INTERVIEW WITH STEVE HILLAGE

Think Steve Hillage and the name System 7 will pop-up right away.
But his career spans back decades. Remember Gong? Today Steve hates being called a prog-rock guitar player and loves dance music culture! Read it all in this interview.

Please complete the following bit of lyrics, and tell something about your connection with it.

"City in my head, ........"

Was that period crucial in terms of the musical direction you choose to follow?

'' ...... Utopia.

"I don’t think Todd Rundgren’s influence had a crucial effect on my musical direction – my musical direction was already well formed at that point. But meeting Todd was like meeting a musical brother – it was great to collaborate with another string musical personality after leaving Gong and it was great to learn about record production from working with him."

Your output as a performing and recording musician is impressive on its own, but you can also look back at some highlights being a record producer. Tell us something about that.

"Quite early on in my career as a producer I had a great project with Simple Minds. One of the tracks from that album “Theme for Great Cities” that I mixed myself became a big Ibiza club hit at the time of Acid House in the late 80s around the time we decided to start System 7. It’s also been very inspiring working on many Arab music productions with artists like Rachid Taha, Khaled and Latifa etc. I love recording Arab string orchestras in Cairo!"

 1 | 2 | 3 all interviews