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Spectral Mornings

1979 studio album by Steve Hackett

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ2314954
Source-derived summary

Spectral Mornings is the third studio album by English guitarist and songwriter Steve Hackett, released in May 1979 on Charisma Records. It is his first to feature members of his touring band, which many Hackett fans consider as the "classic line-up". The musicians are his brother John Hackett, Nick Magnus, Dik Cadbury, John Shearer, and Pete Hicks.

In 2005, Spectral Mornings was remastered and re-released on Virgin Records. The new edition features updated liner notes and bonus tracks. A new 5.1 surround mix of the album by Steven Wilson is included in Hackett's 2015 compilation box set Premonitions: The Charisma Recordings 1975–1983. In 2015, Hackett appeared on a re-recorded version, "Spectral Mornings 2015", with new lyrics written by David Longdon of Big Big Train, and sung by Longdon and Christina Booth of Magenta. Proceeds from the track on release went to Parkinson's Society UK.

Background

After the release of his previous album, Please Don't Touch!, in 1978, Hackett wished to tour the material from the album along with material from his previous solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte. This meant that he needed to assemble a touring band since the personnel on Please Don't Touch! had essentially consisted of guest musicians.

Editorial summary

“Spectral Mornings” enters the record as 1979 studio album by Steve Hackett. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Spectral, Mornings and studio can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 2005, 2015, 1975—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1979. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Spectral, Mornings and studio.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Spectral Mornings” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Spectral, Mornings and studio provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2314954. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1979, 2005, 2015 and 1975.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Spectral Mornings”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Spectral Mornings primary sources, Spectral Mornings archive and Spectral research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Spectral Mornings”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Spectral Mornings” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.