It’s the year 1972. Genesis had released Nursery Cryme the year before and had played their first show overseas in Brussels in early 1972. Several shows in Europe followed and after their return to the UK, they began writing their next album Foxtrot, which, for many fans, would become their ‘progressive’ high point.
Genesis in 1972
On 28 May 1972, Genesis played at The Great Western Festival in Lincoln. Here, Peter Gabriel wore a jewelled Egyptian collar and black eye makeup onstage, but most attention drew the shaved front of his head, leading the press to write about their performance.
Band photographer and biographer Armando Gallo: ‘The Lincoln Festival was very good because it was a four day event; the weather was dreadful, and after they had played they thought they’d done a horrible show. But that’s when I got converted to Genesis, because the atmosphere was so against them. It was two o’clock in the afternoon – it was so cold and everybody was covered in straw! As it was raining so much they gave out hundreds of bales of straw and people were sleeping under it and at the time Genesis came on people were just waking up. I wrote in my first book that this was where I stood with my wellies entrenched in the mud with twelve Italian jouralists that I was taking care of and we were all just raving about it…‘1
Onstage, the band often sat on stools playing with Peter standing and singing in the middle. Something that changed after Phil Collins had entered the band in 1970 was that Peter could hardly bring in any rhythmic ideas anymore. Peter had liked the idea of double-drums, but did not have the ability. Not having his costumes yet, he kept his little bass drum in front of him next to his mic stand.
Phil Collins: ‘In the early days at Aylesbury Friars and all those places, the costumes were a hat, it wasn’t like Slippermen. He had his bass drum which was part of his equipment and he could hide behind his bass drum and I know how that feels because when you’re a drummer, it doesn’t have to be a huge kit, it’s just like between you and audience. It’s a bit of a security blanket. I think Peter wanted to keep his bass drum because he was a drummer for the moments when he wasn’t actually singing and there were quite a lot of moments in Genesis music where there was no singing. Plus the flute. The hat and the costumes gave him something to hide and become somebody else.’2
Writing Foxtrot
When there were days off, their friend, roadie and tour manager Richard Macphail put up the band’s gear at Rod Mayall’s studio in West Hampstead.3 At 9 o’clock, the band arrived, and Rich and the other roadies went off to repair and maintain instruments and equipment. ‘Essentially those years, there was quite a shape to the year’, Rich remembers the straight schedule. ‘The summer would be off, we’d go down to Crowborough, write the next album, go in the studio from sort of September/ October, then go on the road November through till March/April the next year touring the album.’4
They started writing and rehearsing new material at a rehearsal space in Blackheath, but most of Genesis’ next album was written in the basement of Una Billings School dance studio in Shepherd’s Bush, a location they got through Phil’s mother’s connection to London’s acting and dance scene.
Phil admired that Genesis were always striving for something new when other bands would have had had a finished song. Guitarist Steve Hackett, who had joined the band in late 1970/early 1971, on the other hand says: ‘Genesis was famous for discarding very good bits. I’m not just talking about my own stuff, but other things, stuff that Pete had written for instance. It was amazing to me that we would put things on a back burner and it troubled me. I would push for certain things and you realize, in order to get something done sometimes you would have to be extremely bloody-minded and at times threaten. They had grown up at school with this kind of cut thrust thing. In another era they would have all been trained to lead a charge in the Crimea and not flinch. They were raised to rule, there’s no doubt about it. Sometimes it would turn into all-at-war, but I think in any negotiation you’ve got to be prepared to lose, that’s the strongest possible position.’5
Peter Gabriel: ‘There was a lot of idealism about the music, too, and we had made a decision to split things five ways. What happens in a lot of bands is: ‘We have to get more of my songs, because there’s musical reasons, but also I’m gonna earn more cash out of it.’ That was, I think, a liberating thing. It brings with it its own set of complications, but sometimes things like that, behind the scenes, help to shape how you make the musical decision.’6
While on the road they had already written and played some new, sometimes unfinished songs live like ‘Watcher of the Skies’ and ‘Can-Utility and the Coastliners’.
Recording Foxtrot
The band went into Island Studios in August 1972. Having worked with John Anthony on their single ‘Happy The Man’, he was set to produce Foxtrot, too, but the escalating costs caused disagreements between him and Genesis’ record label Charisma. As a producer, Charisma brought in engineer Bob Potter, but Potter and the band did not get on at all.
Tony Banks: ‘Charisma wanted us to have a hit, so they thought they’d bring in Bob Potter who had worked with Bob Johnson in America and people like Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan. Charisma thought that he could tighten things up a bit and stop things getting too arty for their own good. He came in and we just didn’t see eye to eye at all. I did the introduction to ‘Watcher…’ and he said it was awful, he felt it sounded just like 2001.’7
Potter resumed his post and next, producer Tony Platt was brought in: ‘I only did a couple of sessions with Genesis and frankly, we didn’t get on very well! After a couple of fairly non-productive sessions with them, I stood down.’8
Tony Banks: ‘We didn’t like what he was doing either, so we were very happy to get rid of him. We got in David Hitchcock. He wasn’t really right either and didn’t know what was going on. We had to work around him all the time. He was a nice enough guy, but in terms of sound we disagreed very strongly. Despite all that, the album produced some of the best things of all. We had just done the first bit of ‘Supper’s Ready’ with the original engineer and then we did the last half with John Burns as engineer. Suddenly there was power and excitement and I came out of the studio for the first time wanting to listen to something over and over again.’9
The songs
Watcher of the Skies
‘Watcher of the Skies’ is known for its mellotron introduction, which made venues shake when they opened their concerts, as Steve Hackett compared it to ‘a spaceship coming down to land!’10
The song features an imaginative sci-fi lyric by Mike and Tony about the a mysterious traveller from space, contemplating the fate of a departed human race. When performed live, Peter Gabriel played the ‘Watcher’, wearing batwings on his head and glaring with luminous eyes.
‘Watcher of the Skies’ is partly hard to sing to the melody, but Pete managed to pull it off. Musically, the song is driven by Phil’s jazzy syncopation: ‘Sometimes I felt like I was swimming against the tide to get something with a real groove. Mike and Tony’s playing has changed drastically since the early days of the band, but in the early days it was a band without a groove, frankly. I did my best, but some of the later stuff grooves a little better. I always felt we rarely got it right in the studio. Sometimes live we’d get it right, but I was the band’s biggest critic in some respects in terms of our recorded material.’11
The song was also one of the band’s attempts to reach a chart position with a single. They released a single edit, leaving out the intro and adding a fade-out instead of the the instrumental outro. It failed to chart.
Time Table
Music journalist Chris Welch: ‘A light relief after the pounding excitement of the previous track, on this gentle but stirring pop song. […] The lyrics have poetic depth and tenderly evoke a bye-gone age of kings and queens, ultimately banished by war and conflict.’12
Band biographers Bowler and Dray: ‘‘Time Table’ yearned for a return to old values of honour and decency.‘13
Get ‘Em Out by Friday
A prime example of Peter’s abilities as a lyricist and storyteller, ‘Get ‘Em Out By Friday’ is almost like a theatre play with different characters and scenes.
Bowler and Dray: ‘…a further offering from the Peter Gabriel school of comic opera.’14
‘Get ‘Em Out by Friday’ was inspired by Peter’s problems with his landlord. The song features the characters John Pebble of Styx Enterprises, his employee Mr Mark Hall aka The Winkler and Mrs Barrow and her family, tenants of a house owned by Styx. Hall informs Mrs Barrow that her property has been purchased, but she refuses to leave. The rent is raised. Hall offers her £400 to move to a property in Harlow New Town. There, he raises the rent again. By the time the story reaches 18 September 2012, an announcement of Genetic Control on A-Dial-Program television orders that humans have to be restricted to four feet in height. A pub costumer called Joe Ordinary assumes they can fit twice as many in the same building that way.
Tony Banks: ‘A very good lyric of Pete’s early days was ‘Get ‘Em Out by Friday’, which has a fantasy element to it but is quite rooted in the real real world as well.’15
Can-Utility and the Coastliners
‘Can-Utility and the Coastliners’ was a based on a guitar-idea by Steve Hackett that the rest of the band liked a lot.
Bowler and Dray: ‘A tale of the folly of blind faith and of King Canute, unable to hold back the waves.‘16
Chris Welch: ‘But this is a strange tale indeed, ostensibly about King Canute, but one wonders if it is actually about Peter Gabriel, as he tells of a singer wary of flatterers and tired of singing.‘17
Horizons
The song before the majestic ‘Supper’s Ready’ (and the only other song on Side B of the vinyl) is a short instrumental acoustic guitar piece by Steve Hackett and the only song recorded with Potter.
Steve Hackett: ‘I had managed to record ‘Horizons’ with him – an acoustic guitar piece – and I got it in about the fourth take. He said ‘I can work with you, but I can’t work with the others.’‘18
Chris Welch: ‘A short but nonetheless attractive Steve Hackett solo piece, with some nifty harmonics.’19
Supper’s Ready
Genesis’ magnum opus is 23 minutes long and subdivided into seven parts: ‘(1) Lovers’ Leap, (2) The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man, (3) Ikhnaton And Itsacon and Their Band Of Merry Men (4) How Dare I Be So Beautiful? (5) Willow Farm (6) Apocalypse In 9/8 (Co-Starring The Delicious Talents Of Gabble Ratchet), (7) As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men’s Feet)’.
Mike Rutherford: ‘In those days there were no real rules. […] There were two worlds, there was the single world, the kind of pop bands, sort of Mud, Sweet and Pickettywitch and that lot and there were the album bands and they weren’t in the same area so you weren’t worrying about the length of songs.’20
Lover’s Leap
‘Lover’s Leap’ starts with a very romantic twelve-string melody.
Steve Hackett: ‘I remember we were rehearsing in the basement of a stage school, so upstairs you had girls learning to tap dance to ‘Tea for two’ at half speed and downstairs we were in what I think had been designed as a cafeteria. We started putting this piece of music together, it really started on twelve-strings and we were all contributing bits.’21
Mike Rutherford: ‘We didn’t sit down and say we’re going to write a song this long. The opening part was a wonderful Tony Banks’ guitar piece and because he doesn’t play guitar very much, he chose a shape I would never have chosen. It’s just a weird finger movement but it worked. You know, that has been part of our sort of pattern.’22
Tony Banks: ‘The key track on his album was ‘Supper’s Ready’, which had started off acoustically, like ‘Stagnation’ and ‘Musical Box’. I’d written a descending chord sequence on the guitar, and when we were playing in somewhere like Cleethorpes, I was in the changing room tuning the guitar and playing these chords. The room had a fantastic acoustic which made this particular chord sequence sound wonderful; Mike walked in and said, ‘That sounds great, what’s that?’ So he learnt the part and we played it together, and then got the others in and played this sequence to them. I didn’t know what we were going to do with it, but it was obviously something we could use as a starting point.‘23
Peter Gabriel ‘s lyrics came from an experience that he had with Jill, his wife at that time, at Jill parent’s flat in Kensington Palace. A friend of theirs, John Anthony, was very interested in spiritualism. Having talked to Jill about the idea of power of will, the atmosphere in the room suddenly changed dramatically. Jill fell into a trance as the windows blew open. Peter Gabriel: ‘We saw other faces in each other. It was almost as if something else had come into us and was using us as a meeting point.‘24
Hegarty and Halliwell wrote about the lyrics in their study on progressive rock: The two characters ‘have doubts about whether their love for each other is true, or if the beloved ‘guardian eyes so blue’ can offer adequate protection from the unknown.‘25
The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man
Chris Welch: ‘Acoustic guitars beaver away, then an electric piano joins the fun as the danse macabre begins. Peter breathes a lover’s greeting: ‘It’s been a long time. Hasn’t it’ with gentle understatement, as the band finally make their appearance on ‘Sanctuary Man’.’26
This section was composed by Tony Banks around the time he started university.
Chris Welch: ‘The musical moods change, but there is pause for thought and reflection. Children’s voice chant a nursery rhyme during ‘Sanctuary Man’, then Peter heralds a clash of dark forces. ‘Killing for peace…bang, bang, bang!’ he yells as the combined forces of Hackett, Rutherford, Banks and Collins march into action.‘27
Hegarty and Halliwell: ‘The ‘Sanctuary Man’ cannot distract the quester from scenes of war in which ‘the children of the west’ and ‘a host of dark skinned warriors’ wait for battle.‘28
Ikhnaton And Itsacon and Their Band Of Merry Men
Hegarty and Halliwell: ‘The battle between civilization and savagery ends in jubilation, where dancing and rejoicing suggest a change of order.‘29
Chris Welch: ‘A sudden halt creates a cliff hanging moment for tension before the main riff is repeated.‘30
How Dare I Be So Beautiful?
Chris Welch: ‘Gabriel’s gift of extracting maximum meaning and sensual effect from well chosen words is exemplified on ‘How Dare I Be So Beautiful?’ when in the aftermath of battle he says: ‘We climb up the mountain of human flesh.’ The final line of this piece ‘…Narcissus is turned to a flower,’ concludes with ‘A Flower?‘31
Willow Farm
Genesis have always liked to play with contrast with Tony Banks being the driving force. He was always the one that wanted to get away from only writing straight pop songs and loved the idea of adding quiet bits to loud bits, sometimes only to make the loud bits seem louder than they were.
Having written the guitar intro and developing it further as a group, for Tony, ‘Supper’s Ready’ seemed to become ‘The Musical Box Part II.’ Knowing that Peter Gabriel had written an independent song called ‘Willow Farm’, Tony suggested to suddenly go into this electric song after ‘How Dare I Be So Beautiful?’
Tony Banks: ‘We had this completely distinct song that Peter had written on piano called ‘Willow Farm’. I took the left-hand part and played it on the Mellotron brass, and played the right-hand part on the organ, which created this rather ugly sound, and the first run-down had a very strange note in it that made you sit up.’32
Steve Hackett: ‘‘Willow Farm’ […] was one of my favourites. That was one of the strongest segments; it was Beatlesque, very catchy. I thought that was the band playing at its best. Because it was pastiche, it was possible to do that with gusto in most situations.‘33
The surprise effect and the contrast made ‘Willow Farm’ sound more insane and distinctive in the context than it had been before. On live performances, Peter appeared in a flower mask that became an iconic image in early Genesis’s history and was inspired by Bill & Ben, the Flower Pot Men. According to Tony, Pete adopted his ‘music hall persona’ there, ‘and he became even more the centre of attraction.’34
Band biographer Paul Russell: ‘There’s some light relief with the flower mask during ‘Willow Farm’ and several tranquil guitar sections with Gabriel adding some soothing flute.’35
Chris Welch: ‘Gabriel appeared dancing in tight black trousers with a huge flower wreathing his head, launching him into the camp and comic ‘Willow Farm’. Gabriel, growing ever more surreal, chants over a suitably silly march, ‘There’s Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British flag, plastic bag…what a drag.’ This piece of eccentric nonsense, much in the tradition of Edward Lear and John Lennon, stops in its tracks with a cry of ‘All change!’‘36
Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-starring the Delicious Talents of Gabble Ratchet)
The decision to include ‘Willow Farm’ transformed the whole of ‘Supper’s Ready’ and from there, it became much grander and reached another level, particularly with the following ‘Apocalypse in 9/8’ section.
Chris Welch: ‘‘Apocalypse’ begins with doomy chords, heralding an Elizabethan style serenade on flute and guitar. This is supplanted by a grinding, angular organ solo over a pounding, relentless rhythm in 9/8. Phil’s drums skitter around the Hammond as Tony’s stabbing notes become increasingly hysterical during a lengthy instrumental interlude.‘37
During the writing process at Una Billings, Mike, Phil and Tony wrote this section together as a trio, marking the beginning of the three of them being the musical core of Genesis. They were jamming in a 9/8-rhythm with Mike playing the riff and Phil giving the complex, but steady basis on drums to Tony’s keyboard solo, who put big chords into this otherwise very free and open part.
Tony Banks: ‘The section of ‘Supper’s Ready’ called ‘Apocalypse in 9/8’ was the best instrumental piece we’d created up to that point. Mike had a way of playing bass pedals and then putting guitar chords across it which just sounded great, and I said ‘If you can tie it down so you’re playing an E on the bass, and then just play an F sharp and a B at the top, don’t play any other notes. Then I can play any chord I like on top of that which will give me great freedom to write a solo on top of that.’ Mike and Phil created a 9/8 riff, but I didn’t want to be tied to the time signature so I just took it as a 4/4 thing and played right against their riff.‘38
Mike Rutherford: ‘The ‘Apocalypse in 9/8’ – the instrumental section from ‘Supper’s Ready’ – was written at the Una Billings dance school, a rehearsal place just off Shephers Bush. Peter wasn’t there, so Phil, Tony and I started working on it; Steve didn’t have much to do at that point. And it marked a start of what was later going to be the three-piece unit. And in a sense the piece was less written; the chords were set up and the mood was there. It was more like a group composition in that sense because the music was in place and Peter came in with the vocals afterwards.’39
Phil Collins: ‘I was not there that day the riff came up. They’d worked out this thing between Tony playing a kind of keyboard piece on top of the guitar and bass pedal riff, and I came in the next day and played I didn’t know what. I couldn’t quite follow, I joined this bit, the bass and guitar riff when I heard it, and then when I heard a good bit from him [Tony] I joined him, I kind of went to the loudest side. It was the same thing on the recording of it. I eventually learned the part that I improvised but it was just basically flipping between the two things. It was one of the strongest pieces we ever did at that time.’40
Tony originally envisioned it as an instrumental piece, but then Peter Gabriel started singing on top of it at the end of the keyboard solo. Tony’s first reaction was ‘What is he doing?’: ‘It took me about ten seconds to think ‘This is fantastic, it’s so strong’, even though that hadn’t been my plan. That taught me another lesson, that however much you can climax a keyboard solo, if you have a vocal or even a guitar to finish it off, it takes it onto another level.‘.41
Mike Rutherford was stunned by the incredible powerful line ‘666 is no longer alone’: ‘Whereas some music sections are a bit laboured, […] this one just seemed to become a wonderful piece without too much effort.’ He thinks that on ‘Supper’s Ready’, ‘everyone in the band is at their best instrumentally. […] All the best of what we were doing at that time were in that song.’42
Paul Russell describes the atmosphere of this sequence onstage as ‘a flame engulfed battlefield, the lightning against the gauze sails give the impression of flickering flames.’43
During this sequence, Peter Gabriel appeared on stage in a strange box mask, a picture of this scene later appeared on the album Genesis Live from 1973 and Russell thinks ‘this is rock theatre at its peak.‘44
As Sure as Eggs is Eggs (Aching Men’s Feet)
Chris Welch: ‘Bells chime and the snare drum rolls as Gabriel sounds a return to the theme from ‘Lover’s Leap’. The dénouement of this massive work is reached with ‘As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs’, where the tempo reverts to a slow but steady rock beat, with huge notes from Mike Rutherford’s bass pedals underpinning an exultant guitar rhythm. It sounds like the whole band is waving farewell.’45
What is ‘Supper’s Ready’ about? – A selection of quotes and interpretations
Band biographer Robin Platts: ‘The lyrics to ‘Supper’s Ready’ were the brainchild of Gabriel […] – an epic tale of good versus evil that referenced the Bible, Winston Churchill, Greek mythology and, indirectly, Jonathan King (‘How dare I be so beautiful?’ was a King catch phrase).’46
Bowler & Dray: Onstage, ‘a black cloak that at the end of the song was torn off in a flash of light to reveal Peter in a shining white suit, the final triumph of good over evil.’47
Kevin Holm-Hudson, in his study of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, calls ‘Supper’s Ready’ ‘a Gabrielesque vision of the battle of Armageddon and the second coming of Christ.‘48
Steve Hackett: ‘Lyrically, you couldn’t really pin it down. There was the gobbledygook factor and all the rest, and in the middle of this long piece, you had the mini-pop songs.’49
Steve Hackett: ‘The word Elgar comes to mind for some reason, Elgar on acid perhaps.’50
The aftermath
When the band went into the studio, they were still putting ‘Supper’s Ready’ together, knowing only the beginning and where and how the song would end. After playing and recording it, the band listened to it and realized that two bits were slightly out of tune with each other. Slowing down one part to make it fit became an artistic challenge for Mike and Tony, but the result gave ‘Supper’s Ready’ a very peculiar sound, which the fans thought was very artistic. Years later, when producer Nick Davis and Tony remixed and remastered the original recordings, they realized that it had been in the same key all the time. The problem had been the editing machines in the studio: One of the machines had just run slow. The whole slowing-down process was unnecessary and with modern electronics they would have easily managed to put both bits in the same key.
When Peter Gabriel suggested to call the song ‘Supper’s Ready’ Tony Banks’ initial reaction was ‘No! We need to call it a little more epic!’, but the odd title made the long and ambitious song even more weird. Tony Banks also says, ‘some fans might put ‘The Musical Box’, ‘Firth of Fifth’ or ‘The Cinema Show’ also up there, but ‘Supper’s Ready’ is my favourite song from that period.’51
Richard Mcphail: ‘I remember I got a cassette from the studio and it was a bit like a sort of religious observance. We would listen to it every day, wherever, no talking in the van. It was a huge jump forward in my opinion and as I say, the production was really good. I felt like they’ve captured the power of the band.’52
Steve Hackett: ‘When we were recording it, I really thought the record company was going to pull the plug on us: ‘Game’s up, guys!’ instead of which it became one of the iconic tracks of what we now call ‘Progressive Rock’, but we weren’t using that term at the time. ‘Prog Rock’, here it is, it’s the idea of something that keeps changing scene, that’s how I view it.’53
Tony Banks: ‘We gave them the result. Every time that was all they got. In later years we even told them what the single was, we did not even play them the rest of the album. We were able to do that. Incredibly lucky, I think. The idea of 26-minute songs would not appeal to many people. This particular record company wanted that, so that was fine, but it would not appeal too much to a modern record company. They just let us get on with it. They backed us, they gave us the money to do what we wanted. We didn’t really rise, it was all against future earnings, so we didn’t pay it back for many years. They were there and if we had split up at that moment, we wouldn’t have earned a penny.’54
Foxtrot – Artwork and release
Continuing and developing their style from the two previous albums, Foxtrot was a success for Genesis and the music press celebrated its original style. ‘Supper’s Ready’ and ‘Watcher Of The Skies’ stood out as innovative. The album cover, a painting with a fox wearing a red dress, by Paul Whitehead was largely inspired by ‘Supper’s Ready’.
Peter Gabriel: ‘Originally the concept was going to be a fox on an ice cube, and then Steve and I wanted it to be a fox changing into a woman because we’re both attracted just by the idea of a change, really. That’s what ‘Willow Farm’ is about in that it’s a sort of Zen farm where the only thing that is constant is a stage of change, which probably has a neutralizing effect in itself.‘55
Gabriel even thought of creating his own ‘Willow Farm’ or ‘Real World Experience’, by buying ‘a hundred-acre farm in North Wales and turn it into a cross between Disneyland and an art gallery, where the visitor goes through a tremendous amount of first hand experiences which would completely upturn his points of relativity and put him through a series of changes.‘56
Reception
Foxtrot stayed in the UK charts for seven weeks, reaching #12. Today, it is viewed as one of the great prog rock albums of the age. ‘To this day ‘Foxtrot’ is a magical album’, XTC guitarist Dave Gregory said. ‘’Supper’s Ready’ became like an addiction. It had such a great sound, and enough mystery to make you want to hear it over and over again…To this day, I will never tire of it.’57
Richard Mcphail: ‘‘Supper’s Ready’ […] was as far as I was concerned […] the greatest piece of music ever written.‘58
Steve Hackett: ‘When we first wrote that, and performed it live, I really thought that the game was up and we’d be sussed for the imposters we were. […] The reverse was true. We were hailed as beings from another realm, that managed to come up with this magic stuff, and so my instincts were entirely wrong.‘59
Contemporary reviews
‘[T]hey’ve almost achieved the perfect album’, wrote Jerry Gilbert of Sounds. ‘There are occasions when the overall sound does lack the required vitality and other occasions where Genesis are trying too hard, but these moments are sporadic.’60 Chris Welch wrote in Melody Maker: ‘A milestone in the group’s character, it is also an important point of development in British group music. For Genesis have reached a creative peak with this collection of songs.’61
Their label manager, Tony Stratton-Smith aka. ‘Strat’, believed in Genesis. He had already liked Trespass and Nursery Cryme, but he really loved Foxtrot.
Tony Banks: ‘He was always behind us and had this enthusiasm. There was someone who really liked what we did. The business was full of enthusiasts in those days. He was not a professional, not a record company man at all. He was someone who spent all the money on all the wrong things. He supported groups like Lindisfarne, who made him money, but it was luck. I don’t think Van der Graaf Generator or we really made him any money most of the time. He was very important to us and after a duff concert, when you felt down, we liked to be told ‘You were wonderful, I love you!’ It made us feel fantastic. You need guys like that.’62
Touring Foxtrot
The tour in promotion of the album started in the UK with co-headliner Lindisfarne. At the end of September 1972, Genesis played the infamous gig at National Stadium, Dublin. During ‘The Musical Box’, Peter Gabriel came onstage in Jill’s red dress, wearing the fox’s head from the album cover of Foxtrot. He had not told the rest of the band about it, which was a wise decision, because they would not have him allowed to do it. His image appeared on the front page of Melody Maker and raised the band’s profile. ‘It was weird playing it and thinking ‘Oh God, what’s going on here?’’, Tony Banks said. ‘This brought us on the front page of Melody Maker, so we thought ‘This is okay.’’63
The tour also led Genesis to the US for the first time in December 1972. The first show in America was a warm-up gig at Brandeis University near Boston. The next gig was the Philharmonic Hall in New York with String Driven Thing in benefit for the United Cerbral Palsy Fund. The show was overshadowed by rehearsal problems and technical issues. Nonetheless, the audience loved it, even writing to radio stations in the aftermath and demanding Genesis to be played.
Genesis became a main act. Peter developed his costumes and also perfected his art of storytelling.
Peter Gabriel: ‘The storytelling had emerged as a means of filling in the gaps when we had thirty-six strings being tuned by people who weren’t very good at tuning them.’64
Phil Collins: ‘I would help out by doing a one-handed drum solo whenever the gaps between songs got too long while everyone was tuning or getting the Mellotron ready for the next tune. That left Peter with dead air, which he filled with stories. I became his stooge.’65
Latter-day reception
Foxtrot remains one of the greatest and most beloved progressive rock albums of all time. AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine says Foxtrot ‘is the rare art-rock album that excels at both the art and the rock, and it’s a pinnacle of the genre (and decade) because of it.’66 His colleague François Couture calls ‘Supper’s Ready’ ‘Genesis’ undisputed masterpiece’.67 In July 2010, Classic Rock chose Foxtrot as one of the 50 Albums That Built Prog Rock and Rolling Stone ranked it no. 14 on their 2015 list Greatest Prog Rock Albums Of All Time.68
Sources
‘Advert – Genesis – Foxtrot album – Melody Maker – 14th Oct’, Melody Maker (14 October 1972), p. 23.
‘The 50 Albums That Built Prog Rock’, Classic Rock, no. 146 (July 2010).
Banks, Tony; Collins, Phil; Gabriel, Peter; Hackett, Steve; Rutherford, Mike; Dodd, Philip (2007): Genesis. Chapter & verse. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Griffin.
Bowler, Dave; Dray, Bryan (1992): Genesis. A biography. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
Bright, Spencer (1988): Peter Gabriel. An authorized biography. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
Couture, Francois. “Song Review by François Couture”. AllMusic.
Easlea, Daryl, Without Frontiers: The Life & Music of Peter Gabriel. (Omnibus Press, 2018).
Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, ‘Foxtrot – Genesis (Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards)’. AllMusic.
GENESIS REUNION 2014: ‘SUPPER’S READY’ & ‘MUSICAL BOX’ THE ‘FIVE’ – STEVE, PETER ,TONY, MIKE, PHIL.
Hegarty, Paul; Halliwell, Martin (2011): Beyond and before. Progressive rock since the 1960s. New York: Continuum.
Hewitt, Alan, Opening the Musical Box – A Genesis Chronicle. (Firefly Publishing, 2000).
Holm-Hudson, Kevin (2008): Genesis and the lamb lies down on Broadway. Aldershot, England, Burlington, VT: Ashgate.
MIKE RUTHERFORD UNFILTERED: GENESIS GUITARIST/COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION.
PHIL COLLINS FULL 2-HOUR INTERVIEW: HIS CAREER WITH GENESIS TO 1980.
Platts, Robin (2007): Genesis. Behind the lines, 1967-2007. Burlington, Ont., Canada: Collectors Guide Pub.
RICHARD MACPHAIL INTERVIEW Revised : GENESIS early years.
Russell, Paul (2004): Genesis. A live guide, 1969-1975. London, England: SAF.
STEVE HACKETT FULL INTERVIEW- Revised : MY GENESIS YEARS.
Thompson, Dave (2005): Turn it on again. Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins & Genesis. San Francisco: Backbeat Books.
TONY BANKS UNFILTERED: GENESIS KEYBOARD PLAYER & COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION . FULL.. 1 Hour 53 Mins.
Welch, Chris (2005): Genesis. The complete guide to their music. London: Omnibus Press.
- Hewitt 2000: 34. ↩︎
- PHIL COLLINS FULL 2-HOUR INTERVIEW: HIS CAREER WITH GENESIS TO 1980. ↩︎
- Rod was John Mayall’s younger brother. ↩︎
- RICHARD MACPHAIL INTERVIEW Revised : GENESIS early years. Crowborough was the location where Tony Stratton-Smith, head of the Charisma label, had his house. The house can be seen in the inner sleeve of Van der Graaf’s album Pawn Hearts. ↩︎
- STEVE HACKETT FULL INTERVIEW- Revised : MY GENESIS YEARS. ↩︎
- GENESIS REUNION 2014: ‘SUPPER’S READY’ & ‘MUSICAL BOX’ THE ‘FIVE’ – STEVE, PETER ,TONY, MIKE, PHIL. ↩︎
- Hewitt 2000: 34. ↩︎
- Platts 2007: 53. ↩︎
- Banks in Welch 2005: 25. ↩︎
- Bowler & Dray 1992: 61. ↩︎
- PHIL COLLINS FULL 2-HOUR INTERVIEW: HIS CAREER WITH GENESIS TO 1980. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 26. ↩︎
- Bowler & Dray 1992: 67. ↩︎
- Bowler & Dray 1992: 67. ↩︎
- TONY BANKS UNFILTERED: GENESIS KEYBOARD PLAYER & COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION . FULL.. 1 Hour 53 Mins. ↩︎
- Bowler & Dray 1992: 67. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 27. ↩︎
- Hackett 2007: 119. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 27. ↩︎
- MIKE RUTHERFORD UNFILTERED: GENESIS GUITARIST/COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION. ↩︎
- STEVE HACKETT FULL INTERVIEW- Revised : MY GENESIS YEARS ↩︎
- MIKE RUTHERFORD UNFILTERED: GENESIS GUITARIST/COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION. ↩︎
- Banks 2007: 121. ↩︎
- Bright 1988: 51. ↩︎
- Hegarty & Halliwell 2011: 97. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 28. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Hegarty & Halliwell 2011: 97. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 28. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Banks 2007: 121. ↩︎
- Thompson 2005: 85. ↩︎
- Easlea 2013: 109. ↩︎
- Russell 2004: 60. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 28. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Banks 2007: 122. ↩︎
- Rutherford 2007: 121. ↩︎
- GENESIS REUNION 2014: ‘SUPPER’S READY’ & ‘MUSICAL BOX’ THE ‘FIVE’ – STEVE, PETER ,TONY, MIKE, PHIL. ↩︎
- Banks 2007: 122. ↩︎
- MIKE RUTHERFORD UNFILTERED: GENESIS GUITARIST/COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION. ↩︎
- Russell 2004: 60. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Welch 2005: 28 f. ↩︎
- Platts 2007: 56. ↩︎
- Bowler & Dray 1992: 75. ↩︎
- Holm-Hudson 2008: 125. ↩︎
- Thompson 2005: 85. ↩︎
- Hackett 2007: 123. ↩︎
- TONY BANKS UNFILTERED: GENESIS KEYBOARD PLAYER & COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION . FULL.. 1 Hour 53 Mins. ↩︎
- RICHARD MACPHAIL INTERVIEW Revised : GENESIS early years. ↩︎
- STEVE HACKETT FULL INTERVIEW- Revised : MY GENESIS YEARS. ↩︎
- TONY BANKS UNFILTERED: GENESIS KEYBOARD PLAYER & COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION . FULL.. 1 Hour 53 Mins. ↩︎
- Platts 2007: 56. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Easlea 2013: 114. ↩︎
- in Banks et al 2007: 111. ↩︎
- Thompson 2005: 84. ↩︎
- Gilbert, Jerry, ‘Special review of the new Genesis album by Jerry Gilbert’, Sounds (30 September 1972). ↩︎
- ‘Advert – Genesis – Foxtrot album – Melody Maker – 14th Oct’, Melody Maker (14 October 1972), p. 23. ↩︎
- TONY BANKS UNFILTERED: GENESIS KEYBOARD PLAYER & COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION . FULL.. 1 Hour 53 Mins ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Gabriel 2007: 113. ↩︎
- Collins 2007: 113. ↩︎
- Erlewine, Stephen Thomas, ‘Foxtrot – Genesis (Songs, Reviews, Credits, Awards)’. AllMusic. ↩︎
- Couture, Francois. “Song Review by François Couture”. AllMusic. ↩︎
- ‘The 50 Albums That Built Prog Rock’, Classic Rock, no. 146 (July 2010) / Dolan, Jon, ‘Genesis, ‘Foxtrot’ (1972) | 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time’, Rolling Stone (17 June 2015). ↩︎