GTR-GTR (1986)

When the news broke in the mid-80s that two of the great progressive guitar heroes such as Steve Howe and Steve Hackett would come together to form a band, no one would have imagined that such a combination would have resulted in one of the best albums of the world. decade and with overwhelming commercial success.
Despite the doubts generated when that meeting was discussed, they went ahead against all odds and formed a team to record an album and cunningly dare the fine line between commercial melody and innate sophistication.
Howe had already demonstrated his ability to do something similar with Asia in 1982 and 1983 with his first two albums, Asia had been the perfect example to follow; She had combined the talents of four '70s prog rock giants to do what they did.
But Hackett was on another level, since since his departure from Genesis he had released a series of albums very focused on a very uncommercial sound and away from the masses of sophisticated Pop-Rock.
The result was the first and only work of a formation that they would call GTR, and that was formed in addition to Hackett and Howe by the drummer Jonathan Mover (ex-Marillion), the bassist Phil Spalding (ex-Mike Oldfield) and the singer Max Bacon, as well as Geoff Downes who was the producer and composer of "The Hunter" and Brain Lane (Yes manager) as the band's musical advisor.
This unique and surprising album has a style that combines nuances of progressive Rock and Hard rock framed within the so-called AOR (Adult Oriented Rock), it contains some songs that were an overwhelming success in many countries like in the United States where "When The Hear Rules The Mind" or "The Hunter" were several months between the first positions of the lists of successes.
However, the versatility of Hackett and Howe was manifested with other gems such as the melodic rock "Here I Wait", the progressive "Jekyll and Hyde", the AOR "You Can Still Get Through" or the rhythm and perhaps the most successful song from the album "Imagining".