.

Higher up this page I’ve set out some of the influences I drew upon to generate the initial structure of that book and, perhaps surprisingly, you’ll note that I haven’t mentioned IQ or Peter’s lyrics.  At the time it was, in fact, a conscious decision on my part to avoid straying into the style of imagery I had explored before, in the hope of avoiding the same pitfalls.  After all, this was to be a contemporary novel with lots of historical references, a far cry from the expansive romanticism of IQ.  

But then something strange happened.

To help clear my head of the build up of rubbish generated by the daily grind of office life, I took to going for a jog with my trusty mini-disc player before settling down for a writing session.  During this ritual I found myself regularly selecting the (then) recent IQ album Seventh House as my companion of choice, discovering just as much magic still permeating the band’s new music as I’d first experienced way back in my Youngie days.  As I became increasingly captivated by this wonderful collection of songs, however, it seemed my well-developed plot and the music on the album were increasingly becoming inter-twined.  Peter’s lyrical style is notorious for allowing the listener to interpret his words in many different, and often highly personal ways.   The opening and closing tracks of that album – The Wrong Side of Weird and Guiding Light – were full of such powerful meaning and imagery that, for me, they soon became synonymous with my story.  And, of course, as the writing progressed and I spotted an opportune moment, I would make sure that the odd lyric that hadn’t quite fit into my existing structure could be represented, allowing the synergy to become even more pronounced.  Every IQ fan will, of course, listen to these songs and come up with their own unique interpretations, no doubt hearing totally different meanings in the lyrics to those that I have ascribed to them (which is exactly how it should be).  But there may be some people out there who can see the odd connection, here and there.

So, in the end, the songs of IQ got their cheeky little faces into my novel anyway, even though it hadn’t originally been my intention to utilise or even acknowledge them in that way.  And I’m very pleased about that.  The band were a crucial influence right there at the beginning of my journey and it seems fitting to be able to pay tribute to them in my first properly published book.  

IQ – what a band!

You can check out IQ at www.gep.co.uk./iq

So hold on a minute, setting aside the subsequent tear-jerking tale of my obsession with IQ, how did I actually come to be at the Marquee that night in 1983, rooting for a band that was yet to release its first proper album?  Well, let’s go right back to the start, shall we?

As far back as I can remember, music had always played an important part in the house where I grew up.  It’s not that I remember the radio being played all the time (which might have reduced the act of listening to music to a commonplace event, to be taken for granted) but the fact that Sunday afternoon’s were set aside as the time in which the family would play records. My parents had a pretty extensive collection of albums, and I was quite happy growing up listening to the likes of Lonnie Donnigan, the Seekers, Slim Whitman and, of course Elvis. My father also had a liking for the classics, however, and I remember he had a box set of LPs from the Reader’s Digest called something like The World of Classical Music. Listening to My Old Man’s a Dustman for the umpteenth time was starting to become a bit monotonous, but this orchestral stuff was a whole lot more exciting, providing the perfect soundtrack to the imaginary games I would play.  Each LP featured composers from a particular country and I remember finding the English and Russian albums particularly good at creating a backdrop against which my childhood fantasies could unfold.

And then, one day when I was about nine or ten, my brother brought home a tape-recording of some music.  And everything in my life changed.  The album was Brain Salad Surgery by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and was quite unlike anything I’d ever heard before. Instrumental pieces of music like Toccata and the Second Impression from the Karn Evil Nine suite contained all the drama and excitement I’d discovered within my father’ classical music albums, but with the added bonus of a whole new palette of electrically-induced sounds.  But it was the lyrics to the First and Third Impressions that really provided a revelation. I had never heard “songs” structured and performed like this before and, in an era when Star Wars fever was griping the nation, the Third Impression story-line was quite simply the most exciting thing I’d ever heard.

For the next couple of years, ELP were the only band in existence for me.  My brother would save his pocket money and, on a regular basis buy another album from their back catalogue, each one introducing me to more sounds and stories, aided and abetted by some wonderful cover art.  As my first musical love, I’ve always retained a significant soft-spot for ELP despite the trials, tribulations and even embarrassments that have plagued the band since (Love Beach, anyone?).  It therefore seems quite fitting that, twenty years after I had first been blown away by the song, Karn Evil Nine was to provide the seeds of an idea that would directly contribute to the book’s developing story-line (see above for more information).  Due to the way these things evolve and develop that original inspiration is probably no longer obvious in the final draft of the book, but the music of ELP has also contributed to the plot in many other much more obvious ways.  Obviously, I don’t wish to give too much away for those who may not have yet read it, but suffice it to say that the Pictures at an Exhibition album takes on a particular and very important significance in the story-line.  Indeed, I had originally planned to name the second part of the book “Born In Life’s Fire” (from the lyrics of The Great Gates of Kiev) as an appropriate nod to the significance of the album (although, in the end, I felt I had to go with the IQ-inspired title “Guiding Light Still Shining”). 

And yes, as someone has already asked me to confirm, the name Greg Lessing, one of the central characters within the book, was a very conscious nod towards Greg Lake – just one of many little bits of self-indulgence on my part.
ELP have always attracted a vast mount of criticism, and a good deal of it has sometimes been justified.  At the end of the day, however, there has never been a band with more talent, imagination and vision.  When circumstance allowed those strengths to come together in a constructive and positive manner, the results were simply breathtaking.

So I mentioned above how ELP were the sole focus of my passion for a couple of years, right?  So what happens when you’ve got all the albums and learnt every song they’d recorded inside-out?  You look for something else, of course. And that first “something else” was, for me, Genesis.

Now, my love of this band is every bit as strong but somehow completely different to the way I feel about ELP, and it’s difficult trying to explain why.  Obviously the music of the two bands is completely beyond compare (even though outsiders to the prog world always seem to assume that they must somehow be exactly the same) and, as such, I suppose they stir very different emotions. 

So, anyway, I do get very excited about Genesis. The very idea of a pair of bat-wings, a glimpse of a Shergold double-neck, or the sight of Phil Collins sat behind a drum kit – honestly, it’s enough to make this grown man go all wobbly at the knees.  Almost everything about the band – the lights, the stories, the early costumes – stirs some form of emotion, but at the root of it all is their music, every bit as evocative and inspiring as the bands already mentioned above (no matter whether its Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins at the microphone). 

So where did Genesis contribute to the plot of Kâsdejâ’s Children? Well, I don’t want to spoil all the surprises, but perhaps the one crucial thing I can reveal here relates to the structure and form of the story.  Whilst planning it, I was very keen to make sure the pacing of the book worked effectively i.e. considering how much time to spend on certain elements of the story, the order in which information was going to be released, and how much was to be explained or left to the reader to discern themselves.  Now, if I was clever enough I would’ve just worked all that out on my own. But I’m not, and I felt that, if I was to keep the reader intrigued throughout and deliver to them an emotionally satisfying conclusion, I needed some sort of guidance to help me be sure I was on the right track.  I suppose I could’ve studied other novels or even films that I had enjoyed, but I decided instead to focus on one of the most emotional journey’s I have ever experienced – Supper’s Ready.  

Now, at the risk of repeating myself I do want to emphasise that I’m not talking about using the lyrics of the song to inspire the story – all of the crucial elements of the plot had already been identified at a much earlier stage of the writing process. More important to me was the way Supper’s Ready was structured and how the music unfolded, creating the all-important sense of a journey for the listener.  In short, I was trying to identify what made it work when so many other grandiose epics of the prog-rock genre were disasters.
I suppose that, when it comes down to it, you could say that I therefore stole the structure of Supper’s Ready, although to be fair, I think I’d rather view it as taking a piece of technical rather than emotional inspiration. As a bit of fun on my part, I then began to pay homage to the track itself by planting little references to it here and there throughout the story.  Most of these are quite subtle, and for those unfamiliar with the song these references will simply pass by unnoticed.  Having made the character of Greg a prog rock fan, however, it was also possible to highlight his own familiarity with the song within the narrative, and then play around with that idea too. The resulting scene between Greg and his brother, arguing together while the track plays in the background, is one of my favourite little cameos within the whole book. 

If you had the stomach to read through my ELP memoirs above you will recall how, as a young child, I was enthralled by my father’s collection of classical music, losing myself in make-believe as the high drama of the orchestra unfolded from our behemoth “radiogram”. To achieve such drama composers can resort to many tools and techniques, the most obvious (and the most clumsy, unless executed by the most skilled of hands) being to exploit the dynamics of a piece – loud and soft, fast and slow, thunderous bangs and crashes placed within peace and serenity.  Now, I’m certainly not adverse to a bit of all that when the circumstances warrant it, but there’s another kind of drama in music that is a hundred times more powerful than merely turning the volume up to 10 – melody and harmony.

Composers and songwriters with sufficient talent and imagination to master these qualities can do so much more than rudely grab your attention with a sudden drop in volume or change in pace.  The chemistry of melody interfacing with harmony is the crucial element of a piece of music that can tug on your heart-strings and manipulate your emotions in a quite unexpected ways.  And, for me, Steve Hackett is a grand master. 

Initially, the most obvious feature of any Hackett album you care to mention (setting aside his purely classical endeavours) is likely to be the outrageous eclecticism on display.  But no matter what diverse (and sometimes perverse) direction the man is travelling in, one can always be assured that a mastery of melody and harmony will be there by the bucket-full, waiting to trap you with an unexpectedly poignant or downright creepy twist.  I’ve no doubt that is why I’m such a big fan of his music, and have been since first hearing the Spectral Mornings album back in 1979.

Amongst his impressive catalogue of work, he undoubtedly has some very fine songs, but it is his instrumental music for which he is rightly famous, and that which really captures my attention. Slipping on a pair of headphones and turning off the lights, his music will immediately generate a flurry of images in my head, performing the same service to my imagination as any Genesis or IQ song but without the use of a single lyric.  Communicating his messages through only the vocabulary of melody and harmony (accepting the odd bang and a crash too, always delivered with impeccable taste), he attains a word-less poetry that manages to speak volumes. Forgive me the cliché, but if a picture paints a thousand words, then a single Hackett melody can deliver a thousand pictures.  And one of his albums might just provide enough material to inspire a complete novel.  

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to point out that Steve has the uncanny ability to christen his instrumental pieces with the most appropriate of names – a handful of words, unspoken, that form a symbiotic relationship with the music in question – that undoubtedly provide a kick-start to the imagery download.  A quick look at chapter headings will reveal how many of his pieces had a direct bearing on the book, the song titles linking to the scene whilst the music itself provided the specific queues for the unfolding action. Some might say it’s simply stealing, but if that’s the case then I hope Steve will find it in his heart to forgive me and take it as a very genuine tribute instead.

You can check out Steve Hackett at www.stevehackett.com