| Steve Hillage |
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Stephen Simpson Hillage |
| Born |
 2 August 1951 Chingford, London |
| Genre(s) |
Rock, Electronica |
| Instrument(s) |
guitar |
| Years active |
1967 – present |
Associated
acts |
Uriel,
Khan, Gong, System
7 |
| Website |
http://www.a-wave.com/system7/ |
Steve Hillage is a British
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 and
System 7.
|
Contents
- 1 History
- 2 Trivia
- 3 Discography
- 4 External
links
|
History
Hillage was born Stephen Simpson Hillage
in Chingford,
London, England on 2 August 1951. While still at
school, he joined his first band, a progressive
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 1971,
Hillage formed a new band, Khan, who released the album Space Shanty in 1972 before splitting.
He went on to join Kevin Ayers' live line-up,
participated in Ayers' 1973 album Bananamour (Harvest, May 1973), and
in 1973 he
became guitarist
with the eccentric space rock outfit Gong, in
time for their "Radio Gnome Trilogy".
After a brief stint in charge of Gong, Hillage went solo in 1975, his work partly
continuing the Gong mythology. He made a name for
himself as a guitarist
and prog-rock / fusion composer and performer in the post Hendrix
/ pre-punk
scene of the 1970s. His L album was recorded using
musicians from Todd Rundgren's Utopia, while Green
was produced by Pink Floyd's Nick
Mason.
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 hippy
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 vinyl 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).
During the 1980s,
Hillage worked as a record producer, working for artists
such as It
Bites, Simple Minds, 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.
This participation in the Gong band seems likely to be more of a
one-off than a continuing reformation, however. 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 one long
sustained undulating note.
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.
"Light in the Sky", from his 1977 album Motivation
Radio, is used as the theme for The Friday Night Project
on Channel
4.
Trivia
In The Young Ones episode Cash,
the Steve Hillage song, Electrick Gypsies, from the
album L, is playing in the background whilst Neil,
played by Nigel Planer, is trying to bust the
party of one of his hippie
friends, Warlock, played by Paul Bradley (Eastenders,
Holby
City), having landed a job as a Plod to earn money for the unexpected pregnancy of
his housemate, Vyvyan, played by Adrian
Edmondson. Neil mentions the artist's name in the same scene when he
inadvertently scratches the record, to wit: "Oh, no! — Steve Hillage!"
Discography
Solo albums
- (1975) Fish Rising
- (1976) L
- (1977) Motivation Radio
- (1978) Green
- (1979) Live Herald
- (1979) Rainbow Dome Musick
- (1979) Open
- (1983) For To Next / And Not Or
- (1994) BBC Radio 1 Live
- (2004) Live at Deeply Vale Festival 1978'
External links
