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,
Khan and
System 7.
Early career
Hillage was born Stephen Simpson Hillage in
Chingford,
London,
England on
2 August 1951. While 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
Egg (band). 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, 1976
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.
When Allen, the band'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.
"Light in the Sky", from his 1977 album Motivation Radio, is used as the theme for
The Sunday Night Project on
Channel 4.
Discography
(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
(2003) Light in the Sky
(2004) Live at Deeply Vale Festival 1978'
(2008) Evan Marc & Steve Hillage - Dreamtime Submersible (Somnia Records)
