Renowned guitarist Steve Hackett of Genesis coming to Brown County Music Center

Tickets are selling quickly for Steve Hackett's March 21 show, "Steve Hackett: Genesis Revisited." Hackett, once the lead guitarist for Genesis, is coming to the Brown County Music Center, and the tickets are selling. Act fast to catch this talent who every month has 93,122 people on Spotify checking out his music.

Hackett was inducted, as a member of Genesis, into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2010, and he has established his solo career in rock, using jazz, blues, pop, classical and world music as well. He didn't go to college because he wanted to jump into the music business, but to hear him talk, you'd think he has a degree in literature or music.

This English guitarist, producer and songwriter who vibrated heart- and guitar strings from 1971-1977 as he "lead-guitar'd" for Genesis, performed on nine Genesis albums, seven singles and one EP.

Solo career stirs the air: Pats on back become pokes in chests

As do many band musicians, Hackett started doing his own gigs. Things went well; after all, other Genesis members were doing their own stuff, too. It was all totally cool with everyone.

But then it wasn't.

Hackett's solo project soared up the charts. "I did it just for fun," he said over the phone. All of a sudden pats on the back were pokes in the chest.

Still a Genesis member, he released "Voyage of the Acolyte" (1975). Next came solo triumphs including "Spectral Mornings" (1979) and "Defector" (1980).

I asked Hackett if jealousy had invaded Genesis. He wasn't sure but admitted this about the music business: "Egos do run riot. It's like rutting stags. It's extraordinary that musicians in a band get along. It's an unnatural thing. It's like sharing a pen with another writer or artists sharing a canvas."

If you listen to Genesis you'll find currents of Bach, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and others. Although Genesis' music is often labeled as progressive rock, which emerged in the late 1960s, Hackett said what he was really getting at back then was "music that was surprising, not known, that tells stories." Films for the ear, he called it.

For a rock and roll guitarist, he confused me. He talked about having read Dostoevsky, Nabokov and listening to and gulping down J.S. Bach's "Italian Concerto for harpsichord" (1735).

"You sound well-read and smart," I kind of blurted. (All the rock musicians I've interviewed have seemed smart — and ambitious, by the way; I just maybe wrongly assumed they wouldn't be interested in Nabokov.)

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"Oh, these (newspaper) interviews!"

Hackett suddenly opened up. What had been a staid conversation about his career was now a totally cool guy talking about his intense relationship with music, teenage love, current dynamics in his solo gigs. And books.

I heard him mutter, "Oh, these interviews!"

The reading seemed to have begun at age 15, when after a breakup with his girlfriend, Hackett realized she "was much, much smarter than I was." She read Camus, but they both listened to the Byrds. Hackett started reading R.D. Laing. Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing, attributed mental turmoil to his patients' parents. He's the physician who coined this phrase: "Insanity is a perfectly rational response to an insane world." In 1965, Laing organized the Philadelphia Association with other pioneering scholars, as they sought change for patients with mental illness.

Steve Hackett talks about his music

Hackett left school so he could play music full-time, but you'd never know by talking with him. All of a sudden he was dropping classical bombs, like that Bach "Italian Concerto for Harpsichord" piece. Hackett discovered that concerto, on the B-side of a record he was listening to, because he had been listening to the A-side, which was Andres Segovia (born 1893 in Spain). Segovia is considered the best classical guitarist of his era. By showing its musical power, Segovia reinstated the guitar as a concert instrument in the 1900s.

In addition to electric guitar Hackett plays acoustic, which he said is much harder, more demanding.

"With acoustic, you have to be on top of it, not it on top of you. It's a very unforgiving medium."

He's done several acoustic albums, including his first entirely instrumental one since "Tribute" and "Under a Mediterranean Sky." It's also his 26th studio album, released in 2021. And, yes, it is a film for ears, as Hackett would say.

Listen to Hackett's "Natalia" — for which his wife, Jo Lehmann, wrote the lyrics:

"She cried out, rejoicing, 'Freedom at last!'

But her purse fell empty, again why she asked

A poisoned drink from a woman dressed in mink

Took Natalia's life, a cry in the wind."

Hear a chorus, keyboard, violins. It's dark and reflects Hackett's beliefs about Russian suppressiveness. It doesn't sound like rock and roll.

"We want you to hear Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky," he said.

Talent trio: Hackett, Jo Lehmann, Roger King

Today, Hackett's solo career involves himself, his wife and Roger King. King, a London keyboardist, has created with Hackett since the '90s. Previously King was an engineer and "aspect oriented" programmer for Island Music, The Backstreet Boys, Snoop Dog, Peter Andre and Jamelia. (Aspect-oriented programming is a computer technique that encourages separate modules.)

"We all write together," Hackett said. "No one's trying to blow each other out of the water." They usually agree; sometimes one of them will say something like, "That's too vague." But the ego wars from the '70s are gone now.

Hackett will release his new studio album, "The Circus and the Nightwhale," on Feb. 16. In this 13-track concept album that's a bit autobiographical, the young character Travla is the focus.

"A Genesis in My Bed" and over-boiled sprouts

Hackett released his autobiography, "A Genesis in My Bed" in 2020. Here's an idea of what talking with him was like. This is how his book starts: "Ducks were flying up walls, dish cloths and wallpaper shared the same murky colors and the smell of over-boiled sprouts wafted through stairwells throughout London."    

In an interview about the book, he talked about working with Roger King on an acoustic album with an orchestra and a rock album reflecting a chunk of world music, "Surrender of Silence" (2021).

"Surrender of Silence" was 31 on the UK chart and reached Germany's top 10 chart. His albums "Under a Mediterranean Sky" (#14) and "At the Edge of Light" (#13) also stormed the Top 20.

What scares a guy this successful for this many decades, I always wonder. He had a pretty scary answer. "We were on a safari in Africa," he said, "and a herd of elephants walked by." (That would have been enough for me.) "But one really huge one stayed behind and just stared at us."

That's got to be worse than a breaking guitar string in the middle of Bach.

If you go

WHAT: Steve Hackett Genesis Revisited: Foxtrot at 50 & Hackett Highlights

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. March 21

WHERE: Brown County Music Center, 200 Maple Blvd., Nashville

TICKETS: Start at $30, and may go quickly; available online at http://tinyurl.com/yp6p5fsy.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Steve Hackett, former member of Genesis, coming to Brown County