Words: Mike Barnes and Mark Blake
From their earliest beginnings when Peter Gabriel met Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford at Charterhouse boarding school, Genesis evolved from lofty-minded eccentrics into one of the most commercially successful rock bands of all time. The tale of how a group of “silver-spooned toffee-nosed buggers” battled music industry indifference, audience bafflement and internal rivalry to become the most cherished of groups of the prog era is told in the latest issue of MOJO, as the group’s classic lineup of Gabriel, Banks, Rutherford, Phil Collins and Steve Hackett reconvene to reminisce about the lean years, mad costumes and tricky time signatures of a true rock one-off.
When Gabriel left the band following 1974’s sprawling double The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, relative newbie Collins took over as frontman. But the shift from labyrinthine epics to sleek, radio-ready pop rock was by no means instant as the band’s late ’70s output found them tentatively recalibrating, balancing the grandiosity of old with a newfound immediacy. By the time of 1980’s Duke, however, Genesis had embraced a more concise approach, one which would resonate far beyond prog’s natural milieu of student dorms and sixth form common rooms.
The following decade saw multi-platinum albums, arena tours, and an MTV-friendly polish that, for some, distanced them from their adventurous past. That they managed to keep going into the ’90s, even after Collins departed, speaks to their resilience. Yet the final chapter of Genesis - featuring the hard-to-love, Ray Wilson-fronted Calling All Stations - was a muted end to a remarkable run. Despite intermittent reunions, their studio legacy remains defined by that arc: from ornate prog fantasists to pop-rock titans, and back again. Collins’ ongoing health problems and the band’s farewell shows in 2022 would certainly suggest that this particular book is now closed for good. Here, then, is the story of Genesis told through those albums, ranked from worst to best…
15.
From Genesis To Revelation
(Decca, 1969)
Originally a teenage songwriting collective without ambitions of becoming a band, Genesis attracted the interest of svengali and producer Jonathan King, signed to Decca – whose receptionist would phone up announcing them as “The Janitors” – and released an album of competent, albeit derivative, post-psychedelic pop, which sold poorly. A rethink was clearly needed.
14.
Calling All Stations
(Virgin, 1997)
Ex-Stiltskin frontman Ray Wilson had a big mountain to climb taking over from Phil Collins. But the rebooted Genesis sound “out to sea”, to quote the lyrics to this album’s second single Shipwrecked. Banks and Rutherford later admitted to missing Collins’s “songwriting glue” on what became their studio swansong.
13.
Trespass
(Charisma, 1970)
Inspired by The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Fairport Convention, King Crimson and The Nice – and according to Banks, needing to do something “a little more sophisticated” – Genesis spent months writing and rehearsing, and found their true identity by distilling those influences into lengthy melodic songs – the most successful being ’70s live favourite, The Knife.
12.
We Can’t Dance
(Virgin, 1991)
Collins’s final Genesis album mashes together route one pop (No Son Of Mine, I Can’t Dance) with reflective old-school Genesis story songs, such as Driving The Last Spike, about browbeaten 19th-century railway workers. Social commentary even! Better sometimes than its irritating title track suggests.
11.
Abacab
(Charisma, 1981)
Another UK No.1 hit, Abacab broke new musical and technological ground with Collins reprising his Face Value gated drum sound on several songs and adding Earth Wind And Fire’s horn section to No Reply At All. But the likes of Keep It Dark and Dodo sound a bit cold and unloveable this century.
10.
Invisible Touch
(Charisma, 1986)
Genesis reimagined as puppets on the satirical TV show Spitting Image exemplifies their world domination in 1986-’87 just as well as this album’s high-tech, button-pushing pop. Though Collins sounds like he’s in dire need of sleep on the hungover epic Tonight, Tonight, Tonight. Fun fact: Mike Rutherford’s Spitting Image puppet was later repurposed by the show as Jesus.
9.
…And Then There Were Three…
(Charisma, 1978)
A largely forgotten affair, recorded after Steve Hackett scarpered but before Genesis went Hollywood, it’s quietly charming and melancholy, with the puppyish love songs Many Too Many and the hit Follow You Follow Me nicely offset by the mini concertos Burning Rope and Deep In The Motherlode.
8.
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
(Charisma, 1974)
Sprawling and a tad overlong, The Lamb… is still progressive rock’s ultimate double concept album. Genesis are shown at their most musically inventive and Gabriel’s lyrics guide us through Puerto Rican punk Rael’s bizarre Kafka In Wonderland journey through moral dilemmas, strange sex, mythical creatures’ lairs, penis amputation and a meeting with Death himself.
7.
Duke
(Charisma, 1980)
For grumbling Genesis bores, Duke was the beginning of the end. Wrong! Its artsy pop-rock songs retained the earlier group’s spirit, but took five minutes, rather than 15, to get their point across, while the hits, Turn It On Again and Misunderstanding helped make it Genesis’s first UK No 1.
6.
Nursey Cryme
_(Charisma, 1971)_With new recruits Hackett and Collins on board, Nursery Cryme is full of interlocking guitar and keyboard lines, delicate 12-string interludes, and powerful full-band surges. Lyrically, their mix of whimsy and the macabre evokes Lewis Carroll, Spike Milligan, Gilbert & Sullivan and Greek mythology. For early Genesis, this is where the story really starts.
5.
Genesis
(Charisma/Virgin, 1983)
One absolute stinker (Illegal Alien) aside, The Yellow Album’s nouveau pop songs (That’s All, Home By The Sea) rub along well with its eerie surprise hit Mama, whose walloping drum machine screams ‘1983’ as loudly as Neil Kinnock’s combover or Anne Diamond on Good Morning Britain.
4.
Wind And Wuthering
(Charisma, 1976)
While punk germinated in unemployment-stricken Britain, Genesis crafted songs about 17th-century Jacobites and the lesser-known works of fantasy author Michael Moorcock. Collins found his voice on this, his second album as lead vocalist, and Eleventh Earl Of Mar and Blood On The Rooftops evoke the wintry sky and barren trees on the LP’s cover.
3.
A Trick Of The Tail
(Charisma, 1975)
Collins’s first album as lead singer works like a charm thanks to his emotional engagement and the subtle majesty of the songs: be it the poppy sing-song title track or the Santana-meets-Weather Report jazz-rock twiddling of Dance On A Volcano.
2.
Selling England By The Pound
(Charisma, 1973)
This most English of English albums finds Gabriel as Britannia addressing the nation with some clunky puns: “Moonlit Knight”, anyone? On The Cinema Show, boy-meets-girl meets T.S. Eliot, before gearshifting into a dazzling keyboard-led instrumental extravaganza. Banks rates Hackett’s spectacular guitar odyssey on the majestic Firth Of Fifth as one of the group’s “strongest moments”.
1.
Foxtrot
(Charisma, 1972)
Foxtrot producer David Hitchcock recalls band tensions and doubts expressed over their future, but Genesis delivered their early masterpiece, from the Arthur C Clarke-meets-Marvel comics-in-6/4 drama of Watcher Of The Skies to Supper’s Ready, a side-long epic packed with historical and biblical allusions, and as serious and messianic, or absurd and obtuse, as the listener wants.
“People often imply that we planned to go more commercial. We didn’t. We just couldn’t write hit singles before…” Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our exclusive Genesis interview with Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett in full. More info and to order a copy HERE!
