Steve Hackett recently chatted with Ultimate Guitar promoting his upcoming solo album, “The Circus and the Nightwhale”. He was asked what he thought of thrash metal and metal in general, and if he was familiar with any of those bands, to which he replied:
“Since I came up with the idea of introducing tapping into my parts, I really had a hand in the techniques that a lot of guitarists from those genres then started using. I’m not disgusted with heavy metal, believe me. Whatever it’s called, whatever the subdivisions are – thrash, death and all the rest of it.”
Hackett also noted that his surroundings in his youth – London in the early 1960s – also had a “metal influence” on him:
“I actually got into ‘metal’ from the age of 12-14 onwards – I took steel into my hands and started taming it [referring to guitar strings]. Later on I discovered other kinds – nylon guitar, the feeling of silk under my fingers. So yeah, I know about those bands. I was very familiar with heavy metal bands.”
Finally, he noted that he’s crossed paths with many metalheads over the years:
“I’ve worked with a lot of them. Nuno Bettencourt won the European Guitar Awards and I congratulated him. The previous year Brian May congratulated me…. A lot of guitarists, some I’ve never met – Steve Vai. I think guitarists can be very generous with each other and publicly go out of their way to contact each other. I worked with Paul Gilbert, Nuno and John Paul Jones in Japan – we worked on Guitar Wars together. It’s a ‘guitar club’!”
