What a Steve Hackett listener is loyal to is not the band he joined, exactly. It is a job description: a guitarist credited on one album for both electric and nylon guitar, working inside pieces long enough to leave room for both. That role was built inside one English group between 1971 and 1977, and nobody involved kept it to themselves. This guide to prog rock albums for Steve Hackett fans names six records, none issued under his own name, each tied to him by something documented: a chair he inherited, a label he shared, a bandmate with a second job, a guitarist he later formed a band with, a player who named him in print.

Genesis — Selling England by the Pound (1973)

Start where he actually is. This is the album on which the title artist is credited for electric guitar and for nylon guitar, and it is the reference the other five are measured against. Charisma issued it on 5 October 1973, cut at Island Studios in London that August, and it reached number 3 on the Official Albums Chart. It also carries a wordless piece among the sung ones. The New Musical Express called it the band’s best, most adventurous album to date.

Anthony Phillips — The Geese and the Ghost (1977)

The chair the title artist walked into had been somebody else’s first. Genesis’s founding guitarist left in July 1970; a short-lived stand-in followed; then the title artist placed an advertisement in Melody Maker and the band’s singer answered it. This is that founder’s first album under his own name, cut at a converted barn in Surrey and finished at Olympic Studios in London, and it keeps the wiring live: the group’s bassist and twelve-string player is all over it, and its drummer sings lead on two of the songs. Hit & Run, the company grown out of Genesis’s management, released it in March 1977. Prog called it a valuable addition to the Genesis canon and placed it there beside the title artist’s own solo work; the title artist’s own 2009 album carries a contribution from him.

Brand X — Moroccan Roll (1977)

While the title artist was still in Genesis, that band’s drummer was holding down a second job. The result was cut at Trident and Morgan studios in London across December 1976 and January 1977, with the same drummer on the kit and singing. Charisma released it — the label Genesis were on, the other half of the bridge — and it reached number 37 on the Official Albums Chart. Do not come looking for songs: most of it carries no lyrics, and where a voice turns up it is generally another instrument. Prog, revisiting the band in 2017, reported an online poll showing the esteem in which this album and its two neighbours are still held.

Steve Howe — Beginnings (1975)

The most literal bridge here is a band the two guitarists shared: in 1985 the title artist and the guitarist of Yes and Asia formed GTR, made one album, toured it and parted. This is that guitarist’s first record under his own name, released on Atlantic in 1975 and staffed from the Yes orbit of the moment: both drummers who had held that band’s chair play on it, so does its keyboard player of the period, alongside members of Gryphon. It reached number 22 on the Official Albums Chart. AllMusic, quoted in the album’s standard reference entry, judges the playing strong throughout while finding the songs unmemorable: a fair warning, and the reason a guitar listener is the right audience.

Marillion — Script for a Jester’s Tear (1983)

Here the debt was stated out loud. Marillion’s guitarist told Prog in 2019 that his playing is a mix of Camel’s guitarist, the title artist and Pink Floyd’s, and that the comparison did not trouble him at all. The debut where that voice arrives is this one, recorded at the Marquee Studios in London and released by EMI in March 1983. It reached number 7 on the Official Albums Chart and spent 31 weeks on the chart in all. Kerrang! called it extremely impressive, fully living up to the band’s previous promise.

Big Big Train — English Electric Part One (2012)

The modern end of the same line, and the one link needing plain speaking. The title artist does not play on this album. The drummer who does went on to work with him directly: Louder reported in 2025 that he brought the title artist in to record new parts for a reissue of his own tribute to the Genesis double album of 1974, with strings cut at Abbey Road. The bridge runs through a player, after the fact, not through a shared year or label. The album came out on the band’s own English Electric Recordings in 2012, with a cast running to cornet, trombone, tuba and strings. Prog, reviewing it on release, called it at times simply sublime.

Where to start

Selling England by the Pound first, if you somehow have not: it asks nothing of you. Script for a Jester’s Tear next, the most song-shaped record here and the one where the debt is spoken rather than inferred. The Geese and the Ghost after that — quiet, more instrumental than sung, a parallel version of the same instincts. English Electric Part One is the long modern one. Moroccan Roll asks the most, and repays anyone wanting that rhythm section pushed harder. Beginnings goes last, and honestly: a guitar record with songs attached, not the other way round.

Go deeper

Four of these six carry on elsewhere here. Genesis is the obvious thread: the beginner’s guide to the essential records sorts the catalogue era by era, and the band page gathers the rest. Brand X has a page of its own, which shows how much work that drummer did away from Genesis. Marillion has a beginner’s guide and a recommendations page of its own; Big Big Train has a beginner’s guide and a band page.

Back towards the guitarist who sent you here, the beginner’s guide to the essential Steve Hackett records handles the solo catalogue this page kept out of the six; the band page keeps the rest. The guide for Peter Gabriel listeners runs the same method from the other end of the same group; the map for the series is Prog Rock Recommendations: What to Listen to Next; and the wider canon they sit inside is at The Best Progressive Rock Albums of All Time. A book-length account of the British scene, Beyond the Thames, in the Beyond the Sound series, covers the same ground at greater length.

Want the deeper story behind these records? The books map every era →

Enjoyed the read? Find your next one on the bookshelf below →