Steve Hillage (born
Stephen Simpson Hillage, 2 August 1951, Chingford
, London Borough of Waltham
Forest
, England
) is an
English musician, best known as a guitarist. He is associated with the
Canterbury scene and has worked in
experimental domains since the late 1960s. Besides his
solo recordings he has been a
member of
Gong,
Khan and
System
7.
History
Early career
Whilst still at school, he joined his first band, a blues rock band
called
Uriel, with
Dave Stewart,
Mont Campbell and
Clive Brooks. The band split up in 1968 with
the other members going on to form
Egg,
but they briefly re-united under assumed names to record the album
Arzachel in 1969. Hillage also
guested on
Egg's 1974 album
The Civil Surface.
In 1969, Hillage began studies at Kent University in Canterbury,
befriending local bands
Caravan and
Spirogyra and occasionally jamming
with them. Meanwhile he wrote songs and, by late 1970, had
accumulated enough material for an album.
Caravan put him in touch with their manager
Terry King, who got Hillage signed with Deram on the basis of a
demo of his material recorded with the help of
Dave Stewart of
Egg.
In early 1971, Hillage formed
Khan with
bassist/vocalist Nick Greenwood, formerly of
Crazy World Of Arthur
Brown. Although future
Gong and
Hatfield and the North
drummer
Pip Pyle was involved in the early
stages, the line-up finally settled with the inclusion of organist
Dick Henningham and drummer Eric Peachey (ex-Dr K's Blues Band),
both of whom had recently collaborated on Greenwood's solo project
Cold
Cuts, recorded in California in 1970 but belatedly
released in 1972.
Following a series of concerts throughout 1971, several of them
supporting labelmates
Caravan, Khan
began recording their debut album in November, by which time
Henningham had left, forcing Hillage to bring in his former
bandmate Dave Stewart to play the keyboard parts. By the time
Space Shanty came out in May
1972, Canadian Val Stevens (formerly of Toronto's popular soul-rock
band
Grant Smith & The
Power) had filled the vacancy, making his debut on a short
European tour (including a televised appearance at the Montreux
Festival) and continuing with a UK tour supporting
Caravan in June.
By then, musical disagreements between Hillage and Greenwood
culminated with the latter's departure. Hillage decided to form a
new line-up with a slightly different direction, retaining the
services of Peachey and asking Stewart back (
Egg having recently broken up), and adding
Nigel Griggs (later of
Split Enz) on bass. New compositions by Hillage
and Stewart were added to the repertoire, including "I Love Its
Holy Mystery", which would form the basis of Hillage's later epic
"Solar Musick Suite". Unfortunately, neither manager Terry King nor
label Decca showed much faith in the new music, leaving Hillage
with no choice but to break up the band in October 1972.
Steve Hillage playing Hyde Park,
1974
Hillage promptly joined
Kevin Ayers' new
live band Decadence, participating in Ayers' 1973 album
Bananamour (Harvest, May 1973)
(his solo on "Shouting In A Bucket Blues" was particularly
memorable) and touring the UK and France for two months. Having in
the meantime become a fan of
Gong,
Hillage stayed in France after the tour to join the band. In
January 1973 he took part in the sessions for
Flying Teapot, the first
installment of the "Radio Gnome" trilogy, and soon after graduated
to full-time membership. The 'classic' line-up of
Gong was now in place, with Daevid Allen, Gilli
Smyth, Didier Malherbe, Tim Blake, Mike Howlett and Pierre Moerlen,
and recorded two further albums,
Angels Egg and
You, before disintegrating in 1975.
In November 1973, Hillage participated in a live-in-the-studio
performance of
Mike Oldfield's
Tubular Bells for the BBC. It is
available on Oldfield's
Elements
DVD.
When Allen, Gong's founder and mastermind, left in April 1975,
Hillage took over leadership but found this position increasingly
uncomfortable, and by the year's end had jumped ship to launch his
solo career, his motivation to do so fuelled by the success of his
solo album
Fish Rising,
recorded while still in Gong and featuring most of his bandmates.
His next effort
L
album was recorded in the USA using musicians from
Todd Rundgren's Utopia, and on its release
Hillage formed a touring band which toured to critical and public
acclaim in late 1976. During the latter half of the 1970s, Hillage
made a name for himself as a
guitarist and
prog-rock / fusion composer and performer in the post
Hendrix / pre-
punk
scene. 1977's
Motivation
Radio, with its shorter tracks, marked a departure from
the long instrumental workouts of previous efforts, but 1978's
Green,
co-produced by
Pink Floyd's
Nick Mason, was something of a return to his
earlier, spacier work.
These 1970s works (tacitly in collaboration with his longtime
girlfriend
Miquette Giraudy)
blended complex studio production techniques with dreamscape
anthems and hooky, progressive passages of new world lydian
electric fusion. With lyrics about "electric Gypsies", Hillage was
seen as something of a
hippie figure, and his
sales took a fall with the arrival of
punk
rock. Hillage himself was somewhat enthusiastic about the
energy and freedom of punk rock and the CD version of his 1979
album
Open includes the unambiguously
punky "1988 Aktivator" (which originally appeared on the fourth
studio side of the
live album Live
Herald), whilst other songs on
Open (such as "Getting
In Tune", and "Don't Dither Do It") have an identifiable, if
diluted, punk flavor.
Hillage spent time in the Ladbroke Grove
area of London
, home of the
UK Underground and worked
with Nik Turner founder member of
Hawkwind (one of the original
Underground Community Bands).
Later career
In 1979, Hillage played guitar on "Nuclear Waste" by The Radio
Actors with lead vocals by
Sting.
During the 1980s, Hillage worked as a
record producer, working for artists such as
It Bites,
Simple
Minds,
Murray Head,
Nash The Slash,
Real Life,
Cock Robin and
Robyn Hitchcock. He returned to producing in
the 90s, working on
The
Charlatans self-titled disc in 1995.
After hearing the likes of
The Orb playing
his 1979 ambient record
Rainbow
Dome Musick, Hillage teamed up with Giraudy again in the
early 1990s to form their own ambient dance act:
System 7. They soon became part of the
underground dance scene in London.
Hillage also produced in the 1990s a
raï musical show called '1, 2, 3 Soleils', featuring Algerian
singers
Faudel, Rachid
Taha and Khaled he also
arranged many songs of Latifa.
Since the mid 1990s, Hillage has been an important contributor to
Rachid Taha's music, as guitarist and producer.
In November 2006, he made a surprise return to the
Gong fold when he and Giraudy performed at the
Gong Unconvention in Amsterdam, as the "Steve Hillage Band"
(playing material from the 70's albums - mainly from Fish Rising,
which was itself essentially Hillage using most of the rest of the
Gong band as his own), as System 7, Hillage and Giraudy's current
set up, and also as members of
Gong. At
the Unconvention, Hillage also contributed to the "Glissando
Orchestra", a one hour plus performance where a number of
guitarists (ten or more at some stages, including Hillage and Gong
lead man Daevid Allen) all played mostly continuous drone notes
with some gentle melodic lines overlaid.
This participation in the Gong band was reprised in a small number
of concerts held by Gong in London in June 2008, where Hillage and
Giraudy were among the line up which also included Daevid Allen,
Gilli Smyth, and Mike Howlett. At those concerts, Hillage also
played one track from his own solo repertoire: "Light in the Sky"
from Motivation Radio.
In January 2007, four of his albums -
Fish Rising,
L,
Motivation Radio and
Rainbow Dome
Musick - were released in the UK remastered on CD, each,
except the latter, with previously unreleased bonus tracks.
In February 2007,
Green,
Live Herald,
Open and
For To Next/And Not Or followed,
similarly remastered with bonus content.
Hillage also collaborated with
Ozric
Tentacles on the 2004 album
Spirals in Hyperspace.
"Light in the Sky", from his 1977 album
Motivation Radio,
is used as the theme for
The Sunday Night Project on
Channel 4.
The new
Gong album entitled
2032, released on 21 September 2009,
features both Hillage and Giraudy as part of a return to the
classic 1973-1975 line-up of the band.
Discography
References
External links
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