The history of a rock band
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.
Continue reading “Foxtrot (1972) – Genesis”
Phil Collins: ‘The mid-1980s was the biggest we ever got.’1
By the mid-1980s, there were longer gaps between Genesis albums. Phil Collins had launched his solo career at the start of the decade, and after their previous Genesis album, Mike Rutherford formed the hugely successful Mike + The Mechanics with vocalists Paul Carrack and Paul Young. Tony Banks, who had been releasing solo albums since 1979, remained the only member of the trio without significant chart success.
In 1985, Genesis reconvened at their studio, The Farm, with producer Hugh Padgham to begin work on a new album. The result was Invisible Touch, a bold, vibrant collection of songs released in 1986. Of the album’s eight tracks, five became major hit singles: “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight,” “Land of Confusion,” “In Too Deep,” “Throwing It All Away,” and the title track, “Invisible Touch.”
The lead single “Invisible Touch” is often viewed by die-hard progressive rock fans as a commercial betrayal – a far cry from Genesis’ roots. Yet the song, like all tracks on the album, was born from the band’s collaborative jam sessions. Engineer Paul Gomersall, who worked alongside Padgham, described their creative process:
‘Mike would come up with some sort of wacky drum loop. He’d bring his drum machine in, or Phil would, and they’d work around that. Mike is very experimental. I think he sees himself as more like a Brian Eno sort of person who makes interesting sounds and rhythms. Tony’s stuff was more chordal. Half the sound of Genesis is the chords that Tony comes up with.’2
“Invisible Touch” emerged when Mike played a guitar riff with an echo effect, prompting Phil to sing the now-iconic line, “She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah!” Phil penned the lyrics about being irresistibly drawn to someone mysterious and overpowering, even when it’s not good for you.
The song, like the rest of the album, features electronic drum sounds typical of ’80s pop. The rhythm was inspired by Sheila E.’s and Prince’s “The Glamorous Life” (1985). With Mike’s bassline, Tony’s keyboard solo, and a key change in the outro, “Invisible Touch” becomes a dynamic, infectious pop anthem.
Phil Collins: ‘Invisible Touch is my favourite Genesis song.’3
Live, the band always performed the song in a lower key to reduce strain on Phil’s voice. Still, he turned it into a crowd-pleasing singalong. Mike Rutherford also named it one of his live favourites, calling it ‘a wonderful song: upbeat, fun to play, always a strong moment in any gig.’4
Though a commercial triumph (Genesis’ only US No. 1 single), for some fans it marked a sellout. It even earned a mention in American Psycho, where Patrick Bateman dubs it the band’s ‘undisputed masterpiece.’
Described by music journalist Chris Welch as the band’s ‘most memorable pop ballad,’5 “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” features a haunting electronic motif and lyrics that are both abstract and direct.
The album version runs over nine minutes and showcases the band’s classic style. Originally titled “Monkey/Zulu,” the song grew from a jam session led by Tony Banks, who improvised the extended instrumental section, complete with strange, evocative effects. Phil’s stark lyrics, partly improvised, deal with drug addiction.
Mike Rutherford: ‘It’s more of the old-style Genesis in that it covers a lot of ground musically and has a fairly involved instrumental passage in the middle. We’ve done songs like this from the word go. The initial bit came from an improvised jam and the song and solo part in the middle were obvious from a longer section when Tony was just improvising sound over a rhythm being played by Phil and I and he just assembled a composed solo part.‘6
He added that Tony is ‘the most adventurous‘7 in terms of structure, always pushing the band to break from the traditional verse-chorus format.
Mike Rutherford wrote the lyrics for this rare political track, tackling international tensions. ‘It’s a political song about the mess we landed in. I’ve always shielded away from doing what I call a preachy song, a protest song, but it seemed to work. Maybe because the music was quite angry it made it work.’8
Musically, it was a group effort.
“Land of Confusion” became iconic thanks to its music video, featuring grotesque puppets from the British satirical TV show Spitting Image. Genesis, along with caricatures of politicians like Reagan, Thatcher, and Brezhnev, appeared in a surreal nightmare sequence.
The idea came when Genesis video director Jim Yukich saw Phil parodied on Spitting Image. On the show, puppet Phil performed a spoof love ballad called “Oh, You Must Be Leaving,” crying throughout.
In the video, Reagan is shown in bed with his wife and a monkey, a nod to his film Bedtime for Bonzo. The clip also features puppets of musicians like Bob Dylan, Tina Turner, and Michael Jackson. It won the band their only Grammy: Best Concept Music Video in 1987.
Tony Banks: ‘What other video can boast having all these stars, like Madonna and Prince?’9
In 1985, Ray Cooper of Handmade Films (George Harrison’s company) asked Phil to write a song for Mona Lisa starring Bob Hoskins and Cathy Tyson. While touring in Australia, Phil composed the chorus of “In Too Deep.” But since Genesis were about to start working on a new album, he brought the idea to the band.
The result: a warm, elegant pop ballad. Phil’s tender vocals are complemented by Tony’s piano and Mike’s subtle guitar work. Cooper loved it, and the song became a hit in its own right.
Tony later noted the challenge of filming the video, which simply showed the band performing: ‘The most difficult videos for us in many ways were the ones that you didn’t really have anything do. So things like ‘so ‘In Too Deep’ I remember being a bit of a struggle because it’s just a love song. How do you do it? So we just did it with us, almost like a cabaret thing.’10
Fast-paced and synth-heavy, this track features Tony Banks’ layered brass sounds and Phil’s punchy drums. The lyrics, about tabloid models, inspired the band to cast British comedian Benny Hill as Fred Scuttle in the video.
Phil called Hill himself. Though hesitant to reinforce his “dirty old man” image, Hill agreed if his character never actually got the girls. The video was set backstage at Wembley, with Hill as a doorman keeping out eager women. Phil cherished the signed photo he received afterward.
The album’s epic track, “Domino,” is split into two contrasting parts: “In the Glow of the Night” and “The Last Domino.” The first is slow and atmospheric; the second faster and rhythmically intense.
Tony Banks wrote the lyrics, capturing loneliness and despair during wartime.
Mike Rutherford: ‘His words are the reason why he’ll never write a hit single.’11
Phil Collins: ‘We were always a group of songwriters who would write 3-, 10- and 20-minute songs. We still write 10-minute songs, like ‘Domino’, but unfortunately, the three-minute songs have gotten better and become hits. I don’t feel we’ve bastardized the way we were, as we still work the same way. Diehard fans will say, ‘Rubbish. ‘The Carpet Crawlers, ‘I Know What I Like’ – that was progressive!’ But I don’t see that. We’d have killed for hit singles back in the early days!‘12
Mike added, ‘Looking back, people forget the show’s an hour and three quarters maybe and the costumes were probably 15 minutes of the whole thing. When we started having hit singles with MTV and videos, a hit single overshadowed the whole album and people started sort of saying ‘You stopped doing long songs.’ We never did, really, every album had a sort of 15-minute-long song on it till the very end. But they were album tracks, so they weren’t on television, they weren’t on the radio, but live they were a big part of the set.’13
Built around a looping guitar riff by Mike, “Throwing It All Away” is another emotional song that plays to Phil’s strengths as a vocalist. Despite its melancholic lyrics, the song feels optimistic and breezy, another showcase of the trio’s songwriting synergy. Mike also penned the lyrics.
It became famous live for its audience call-and-response.
Drummer Chester Thompson called it his favourite to play live: ‘The crazy thing about that is that the full kit only comes in the last bit of the song, it’s mostly just hi-hat and bass drum and then you finally come in towards the end, but I just thought it was such a great feel, I loved playing that song.’14
The music video was composed of footage from the band’s 1986 tour, capturing Genesis in their prime.
The final track on Invisible Touch is the instrumental “The Brazilian”, a piece filled with off-kilter electric percussion and eerie half-tone steps. It’s undeniably, as music journalist Chris Welch puts it, ‘the strangest and most demanding cut on the album.’ He describes it as ‘a re-affirmation of the band’s faith in its musical past, […] full of spacey sounds like a sea monster, breathing heavily and stomping up the beach.’15
Music journalist Chris Welch believes that Invisible Touch comes closest to being Genesis’s ‘ultimate album’.16 Biographers Dave Bowler and Bryan Dray agree, writing that it is ‘certainly it was their best album since ‘Wind And Wuthering’‘ and ‘one of the very best albums of the 1980s.’17 . Yet, fan reactions were not unanimously positive. Alan Hewitt, founder of the official Genesis fanzine The Waiting Room, famously remarked that Invisible Touch was ‘the first Genesis album he ever played once and then turned into a frisbee‘.18
Tony Banks, however, defends the album’s diversity and ambition: ‘On ‘Invisible Touch’, you’ve got the ‘Domino’ suite, which is 12 minutes long, and ‘Tonight, Tonight, Tonight’, which is about nine minutes. Both are identifiably Genesis, the sort of thing that no one else does. If you add, say ‘The Brazilian’, which again is like no other group, you’ve got at least 50% of the album. There are songs like ‘Invisible Touch’ and ‘Throwing It All Away’, but we’ve always done those. It’s just that we do them better now. With the songs, say off ‘The Lamb Lies Down’, maybe they’re lyrically more complex, but in terms of the songs themselves – ‘Carpet Crawlers’ or ‘Counting Out Time’ – they’re all attempts at the same kind of things. Even ‘From Genesis to Revelation’ was all short songs, all attempts at writing hit singles. And all failed.‘19
The multi-platinum success of Invisible Touch made it the band’s biggest commercial triumph, both critically and commercially. Tracks like “Invisible Touch,” “Land of Confusion,” and “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” dominated international charts in 1986 and 1987. In the United States, where chart rankings also factored in radio airplay, even the non-single “Anything She Does” managed to chart. Meanwhile, MTV played the band’s videos in heavy rotation, giving Genesis an added boost in the age of music television.
Tony Banks reflected on this success with some nostalgia: ‘It’s great having hits. I was brought up in the era of hits, in the 60s the next Beatles song coming out was the sort of high point of my existence.’20
Interestingly, Peter Gabriel, who had left Genesis a decade earlier, found himself sharing the spotlight with his former band. “Invisible Touch” was famously knocked off the No. 1 spot by Gabriel’s own hit “Sledgehammer.” His 1986 album So became his most successful release. It was, without a doubt, a remarkable year for both Genesis and its former frontman.
Mike Rutherford looked back on that time, saying: ‘A lot of people came to see us in the 80s and 90s in America because of the hit singles, but I always knew the long songs would grab them. They were songs that were visually were impressive with the vari-lites. Those who came to see us because of the singles and the radio tracks went away with a different impression of us.‘21
The album’s success led to a massive world tour that saw Genesis perform in stadiums and arenas across Europe and North America. The tour also included several dates in Japan — only their second visit to the country — and, for the first time, shows in New Zealand and Australia. It all culminated in a record-breaking run of four consecutive nights at Wembley Stadium in London in 1987.
Phil Collins later recalled: ‘The Wembley shows were very special. It was still the old Wembley; it was football territory. Everything just seemed to peak at that point. I’ve been thinking about the set of the time with ‘Home By The Sea’, where the lights were coming down.’22
Those iconic Wembley concerts were filmed using Sony’s then-cutting-edge High Definition technology and released as a home video, a first for the band.
After wrapping up the tour in 1987, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks returned to their respective solo projects. The band wouldn’t reconvene until 1991 to record what would become their final studio album with Collins, We Can’t Dance.
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.
Barnett, Laura, ‘Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford: How we made Invisible Touch’, The Guardian (14 October 2014).
Bowler, Dave; Dray, Bryan (1992): Genesis. A biography. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
CHESTER THOMPSON FULL INTERVIEW : HOW HE WENT FROM ZAPPA TO DRUMMING WITH GENESIS & PHIL COLLINS.
Genesis – Behind The Track (Land Of Confusion).
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: HOW I GOT THE GENESIS AUDIENCES LAUGHING.
Platts, Robin (2007): Genesis. Behind the lines, 1967-2007. Burlington, Ont., Canada: Collectors Guide Pub.
Room, Adrian (1990): An A to Z of British life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rutherford, Mike, The Living Years: The First Genesis Memoir. (Macmillan, 2014).
Thompson, Dave (2005): Turn it on again. Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins & Genesis. San Francisco: Backbeat Books.
‘Tony Banks Interview from ‘Genesis Songbook DVD’.
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.
In June 1998, Genesis released their first of two ‘Archive’ box sets: Archive 1967 – 1975 covers the era with Peter Gabriel as lead vocalist.
After the release of their last studio album Calling All Stations* in 1997, Genesis began putting together unreleased material from their history. The idea dated back to 1994. Originally there were plans to release three box sets. The first would have featured the Gabriel years, the second the period from the mid 1970’s to the early 80’s and the last the period from the mid 80’s to the early 90’s.
But over the years, there were delays and plans were changed. The recordings were released on two box sets, the first one being Archive 1967-75* , released in 1998, the second one being Genesis Archive 2 1976-1992*, released in 2000, which covers the era with Phil Collins on lead vocals. Both sets feature unreleased live performances, studio tracks and demo songs.
Archive 1967 – 1975 is a box set that includes four discs. The mixing was done by Genesis producer Nick Davis. The first two discs feature a complete live performance of Genesis’ magnum opus The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway*. When the band toured the concept album in 1974/75, they played the whole double album. After this tour, Peter Gabriel left the band. The live performance in the box set is from The Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles. Unfortunately, most of Peter Gabriel’s stories about the adventures of Rael between the songs were left out.
Also, it is not a completely live recording. Peter Gabriel and former lead guitarist Steve Hackett re-recorded some of their parts in 1995. You can hear the difference in Gabriel’s voice if you compare the studio versions from 1974 to the live version on Archive I. Gabriel recorded his vocals at his Real World Studios. Also, the last song ‘It’, fades out because the tape machine at the Shrine ran out halfway through the song.
The live performance in general sounds more powerful than the studio version and the crowd seems to be enthusiastic. Apart from that, the songs are almost identical to the studio versions. The only exception is ‘The Waiting Room (Evil Jam)’, which was an instrumental with lots of space for improvisation that was therefore played differently every night. Apart from that, especially the title track, ‘Fly On A Windshield’ and ‘Carpet Crawlers’ stand out.
Disc 3 includes live performances from the Rainbow Theatre in London, recorded on the Selling England By the Pound* tour in 1973. We finally get to hear songs like ‘Dancing With The Moonlight Knight’ and ‘Supper’s Ready’ live with Peter on vocals on an official release. Here, the stories are included. It also features a 1971 BBC recording of ‘Stagnation’ and b-sides and studio tracks from that era like ‘Twilight Alehouse’ and ‘Happy The Man.’
The last disc is the most interesting one, at least for the fans. It features songs from the band’s earliest period, still with Anthony Phillips on guitar. There are BBC sessions and many demo songs. You can hear the band becoming Genesis on this disc. Some of the tracks are real gems, from the early version of ‘Dusk’ to the appealing ‘Hey!’. There is an atmosphere in these early recordings that went missing after Ant Phillips left the band.
Apart from the four discs, there is a 82-page booklet which contains the band’s history and interviews with band members and associates.
So Archive 1967 – 1975 is a quite interesting box set. We finally get to hear official live versions of Gabriel-era songs sung by him. The only official live release with him had been Live* from 1973, which only covers songs from Trespass*, Nursery Cryme* and Foxtrot*. The inclusion of b-sides and unreleased studio tracks like ‘Twilight Alehouse’ make this box set special. Some would argue that disc 4 is only for the hardcore fans, but it also is the most surprising and most interesting of the four discs. Unfortunately some rare tracks and demos that are known to exist did not make it onto the box set. But all in all, Archive 1967-75 is an extraordinary release. Fans seemed to agree with that: It reached no. 35 in the UK charts in 1998.
To promote the release of Archive I, Genesis members past and present reunited for a photo shoot (and a following dinner) at Heathrow Airport in May 1998. There were Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips, former drummer John Silver, Phil Collins, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford. The band’s first drummer Chris Stewart only made it to the dinner. Trespass-era drummer John Mayhew did not attend the event.
Genesis’ next ‘Archive’ release would be in 2000. It would be entitled Archive II 1976 – 1992 and feature the period with Phil Collins as lead vocalist.
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In May 1982, Genesis released 3×3, an extended play featuring three songs left over from the Abacab sessions – tracks that did not make it onto the album but were too good to shelve.
Abacab (1981) marked a turning point for Genesis. With a new producer, Hugh Padgham, and their newly purchased studio – The Farm in Surrey – the band had the freedom to jam, experiment, and refine their sound. When the album was finalized, they found themselves with a few strong tracks that had not made the cut. Rather than letting them go to waste, they chose to release them on an EP the following year.
The songs – Paperlate, You Might Recall, and Me and Virgil – were all co-written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford. The 3×3 EP came out in May 1982, between two major tours. In the U.S., it was never released as an EP; only Paperlate appeared as a single, with You Might Recall on the B-side.
Paperlate shares a similar vibe with No Reply at All from Abacab – funky, upbeat, and driven by the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section, who had also worked with Collins on his solo debut Face Value. The title “Paperlate” comes from a lyric in Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (from Selling England by the Pound, 1973). During a soundcheck in either 1978 or 1980, Phil kept repeating the line “Paperlate cried a voice in the crowd…”, which eventually sparked the idea for a new song.
You Might Recall is a more romantic tune, stylistically close to some of Mike Rutherford’s earlier ballads like Alone Tonight.
The final track, Me and Virgil, is a storytelling piece reminiscent of Deep in the Motherlode (1978). This time, it was Collins who penned a Wild West narrative, with the band attempting to capture the spirit of The Band. However, Collins later expressed dissatisfaction with the track, and it was notably left off the Genesis Archive 2 box set in 2000.
The EP’s cover art was a playful homage to the Beatles’ 1960s EPs, particularly Twist and Shout. Genesis even brought in Tony Barrow, the Beatles’ former press officer, to write the sleeve notes in a cheeky, retro style (“These cheeky chappies from Guildford…”).
Not everyone got the joke. One reviewer, unaware of the Beatles reference, assumed the design was serious. But fans appreciated the nod, and the band’s sense of humor shone through once again. The EP was a hit in the UK, and Paperlate earned the band another appearance on Top of the Pops, with the EP reaching No. 10 on the charts.
Later that year, Genesis released the live album Three Sides Live. Since EPs did not sell particularly well in the U.S., the band opted to include the 3×3 tracks on the album’s fourth side instead of releasing them separately. To round out that side, they added two outtakes from the Duke sessions: Open Door (by Rutherford) and Evidence of Autumn (by Banks). The UK version, in contrast, featured a full fourth side of live material.
3×3 was never released as a standalone CD. However, Paperlate and You Might Recall were included in the Genesis Archive 2: 1976–1992 box set in 2000, which featured many previously unavailable tracks. All three EP songs, including a remixed Me and Virgil, were later made available on CD in the Genesis 1976–1982 box set.