Money: Steve Hackett

What’s your attitude to money?

Several times in my life I’ve had money and lost it, and reinvested it. Money is something that comes and goes and is a means to an end.

Did it change when you became successful?

Once I started to make money, yes. One thing I started to get into in the seventies is ActionAid, the charity that was giving kids around the world a chance to get a bit of education. But I haven’t given up a career to feed the starving. I’m not a saint.

Were you minted in Genesis?

No. I didn’t start making any money until I started doing my solo work. Here’s an example. Having done a year’s work of promoting The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in 1974-75, we owed a quarter-of-a-million quid. That’s not the reason I started doing solo work, it was because I had ideas I wanted to express.

You underwent a huge financial and personal crisis about five years ago.

I went through a divorce, and there’s a gagging order so I can’t discuss the details. I’m very pleased that I divorced, because it left me free to work, but there was a certain price for that. I nearly had to sell my dream guitar at some point, my Les Paul.

What was your biggest extravagance?

The very Les Paul I was talking about. A 1957 Gold Top, costing all of eight-hundred dollars in 1973.

What’s the best use for your earnings now?

I’ve got two places – one where I live and another that’s a place to work – and I’m trying to save up to centralise them. That could be anywhere in the world. But as a musician you should be on the move, taking your music to the people.

If you could advise the eighteen-year-old you, what would you say?

Do it all again, but be a tad more careful.

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer who joined Kerrang! in 1999 and then the dark side – Prog – a decade later as Deputy Editor. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!) and asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit. Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London and can be occasionally heard polluting the BBC Radio airwaves as a pop and rock pundit. Steven Wilson still owes her £3, which he borrowed to pay for parking before a King Crimson show in Aylesbury.