Please Don't Touch!

Hackett's departure from Genesis became public in October 1977. For the follow-up to Voyage of the Acolyte he went to Los Angeles and recorded with American guests: singers Randy Crawford, Richie Havens and Steve Walsh, drummers Phil Ehart and Chester Thompson, bassist Tom Fowler and the Van der Graaf Generator violinist Graham Smith. He said America produced "by far the best vocalists". He was signed to Charisma in Britain but to Chrysalis in the United States.

The title track was pitched to Genesis during the Wind & Wuthering sessions and rejected. It varies the main theme of Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers and the theme returned in Hackett to Bits on the 1986 GTR album. Narnia is based on C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and features Walsh, and Kim is named after Kim Poor, with John Hackett on flute and largely inspired by Satie's Gymnopedie No 1. Poor also painted the cover, which shows a Victorian couple attacked by automata in a toy shop.

It reached 38 in Britain and 103 in the United States. The tour that followed, which began in Oslo on 4 October 1978, was his first as a solo artist.