Genesis – A Trick of the Tail 1975–1977

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Contents Chapter One

3 A TRICK OF THE TAIL

Chapter Two

23 WIND & WUTHERING

Chapter Three

33 SECONDS OUT

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Chapter One

A TRICK OF THE TAIL

In 1975, Genesis found themselves at a crossroads. Producing a follow-up to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was never going to be an easy task, but Peter Gabriel’s decision to leave the band in the summer of 1975 appeared to leave an insuperable problem. For many, Gabriel had become Genesis. The Lamb had been based on a short story he had written, and he had produced all the lyrics. Onstage, he had always been a flamboyant frontman, his theatrical excesses elevating Genesis to a pre-eminent position in the prog-rock elite, but the 1974–75 World Tour had confirmed to many that Gabriel was the band’s key member. Fans and critics alike were doubtful that continuing without him would be a viable option.

Amongst those who apparently auditioned as his prospective replacement were Allan Clarke (from the Hollies), Mike D’Abo, Mick Rogers (ex-Manfred Mann’s Earth Band), Paul Jones, Jess Roden, Andy Fraser, Nick Lowe and ‘Jeans On’ man David Dundas. None fitted the bill, and it was during a Brand X session that Bill Bruford suggested the eventual solution – for live shows, he could play drums while Collins covered vocal duties. The rest is history.

•• Following the Lamb tour, Hackett recorded his first solo album Voyage of the Acolyte as he felt unsure that Genesis would survive following Gabriel’s departure. He then reconvened with the remaining group members in Acton, London in July 1975 to create Genesis’ next album – A Trick of the Tail. The new material was quickly written and with little effort, and most of Dance on a Volcano and Squonk

was put together in the first three days. Recording began in October 1975 at Trident Studios with Hentschel as producer.

A Trick of the Tail was released in February 1976 and was a commercial and critical success for the band. The album reached No. 3 in the UK and No. 31 in the US. The title track was released as a single, though it did not chart. In June, the album was certified Gold by the British Phonographic Institute for selling over 100,000 copies which helped the band clear the £400,000 of debt (equivalent to £2,900,200 in 2021) they owed when Gabriel left.

With the benefit of almost thirty years of hindsight, A Trick of the Tail can be seen as an emphatic statement of intent. Not only were Genesis without Gabriel a viable proposition, they were out to prove that they could still make complex, challenging music better than anyone else. It wasn’t universally perceived that way at the time, though – many were convinced that the band had been fatally wounded by the loss of their ‘leader’, and some refused to give the reduced 3

line-up a fair hearing. Even now, some die-hards maintain that everything after Gabriel’s departure was inconsequential – and, looking at the band’s output in the 1980s and beyond, the argument is far easier to sustain. However, A Trick of the Tail is rightly regarded by most as a considerable achievement.

With a far warmer production than any previous Genesis album, for which David Hentschel should be given due credit, A Trick of the Tail includes many fine moments, some strong compositions and has an overall consistency which earlier recordings lack. True, some of the lyrics are a little clumsy, and Collins occasionally sounds slightly uncomfortable in his new role as lead vocalist, but only the title track fails to live up to previous standards. Moreover, although the band’s pastoral side was given more emphasis than before, accusations that Genesis had betrayed their progressive roots were, for the time being, premature.

For the first time in their career Genesis filmed promotional videos for their songs, including A Trick of the Tail and Robbery, Assault and Battery. From March to July 1976, Genesis performed across North America and Europe with the A Trick of the Tail tour, to enthusiastic crowds.

Collins adopted a more humorous rapport with the audience, unlike Gabriel’s theatrical approach, which was successful.

The shows in Glasgow and Stafford were filmed for their concert film Genesis: In Concert, released in cinemas in February 1977 as a double bill with White Rock.

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A track-by-track review of

A TRICK OF THE TAIL

by Hugh Fielder

Dance on a Volcano A superb opener, with a complex structure and what might just be Phil Collins’ best ever performance as a percussionist on any Genesis recording. An almost leisurely introduction lulls the listener into a false sense of calm before the opening verse rips everything apart. The 7/8 time signature and complex instrumental interplay are suitably edgy, communicating the uncertainty and danger implicit in the lyrics.

Typically, the lyrics themselves are oblique and open to a number of interpretations but, in the light of Gabriel’s departure, the likelihood is that they refer to the obligation the band felt itself under to come up with proof of their abilities. As Mike Rutherford later admitted, ‘We knew it had to be not just good but very good,’ so clearly there was intense pressure on the musicians. Remarkably, given its complexity, the first half of the track came out of a studio jam, while the instrumental passage at the end evolved later.

David Hentschel later said A Trick of the Tail was recorded in a relaxed atmosphere, but signs of the tension beginning to grow between Tony Banks and Steve Hackett are evident in the closing section of this recording where Hackett’s guitar suffers from being pitted against a heavy keyboard backing.

Here was a perfect opportunity for Hackett to cut loose, but the arrangement gives him little or no chance to shine, and it’s tempting to interpret this as a product of Banks’ preeminence in the band at the time.

Nothing, however, could prevent Dance on a Volcano from being one of Genesis’ strongest recordings, and they had opened their post-Gabriel account in rampant fashion.

Entangled A complete change of mood for this one, a haunting number underpinned by acoustic guitar and possessing an atmospheric intensity rarely matched by any of the band’s recordings. Although co-credited to Steve Hackett and Tony Banks, Entangled bears the unmistakable hallmarks of Hackett’s subsequent solo work, and is one of only two numbers on the album on which his influence can clearly be heard.

Opening with no less than three acoustic guitars beneath Collins’ understated vocal, the delicate harmonies that fill out the chorus lend the track a mesmerising quality which perfectly compliments the lyrics.

It has been suggested by some that the story concerns a cynical group of medics bringing a dying man back to life and then presenting him with a huge bill for their ministrations, but the key line concerning ‘counting backwards’ points rather to undergoing anaesthetic or even hypnosis. There is also a reference to the patient looking ‘tired and ill’, which implies physical or mental frailty rather than a near-death situation.

The track closes with an achingly beautiful synthesiser solo, played over a backing of acoustic guitars and mellotron, surpassing just about any of the pastoral passages on earlier albums. This is a beautifully crafted, dreamlike number which is the musical equivalent of having an out-of-bodyexperience. Entangled is the perfect progressive ballad and remains a highlight not only of this album but the Genesis canon as a whole.

‘If a musician dares to get out of the box he’s been put in, people get confused; They want people where they can find them. I am fortunate in some respects as I’ve always been known as someone who “moves around” and tries different things.

But generally, we are supposed to stay where we’re put.’

Squonk With its heavy, almost Bonham-esque, beat and a somewhat plodding quality, Squonk was one of the tracks that came under fire from those who claimed that the four-man Genesis had moved too far away from their roots.

This was undoubtedly a departure from the band’s earlier style and, in retrospect, something of a clue to the band’s later commercial leanings.

At some points, Collins’ vocals are rather lost in the mix, a pity because this is one of the tracks on which he sings towards the top of his range, and his efforts deserved more prominence. The lyrics themselves were based on an entry by William T Cox in his 1910 book Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. Cox describes the Squonk as an ugly creature, with an ill-fitting, blemished skin. Acknowledging its ugliness, the Squonk spends much of its time hiding from the world

Phil Collins

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and weeping sorrowfully. Furthermore, it can evade capture by dissolving completely into a pool of tears, hence its Latin name Lacrimacorpus Dissolvens.

Squonk was one of the earliest pieces written for the album – perhaps everyone was suffering a reaction to the complexity of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – and as such was used as a test bed for prospective vocalists after Gabriel’s departure.

Mad Man Moon A Tony Banks composition based on piano and mellotron which starts out as another delicate ballad before moving into the classical piano territory previously explored on the likes of Firth of Fifth. Beautifully written, and graced with one of Collins’ most accomplished vocal performances, Mad Man Moon boasts a fine melody and some exquisite playing but somehow falls just short of being a true classic.

Curiously, Steve Hackett seems to make no contribution to the recording at all, and this lack of instrumental diversity may well contribute to the feeling of unfulfilled potential.

Where Banks has chosen a rather cheesy synthesiser sound for the lead instrument in the middle section, even a few bars of Hackett’s trademark guitar work might have added an emotional edge to the proceedings.

Lyrically, however, Mad Man Moon is difficult to fault.

These are excellently-crafted lines, an elegant evocation of the perennial belief that the other man’s grass must be greener.

Starting from the break-up of a personal relationship, and the emotional desolation suffered in its aftermath, Banks uses images of the desert to represent the feeling of emptiness that follows any of life’s wrong decisions. He later expands the theme further to cover all victims of over-arching ambition.

Not surprisingly, given its heavy reliance on multiple keyboard parts, Mad Man Moon never found its way into Genesis’ live repertoire. Nevertheless songs such as this were to be the model for a new, more commercial, Genesis, and success on a scale they could only imagine.

Robbery, Assault and Battery More accurately, ‘Robbery, Assault and Murder’ as the main 6

character shoots his way out of trouble after being caught in the act of emptying a safe… but there’s not much that rhymes with ‘murder’, so ‘battery’ it is.

Throughout the Gabriel years, storytelling had been Genesis’ stock in trade, and in many respects this is firmly in the same tradition. Basically, a straightforward, light-hearted rock song, Robbery, Assault and Battery lyrically evokes memories of the music-hall style of, say, Harold the Barrel from 1971’s Nursery Cryme album, and former child-actor Collins threw himself into the role(s) wholeheartedly.

There is a surprise lurking in the middle section as both Banks and Hackett in turn offer accomplished solos over a frenetic backing totally at odds with the relatively simple structure of the opening.

This achieves a brilliant change in feel and texture, and successfully prevents the song from tipping too far into the realms of vaudeville.

Collins, meanwhile, turns in a masterful performance behind the kit, creating an atmosphere just the right side of comedy through the verses and bursting into life for the instrumental breaks.

Robbery, Assault and Battery has an endearing charm, and it remained a live favourite for some time.

subtly, and throughout the instrumental section which follows Hackett’s plaintive guitar can be heard intertwined with Banks’ classical piano flourishes and sensitively pitched synthesiser to stunning effect. This is the eerie, swooping guitar sound that graced many a Genesis recording over the years but which is sadly absent from much of A Trick of the Tail.

Crowned with another excellent vocal performance from Phil Collins, Ripples stands out as an example of Genesis’ unique ability to craft ballads of exquisite and spine-tingling beauty. Here Collins had superb material to draw on – wistful without being overly sentimental, the lyrics take a look at the ageing process, and, married to a gently lilting melody line, the words perfectly evoke the feeling of futility inherent in growing older, watching beauty fade and seeing time inexorably passing…

‘We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.’

A Trick of the Tail A sticking point for most fans at the time, and barely less of a talking point almost three decades on, the album’s title track was also its least musically adventurous. Fans are still divided on its merits, although there are probably more prepared to defend it now that when it first appeared. It simply wasn’t what die-hard Genesis fans wanted, and offered little in the way of musical or lyrical satisfaction for those raised on a diet of Selling England by the Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

In truth, this is probably the album’s low point, although it remains catchy and infectious. The fairly simple lyrics, Tony Banks later explained, were inspired by William Golding’s The Inheritors, about the last survivor of a race who inhabited Earth before man. ‘The very last chapter deals with our

Bill Bruford

Ripples Just when you thought that Entangled looked like being the most beautiful song Genesis would ever write, along comes another shimmering song based on a backing of twinkling keyboards and acoustic guitar.

Clocking in at a shade over eight minutes, Ripples affords Steve Hackett a second opportunity to stretch out and make his mark. Halfway through, the mood of the piece changes 8

reaction to him, while the rest of the story is his reaction to us. It’s about an alien with horns and a tail who appears in a modern city, and how people react to him.’

Although it pales somewhat in comparison to the other tracks on the album, A Trick of the Tail remains today what it always was – a simple, inoffensive song telling an uncomplicated story in a straightforward manner.

Los Endos Reprising some of the album’s dominant themes, most notably Dance on a Volcano and Squonk, Los Endos was a neat way of rounding off the album. Powerful, memorable and brilliantly put together, Los Endos was also an obvious candidate for live performance and featured in the band’s stage shows for about six years after release.

As the track fades out, Phil Collins can clearly be heard singing a couple of lines from Supper’s Ready, later explained as the band’s way of saying goodbye to their recently departed vocalist. Gabriel had felt increasingly trapped towards the end of his time with the band, and hated what he’d come to see as the treadmill of writing, recording, touring and then starting again, so these were appropriate words indeed.

Meanwhile, Genesis were most emphatically still in business as they made clear in the series of very frank magazine interviews that follow.

•• Bill Bruford: Have Drum Will Travel Phil Sutcliffe, Sounds, 10 April 1976

It was in the unlikely setting of the Una Billings School of Dancing’s basement that the partnership which will be titillating the timpani of drum freaks all over the country this summer was conceived – Phil Collins and Bill Bruford in the same band, the reborn Genesis.

As Bruford puts it: ‘I’d been cavorting around with Phil for quite some time in Brand X and we were rehearsing in this little place in Shepherd’s Bush. He kept on talking about needing a drummer for Genesis onstage because he had

decided he could handle the vocals out front and I said “Why don’t you ask me you prick?” and he said “Yes.”’ Which is how one of the year’s most unlikely rumours became fact – Bruford joining Genesis? blimey, Collins hasn’t left them as well has he? Are they busting up? All wrong, though the speculation was quite understandable as, in losing their singer and main writer Peter Gabriel last autumn, the band had already appeared as depleted as the Stones without Jagger.

A Trick of the Tail has proved that Genesis live. Now they need a successful tour to complete the regeneration.

Not that Bruford was a known Genesis devotee. Far from it. He said: ‘I’d never seen them or heard their albums before I had to learn them to go on tour. I’ve been on another planet for a couple of years. The planet Gong. But I respected Phil and knew he wouldn’t be involved in any rubbish.

‘Obviously they need to get out on the road and reassert themselves. I think there’s quite a refreshing change in their music now that Gabriel’s left. They may have got bogged down in his theatrics I suspect.’

So Bruford moves into his third major progressive rock band following Yes, King Crimson and a batch of adventures in between which make him one of the most widely experienced musicians of any kind in the land.

Since he left Crimson he’s hardly given an interview which is strange for such a friendly and articulate man, but he told his publicists he was ready now and the moment he sat down in the unpadded cell of ‘the interview room’ he opened up saying what he wanted to, so that questions were irrelevant trivia.

Not that he’s suddenly got on some ego trip about being the most wanted drummer man around: ‘I’m not being hired

by Genesis to change the group’s heads around. After six or seven years they have a clear idea of their own direction and they’re not going to let any old ligging drummer interfere with it.

‘I know the more obnoxious and revolutionary aspect to my personality will have to be saved for another occasion.’

He set up a fine rattling of fingers and feet on the desk in front of him, intense enthusiasm flowing out of every word and gesture.

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He began to analyse exactly what all those superstar and extremely obscure gigs have meant to him and so may I present to you a few brief chapter’s of an unfinished work titled Bruford’s Progress: Savoy Brown: ‘My first band. I played with them for three nights and then they asked me to leave. They didn’t think I was suitable which was true.’

Yes: ‘After that debacle Yes was my first real shot at anything.

I had nothing to compare it to so I wanted out to get some distance from it and see what I had been doing.’

I always thought his drumming driving right up the ass of a potentially too-cool band was a vital ingredient in making Fragile a great album. Bruford is more critical of his performance: ‘I’m glad it convinced you but it didn’t convince me. It was just youthful enthusiasm, very shallow.’

King Crimson: ‘With Crimson I learnt the selfdependence of playing on the spur of the moment. With Crimson nothing was discussed, at least half of the set was improvised. It’s very nerve-racking when you haven’t been used to it.’

Roy Harper: ‘Obviously it’s not a dynamic drum job. No way was I required to play anything apart from straight, gentle, stylised rock drumming which earlier on would have been very embarrassing to me, unthinkable.

‘In a way it’s like asking Nureyev to dance a waltz. But there was a terrific amount of creativity in the music, it was nice to play with guys like Chris Spedding and I really liked Roy’s philosophy. It was a way of saying “I sympathise with you, I’ll play with you.” He’s the first person I’ve heard who’s been able to sing “I love you” and not make me want to throw up.’

Gong and National Health: For the past year or so Bruford has been the ubiquitous drummer with these bands (related by various marriages to Hatfield and the North, Egg and Gilgamesh) on the progressive frontiers of British rock, 11

sometimes almost presented as their credentials – ‘Well, if Bruford’s there it can’t be just freaky rubbish can it?’

He said: ‘These bands both have their problems connecting, getting it out of the front rooms. I can help them with that I think because of my experience playing big gigs. I enjoy the Montreal Forum in front of 13,000 or Middlesbrough Poly on a Thursday night with twenty-two people who don’t understand what you are doing, or Alan Gowen’s front room with nobody but the band. It’s the spark.

It’s my tiny, infinitesimal purpose for being here.’

Absolute Elsewhere: Bruford’s name has recently been writ large in the publicity for an album based on Von Daniken’s theories about spacemen visiting Earth centuries ago. It has not been well-received and the whole affair has given Bruford pause for thought.

‘I didn’t particularly care for that music,’ he said. ‘I did it in an afternoon session then six months later it surfaces with the full might of Warner Brothers behind it.

‘I’m accustomed to saying “yes” when people call me up but there’s a risk of playing in something that’s below par.

I’ll have to watch it. I don’t want to be hired just for my track record and my name, I want to be involved completely or not at all.

‘You have a responsibility to stand by what you have played and the session approach does devalue music, makes it muzak.’

He’s made so many choices in his musical life and yet he still doesn’t know what he’s going to do next: ‘I used to feel apologetic about it but I don’t think I should. Musicians are allowed to take a breather now and then.

‘Until I get that blinding white vision I won’t make a decision. No, not a solo album. I haven’t the gall to suggest I’m worth it. I laugh hysterically at my own compositions though I would like to get over that.’

Hyper-activity, a willingness to play along with other people’s grand schemes while mocking his own out of court – the combination of confidence and hesitancy that makes him the ‘have-drums-will-travel’ man must come from a combination of his admiration for some of the ‘strong people’ he has played with and his severely critical view of himself as seen in the mirror of music.

He said: ‘Jon Anderson, Robert Fripp, Jamie Muir, Didier Malherbe, Roy Harper and Mont Campbell all have a unique point of view and if you glide past them it rubs off. Maybe the common denominator is maturity, they are all relatively old for rock punks.

‘The way a man applies himself to an instrument reflects exactly the way he applies himself to life. All my weaknesses and strengths are in the way I play drums. It’s like taking off all my clothes.

‘Jamie Muir reduced me to tears in a rehearsal room, me a grown man, with these startlingly pertinent comments about my character which he had seen in my music.

‘I hate a lot of my playing. The reaction when I first saw myself like this, with Crimson, was “Aargh, it’s me and I’m horrible!” But you have discovered the reality and you can set to work to change it. As a drummer I think I’m edgy, ahead of the beat, too tight – I’d like to be more loose.’

And obnoxious. And revolutionary. The man who seems to fit in perfectly everywhere said: ‘Entertainment is about

‘You know, a song is like a kid. You bring it up. And sometimes something you thought was going to be fantastic, by the time it’s finished, is a bit of a disappointment.’

Phil Collins

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telling everybody that everything’s all right but music is on the side of the upsetters and that’s where I’m at.’ © Phil Sutcliffe, 1976

•• The Trick of the Tale: Phil Collins Talks Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 3 July 1976

Phil Collins is a spry, restless man with seemingly limitless amounts of energy and intense drive. It is this drive that has made him one of Britain’s finest group drummers and has enabled him to assume the tremendous responsibilities of fronting Genesis, one of the most exacting and musical bands now gracing the stages of rock.

It is hard to believe that Phil managed to contain so much of his talent in days of yore when one sees him now as fullyfledged singer and focal point of a band full of character and with such a solid tradition behind it.

Much of the frustration has been swept away, and Phil should be a much more contented musician now that he can work as a drummer, singer, and even incorporate his other talents as an actor.

The spell has broken with the passing of Peter Gabriel to pastures new, and each member of Genesis has developed and opened up in extraordinary fashion. Steve Hackett hurling his bottleneck at the audience – unheard of!

The testing ground for Genesis when they finally set out on the road, with Bill Bruford on drums, and Phil as vocalist and drummer, was America, where it was felt the music was better known, perhaps, than the personalities.

And America accepted the new, approved Genesis with open arms, as have their British fans.

Phil appeared at his London office to meet me sporting what seemed a greatly enlarged beard. His eyes twinkled behind his whiskers and he looked a bit like a Cornish rum smuggler.

Boost ‘Is it a pouch or two of baccy ye’d be after sir, or mebbe some brandy for the parson?’ Actually, he didn’t say that, but explained the beard as a psychological boost.

‘It’s just that I feel more at home with a beard. It’s just another thing to hide behind. It’s always been very short in the past. I’ve taken it on and off. But on tour I let it grow and become the Wild Man of Epsom.

‘We had a good time on the road. Bill fitted in very well, and one assumes that musically, people are flexible enough to fit in, but personality-wise, he was tailor-made for the job. And it was good fun – we bounced off each other a lot.

Having two drummers in the group means there is a lot of energy on stage.’

Q Did they clash at all or find themselves playing across each other?

‘No, not really. Obviously, it got better as we got into it.

He’d start a break and I’d know what was coming and I could put a full stop at the end of his phrase. Punctuation – yeah, right.

‘There are some things we did spontaneously, perfect together. It was that knife-edge stuff that was good. Some nights, it’s great, other just okay.

‘With two drummers, neither of you are doing much.

Bill plays the song while I’m out front. He stays within the framework but obviously injects his personality.

‘On something like Cinema Show we play a bit together.

Los Endos and Firth of Fifth, on those instrumental passages, we get in a groove. It’s very interesting.’

Changed ‘Of course, we’re alike in a way. I feel that in the past we were more similar, say a couple of years ago. But during Bill’s stint with Crimson, he changed a bit, and I’ve changed.

‘I’m very bottom heavy – good at the bass drum, whereas he’s good with his hands. So together we make a pretty good drummer! Any new man brings his energy into Genesis. And, for me, the novelty of singing onstage hasn’t worn off. Doing the album was a big shot in the arm.

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‘I knew I could sing the acoustic songs okay, with a kind of frail voice. But actually coming out and doing things like Squonk, well, I was obviously an unknown quantity.

‘I knew I could do it but didn’t want to force the others into letting me do it. In the end, they just said, “Well how about doing it?” and that’s really what happened. It was born out of necessity.’

Q So the changes have all worked out for the best then?

‘The band is really strong. A very strong group. We tend to do things in yearly cycles.

‘We’re starting work on an album in July and there will be a period when we’re not working. If Bill gets anything together during that period, then we’ll have to find somebody else. But we’re off to Europe now so we’ve a got a month or two with Bill. The next big change he wants to do is get into a group, and it will have to be the best for him, not a half-way thing.

‘But, until then, if we offer him the gig on a touring basis, he’ll probably do it. I know he enjoyed the touring side of it with us. Often the vibes on the road when he was with King Crimson were a bit strange.

‘In terms of establishing Genesis, the American tour was the most successful yet. Pete’s going doesn’t seem to have halted anything at all.

‘The album did the best in America that any album has done, and it’s been very encouraging. There was that first night and we wondered what was going to happen. The first gig was in London, Ontario, at a roller rink, and the people kinda knew us and they enjoyed it.’

Shouts ‘We were waiting for people to shout out: “Bring back Gabriel!” There was none of that at all. There were two shouts, but apart from that nothing – which is a pretty good average.

‘Everybody, Mike, Tony, and Steve, has come out of himself a lot more. Steve is much more energetic now. All the way down the line we’ve made a point of changing – producers, studios, even down to the credits which now say who wrote what.

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‘We started off A Trick of the Tail on a better basis all round – and we got a good bass drum sound!”

Q Whence came this new freshness about the band?

‘I dunno – we did that long tour with The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, and came back with Peter, and talked about the band quite a bit, and about what we were gonna do.

‘We had a couple of months at home writing, while I was doing my Brand X thing, and Steve was getting his solo album together. Basically, the vibe was to get some new ideas and instil freshness.

‘So we started work downstairs at a rehearsal room in Acton, and within the first two days we knew the new album was going to be pretty good.

‘We felt confident until it was time for the album to come out and we thought of our little baby being exposed to the world. What was going to happen to it? To us it was a foregone conclusion it was a success.”

Q It was hard to think of a similar situation in rock, where the lead singer of a powerful and successful band had quite and the band had survived. It was rather like Mick Jagger leaving the Rolling Stones – right?

‘I think people just underestimated our contribution. The same with singing. In the States, a lot of people were saying, “It’s remarkable how similar your voices are – it doesn’t sound any different.”

‘In fact, I had been singing with the group for five years, and my voice had always been subliminally in the background, or singing just behind Pete’s voice.

‘So when you take Peter’s voice away, it’s really not so different. And, of course, Genesis melodies are going to sound pretty similar, even if they’re sung by different people.

They’re tunes y’know.

‘Right now we’re looking forward to doing the next album.’

Q Did the band run into any controversy about the split in America?

‘No, but towards the beginning of the tour we ran into some 16

pretty strange reviews, but we know for a fact that of the two reviewers, one was a James Brown fan and the other was a gardening correspondent. They didn’t particularly like the show, but that’s what you’d expect.’

Q Did Bill and Phil talk drums throughout the tour together?

‘Oh yeah. We’d get together in the hotel after the gig and play each other tapes of Brand X and National Health, and well, you know what Bill’s like – he gets his pad and his books and he’s away for two hours.

‘I can’t discipline myself to do that. I can’t get enough out of a pad. But we have a lot of mutual ideas and I learnt much more about him as a person.’

Admired ‘We didn’t really know much about each other, although we’d ring each other up and exchange tapes. Now we’re good friends. I’d always admired Bill and I still think he’s one of the best we’ve got.’

Phil loves to work and even while he is thinking ahead to the next Genesis album, he is busy with a new album for Brand X and various session projects.

‘I’m doing Billy Lyle of Pilot’s solo album, so you can see I’ve got my irons in a lot of fires.

‘I did some stuff with Eno which was beautiful – I think Eno is fantastic. He’s making a very strong contribution.

‘Also – oh, one of the best things of the tour happened to me in LA. I got in the lift at the hotel with a big, lanky black guy, and I knew him from somewhere and it was Alphonso Johnson.

‘I’d been very fond of his bass playing with Weather Report, so I introduced myself and it transpired that he’d got most of our albums and knew all about Peter leaving and was trying to get a ticket for our LA concert. I got him a ticket and the next night he invited me round for dinner and asked me to do one side of his solo album. I was very chuffed at the chance of playing with guys like George Duke and Airto.’

Session ‘Patrick Moraz might be doing it as well, or Jan Hammer. I’ll be going to LA in August. Alphonso is now with Cobham and George Duke, but he’s basically a session guy and did all those Philadelphia sessions, and then moved to LA and worked with Airto and Flora Purim. He was with Weather Report for two years.

‘I found a lot more energy having more to do. As Brand X was coming along, I was quite prepared to leave Genesis and do something else, but it became apparent that I could do both.

‘And that’s what I really wanted, obviously: have my cake and eat it. Singing as well with Genesis, I can now play the interesting pieces, the strange times and obviously Bill and I are having a good time.

‘With the opportunities to do all these sessions, I can put on whatever hat I want. But if I’m with Genesis, I put all my energy into them, and if I’m with Eno I put my different cymbals on, tune my drums up, and go and play with Eno. ‘Brand X veers towards the Weather Report area, and if it’s a session and the producer says, “tune your snare drum head down,” even though I can’t do a fast roll, I’ll do that, too.

‘It’s different. I don’t want to play with a pin if it’s a fourto-the-bar slog. I’d like to learn to read, but I prefer to play intuitively – off the top of my head.

‘You go through all the possibilities of how a bit should be played in rehearsal. In Genesis we improvise for ages on small sections to wring them out and see which are the most potent ideas. They’re all head arrangements, but by the time we get into the studio we’ve been playing them for weeks.’

Q What will the new Genesis album be like?

‘No idea yet. There are plenty of ideas in people’s heads but they’re likely to change. When we went into the Lamb rehearsals, we had the idea of doing an acoustic album, and it was going to be a single.’

Around ‘But it turned out to be a double – with a story. Quite heavy as well. So we follow our noses. It depends what’s around at the time.

‘There are always pieces that hang over. For example, the track Trick of the Tail was around four or five years ago. Then the energy gets diverted into a different song.

‘A song has its moment of glory and then gets forgotten again. We don’t do Musical Box onstage anymore and we don’t do Watcher of the Skies as a separate tune; we’ve played those out. Musical Box they’ve been playing for years – they played that before I joined!

‘Cinema Show has been a show-stopper. Everyone is waiting for the drum battle, right? In Cinema Show, Bill and I do an unaccompanied eight bars, and they think its going to be a drum solo, but then everybody comes back in again.

‘We just give ‘em a taste. It would be easy to lay a drum solo, but my licks are spread out around the set. To condense them into ten minutes for a drum solo I’d find a bit tedious. I couldn’t sustain a drum solo for my own personal enjoyment.

And I couldn’t be that good every night.’

‘I’m sorry that it was all so successful. I honestly didn’t mean it to happen like that. It’s hardly surprising that people grew to hate me.’

Phil Collins

© Chris Welch, 1976

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Following the Wind & Wuthering Tour, it was announced in October 1977 that Steve Hackett had left Genesis to pursue a solo career. Following Hackett’s departure, Daryl Stuermer joined Chester Thomson as a member of the Genesis touring band, performing guitars, bass and backing vocals. The lineup of Genesis including Struemer and Thompson remained constant for almost twenty years.

Left to right: Tony Banks, Daryl Stuermer, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins and Chester Thompson.

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The Ghost That Haunts Genesis

Harry Doherty, Melody Maker, 14 February 1976 Yes, Peter is past, but the legacy remains. And Tony Banks, keyboards’ player with Genesis, is finding it difficult to swallow that. Peter Gabriel has quit the band, life must go on as if nothing has happened. Courageously philosophical; hardly realistic.

Peter is past… but a Genesis minus Gabriel cannot possibly plod on regardless. They might feel that nothing has changed, want to believe that it’s all the same but it cannot be. Change is inevitable.

Since the split, Genesis have fared well. They’ve released a new album, A Trick of the Tail, which has satisfied established Genesis freaks, and are preparing for an American tour. It is all coming together well. Drummer Phil Collins will handle the vocals, there will be no replacement for Gabriel. The visual presentation that has become a feature of the Genesis live act will remain, though without the weird costumes that Gabriel made his trademark.

The emphasis will switch to films, slides and lights.

‘We are apprehensive about the album. We still are. We’ve always had confidence in our own ability. The apprehension is more on whether audiences will accept us without Peter. He was our visual logo. The things you remember are Peter and his costumes. It’s losing that.’

Collins: ‘I’m supremely confident. We all have the same reservations. The visual show has always been the trimmings.

That’s the least important aspect of what we’re about.

Recording good music and the playing of the music is the most important thing. The presentation was the icing on the cake. A Trick of the Tail is a typical Genesis album but the major change is that it has a much stronger appeal than any other.’

‘When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in eighteen months or two years ahead; I just did not enjoy it.’

Banks: ‘I suppose we had to prove that we could do without him but that is really a secondary thing. We went in to make a strong album and we feel that we’ve done that. It doesn’t matter now if it doesn’t even sell a couple of copies.

We think it’s the best we’ve done. The sound production is the best we’ve ever had. This album is the most consistent, there aren’t many low points.’

‘We’ll lose people and we’ll gain people with the new album. We expect that. The trouble with England is that people decide at an early stage whether they like something or not.

‘What I would like is a reassessment. A lot of people have preconceived ideas of what Genesis is about. I’d like them to give albums a listen and they might be very surprised.”

‘His departure gives us a bit of breathing space and presents us with a few challenges. The whole thing had been

Peter Gabriel

Banks: ‘It’s (the music) as strong as it ever was. If it isn’t, we won’t play again. If it’s not as good, there’s no point in playing. Peter left and life goes on. We were all sort of sad. We spent some time trying to make him change his mind, but when he didn’t, we just carried on.’

But the absence of Peter Gabriel has forced change and eventually, Banks conceded that the post-Gabriel Genesis approach their task with a little apprehensiveness.

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becoming a bit obvious. We knew that we could get away with murder. We could, and did, play badly and get off with it. It gets too easy when you get very big. It’s good to have some things to keep the edge.

‘We tried to talk Peter out of it because there have been times when other people said that they wanted to leave and didn’t. Steve [Hackett] has wanted to leave. I’ve wanted to leave. But when we’ve discussed it, it all seems silly. Peter’s left, you accept that and you accept the challenge that it brings.

‘I don’t feel that we are left now with it all to do. There’s no reason why it should stop. I’d say that it’s set us back a year on live gigs, especially in the States, but Peter leaving has been played down there. You see, people there have no preconceptions about what to expect.

‘England is the most difficult country of all. The English attitude is different. In this country more than any other, Peter was made out to be the star. England always looks for a star and the rest of the band are regarded as idiots. Some groups are allowed a couple of stars. In Europe, they see the band as all the constituent members. A band is only as good as the people in it. Everybody matters.

‘The Press and the public here don’t see it that way. Just because Peter was the frontman, it doesn’t follow that he should be the chief writer and chief everything else, which was never true at all. For instance, if somebody else had left the band, there would have been a few polite questions and not much more.’

The revitalised Genesis, with the main stumbling block to complete unity within the ranks out of the way, are brimming with new ideas. The band, Collins and Banks feel, is now a total unit. When Gabriel was there, he did his vocals alone in the studio and the result was that he often sang, without first informing the rest of the band, over strong instrumental passages. Now everybody is there to see what’s happening.

There is an urge with Genesis to appeal to a wider audience, and they see themselves doing this with the help of a hit single. To achieve that end, the title track from the new album, A Trick of the Tail, specially written as a single, will be released.

Banks: ‘People like to think we’re very complicated. That’s why I’d like a hit. Genesis, as distinct from Yes and ELP, depend on the basic song rather than the fast playing and the fancy arrangements. It’s closer to pop music really than heavy rock. In fact, I probably like more singles than heavy rock bands. We’d certainly like to appeal to a wider audience but I suppose we limited ourselves by the visual approach. I Know What I Like was a minor hit but it doubled the sales of Selling England by the Pound. That patchy single introduced people to a work that was an hour and a half long but I’m still not sure that we’re capable of writing hit singles.’

So with Gabriel gone Phil Collins, with his fine vocals but with hardly the intrigue and mysticism of his predecessor, has take over at the front. He’s confident that the can deal adequately with the task but there is no way that he’ll approach it in the same way as Gabriel. He feels no pressure.

‘I don’t see it in terms of pressure, I see it more in terms of excitement. I’ll still be drumming on instrumental passages so I’ll get the best of both worlds.’

America gets the first taste of the new-look Genesis stage show in April. It might not reach Europe.

Banks: ‘If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t. At least the Europeans won’t get the chance to see it not working but I can’t think in terms of it not working. We’ve still got one or two unknowns that could be problems.’ © Harry Doherty, 1976

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Chapter Two

WIND & WUTHERING

In September 1976, Genesis relocated to Relight Studios in Hilvarenbeek, The Netherlands with Hentschel to record Wind & Wuthering. It was put together in a short amount of time and a considerable amount of material was written beforehand, of which the most suitable songs were picked for development. Rutherford spoke of the band’s conscious effort to distance themselves from songs inspired by fantasy, something that their past albums were full of. The band spent roughly six weeks writing the album with a basic form of each track put down in twelve days. Additional recording and production work was done at Trident Studios that October. Wind & Wuthering was released in December 1976 and reached No. 6 the UK and No. 26 in the US. Rutherford’s track, Your Own Special Way, became its sole single and went to No. 43 in the UK charts.

If A Trick of the Tail is the album where Genesis demonstrated they really did have a future, then Wind & Wuthering is the album where they begin to consider what form that future might take.

It’s also the album where the individual elements of Genesis’ music that, prior to 1976’s A Trick of the Tail, had been closely woven together to form that unique early Genesis sound unravel further as, with growing confidence, the band members exercise more control over their own compositions.

It contains music which recalls the classical narrative feel of earlier albums such as Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot alongside jazz-rock adventures reminiscent of Phil Collins’ Brand X project. There’s also the distinct sound of Steve Hackett’s imminent solo career and the emerging sound of a future Genesis capable and prepared to compose more straightforward songs sung from a first-person perspective.

Both in terms of the formal credits and the presence of his distinctive guitar work, Hackett’s impact on Wind… is less

than on any of the other Genesis albums which he appears.

Certain reports suggest that the musically lightweight quasijam that is Wot Gorilla? was included in place of the arguably much stronger Hackett composition Please Don’t Touch. If this is truly the case, then Steve’s departure following the tour to promote the album (which resulted in the live album Seconds Out) is hardly surprising.

In hindsight, it is possible to hear the shape of Genesis’ future emerging on Wind & Wuthering – a smoother, more refined and less eccentric musical palette with less room for Hackett’s quirky musical and lyrical sense of humour.

Prior to the 1977 tour Bruford declined an offer to return as second drummer, leaving Collins searching for a replacement. He heard American drummer Chester Thompson, of The Mothers of Invention and Weather Report, play a drum passage on More Trouble Every Day from Zappa’s live album Roxy & Elsewhere. Collins said, ‘It floored me completely… I had never met him. I rang him up and said, 23

“Hi Chester, I’ve heard your stuff, would you like to play with Genesis?”… He didn’t even audition!’ Genesis toured Wind & Wuthering from January to July 1977 across Europe, North America, and for the first time, Brazil. The stage show cost £400,000 (well over two-million-pounds today) which featured a new PA system, lasers and smoke, and lighting supplied from two rows of Boeing 747 aircraft landing lights.

Touring began on 1 January with three sold-out shows at the Rainbow Theatre in London, where 80,000 applications were made for the 8,000 available tickets. They returned to London for three nights at Earls Court, then the largest arena in Britain, supported by Richie Havens. The band’s growing popularity in North America led to television appearances and concerts organised in larger venues than previous tours, including Madison Square Garden in New York City. Their Brazilian dates were attended by over 150,000 people and a proposed 100,000-person gig was cancelled over rioting fears. An armed bodyguard accompanied even each member throughout their stay.

Superfan and author Armando Gallo once described how he first entered the ‘world of Genesis’ at the Lincoln festival in 1972. If, as the view of many fans, Wind & Wuthering marks the last album created upon the original and totally unique, musical world they created, it also marks the opening of the doorway to another which the band would share with a vastly greater audience worldwide.

••

A track-by-track review of

WIND & WUTHERING

by Hugh Fielder

Eleventh Earl of Marl With its opening ‘orchestral’ crescendos (created by Tony Banks’ mellotron and Steve Hackett’s guitar swells), complex bass and drum work on the verses and narrative structure, this song recalls the Nursery Cryme period (Fountain of Salmacis in particular) more than any other song from this era of Genesis – albeit with an updated and slightly more synthetic sound palette. How many other bands would base a lyric on such a historical tale as the 1715 Jacobite rebellion?

Of all the songs in the immediate post-Peter Gabriel era, one can’t help feeling that this is the one that would have taken on a new dimension with his dramatics and storytelling ability, although Collins’ vocal would have benefited from more presence in the mix.

One for the Vine A solo Tony Banks composition which continues the ‘classic Genesis’ feel of the album established by the opening song.

Grandiose balladry with oblique lyrics alluding to great deeds and that extraordinarily high ‘Follow Me…’ refrain.

Banks creates a one-man orchestra of piano and synthesisers, placing the other instruments (particularly Hackett) in a largely supporting role. At around four-and-a-half minutes it’s all change as Collins’ percussion leads the band into a dramatic up-tempo section that somehow manages to combine just a hint of a disco rhythm with castanets and a

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classic theme from Banks. The meditative verse structure returns before the song concludes with a triumphant crescendo. It’s almost as if a symphony had been condensed into ten minutes.

Your Own Special Way A solo Banks composition is followed by a solo Rutherford composition, this time taking the form of a far more direct first-person ballad, a form which at the time (early 1977) was still very unusual in the Genesis canon; More Fool Me is the only other that springs to mind. Simple, strummed acoustic guitar verses topped by plaintive Collins vocals give way to a more traditionally grand Genesis treatment of the a-typically catchy (for Genesis at this time) chorus.

A shortened version of the song achieved radio play on both sides of the Atlantic, paving the way for the huge commercial success of later material such as Follow You, Follow Me.

two antagonists plus a passing ‘loving couple’. While superbly executed and far more worthwhile than the preceding Wot Gorilla?, this is ample evidence that Genesis really did need to find a new direction.

The song continues the humorous tradition established by predecessors such as The Battle of Epping Forest and Robbery, Assault and Battery while lacking either the subtle lyrical humour or the edge of either. Collins’ vocal may lack some of his typical enthusiasm, but not even Peter Gabriel could have prevented this particular tale from teetering on the edge of twee. The high point is the brief Steve Hackett guitar solo in the closing minute or so. A scary indication of what might have been had The Lamb succumbed to the alternative suggestion of The Little Prince.

‘Many people think of me as a perfectionist: someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I’ve always been bothered by that assumption.’

Wot Gorilla?

In which Phil Collins get to exercise his jazz-rock drum chops while Banks improvises synthesiser lead lines over the top. In many respects, this sounds as if they were jamming and trying out ideas for parts of another song. Although cut from a similar cloth as the majestic Los Endos from Trick of the Tail, there is little or no development and the whole things runs out of steam in a quite unsatisfying way. Pleasant enough, but one can’t help feeling this track was more fun to play than to listen to.

Blood on the Rooftops Sixth track on the album and the first to contain a credit for Steve Hackett (in conjunction with Phil Collins), Blood… provides a welcome change of tone and mood. Opening with typical Spanish guitar work from Hackett, the track progresses to paint wistful, abstract pictures of an English home and its reactions to the torrent of bad news and disturbing images that pour forth from the TV set. Filmic in its evocative imagery and a reminder, if one were needed, of the elements that Hackett brought to the band’s music and which would be missing from future works.

Phil Collins

All in a Mouse’s Night Banks’ evocation of the nocturnal battle between cat and mouse complete with parts of the narrative assigned to the 26

Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers…/ …In That Quiet Earth An instrumental in two parts, the first by Hackett and Rutherford, recalling the earlier days of the band with its combination of Spanish and twelve-string guitars and

continuing in some respects the mood set by the previous song (Blood…). The second part, credited to all four musicians, brings proceedings bang up to date with flowing jazzy drums from Collins reminiscent of the style that emerged on Los Endos, …Gorilla and in Brand X. Rutherford provides typically tricky but agile bass while Banks and Hackett duet on and around the melodic theme.

A brief reprise of the melody from Eleventh Earl…, which opened the album, takes us to some heavy-duty guitar chords topped by soaring synth lines from Banks. This remains a good example of Genesis’ instrumental and compositional fire-power from the period, but the suspicion remains from long-time fans that, in the past, elements as good as this would have been included within some greater, ultimately more satisfying composition.

That said, this tantalising glimpse of the band firing on all four cylinders for perhaps the first time on this album and for the last time on record leads nicely on to…

Afterglow Tony Banks’ epic lament for persons or opportunities lost was to become a focal point of the band’s live performances around this time and for several years afterwards. Possibly one of the strongest and certainly one of the most emotional Genesis songs ever, it boasts no epic structure, no instrumental fireworks and is quite Beatle-esque in its chord structure and harmonies. In short, Afterglow is a song you can play on an acoustic guitar and it still sounds impressive. The album version, despite its passionate Collins vocal, only hints at the power this song was to assume on the live stage.

•• The critical reaction to Wind & Wuthering was widely positive, but most media outlets were more concerned with the future of the band, and how the loss of Peter Gabriel had changed the group dynamics. Chris Salewicz was no different, as we see in the following 1977 interview.

Genesis Reborn

Chris Salewicz, GIG, May 1977 If Mick Jagger were to quit the Rolling Stones or Robert Plant were to leave Led Zeppelin, there doesn’t seem to be the least possibility that either band would – as Genesis has done since lead vocalist Peter Gabriel split the outfit in 1975 after several albums – retain its status or actually increase its popularity. Matters of mere internal chemistry aside, the nature of such bands is that to their audience the image of the individual musicians is almost certainly as important as that of the band’s music.

Perhaps technoflash rockers are less competent at the art of self-hype. Or perhaps it’s just the nature of the genre to attract the more humble sort of rock ‘n’ roll chap. Which could usefully explain the collective psyche behind the musical tumescence of Yes, ELP, the Floyd and all their synthesized chums.

Certainly Steve Hackett appears to prove this rule. One would imagine that the burdens of stardom do not weigh too heavily on the Genesis guitarist. One senses that it is quite feasible for Steve to spend a Saturday afternoon wandering the shopping streets of London without having his clothes torn to pieces by fans. The only Genesis album to include a photograph of him is the live record, and that is blurred, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to how he looks today, four years on. Even his solo album Voyage of the Acolyte, carries no picture of the star.

With his zip-up black cardigan, pink shirt, dark pants, tinted glasses and shortish dark layered hair, Steve looks more like a hip London doctor or teacher than the guitarist with the most successful band in Britain during 1976.

Indeed, when he runs down the stairs to open the door of the short-lease Notting Hill maisonette he’s renting before taking up occupancy of a house he’s just bought off the Portobello Road, I think for an instant that Steve Hackett is the journalist who’s been interviewing Steve Hackett before me. As it happens, there is no other journalist. In fact, Steve has forgotten that he is due to perform in an interview this evening and is in the process of running a bath. Thoughtfully 27

– and no doubt wisely – he turns off the taps and offers a pot of tea before deciding it would be a better idea to produce a bottle of French red wine. We sit down on the kind of modern couch osteopaths love and play at media people getting slightly drunk together.

Steve, as a matter of fact, disagrees totally – as does this writer to a less extent – with the lumping of Genesis into the technoflash category. ‘It’s very much melodies and songs,’ he tells me in that Jagger-esque South London accent favoured

by British rock ’n’ rollers who visit the States a lot, which gradually decreased into standard BBC vocalese as the interview progresses, ‘Technoflash… We do some very simple songs which are almost banal. Deliberately so to counteract the other side of the thing. It’s a misconception, though, to think of us as technoflash, though I think that’s all changing now anyway.

‘I must think about music differently from the way other people hear it. Though I wouldn’t get offended if some one gives a bad review to an album I’ve done because I give albums bad reviews right up to the time they’re finished and released.

Then after that I’ve done it and that’s that.

‘But even then I can see why someone wouldn’t like something.’

See, transcendental meditation – which Steve started getting into a while back – really does work. Perhaps Lou Reed or Ian Anderson should take it up.

The matter of the missing Peter Gabriel, though. At the time, it was assumed that when Gabriel split to pursue a solo career that would also mean the end of Genesis; the band would probably limp along for two or three more years selling records and concert tickets to the remaining hardcore fans and then split up. I remember feeling almost sorry for the band that they were going to attempt to continue. Instead, with drummer Phil Collins at the vocal and frequently stage-front helm, Trick of the Tail becomes their most successful British and American record release, and, in England particularly, the band’s status is now so elevated that they played for six sell-out nights at London’s Hammersmith Odeon last summer on the British leg of their world tour.

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‘Obviously I’m pleased,’ smiles Hackett, raising his wine glass in a mock toast, ‘we’ve done two albums now so it seems so much a part of the past… Obviously we were very worried when he left but all our fears were groundless.

But there was that whole thing where he was regarded as the leader of the band. The brain behind the band, the face behind the band, And I would read articles and people would tell me that he was the band. And I was so determined to prove – I think everyone had that feeling individually – that we were going to show them. And we did.

‘The worst thing was playing the first few gigs whereby we thought “Well, we’re going to go on and it’s gonna be where is he?” But it wasn’t like that at all. And the first gig where Phil was upfront and he was doing his bit I was just getting entertained by watching him. And I got off on it so I knew the audience would. And when he rapped to the audience he actually got them laughing. Whereas when Peter used to tell a joke it used to fall on stony ground every time.’

Well, I always used to find Peter Gabriel’s onstage histrionics to be irritatingly pretentious. In fact, it really annoyed me that I had to find him pretentious because he seemed a very interesting person, but was just missing focus all the time…

‘Yeah,’ Steve laughs nervously, ‘Well, you know, Peter’s a friend so I’d hate to… But there were a lot more arguments in the band when he was part of it. You had a lot of strong personalities pulling in different directions. Things have been a lot smoother since he’s gone. I’m not saying he was the cause of them, but the band as that unit didn’t seem to find it so easy to work with each other.

‘I feel much more comfortable on stage now. Quite honestly, when Peter was doing a lot of things I used to find it very hard working with him because his mind would be in such a different place at times… Peter’s a very abstract kind of person. A bit like his lyrics, whereby after you’ve heard an explanation and you’ve studied them carefully you’re still no wiser as to the original intent. Earlier on in the relationship Peter and I had quite a lot in common. We wanted to provoke the band to get into different areas. To make them do things they didn’t want to because it would be good for them.

‘But it was a bit like different camps. You’d get a couple of your union members versus your rock establishment. But now everyone seems to have opened up a lot.’

Including, most certainly, Phil Collins who, in addition to drumming, writing and becoming the band’s onstage protagonist, has also recorded and played live with Brand X, the quasi-jazz, loosestructured band he formed to fulfill the areas of interest which couldn’t be satisfied in Genesis. His child actor background – like both Steve Marriott and Monkee Davy Jones, Collins spent part of his teens occupying the role of the Artful Dodger in the musical, Oliver – has seen both him and the band through okay: ‘Phil has always been a natural entertainer within the band anyway, I guess it’s his background. He went to stage school. The drumming took over as his main love and now you’ve got a situation whereby he’s able to follow up both. At that moment, he still regards himself as a drummer who’s been given the chance to be a singer but he’s developing in a lot of different directions at once. He’s got a lot of things going. I couldn’t be Phil Collins at this moment: a husband,

‘Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature, I’ve thought about this. Conceptually, what I’d like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.’

Phil Collins

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a drummer in two bands and a singer in one of them as well.

Of course, any session that comes up he’ll do it. Just go and pick out any random selection of English albums in a record shop and you’ll find he’s on so many.’

Three days prior to his visit to the Hackett home, Genesis – with Zappa alumni Chester Thompson replacing second drummer Bill Bruford who’d quit to join a now-aborted Rick Wakeman, John Wetton and Bruford musical linkup – had re-opened the Rainbow Theatre rock venue in NorthEast London after its lengthy closure as the first date on an exclusive world tour. Naturally, the tour is being utilized to promote the new album, Wind & Wuthuring, recorded in Holland, for tax reasons, at the end of last year. Much of the band’s material has its beginning in rehearsal room ‘blows’: ‘Most bands do that. You record it on a cassette and then you try and work out the essence of it and prune it, lengthen or build on it… whatever. But it means it does have some spark of spontaneity which is good for everybody. You can pull a structure out of something like that.

‘We’re a very democratic organisation. Funny thing is, Chester Thompson was saying – and he having come from jazz circles – that he thought we were the first true democracy he’d worked with. And I thought he was going to find us terribly structured and restrictive. Then you realize that there are no immaculate conceptions. I thought “Well, people think jazz is really free, don’t they?” But there’s usually someone calling the tune.’

Unsurprisingly, Hackett maintains he is very pleased indeed with Wind & Wuthering: ‘When we were rehearsing it first I wasn’t quite sure. And then there came a point in rehearsals where I suddenly realised that it was the best thing we’d ever done. And the feeling kept up through the studio right until it got onto record. And now I’ve heard it so many times that I can’t really listen to it dispassionately. Which is another cliché, of course. I managed to play a couple of tracks off it today and I quite enjoyed it…

‘If someone says to me “Hey, I’ve got this record here. You should hear this” and they put it on expecting a reaction, I don’t react. So now I forget about the first listen of an album.

It’s very rare that I’ll get off on it. I’m a bit frigid musically.

You can’t get me going on anything. Can’t get it up anymore.

I have to be wooed and then it works.’

Hmmm… Well, from that stack of albums over by the stereo I can see you’re currently being wooed by Breton harpist Alan Stivell and esoteric lute music records.

‘I make a point,’ he nods, ‘of not listening to guitarists.

As far as I can gather most of them are trying to do the same thing. The race is always on with guitarists to try and play faster than the next bloke.

‘The guitar isn’t quite the symbol it once was. You see, I think the answer lies in certain things which haven’t been picked up on in progress music so far. And it’s chords and melody line which are the things. When you apply that structure to guitar playing or whatever it happens to be then it’s different. Then it doesn’t have to fall into a jazz category or a blues category. It can be itself.’

Later this year Steve Hackett intends to record his second solo album in the States: ‘I’m hoping to use a couple of black people in it. Which is the antithesis of everything Genesis does.’

In a corner by the door lies a silver album for 100,000 British sales of Voyages of the Acolyte, the first Hackett solo record which was released in the autumn of 1975.

He smiles somewhat sagely; ‘Each track, was based on a different tarot card and it was really what I got off that card.

The cards only present you with a different set of answers which you can choose to regard or disregard. Just use it to find where you are at the present and stuff like that and possibilities… I mean, I’ll often do a spread and I’ll find the Devil at the end of it and I’ll think to myself “OK. Am I turning into a hellish creature, or what?” But, as someone said to me, “Don’t worry about the Devil. The Devil is just brute force.” It can be as little as that. Then maybe you wouldn’t recognise the Devil in yourself in that sense. It doesn’t have to be so straight.’

Then Steve Hackett empties the last drops of the wine into my glass, picks up his set of cards from the top of a desk and gives me a tarot reading. © Chris Salewicz, 1977 31

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Chapter Three

SECONDS OUT

In May 1977 Genesis released Spot the Pigeon, an extended play of three tracks left off Wind & Wuthering.

This was followed by Seconds Out, released in November 1977, which effectively rounded off Genesis’ progressive period. Subsequent recordings occasionally hinted at former glories, but for the most part the way ahead was characterised by an increasingly commercial approach. This shift to a more direct style had attracted a new generation of fans, and for them this live double album would provide a perfect introduction to the band’s more colourful past.

Recorded during the hugely successful world tours of 1976 and 1977, Seconds Out is significant for a number of reasons.

These were the first commercially-available Genesis recordings to feature newly-recruited touring drummers Bill Bruford and Chester Thompson and the last to feature guitarist Steve Hackett, whose decision to pursue a solo career came while the tracks were being mixed for release.

The material also stands as a sort of time capsule, including selections from virtually every stage of their career to date, and certainly not just a ‘greatest hits live’ package as later collections tended to be.

The overall sound quality is excellent, although the production seems a little too tidy in places to allow the warmth of the live performance to shine through. Some of the tracks are so like their studio counterparts that it’s difficult to sense the excitement of the band in full flight, but there are some genuinely uplifting moments.

Phil Collins had clearly settled into the role of lead singer very quickly. And though he doesn’t always pull off the challenge of singing songs associated with his predecessor, he tackles the more recent numbers with more conviction, safe in the knowledge he’ll be judged on his own merits. Less pleasing is the way Steve Hackett’s guitar gets lost in the mix, which led to accusations from some quarters that his contributions were deliberately played down.

Whatever the truth, these are confident performances that catch Genesis in top form and provide a high-resolution snapshot of their achievements up to this time. The album is an essential for fans, and a good primer for anyone still wondering what the fuss was about.

•• 33

A track-by-track review of

SECONDS OUT

by Hugh Fielder

Squonk A solid, if unexciting, performance which, in common with the three tracks that follow, adds little to the studio version.

Faithfully following the original blueprint, and suffering from a bland mix, this is a proficient rendition of a song which would be a live favourite for some time to come.

Collins sounds in good form, and the rest of the band are as precise as ever, but this is one of the recordings on Seconds Out which fails to convey any real sense of live performance.

The Carpet Crawl After an inauspicious start, Seconds Out moves into Gabriel territory with this offering from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Shorn of its opening verse, this is an otherwise straight reading of one of Genesis’ most haunting numbers, ideally suited to Collins’ vocal talents. The similarity between Collins’ voice and Gabriel’s has been noted on innumerable occasions, but Collins was always most at home on the less energetic Gabriel-era songs nearest in style to the more commercially-oriented ballads of Genesis’ later years. He was, therefore, at home here, although there was a slight edge to Gabriel’s original vocal that was lost.

Taken at a marginally slower pace than the original, this is another competent if unremarkable effort.

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Robbery, Assault and Battery Robbery… provided an ideal opportunity for Phil Collins to prove Peter Gabriel hadn’t been the only band member who could do a bit of rock theatre. Clearly relishing the chance to spread his wings, Collins threw himself wholeheartedly into acting out the various roles included in this story of criminal excess, and the former child-actor would scamper around the stage looking every inch the safe-cracking anti-hero or one of his authoritarian tormentors. All hugely enjoyable for the concert-goer, but once again this recording fails to convey the excitement of live performance, falling rather flat without the on-stage antics.

Unusually, Tony Banks sounds slightly hesitant on his keyboard solo, but everyone else plays their part to perfection. Quite simply, though, there’s nothing to recommend this version over its studio counterpart.

Firth of Fifth Like The Carpet Crawl, this number lost its introduction when performed live, omitting the classical piano section which opened the studio version and bursting into life at the beginning of the first verse. This is a typical example of Genesis’ progressive work, and a timeless piece. Firth of Fifth boasts a truly memorable melody and some powerful instrumental passages, and this superb rendition provides the album’s first real highlight.

After a first half built squarely around Tony Banks’ keyboards, Steve Hackett gets a rare opportunity to take centre-stage when he delivers a hauntingly expressive guitar solo. The only minor reservation concerns Phil Collins’ vocals, which lack the edge of Gabriel’s original reading, but there’s no doubt that this captures the power of live performance most effectively.

Afterglow The only selection from most recent studio album Wind & Wuthering, this was the final track on the first side of the original double vinyl version of Seconds Out. Collins is obviously in his element on this radio-friendly ballad, typical of material cited by longterm fans arguing the case for Genesis having ‘sold out’.

Like it or not, Genesis did these things rather well in the late 1970s, and here Tony Banks’ keyboards steadily build throughout the track to great emotional effect, underpinned by solid performances from Chester Thompson and Mike Rutherford. It’s anybody’s guess where Steve Hackett might have been at the time – it’s difficult to determine if he makes any contribution to Afterglow and, if there’s one track on the album which cries out for a few strategically-placed examples of his distinctive, otherworldly guitar sound, this is it.

I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) A single from the days when Genesis rarely released singles, this is another of the character sketches found throughout the band’s earlier catalogue. It’s a simple song about a simple lad who’s quite happy to spend his days mowing lawns while those around him seem intent on making him change his way of life. It gave Phil Collins another opportunity to throw in a few characterisations along the way, and he’s on top form here.

Musically, this is another strong rendition, and the band are clearly enjoying themselves. In the middle of the song, there’s an instrumental interlude where audience reaction points to some sort of on-stage frivolity and, after a fairly straight run-through of the song itself, the fade-out is extended considerably to allow solos and instrumental

‘Whatever I have come to offer, I have come to offer and it may or may not be connected to anything that has happened in the past.’

Bill Bruford

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interplay. For the first time we can see Genesis cutting loose, proving they were more than just very good at reproducing their studio arrangements on stage.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/ The Musical Box (Closing Section) Although this is an interesting medley of two songs from the Gabriel years, it’s debatable whether Genesis should have continued to perform them without Gabriel himself. In both cases, there’s an emotional intensity to the original vocal which Collins simply fails to achieve, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in particular coming across as flat and lacklustre when compared to the original. Two steps forward, one step back – and, although the quality of the band’s performance can’t really be faulted, the end result lacks the killer punch.

Supper’s Ready Having failed to include a version of their magnum opus on the earlier Genesis Live album, the band took this opportunity to ensure one was preserved for posterity. Tony Banks later described how he felt the band were playing it so much better by this time, and how there had been some dissatisfaction with the way the original version had turned out. ‘On Foxtrot,’ he explained, ‘the final parts sound great, but the early parts are a bit rough. Seconds Out was our chance to do the whole thing with some flow to it, which it didn’t have before.’

This version lives up to expectations, achieving a level of coherence that was certainly lacking on the original.

With the exception of Willow Farm, where he lapses too far into parody, Collins hits the spot throughout, handling a frighteningly diverse set of musical settings with considerable aplomb. You couldn’t ask for more from any of those involved.

Bruford. Featuring all the elements of the original, with the added bonus of being able to hear Collins and Bruford playing alongside each other, this clearly demonstrates the power and precision of the band at full throttle.

Dance On a Volcano/Los Endos Seconds Out comes full circle to finish as it began, with material from A Trick of the Tail. These two tracks were the standout rock numbers from the original album, and provide a storming finale to a live set which only really gets going after the first four tracks. This time, Collins gets to play alongside Chester Thompson and, although they play in tandem on the instrumental passages of some of the earlier cuts, only here do they do so unaccompanied. The power and precision of two of the world’s top drummers in almost perfect synchronisation is simply awesome as they provide a bridge between the two parts of this final medley. Genesis close the album with the strongest cut, leaving the audience hungry for more.

•• With Seconds Out successfully completed, Genesis’ progressive period was effectively at an end. This time marked an important juncture in the band’s creative output, and looking toward 1978 and the future, Genesis began to map their future as a trio.

The Cinema Show Another of the classic progressive Genesis tracks, and another from Selling England by the Pound, this version stands up well against the original and is the only selection included on Seconds Out to feature short-lived tour drummer Bill 37

In 1975, Genesis found themselves at a crossroads. Producing a follow-up to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was never going to be an easy task, but Peter Gabriel’s decision to leave the band in the summer of 1975 appeared to leave an insuperable problem. For many, Gabriel had become Genesis.

Onstage, Gabriel had always been a flamboyant frontman, his theatrical excesses elevating Genesis to a pre-eminent position in the prog-rock elite, but the 1974–75 World Tour had confirmed to many that Gabriel was the band’s key member. Fans and critics alike were doubtful that continuing without him would be a viable option.

Here, through expert track-by-track analysis and in-depth band interviews, we examine how Genesis pulled off this tricky transition to emerge brighter and more successful than ever.

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