I should add, keyboards when done right, can produce some really quality guitar leads. Primarily electric Piano going through the right pedals. I remember quite a few years back, late 90's, a Sam Ash store here in NY, a keyboard salesman, great guy I'd deal with a lot, we used to laugh at how hot the leads he was getting out of this Kurzweil patch, through some signal processing. People would come by from the guitar department, saying what is that guitar?
He would get just the right guitar bends and express tension really well. The nature of a good piano patch is a hammered string, and it can be really hot sounding for a guitar fundamental. The other approach of course is sampled guitar leads which is what I hear, but with some nice expression.

Anyway, I think the Hackett reply just says it's reminiscent of that sort of playing. Steve hackett got some very sustained, and processed sounds that were very cool (Firth of fifth, Dance on a volcano, Fly on a windshield, etc.). Cheers.

I also like the Fat synth going on here.