“There was a point when we were making this album when he said the music felt like an extension of our friendship,” Steve Rothery says, turning to his counterpart, Steve Hackett, with a warm smile.
“When you’re friends first and the music comes later, you know it’s non-competitive, and something else starts to happen,” says Hackett with a matching grin.
The long-standing friends have are discussing their first full-length collaborative album, The Roaring Waves, which is billed as a cinematic exploration of all things oceanic. Eight years in the making, it showcases the two virtuosos in a dramatic new light.
“It’s not a technical album,” says Marillion’s Rothery. “For me, music has always been about melody, emotion and atmosphere, and I think that’s what we both encapsulate in our playing. You’re going to move people a lot more with several notes over a beautiful chord sequence played with emotion than you are by sweep-picking across the neck for five minutes.”
Ex Genesis guitarist Hackett says the album goes against the argument that “you put a couple of guitarists together and they try and outplay each other,” adding that it’s “deliberately non-virtuosic, and certainly not the kind of album guitarists normally make together.”
A score to a non-existent movie, The Roaring Waves finds them creating musical musings on everything from Rothery’s childhood by the sea in Whitby to the final voyage of a lost Soviet submarine.
It opens with The Storm, where after some gales and rainfall effects, Hackett plays a sorrowful lead call-out as a military-style rhythm develops. Then both guitarists drive into a heavier riff before more freeform fret-bothering, each reacting subtly and sensitively to the other’s choices of direction.
The residual benefits of Rothery working with Thorsten Quaeschning of Tangerine Dream on their Bioscope project might be evident in places, where restraint overrules rocking out. Sandsend, named after an area near Whitby, bathes in a kind of subdued serenity, honouring its melody without overselling it.
Red Dragon throws the listener off with faux bagpipes before digging into a chunky, meaty motif. Then it’s back to the ocean for the seven-minute title number. There’s a tantalising taste of flamenco, then stabs of tension introduce warm, unapologetic guitar wizardry. The construction here is perhaps the closest this album comes to Hackett-era Genesis.
K-129 was inspired by a Soviet submarine which went missing in the late 1960s, with some claiming the captain took it on a suicide mission to the seabed rather than start a war. It’s faintly too perky to evoke the claustrophobia it’s shooting for, but the insistent whispery sidebars of electronica give it gravitas, and there’s sincere urgency over the closing stretch. Next, The Black Sea glides in gracefully – and here’s where Rothery really gets his Andy Latimer on. The tender melancholia could sit comfortably within a Camel opus such as Moonmadness or The Snow Goose.
(Image credit: Anne-Marie Forker)
“The original ideas defined the concept,” Rothery says of the fruits that bloomed from their initial jam sessions at Marillion’s studio, Racket Records. “We asked, ‘What picture does this paint?’ and from that moment, the songs and concept evolved together; they guided the mood and atmospheres.”
Though their ever-packed schedules have made writing sessions sporadic, they’ve revelled in a distinct lack of pressure to get it done. “It’s a case of letting the music grow organically,” Rothery says. “We’re trying to create music that people would love to listen to on headphones last thing at night.”
What defines this album more than most guitar pairings is that it’s responsive. There’s question and answer – it’s antiphonal
Steve Hackett
That’s why the tracks defy conventional song structures to flow like the waters that inspired them; sections barely repeat as their current pulls listeners along to what Rothery calls “a fascinating dialogue between our instruments.”
Hackett adds: “I think that what defines this album much more than most guitar pairings is that it’s responsive. There’s question and answer – it’s antiphonal. We’ve been able to take things onto a whole different level.”
An inspiration-seeking trip to Rothery’s old stomping grounds on the North Yorkshire coast provided a powerful full-circle moment for him. “If you’d have told the 15-year-old me, who was just discovering Genesis and starting to learn to play guitar, that one day this legendary guitarist would be a great friend of mine, and that we’d be walking around these same streets, 40 years later, I’d have fallen over,” he says.
After all the ghosts at sea, the album finale is a blindside blast of light relief, tacked incongruously onto the end because they liked it so much. Pacific Coast Highway is one for cruising across the States in a beloved car: in parts it sounds like they’re auditioning for a new Top Gear theme tune. Hackett kicks it off with some busy harmonica, thoroughly enjoying himself.
“That’s the one that’ll give the biggest shock to prog audiences,” Rothery notes of the piece, which also includes both Steves’ wifes – both named Jo – providing a splash of vocals.
Hackett and Rothery express a desire to write more music, and even tour together. There’s just the small matter of trying to find some free space in their perennially ink-black diaries. As Rothery jokes, “It might take another 10 years!”
The Roaring Waves is on sale now.
