Tag: last show

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Anthony Phillips’s last gig with Genesis

Cover for one of the various editions of 'From Genesis to Revelation'

On 18 July 1970, Genesis played their last show with founding member and guitarist Anthony Phillips at Haywards Heath.

Charterhouse and ‘The Anon’

Anthony Phillips joined Charterhouse, a public school in Godalming, Surrey, in April 1965. Being a guitarist, he quickly formed a band there with his fellow pupils Richard MacPhail, Rivers Jobe, Rob Tyrell and Mike Rutherford. They named themselves Anon and played songs by The Rolling Stones1, The Beatles and several other pop groups of the era. They performed mostly at parties.

The first member to bring in an own song into Anon was Anthony Phillips: ‘Pennsylvania Flickhouse’. They booked an hour of studio time at Tony Pike’s studio in Putney, as Richard MacPhail remembers: ‘We piled all the gear in Ant’s mother’s Mercedes and got on a bus and I thought ‘An hour, on my God, what are we gonna do with a whole hour? Each song’s three minutes long, that means we’re gonna get about nine songs done.’ We just got one done and we had huge rails with Mr Pike because everything was of course too loud and he said ‘You’re gonna ruin my equipment!’, all that classic stuff that went on in those days in recording studios.’2

In December 1966, the group disbanded.

Anthony Phillips in Genesis

In 1967, Ant and his friend and fellow guitarist Mike Rutherford began writing music together. To record a demo, they asked another Charterhouse pupil, Tony Banks, if he could play organ on a song. Tony agreed under the condition that his mate Peter Gabriel could also come along and sing one of their songs. Both of them had also played in a band at Charterhouse, The Garden Wall. Ant and Mike agreed and soon, former Garden Wall drummer Chris Stewart joined the group.

The demo tape was given to producer Jonathan King, who signed them to his publishing company and they recorded some singles. King then named the group Genesis, and the group recorded their first studio album From Genesis to Revelation (1969). Like on the singles, King added strings arranged by Arthur Greenslade to the mix. To their frustration, the band only found out about the strings when listening to the finished version of From Genesis To Revelation with only Ant Phillips showing his anger by storming out of the studio.

By mid-1969, the boys’ parents wanted them to resume education. At Charterhouse, Ant began studying for further A levels to pursue a university degree. But Ant and Mike had been gripped by rock and roll and decided to become professional musicians. By the end of the summer of 1969, Peter and Tony joined them in their wish to become full-time musicians. They began writing music and touring the country from late 1969 to early 1970. ‘Yet, something was lacking‘, it is said in the press kit of Ant’s first solo album, ‘Phillips, perhaps because he was younger than the others found that life on the road was getting in the way of his writing.’3

The unhappiness and the stress began affecting Ant’s health and also he began suffering from stage fright: : ‘I was in Watford Tech, I remember playing the opening thing of ‘Let Us Now Make Love’ and I looked at the guitar and I thought ‘I haven’t got a clue what comes next’ and then I saw myself playing, but it was really scary.’4 Rich MacPhail remembers him playing a gig at Hackney where Ant was almost catatonic.5

Ant battled with the stage fright for three months thinking it was a passing phase and then fell ill with bronchial pneumonia: ‘Doctors were advising me to leave [the band]6‘, Ant says.

In June 1970, Genesis recorded their second album Trespass. Ant enjoyed working in the studio, but in July, they went straight back into band-life with little sleep, a lot of excitement and although Richard MacPhail tried his best to nourish his mates, pretty basic food. They were travelling and sleeping in their bread van or on floors: ‘We literally pitched up somewhere in the Midlands and we had nowhere to stay’, Ant recalls. ‘Too far to go back and some guy said: ‘Well, I know a guy with a bloody big house in Buxton’ and we stayed on the drafted floor of a bloody big house in Buxton.’7

Anthony Phillips leaves the band

Finally, Ant decided to leave Genesis. ‘I remember driving out with with Richard MacPhail who said ‘Can we have a word with you?”, Mike Rutherford remembers. ‘To the pitch at Richmond rugby ground after a soundcheck. Light was falling, it was a weird atmosphere and Ant said he wanted to leave. It was a huge shock to me.’8 Ant’s last show was at Haywards Heath on 18 July 1970.

Tony Banks says: ‘I thought it was the end of the group. He was vital to its formation and in many ways he was the strongest member. We felt that whatever was special about us was a combination of the four of us being together in the same room so I assumed that when he left, that was it.’9

Losing Ant ‘was the closest we came to busting up’, Mike Rutherford agrees. ‘For some reason we felt so close that if one left, we thought we couldn’t carry on. Of all the changes we’ve been through, surviving Ant leaving was the hardest.’10

The aftermath

After Ant’s departure, Genesis did not disband, but his influence remained. The acoustic beginning of the ‘The Musical Box’, the opening song of their next album Nursery Cryme, was based on an instrumental guitar piece by Mike and Ant called ‘F Sharp’.

Ant himself went into a hiatus. ‘I left Genesis in a cloud of dust’, he says. ‘I remember I was listening to Sibelius when I had one those strange revelations – that I was terribly limited.’11 He started studying various musical styles and in 1974, he began teaching music as a means to further explore the subject. In 1977 he said: ‘In the time since I left Genesis, I’ve studied classical guitar, piano, orchestration.’12 That same year he released his first solo album The Geese And The Ghost. Anthony Phillips is still active as a musician today.

Title photo: Cover of one of the various editions of From Genesis to Revelation

Footnotes

  1. To this day, Ant sends Christmas cards to Richard addressed to ‘Mick Phail’. ↩︎
  2. RICHARD MACPHAIL INTERVIEW Revised : GENESIS early years ↩︎
  3. “The Geese and The Ghost Press Kit“. Passport Records. 1977. pp. 2–3. ↩︎
  4. ANTHONY PHILLIPS UNFILTERED: GENESIS C0-FOUNDER IN CONVERSATION ↩︎
  5. RICHARD MACPHAIL INTERVIEW Revised : GENESIS early years. In fact, Anthony Phillips has not played live to this day. ↩︎
  6. Cherry Red Interview: Anthony Phillips Story – Part 1 – Interview by Mark Powell – 2014 ↩︎
  7. ANTHONY PHILLIPS UNFILTERED: GENESIS C0-FOUNDER IN CONVERSATION ↩︎
  8. MIKE RUTHERFORD UNFILTERED: GENESIS GUITARIST/COMPOSER IN CONVERSATION. Now Revised ↩︎
  9. Bowler, Dave; Dray, Bryan, Genesis. A biography. (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1992), p. 35. ↩︎
  10. Ibid. ↩︎
  11. Hedges, Dan, ‘It’s that candour moment…’, Sounds (26 March 1977). ↩︎
  12. Ibid. ↩︎
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The end of the Invisible Touch Tour at Wembley 1987

On July 4, 1987, Genesis finished their gigantic Invisible Touch tour at Wembley Stadium. It was the fourth sold out night in a row at Wembley.

Invisible Touch

In 1986, Genesis released the album Invisible Touch. It became their most successful album, peaking at #1 in the U.K. and #3 in the U.S. It produced five hit singles: ‘Invisible Touch’, ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’, ‘Land of Confusion’, ‘In Too Deep’ and ‘Throwing It All Away’. Songs like the title track, ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’ and ‘Land Of Confusion’ with its famous spitting image video would dominate the radio and music TV stations and the international charts of 1986/1987. Genesis were everywhere and bigger than ever. So of course, the band went on a massive tour through North America, Australia, Japan and Europe before finishing in Britain with four sold-out nights at Wembley Stadium in front of 300,000 people.

Purchase Invisible Touch here on Amazon!*

The Invisible Touch tour

The tour began in the U.S. in September 1986 and included 112 dates and sold close to two million tickets. It ended in July 1987. In Australia and New Zealand, the five-man line-up was accompanied by a four-piece string section on ‘In Too Deep’ and ‘Your Own Special Way’. They had to invite the quartet because of local regulations that required them to employ local musicians.

At this time, the band was not only a hit-machine, but a working and brilliant live act. The Vari Lite light show was impressive as always. The band had much material to rely on, but chose mainly new songs from their hit album and the albums before.

The shows were always opened with ‘Mama’ (which sometimes lacked a bit of atmosphere in daylight) and ended with the ‘Turn It On Again’ hit medley that the band had established on the previous tour. The medley included ‘Everybody Needs Somebody to Love’, ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Twist and Shout’, ‘Pinball Wizard’, ‘All Day and All of the Night’ and ‘Karma Chameleon’.

Older songs in the set included ‘Los Endos’, ‘Home By The Sea’ (including it’s meanwhile standard ghost-story introduction) and another ‘In The Cage’ medley. When the tour began, they had played ‘In That Quiet Earth’ and the second half of the epic ‘Supper’s Ready’ after ‘In The Cage’. However, during the tour Phil had difficulties reaching the higher notes in ‘Supper’s Ready’, so by the middle of the tour they had gone back to the usual ending of ‘In That Quiet Earth’ and ‘Afterglow’.

New songs included ‘Domino’ (with another – soon to be famous – introduction by Phil), ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’, ‘Throwing It All Away’, where the call-and-response singing developed throughout the tour, and ‘Invisible Touch’ itself.

Live at Wembley Stadium

‘Nearly 300,000 people at Wembley. OK, there might have been a few repeats in there, but I thought at the time, and I still think now, that moment was the peak of our career’1 – Tony Banks.

By the time Genesis got to Wembley, they had performed the set so often that it had become a true piece of fine art and musicianship. Interestingly, only two shows were scheduled at Wembley, but the demand for tickets was so high, that a third and then a record-breaking fourth night were added. Genesis ended in Guinness World Records until Michael Jackson sold out Wembley Stadiums on seven nights on his Bad World Tour one year later.

The Wembley shows were filmed and released as video and as DVD in 2003. Unfortunately the famous ‘In The Cage’ medley was left out of the release because on every night, the tapes had to be changed during that song.

Apart from that, the results and the performance are astonishing. The band truly ended the tour on a high note there. Looking back at the videos and listening to the songs and performances, we can say that Genesis were at their peak at this very point at Wembley Stadium. Afterwards, the fans had to wait four more years for a new Genesis record.

Title photo: Genesis Nancy 1987. Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson. Genesis en concert à Nancy le 14 juin 1987 au stade Marcel-Picot de Nancy-Tomblaine Source: Wikimedia Commons, Fredamas / CC-BY-SA-2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

Listen to songs recorded at Wembley in 1987 on “Genesis – BBC Broadcasts” – Get it here!*

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  1. in Banks, Tony; Collins, Phil; Gabriel, Peter; Hackett, Steve; Rutherford, Mike; Dodd, Philip, Genesis. Chapter & verse. (New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007), p. 287. ↩︎
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Steve Hackett’s last show with Genesis

On July 3, 1977, Genesis played the last show of their Wind And Wuthering tour and (unbeknown to them at that point) also the last show with lead guitarist Steve Hackett.

Wind And Wuthering

In December 1976, Genesis had released Wind and Wuthering, their second album since Peter Gabriel’s departure. The band had become a foursome the year before, drummer Phil Collins had taken over the vocal duties. He had proved that he could fill this role easily on the previous album A Trick of the Tail and the following tour in 1976.

By this point, keyboardist Tony Banks and guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford were the main songwriters with Phil Collins being more of a player and arranger. Guitarist Steve Hackett felt that not enough of his material was used. He was frustrated about his role in the group and decided to leave Genesis after the 1977 tour.

The Wind & Wuthering tour

The band set out for a huge tour in 1977 that would lead them to South America for the first time and through Europe and the US. On drums, they were accompanied by American drummer Chester Thompson. It was his first tour with them and he would remain with the band as a live drummer until 2007 (with a short interruption in the 1990s).

Genesis reached a new peak in live performances and was voted ‘Best live group’ in 1977. This was captured in the double live album Seconds Out.

The last show

The last show of the tour (and also Steve Hackett’s last show as a member of Genesis) took place in the Olympiahalle, Munich, on July 3, 1977. They opened the set with ‘Squonk’ as they had done throughout most of the tour, then they played ‘One For The Vine’, a Banks composition from the new album. ‘Inside And Out’ from the recent EP Spot The Pigeon was added on some European dates and was also played in Munich. Among the highlights of the show were songs like ‘The Carpet Crawlers’, ‘I Know What I Like’ and ‘Supper’s Ready’, some of which had changed a lot since the days when Peter Gabriel sang them. Also, the band had started to play medleys on the tour before and continued to do so on the Wind & Wuthering tour. ‘Dance On A Volcano’ and ‘Los Endos’ were combined as well as ‘The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway’ and the closing section of ‘The Musical Box’. The band also played ‘Firth Of Fifth’ that night in which Steve plays the famous guitar solo. Neither the fans nor the band knew that they had witnessed him playing it live for the last time.

Steve leaves the band

Steve Hackett had been the first Genesis member to record a solo album. There, he included some of the music that was not used on Genesis albums. During the period as a four-piece-band, he wanted to have a certain percentage on each album for his own songs. The others disagreed; they were a democratic band. So he started recording solo albums and felt that his input on Genesis albums became less and less.

Also, when the band mixed the live album Seconds Out in July 1977, he could not stand listening to tracks like ‘I Know What I Like’ anymore after having played them for months at this point. Also, he felt that after playing shows with audiences of 20.000 people, there was nothing new to strive for. So one day he phoned Mike Rutherford and told him he wanted to leave. Mike knew that Steve had been unhappy in Genesis for some time, so he did not try to talk him out of it. Later that day or the following day, Phil Collins drove from West London to Trident Studios, where they mixed the live album. He passed Steve on the street and told him to jump into the car. Steve acted a bit oddly, said ‘Speak to Mike, he’ll explain’ and went off. When Phil arrived at the studio, Tony and Mike informed him that Steve had left the band.

The three remaining members then went on mixing Seconds Out and afterwards went into the studio to record their next album. They would remain a three-piece-band in the studio for the rest of their career and Steve Hackett would continue his career as a solo artist.

Title photo: Genesis Steve Hackett. Source: Wikimedia Commons, Jean-Luc / CC-BY-SA-2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0). Originally posted to Flickr as Genesis.

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The last show of “The Lamb” tour

On 22 May 1975, Genesis played the last show of their ambitious “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” tour. It was also their last gig with Peter Gabriel as lead singer.

“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”

In 1974, Genesis went into the studio to record the album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway*”. It was a double concept album, based on a complex story by lead singer Peter Gabriel about a Puerto Rican boy named Rael. Rael lives in New York City and is sucked into a netherworld, where he encounters strange characters on his adventures.

The story and the American setting were a break from their earlier tales of British myth and fantasy. Previous to the album, the band had toured North America and were trying to become successful in the United States. It was also (after the failed attempt on their first record) their first real “concept album”, a trademark for many progressive rock bands.

There were tensions going on inside the band, when they wrote the ambitious album. Peter Gabriel wrote the lyrics and the story separately, while his bandmates wrote all the music. Only the lyrics for one song, “The Light Dies Down On Broadway”, were written not by Gabriel, but by Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. Most of the music came from jam sessions by the trio Tony Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (bass and guitars) and Phil Collins (drums). Lead guitarist Steve Hackett did not contribute much to the music.

Tensions within the group

There were two main reasons for the split between Gabriel and the rest of the band that overshadowed the making of the album: For one, William Friedkin, director of “The Exorcist*” was interested in working together with Peter Gabriel on a film script. Peter Gabriel was interested and even thought about leaving the band for this project, but Friedkin backed away when he realized that.

The other reason was that Peter’s wife Jill was pregnant with their first child Anna. She was was born in July ’74 and there were some complications in the aftermath. Gabriel started to alienate from the band during that time. He was the first one to have a child and see that there were other opportunities and possibilites in life besides being in a rock band. His inner conflict is also reflected in the story of “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”, for example in the lyrics of “In The Cage”: “Get me out of this cage!”

Up to this day, the album divides fans and critics. Upon its release, “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” received decidedly mixed reviews and was a commercial failure. Ticket sales did not go as well as planned and they had to cancel several shows. Nowadays it is looked upon in a hazy retrospective because it is Gabriel’s last work with the group.

The “Lamb” tour

Peter Gabriel was frustrated by the failure in terms of success and sales, especially because it was his story. For the tour, the band decided to play the entire album live, often to an audience who had never heard it because the tour began before the album was released.

Having become famous for his use of masks and costumes, Peter Gabriel wanted to use visual aspects to underline the story of the album. This time he overused them. Again, he wore costumes, the most famous being the “Slippermen” outfit, which covered him from head to toe and did not allow him to get the microphone close enough to his mouth, so his vocals could not be heard clearly. The band did not like this exaggeration and felt that the costumes and the performance had become the focus of the show to the disadvantage of the music.

The spectacular stage show also brought along some problems. There were slides at the back of the stage and they never were in the right order or stopped and did not move on. One night, a dummy of Peter Gabriel, which used to mirror him during one of the songs, was replaced by a naked roadie. And once when there had to be a small explosion for one song, the production manager caused a big explosion, so loud that the band stopped playing in the middle of the song. He poked his head round the curtain and said “Sorry!” to which Phil Collins shouted back: “You’re fired!”

Peter Gabriel decides to leave Genesis

During the course of the tour, Peter Gabriel decided to leave. It was no surprise to manager Tony Smith and the rest of the band. Smith only wanted Gabriel to finish the tour and announce the news afterwards.

Peter Gabriel played his last gig with Genesis at St Etienne in France in May 1975. It was a strange last gig, because St Etienne was meant to be the penultimate date of the tour, but the final date was cancelled just the day before. And so, Gabriel’s time with Genesis was over. He had founded the band in 1967 with Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford. When it was announced publicly, the fans were greatly shocked. Many doubted if Genesis could survive without him but we know they did and so did he.

Photo: Peter Gabriel in 1975. Photographer unknown. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Peter_Gabriel,_April_1975.jpg. Unknown author / CC0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0).

Listen to recordings from The Lamb tour on “Genesis – BBC Broadcasts” – Get it here!*

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