Genesis

Genesis established themselves at the end of the 1960s as one of the leading groups of the emerging progressive-rock, and distinguished themselves from the others for their inclination toward the sophisticated song and a decadent theatricality. Their compositions united elegance, atmosphere, romanticism, and histrionics. Later they would simply become a chart-pop group, but for a few years their progressive-rock was at the vanguard of the genre together with King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator.

The singer Peter Gabriel, the organist Tony Banks, and the guitarists Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips played in a college band at the exclusive Charterhouse school. Theirs, by definition, was not the usual rock band formed in a garage to play rhythm and blues and rock and roll classics. The first Genesis single, The Silent Sun, was released in February 1968.

Genesis (still adolescents at the time) debuted on album with an intellectual work that had little in common with the rock of the era: From Genesis to Revelation (Charisma, 1969). Inspired by folk and biblical sagas, steeped in literary quotations and set in a fabulous and mythological Middle Ages, their musical world offered only fragile melodies, but the evocative choreography of the shows, the classical-style arrangements of Banks, and the ambiguous personality of the singer-mime Gabriel made them exciting.

Trespass (Charisma, 1970) is the album that codified their style. Brief melodramatic pieces follow one another without interruption, like movements of a symphonic poem, indulging in catchy melodies, precious arrangements and cryptic verses; they flow light and polychrome, weaving epic sagas or mystical fantasies that seem to emerge from Bruegel’s frescoes and Tolkien’s volumes: Looking For Someone (Banks’s classical tour de force, with the sinister effect of a distant flute), White Mountain (the most insistent, on a baroque organ toccata), Vision Of Angels (a religious psalm with a galactic finale), and above all Knife, the (nine-minute) sonata that invented a tragic and cultured version of music-hall, which to the programmatic refrain can make follow a martial flute solfeggio and a jazz-rock jam.

A few months later the guitarist Steve Hackett (in the place of the departing Phillips) and the drummer Phil Collins were hired, completing one of the most erudite line-ups in rock. The star remained Gabriel, a modern troubadour of a new allegorical Middle Ages and a spectacular jester in line with the “glam” tendency of the era, but the polished ballads of Nursery Crime (Charisma, 1971) brushed against the format of the suite thanks to the generous doses of instrumental inventiveness of the others. Verbose and magniloquent as they were, The Return Of The Giant Hogweed and Fountain Of Salmacis were worthy of soundtracks for scenic actions. Even the humbler compositions (the vaudeville skit of Harold The Barrell, the ballad For Absent Friends, the melodious Harlequin) boasted exceptional scores.
The script was still the same, overflowing with medieval images, fabulous bestiaries and mystical legends. The arrangements however had become even more rarefied, as demonstrated by their masterpiece, Musical Box, a collage of folk cantilenas and classical fragments, with the incessant tinkling of the guitar building the dreamlike atmosphere and coiling into the baroque riff of “play my song,” with the pompous keyboard crescendos creating dramatic suspense, and with the finale of whispers and shouts over the solemn notes of a cathedral organ.
Still halfway between King Crimson and Yes, Genesis distinguished themselves from both for the use of more meticulous instrumentation, sometimes humble at the limit of folk, sometimes rich bordering on symphonism.

Foxtrot (1972) increased the polish of their production, giving ballads such as Watcher Of The Sky an almost neutral tone. The technical and lyrical summa of the period is Supper Is Ready: twenty minutes of emphatic melodies, classical interludes (the opening one for harpsichord, flute, and cello), rhythmic progressions, and vaudeville sketches, culminating in the inevitable bombastic, epic finale. The sophisticated, cerebral melodism of Genesis was the negation of proletarian rock’n’roll, but it was ideal for the bohemian intellectuals who had replaced the hooligans at rock concerts. The sound was no longer revolutionary; it had become a new benchmark for consumer music. Selling England By The Pound (1973) turned the idea into mannerism and chiseled impeccable songs such as I Know What I Like. The group’s talent was the excuse behind which this new form of song hid: the long Firth Of Fifth is simply constructed as a parade of the musicians’ technical prowess, in particular Steve Hackett’s solo (who also shines on Dancing with the Moonlite Knight). Two other long tracks, The Battle Of Epping Forest and The Cinema Show, were instead pedantic, didactic, and redundant (the latter would nonetheless become one of their live warhorses). Banks’s dictate was now total, placing them at the head of the moderates of “progressive rock.” Pushing to the extreme the fusion of folk and psychedelia proposed by King Crimson, and replacing jazz-rock with Banks’s conservatory classicism, Genesis had arrived at a new form of “pop song.”

Chronic victims of a Broadway-musical obsession, Genesis reached their delirious peak with the hundred-plus performances of the spiritual rock opera The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (Atlantic, 1974), which is at once a Gabriel-centered album and their most accessible one. Gabriel’s vocal virtuosity single-handedly paints the atmospheres of The Colony Of Slippermen and Back In New York City. The ballads Cuckoo Cocoon and The Carpet Crawl make it clear that, ultimately, once the intellectual mantle is discarded, this is a pop band. The stylistic spectrum is nonetheless vast, ranging from Brian Eno-style avant-garde (The Waiting Room) to psychedelia (Fly On A Windshield), from music-hall (The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging) to the brutal Lillywhite Lilith that anticipates Gabriel’s future.

Archives (1998) is a box-set of previously unreleased material.

Anthony Phillips had launched a solo career marked by fantastic themes and sui generis arrangements. The Geese And The Ghost (Hit & Run, 1977) features a chamber ensemble and a symphony orchestra. Phillips alternates among guitars, keyboards (mellotron, synthesizer, harmonium, organ, celeste, and piano), and percussion (glockenspiel, timpani, bells, and gongs). A dozen friends (oboes, horns, flutes, cellos, violins, timpani) help him arrange and perform the pieces. Michael Rutherford, in particular, contributes to the two instrumental suites that make up most of the album: Henry, steeped in baroque sonorities and regal atmospheres, and the title track, whose melodious tinkling of the classical guitar gleams with classicism. With this album Phillips was the first to push the progressive rock of bands like Genesis beyond its self-imposed limits, effectively bringing it closer to classical music. The suite reveals itself to be an open format in which the artist can give free rein to his inspiration.
With Private Parts And Pieces: vol.1 (PVC, 1978) Phillips began publishing the “home recordings” he had accumulated over the years. Surprisingly, these are his most refined works, preserving a folk melodiousness even in his boldest experiments (the minimalist score of Beauty And The Beast). Over the years Phillips continued to dispense atmospheric music for acoustic guitar and/or piano and occasionally some synthesizer. The solo-piano pieces on Ivory Moon are perhaps the most moving, and the closest to the New Age music of the period. With Slow Waves Soft Stars (Audion), Phillips instead transformed himself into a “cosmic courier,” a wizard of synthesizers and electric guitars.

Starting with Voyage Of The Acolyte (Charisma, 1976), whose instrumental Hands Of The Priestess (with mellotron and oboe) is worthy of the major works of Genesis and King Crimson, Steve Hackett recorded classical-leaning albums aimed primarily at the sales charts. In 1986 he formed GTR with Steve Howe, then resumed his solo career, but only with Guitar Noir (Viceroy, 1993) did he recover the verve of his early days.

For his part Tony Banks recorded the mediocre A Curious Feeling (Charisma, 1979), The Fugitive (Charisma, 1983), The Wicked Lady (Atlantic, 1983), Quicksilver (Atlantic, 1986), Banckstatement (Atlantic, 1989). He would go on to score film soundtracks and classical music, notably the symphonic suite Seven (2004).

Meanwhile the Genesis scepter had passed into the hands of Phil Collins when Peter Gabriel decided to launch his solo career. Genesis’s music was shrinking into a bland cocktail-lounge pop, yet A Trick Of The Tail (1976) established their sales supremacy. Collins proved to be an even more evocative singer than Gabriel. Despite the effort in arrangements and lyrics to embellish the banal melodies of (Robbery Assault and Battery, Dance On A Volcano, Squonk, Entangled), the closing instrumental Los Endos dominates.

Wind And Wuthering (1976), an even more baroque and luxuriant album, perfected all three canonical Genesis genres: the long metaphysical suite (One For The Vine), the tragic pop song (Your Own Special Way), and the surreal instrumental (Unquiet Slumbers For The Sleepers).

Then Hackett too left the band. Collins, Banks, and Rutherford celebrated the event with And Then There Were Three... (1978), an even more banal and monotonous album (Follow You Follow Me) that nevertheless sold even more than its predecessor, and Duke (1980) sold even more still. The commercial escalation seemed unstoppable, but instead Phil Collins recorded his solo album Face Value (1981), which surprisingly outsold the Genesis records (containing In the Air Tonight, with one of the most famous drum fills of the era, and I Missed Again). From that moment on Collins would live two parallel lives, ultimately accumulating more chart successes than any other British musician. He even led a third life (perhaps the noblest) as drummer for the jazz-rock band Brand X.

After Abacab (1981), which contains No Reply at All and Who Dunnit (on which Tony Banks used the Prophet-5 synth in an innovative way), and Genesis (1983), which contains That's All, both best-sellers, Rutherford too launched a parallel career with Mike + The Mechanics (Atlantic, 1985), whose singles All I Need Is A Miracle and Silent Running conquered dance floors worldwide, and The Living Years (1988), featuring Nobody's Perfect.

In the meantime Phil Collins dominated the charts, first with Hello I Must Be Going (Atlantic, 1982), which contains I Don't Care Anymore (not yet a hit but the song that created his new style), then with the 1984 hits (Against All Odds – Take A Look At Me Now, Separate Lives, Easy Lover, Two Hearts, You'll Be In My Heart), the covers of ‘60s pop tunes (You Can't Hurry Love, Groovy Kind of Love), and finally with No Jacket Required (1985), his greatest success and a classic of the romantic ballad, featuring One More Night, Sussudio (a reworking of Prince’s 1999), Don't Lose My Number, Take Me Home (Sting and Peter Gabriel on backing vocals).

Phil Collins’s songbook is among the most substantial of British pop singers of the 1980s, thanks to In the Air Tonight (1981), Against All Odds (1984), Easy Lover (1984), Sussudio (1985), Don't Lose My Number (1985), One More Night (1985), Another Day In Paradise (1989), I Wish It Would Rain (1989).

Genesis seemed destined to become a mere appendix to the solo careers of its members, yet Invisible Touch (1986) broke all their sales records and catapulted five hits to the top of the charts: Invisible Touch, Throwing It All Away, Land Of Confusion, Tonight Tonight Tonight, In Too Deep.

In 1988 Mike + The Mechanics scored another blockbuster hit with The Living Years.

In search of artistic respectability, Collins recorded But Seriously (1989), containing the most serious compositions of his career: the protest ballad Another Day In Paradise, the elegiac I Wish It Would Rain, Something Happened On The Way To Heaven, Do You Remember.

Genesis returned after five years of absence with We Can't Dance (1991), but this time the album sold less than its predecessor, for the first time since the group’s formation. The album was followed by the colossal live release The Way We Walk (1993).

Continuing his progression towards more mature music, Collins played all instruments on Both Sides (1993), containing Both Sides of the Story, but the schizophrenia ultimately weakened Dance Into the Light (1996), with the Afro-pop of Dance Into the Light.

Another long hiatus preceded the new Genesis album, Calling All Stations (1997). Without Collins, it was a disaster.

Turn It On Again (1999) is an anthology of the Genesis commercial-period hits, and is effectively one gigantic yawn.

Testify (Atlantic, 2002) by Phil Collins is senile easy-listening for late-era Beatles fans.

Phil Collins' career de facto ended when he suffered a neurological problem which affected his hand His album Going Back (2010) contains Motown covers.