This programme contains strong language
CHANTING: Genesis. Genesis. Genesis. Genesis...
CHANTING CONTINUES
MUSIC: Turn It On Again
Yeah, forget about all this other bullshit.
We are entertaining people,
and if they're entertained we've done our job properly!
MUSIC: Invisible Touch
# She seems to have an invisible touch yeah
# She reaches in and she grabs right hold of your heart... #
No, I love this. It's great having hits.
MUSIC: Jesus He Knows Me
# Cos Jesus he knows me and he knows I'm right... #
In those days there were no real rules. I think
we were just trying to be a bit different,
because the canvas in those days in the '60s
and the '70s was pretty blank.
MUSIC: The Knife
# Carry their heads to the palace of old
# Hang them high let the blood flow... #
The basic feel was radically different
than anything I'd ever done.
Very British, actually!
Aye, aye, aye, ah!
It's not country, it's not rock, it's not jazz, you know,
it's Genesis.
# There must be some misunderstanding... #
A very competitive band, no doubt about that. Very gifted,
but with those gifts, you know, there's a certain price.
MUSIC: I Can't Dance
It was always, you know, beating each other into submission.
# I can't talk... #
We pulled rank!
# The only thing about me is the way that I walk... #
Peter and I used to fight a lot. Very close friends but, you know,
used to argue about silly little things.
MUSIC: I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)
No, he was a really awkward bastard!
But we loved each other too,
you know, there was a real bond.
They were at the forefront of what we now think of as prog rock.
Then in the '80s, they were a massive
rock/pop band on both sides of the Atlantic.
MUSIC: That's All
# Just as I thought it was going all right
# I found that I'm wrong when I thought I was right
# It's always the same it's just a shame
# That's all... #
Genesis were never cool, and Genesis are proof that, ultimately,
in rock music brains win out.
MUSIC: Sledgehammer by Peter Gabriel
# I wanna be your sledgehammer... #
There's something in the DNA of that group that's still connected,
even though they were in different places.
MUSIC: In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins
# I can feel it coming in the air tonight... #
Whenever, sort of, Spinal Tap is on or something and you see these
moments you think, "I've been in a band like that! That's Genesis".
No, they don't think so.
We had something that none of us could do on our own.
MUSIC: A Change Is Gonna Come by Otis Redding
I was at school, and I remember exactly which room I was in,
and I heard this thing coming out of the radio, and phrew.
Otis Reading was my hero at that time, I think.
It felt very free, it was sort of hot, sexy, alive,
and it had obviously come out of blues and pain and suffering.
# That change has gotta come, yeah
# Ooh, yes, it is oh, my, oh, my... #
The rigours of that school would have given them something to kick against.
There was a revolutionary impulse within them, which is that -
despite the constraints of that,
you know, very traditional public school education -
they thought, "We want to make a living out of music."
It was music that got them through their day.
That's where Genesis developed this desire to create something
that was elaborate and big and grand
and sprawling, that kind of pushed those rigours out of their life.
The demo session was Mike and I saying, "Tony will you come
"and help us with the keyboards?" And he said, "Yeah, I'll do it
"if my mate Peter Gabriel can come along and sing one song."
It was called She Is Beautiful to start with.
I'm not sure what it ended up as. It was a lovely song.
So we hustled our way into their session.
# She is beautiful
# Very beautiful... #
We'd done these demos and it was OC's day, Old Carthusian day,
Jonathan King was spotted there.
I was a successful pop star,
the first act on the London Top Of The Pops show.
And, of course, I went back to Charterhouse in glory,
in my little Austin-Healey Sprite.
And one of the kids at Charterhouse rushed up to me
with a grubby cassette tape, that I still have to this day,
and said, "Oh, this is the school group, listen to it."
# For them you're just a product
# For me you're the one I love
# Baby... #
The lead singer had THE most wonderful voice, I thought.
So I got in touch with them and said,
"Look, I really like the sound of you, I'd like to produce you."
And they said, "Oh, yes, please".
I gave them the name Genesis because that, to me,
was the start of my production career.
We did an album - From Genesis To Revelation
which was just bought by us and our friends.
And, you know, and then pretty much that looked like it, and he,
sort of, was losing interest and everything, which was fair enough.
I'm not very good with really good creative artists.
I'm actually better with people just doing as I say,
because it's my work of art that I want to do.
My parents had a cottage near Dorking in Surrey, quite remote.
They let us use it.
You know, it was very turbulent.
They're very strong characters, you know, and we were kind of -
slightly... t was a bit of a pressure cooker situation.
The guys never saw their girlfriends half the time, it was
positively draconian.
But we were too serious. We never went for walks.
We weren't the sort of group to go down the pub and have pints
and, you know, relax.
Ant was also, probably, the best musician at the time.
He was the only one who could actually do something
with his instrument.
And he kind of brought me on really, he taught me some chords.
Kind of early days in the writing sessions
with Ant it was two guitars.
Ant and myself playing guitars, Tony keyboards
and Pete a bit of keyboards, you know, but more the vocals really.
Sneaking away from school to come to these hippie events,
to then be offered to perform in an Atomic Sunrise Festival, it sounded,
you know, like a thing we couldn't say no to.
The Roundhouse was somewhere where, you know,
concerts were not just concerts, they were happenings, you know,
and it would be somewhere you'd go to commune with kindred spirits.
People would sit and happily close their eyes
and listen to songs that lasted 25 minutes.
And Genesis just at that time fitted right in there.
I remember finding it all starting to get terribly tense,
and I used to be very frightened.
# Looking for someone
# I guess I'm doing that
# Trying to find a memory in a dark room
# Dirty man, "You're looking like a Buddha"
# I heard him say... #
The Atomic Sunrise Festival I remember mainly for there
being more people on stage than there were in the audience.
Tony and I, particularly Tony, were both Bowie fans from very early on.
# Children of the summer's end
# Gathered in the dampened grass... #
Bowie's band were very theatrical at the time
and it wasn't sort of Ziggy-type costumes,
it was more sort of raiding the theatre costume department.
Then of course came the first official,
if you like, Genesis album, with Trespass.
Where they were starting to get their proper sound together.
It's not quite there,
but you can hear the seeds of what they became within it.
And it has, famously, the track The Knife.
And I looked at the guitar and I thought,
"I haven't got a clue, not a clue what comes next."
And then I saw myself playing this thing, but it was really scary.
I eventually just sort of went kerblonk really.
I tried fighting through it, but I didn't make it.
Well, Anthony Phillips was a fantastic musician,
he was very much part of the original collective.
And when he left, it could have very easily have been the end of Genesis.
We wouldn't be having this discussion,
because they did very seriously consider calling it a day.
That was a very, very significant loss.
I mean Ant leaving was far
and away the most significant moment in Genesis's history.
People don't quite realise
how important a character he was.
I would say he was...
very much the driving force.
I felt it was the right thing to do.
If I hadn't left they may never have got Phil Collins.
So, I mean...
All I wanted to do was to be able to play the drums
and make enough money to live.
It wouldn't be stardom or anything.
I was a professional musician in a semi-professional band.
The band would have day jobs and, you know, and we'd all meet up,
but I was the one that was actually existing on whatever we earned.
Phil comes along, Dad's in insurance,
he's a Hounslow boy, a good West London boy, but he does bring
some creativity with him because Phil's mother, June,
also worked with Barbara Speake at the Barbara Speake Stage School.
The first thing he did was bring this incredibly direct
and brilliant musical drumming.
He can play anything.
He can play your soul music, your prog music, your jazz music,
your fusion. He can play it.
And he brought that incredible confidence, I think, to their sound.
You know, I was a stage-school kid,
I was from a very different background.
I'd been playing music all my life,
whereas music, to them... was...a restricted subject.
You know, I mean, you weren't supposed to play
guitar at Charterhouse.
And they were kind of very precious,
you know, it really mattered.
You know, "You're playing what kind of A chord?
"No, no, that's not the best inversion of the A."
You know, I mean, things like that.
It was just unbelievable. The difference?
I never ever, ever could have imagined
in a million years the difference
a drummer could make.
Oh, my God, he was... It was unbelievable.
He transformed the music.
It was very apparent to us that he was a really good drummer,
you know, had a fantastic sense of rhythm and stuff,
which... We were all a bit stiff, you know?
He understood and felt things and, you know,
it was thank God for me that I can talk to someone who actually
knows the realities of life.
And he had a lightness as a personality too.
He could joke and stuff and everything, you know,
much better than... We were very intense.
It was very incestuous.
You know, we did nothing but this so, obviously, you know,
people got irritated with each other.
I remember storming out of... when we were rehearsing one place,
first time with Phil.
You know, it just must have been difficult for him I think.
I was amazed he stayed.
All this friction or sort of tension that was under...
you know, kind of under wraps occasionally would boil over
and someone would get up and walk out.
And I'd..."Did I miss something, what happened?" You know?
LAUGHTER
And it would be like... (MUMBLES) .."Fucking..."
LAUGHTER
Off into the distance.
Because Phil like felt a professional who'd played with
other musicians and was just getting on with the work, whereas we had all
these intense, sort of, dysfunctional family arguments going on.
They discussed these things under a sort of stifling cloak
of British reserve, which is very typical of the public schoolboy.
And I imagine that the workings of that band were quite
mystifying to Collins.
But I imagine he was something of a breath of fresh air.
It was always, you know, beating each other into submission.
But that was fun, I mean, I was in a band, I was in a thinking band.
You know, as far as I was concerned it made a big change from what
I'd, kind of, been playing.
And that was the first time that it felt like there was some chance
of this combo gelling and delivering something with a bit of punch.
Things that had seemed really hard work, you know, like pushing
this big thing up a hill, suddenly it was downhill and we could smile.
When Steve Hackett joined it was another kind of big
moment in the Genesis story. An absolutely stunning musician.
He could make a guitar sound like any instrument.
It was really a little bit like being thrown in at the deep end.
I mean, I'd really been a legend in my own bedroom at that point.
Yes, I could play screaming solos very, very quietly on this little
radio that served as an amp, and then suddenly to work with a band.
And we all met him at Tony's flat.
And he was very dark,
but he always gave the impression of being very serious, you know,
with his black glasses, black hair.
I sat down and played three different styles of things
to them, and I remember Pete famously saying,
"I think we can use the first style, I'm not sure about the other two."
We liked his approach.
He was a very accomplished guitarist without wanting to be
a sort of flash guitarist at all, you know?
And he was interested in, sort of, combinations and all the rest of it.
Literally, and then there were five,
and that really was the classic band.
And Steve just had - he was just perfect.
Nursery Cryme was when they began to get a few sniffs at what
they were doing.
It went into - you know, scraped into the Top 40,
and you can hear the sound coalescing, coming together there.
But at the time, of course, it was called progressive rock.
Involved no limits, basically, no barriers.
So they were testing the barriers,
learning how far they could push this and realising that they
could actually push it a lot further than 4x4 beach music.
Prog rock to... If you were trying to explain it to an alien who'd
just landed on Earth - I'd say songs that last 20-minutes plus,
have mythical allegories and strange creatures in them,
perhaps, you know, uniforms in the case of Genesis and standing stones.
There's something very, very English about Genesis's music that,
to me, it's an England beyond psychedelia.
# But I am lost within this half-world
# It hardly seems to matter now... #
The guys were terrible at tuning the 12 strings
and they would take, sometimes, five minutes between songs.
Everyone looks at the singer...
.."Entertain us," you know?
So that's what I realised I had to start doing.
He's not particularly at ease with an audience
until he became someone else, you know?
The first time he ever wore a costume was, obviously,
the infamous time in Dublin in the boxing ring.
He hadn't told us about it, which was just as well
because we'd never have let him do it.
There's quite a long instrumental passage in the middle
and Peter went off.
He certainly didn't tell Tony Banks because I think, rightly,
he thought that Tony would veto it.
I was always afraid that these guys, you know,
would start arguing about any of the visual costume bit that
I was trying to do, and so I would bring the stuff in.
I'd smuggle it in.
I'd smuggle it in as late as possible,
when they were so preoccupied with getting everything else
sorted, that I could sort of get away with whatever shit was in my head!
KATE MOSSMAN: Peter's impulse to dress up in these elaborate clothes
and his wife's dress with a fox's head.
I mean for him
it was shyness, as I understand.
I mean, he was a beautiful young man,
but he was not sexually confident in the stagey way like Jagger was.
And he wasn't even as sort of committed to the
personas as Bowie was at that point.
So the likes of Bowie were doing it,
the likes of Mark Bolan, you know, the wearing of make-up,
all that kind of stuff which didn't go down well across the Atlantic.
Americans - "What are these Brits doing in frocks?"
You know - "We don't want any of that.
"We want rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll!"
MUSIC: The Musical Box
# I've been waiting here for so long
# And all this time has passed me by... #
It was dark, it was a sort of dark energy,
and it was scary to people and shocking.
You know, he didn't run it via the committee.
He bullishly went ahead and did it.
And if he hadn't, I suspect that Genesis perhaps would not
have gotten as far so quickly.
CHEERING
It brought the house down.
It put a nought on the end of our earnings.
The costumes at that point
were not intrusive.
I mean, it kind of just seemed to be part of what Genesis were,
and I was all for it.
I am the voice of Britain before the Daily Express.
My name is Britannia.
Foxtrot, I think, is where most Genesis fans agree that
that's where they really broke the roof and went to another dimension.
It's one of those things where you get popular
and then by the time, you know, you never really get it,
you're sort of, "Oh, my God, there's all that."
And you get to that level and think, "Oh, my God, there's all that."
So, we didn't realise until we came to New York, probably, just how
VAST America was and how much there was to do.
American rock in the '70s was very, very American,
and the British rock that they liked was working with American DNA,
so they liked The Stones because it was blues.
So you had your, you know, your Bob Seger and your Lynyrd Skynyrd
and then you had your art rock, your Iggy and Stooges
and Velvet Underground.
And, in a way, it was a different language.
It was quite a challenge, you know, we were not downhearted by this.
You know, we may be big over here,
but over here you don't mean anything.
This was America, you know,
this was the America that we'd all heard about and read about.
Just to stay in a Holiday Inn we thought,
"This is the Holiday Inn!" You know, "This is a Holiday Inn!"
Because they're famous rock'n'roll hotels,
you know, people get banned from these.
So it was all experience.
And I can't remember ever feeling
jaded by it or, like, depressed by it.
It was like we were touring America, that's what you wanted to do.
The initial tour which I was responsible for, 18 cities,
they were totally unknown.
I essentially did something that I never did before,
for Genesis I had to lie.
Everybody in your city knows about Genesis because of imports,
the thousands are coming in daily,
and universally loved it, ah,
it's underground, you can't see it.
I can see it, but you can't. But don't worry, they'll come.
The first time I saw them, I noticed that the audience seemed to
be elevated, they were lifted out of the mundane for a moment.
I saw that.
It was like a religious service, it was very powerful, very palpable.
I was moved along with the audience.
Early Genesis followers, early Genesis listeners,
almost embraced them as, not a cult,
but some kind of emotional religious openness to freedom, because
music still does, but especially back then, it spoke to you.
It touched a part of you.
Particularly with Supper's Ready, which is
the 23-and-a-half-minute anthem, which was then side two,
which, I think, stands as the definitive Genesis work of art.
I can say no less.
Yeah, there is this sort of spiritual yearning
going on through everything that I do, and with Supper's Ready
there was a powerful mood in the audience sometimes that
you just could harness and we could convert very cynical people!
# Walking across a sitting room
# I turn the television off
# Sitting beside you
# I look into your eyes... #
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, because
it's just a weird...
finger movement.
A guitarist would never play that, because you weren't a guitarist...
I played it... You never were a guitarist,
get that straight. You played sort of, you know...
That first two or three minutes of it was just
a chord sequence I wrote, but I knew it was going to have
a melody on it, I wasn't worried about that.
I think when we first started writing we were...
This is going... Knew it was going to get fucked up...
LAUGHTER
Tony was never short of a solo or whatever,
and I had always come in and start wanting to put vocal things.
So it was, sort of, really decorating around what he did.
And, you know, I think we had a good partnership.
# Lord of Lords
# King of Kings
# Has returned
# To lead his children home
# To take them to the new Jerusalem... #
When I sang "the new Jerusalem", I was absolutely singing from my gut
and I think people could feel that.
Whether it was a sort of spiritual goal destination, it's a...
powerful word.
And then you have Blake's Jerusalem
and that history as well.
So there was all of that washed into it.
I think when we got it right, we had something that none of us
could do on our own.
And there were different musical histories, you know,
merging together in a powerful way.
# I know what I Like
# And I like what I know
# Getting better in your wardrobe... #
For me, when Genesis actually found their feet was
when the tunes started to become a little bit more robust.
I mean, you can hear in Selling England By The Pound,
I Know What I Like, that sounds like a good pop song.
The structures are still proggy,
they're still slightly overblown and long and mad, in a sense,
but the production is sharper, that you...
They needed to make themselves slightly more palatable
to the layman rather than the prog fan and it worked.
Peter had this idea and he was
quite dogmatic that he wanted to do this idea,
and we thought, "Well, you know, OK."
But it meant him writing pretty much all the lyrics as well.
You know, if you really want to define a world you have to
let one person paint it.
There weren't many novels created by committee.
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was a complex beast in every way.
It pretty much broke up the band in terms of Gabriel leaving.
He said there were autobiographical elements in there,
but then again there were bits of dreams and bits of surrealism.
We all were in thrall to bands who could create a weirdness,
an almost Monty Python-like
side to music at that point.
I remember thinking that the two were almost together at that
point in late '60s, early '70s Britain.
It's the one time Peter did all the words himself, bar sort of one song.
Maybe it had to be that way, I think, actually.
You couldn't have sort of shared the words in the same way, in my mind.
I'm sure Banks disagrees but I think you probably couldn't have done.
You know, I think the prime venom was between Tony and I.
It's a funny period for me.
The Lamb was my least favourite period during the whole
of the time with the group, basically because - mainly
because there were problems with Peter, I think, you know?
You know, because we'd obviously been very close up to that point
and, sort of, things were going a bit wrong and all the rest of it.
He just didn't like me getting away with too much, you know,
or getting into a controlling position.
So there was, I think, wanting to keep check on my power as well.
I wasn't really that excited by the story,
I have to be honest about it, I never have been.
And that kind of was what the whole thing was hanging on.
MUSIC: In The Cage
# I got sunshine in my stomach
# Like I just rocked my baby to sleep... #
Peter was, you know, he was flashing back and forth.
You know, his birth of his daughter was fairly traumatic.
So, from his point of view the writing was very slow.
The problems with my daughter's birth
and the fact she was in an incubator for a good amount of time that
was absolutely number one for me, there was nothing more important.
And there was very little tolerance and understanding for that.
Meanwhile, the album was being delayed and delayed
and delayed and then the end result being, of course, that
the day the album came out was the first show we did on the tour.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, I think,
was a massively brave album
to make. Hugely ambitious, you know,
you can't fault a band for being ambitious.
Prime example of what not to do is to go on tour with a new album
not released and play the entire double album live.
Now, that was a risk, bearing in mind this was a time
they needed to be steadily building their American audience,
they decide to produce this out-of-left-field concept album.
MUSIC: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
# And the lamb lies down
# On Broadway... #
To go from Selling England By The Pound,
to go from this English rural atmosphere to, you know, the mean
streets of New York I think it's an incredibly brave album to make.
It's an album I will defend to the hilt.
It is a sort of Pilgrim's Progress
set on the streets of New York for me.
He was a punk character in a way, Rael.
It's a journey through which he learns to destroy oneself,
to open up the space for another.
The Lamb was probably slightly ahead of its time.
They did it and, from what I know,
the slides that they used on the back projector failed regularly.
They never quite got it right, and yet they carried on doggedly -
this will work.
And although it was a troublesome child, you know,
with the visual side, you know, I mean, a few nights it actually
worked properly, but most nights it didn't.
# ..On Broadway
# They say there's always magic in the air
# On Broadway... #
What I remember about The Lamb
was smoking a little joint before I went on,
and putting headphones on, and playing in my own little world!
And I just had a great time every night, you know?
It was great to play.
# Making a crust I cannot move in... #
'The Lamb album was the best we'd ever been on a record.'
INSTRUMENTS KICK IN
It was such a multimedia event The Lamb,
the screens, Pete's costumes, the music.
It was just an assault on the senses, I think.
The problem with The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was that
when it was done live it was being performed, you know,
across North America to audiences that had never heard it,
that are sitting there going, "The Knife?" And going, "What is this?
"And why is Peter in a huge bobbly suit, and what on earth is going on?"
There was with the Slipperman outfit,
which had this sort of big head, I couldn't hold the mic properly,
and they didn't have these little radio mics then,
so you couldn't hear a word I was singing
when I was in that.
# His skin's all covered in slimy lumps... #
But in a way, you know, whenever sort of Spinal Tap
is on or something and you see these moments you think,
"I've been in a band like that!"
Where the pod didn't open, you know?
That's Genesis!
# ..My grip must be flipping
# Cos his handshake keeps slipping... #
It was becoming increasingly difficult,
the way the band was perceived was getting difficult,
it was seen very much as Peter and the band, you know,
and that was kind of difficult for all the rest of us because...
I think it was creating some jealousies.
Yeah, of course it was, you know, we were only in our early 20s
and it was a difficult time that, you know?
And certainly people would come in the dressing room...
In America I remember the record company guys, the local guys and
the promoters would come and say, "Yay, Pete, great show, great show,
"when you put that mask on they loved it, the kids loved it!"
You know, I'm exaggerating, but it would be that kind of thing.
And it would be like "Hello, you know, it's a band, you know?"
And the music was first.
It was a very difficult time,
but I still feel that along with Supper's Ready it's
one of the things that I feel best about from my time with Genesis.
We were in a hotel in Cleveland and Peter came to my room
and said, "Look, I can't do this any more, I'm at the end of this...
"I'm leaving at the end of the tour."
MUSIC: The Carpet Crawlers
# There's only one direction in the faces that I see
# It's upward... #
We had, I remember, a very long conversation actually about it,
but I knew that he was not - he was not going to come back,
it was as simple as that really.
But we talked anyhow, really.
"This is the band, man!" You know? "What are you doing?"
"This is..."
It's... It felt a little bit cheated
and let down by the fact that someone's going to leave.
For him one of the reasons, apart from family reasons
and everything else, is something that I'm sure he'd felt he'd
sort of got to a point that he'd, sort of, moved on really.
And then we kept it very quiet right to the end of the tour.
We didn't really make any announcements
until the end of the tour.
I felt desperate to tell the audience that I was going,
and it felt like I was betraying the people who were coming,
who were paying to see us, that I couldn't be myself
and be real and be honest and tell them what I was feeling.
We all got quite emotional at the last show.
It was like talking about someone dying, I suppose,
but, I mean, no-one had prepared themselves for this.
MUSIC: The Musical Box
# I've been waiting here for so long
# And all this time has passed me by
# It doesn't seem to matter now... #
I remember thinking, "Oh, my God, what are we going to do?"
The British press, certainly, sort of started to write Genesis's
obituary when Peter left.
We knew that we were going to carry on,
so I said, "Let's just do the whole thing instrumentally, you know?"
And it was like a cartoon, it was like -
"Well, let's just do the whole thing instrumentally."
"Shut up!"
You know? "Are you mad, are you crazy?
"We write songs, they need to be sung. Now, just shut up!"
You know, that's the way I felt it was.
"Sorry, just a suggestion."
We auditioned quite a few singers.
And most of the time Phil would sing the part to show them what they
were singing and then they'd sing it and it wouldn't be as good as Phil.
I didn't want to not be the drummer.
You know, this is what I did, this is my territory!
"I don't want to go, don't push me out there, sir,
"please don't take me out there, don't send me
"out there with a microphone." I didn't want to do that.
You know, it was a question really
whether he wanted to do it more than anything else.
You know, we did, as far as I can remember,
we did revisit some of the tapes
and thought, "Is there really nobody that we've heard?"
You know, and we decided that there wasn't.
MUSIC: A Trick Of The Tail
# Everyone looks so strange to him
# They've got no horns and they've got no tail
# They don't even know of our existence
# Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold
# That lies in the deep distance he cried
# And wept as they led him away to a cage... #
I think the big question mark was
whether he could cut it on the more rock,
out and out rock stuff, whether his voice was big enough.
I remember nothing but good vibes from the audience, you know.
They wanted this to work. They didn't compare with me with Pete.
I was one of the guys in the band coming forward.
And I'd been there all along.
I think I had more confidence in the band being able to be
successful than they did initially.
JOURNALIST: Last May the lead vocalist
of the British progressive rock group,
Genesis, left the group.
Now, when this happens a group either breaks up or dies a very slow death.
But because of the versatility of each individual at Genesis
they're doing very well.
As a matter of fact, they seem to be doing better than ever before.
I believe it was your quote, I am going to not give it verbatim,
that it was like a very big load off everybody
when he finally did leave. Is that true?
Yeah. I mean...
now it's paying off in a way.
One feels better about it,
because you've come out from an underdog situation.
The sad thing is that when someone leaves, like Anthony and Peter,
there's a sadness because, you know, you'll never be as close again.
You know, you stay in touch and you see,
but you lose that bond of sharing things that I've had with Tony
and Phil for the last, way too many years.
# Sail away, away
# Ripples... #
A lot of people compliment me on A Trick Of The Tail
when I wasn't actually there, so it's...
LAUGHTER Reflected glory. Yeah.
One of your finest moments.
The band were much more successful without me than they were with me.
# ..Sail away, away... #
After Pete left,
two years later I was basically doing the same thing myself.
I feel uncomfortable talking about it even now.
I feel, you know, if I reveal too much
it's a man ratting on the regiment.
I'm very grateful to the regiment for everything it gave me.
MIKE: He's a fantastic lead guitarist.
You hear one of those songs
and it'll be absolutely unique, you know?
STEVE: In many ways it was such a claustrophobic experience.
Harder and harder to find relevant things for the guitar to do,
so, over time, I started to amass solo material.
God forgive me, guys, but I just thought it's the only way to
go to get ideas across is to just negotiate with myself in the end.
But there you are, that's the way bands are.
I think there was a certain amount of, you know,
who shouted the loudest and got the most grumpy
if their bit wasn't used, you know, which would be me.
Yeah, well, I mean I did probably
get more on than other people, you know, and that's...
So, you've either got me to blame or to love for the music.
We then thought about getting someone else in,
but I think we felt that the three of us had gone...
we were so close at that point in time, such a good working unit,
that to bring a new person in - I mean it could have worked,
you know, but it wasn't quite so... It wasn't imperative.
# You, you have your own special way
# Of holding my hand, keep it way above the water
# Don't ever let go... #
By this point, the music business had changed a great deal, which we
hadn't sort of really been aware of, still most of it escaped us because
we were out in America most of this time, but punk music
had come in and a lot of the old bands seemed to have disappeared.
If Genesis were all of a sudden going to start sounding
like The Jam or Johnny Rotten I just don't think it would have worked!
MUSIC: Anarchy In The UK by the Sex Pistols
# Anarchy for the UK
# It's coming sometime maybe... #
I mean, the sound of the Sex Pistols, I thought
they had a fantastic sound, it just sounded so...legitimate.
So I kind of liked it, and then I realised that we were the enemy,
you know, we were the people that they were trying to get rid of.
We sort of seemed to go through it regardless.
In fact, we were lucky in a sense
that all the opposition had kind of been killed off.
After Peter left, of course, Phil came into his own
and the hits started coming.
Somehow, almost by chance, Genesis redefined their sound,
went for more compressed, shorter numbers, a less florid sound
and, sort of, almost by chance started to have hit singles.
MUSIC: Follow You Follow Me
We were lucky with And Then There Were Three,
which proved to be, you know, our most successful album at the time.
Follow You Follow Me actually being a single hit,
first hit we really had, you know?
# Stay with me
# My love... #
Follow You Follow Me
must have just been an interesting exercise for the band.
You know, they probably set out and thought,
"Right, how do we write a hit?" And suddenly, a band that was probably
a predominantly male chin-stroking audience was being played
at the, you know, the slow dance at the end of the Friday-night disco.
Actually, Mike was the first one to really write the love lyric,
which was Follow You Follow Me which doubled our audience overnight,
suddenly we were more female-friendly.
# ..Alone with you
# I will follow you
# Will you follow me
# All the days and nights
# That we know will be?
# I will stay with you
# Will you stay with me?
# Just one single tear
# In each passing year... #
I had never met Chester.
You know, I had seen him play with Weather Report.
And there was a track that I really liked,
when he played with Zappa, the Live At The Roxy album.
And him and another drummer, I just liked his playing on this one track.
So I called him and I said, "Do you want to join the band?"
He said, "Well, yeah."
And then I was saying, "Man, I'm going
"over to do rehearsals with this band Genesis," and he gets this worried
look on his face, says,
"Man, are you going to have to wear costumes?"
And I thought, "Oh-oh, what am I getting into here?!"
What we were missing in the visual department with Peter not
being there and his costumes, we suddenly had another facet,
which was two drummers together, one drummer, another drum...
You know, it was mixing it up a bit.
Well, I think we traded off quite a lot, actually.
I got a bit more of, I think,
maybe the sort of his edge in my own playing.
And I like to think he got a little funkier over the years, you know?
CHEERING
When I saw that Chester was going to join I thought, "That's going
"to be a pretty nice band to be in."
Daryl can play anything, you know,
he's an incredibly versatile musician, a brilliant musician.
We'll go back into the G as a sort of...
We have to get the end of Firth Of Fifth, I mean,
are we going to leave that till another point?
So he has to sort of fit into
a certain style for the piece, you know?
And when we wrote Firth Of Fifth, you know, and Steve, obviously,
played a guitar solo on that, he was quite a, you know, quite a
stiff player, particularly in those days, a certain kind of effect.
I mean, it's very much a melodic line
you're playing with Firth Of Fifth,
the main guitar solo and then you improvise a little bit around it.
MUSIC: Firth Of Fifth
It turned into a very strong moment, a stronger moment than
we probably ever thought it was going to be when we first did it.
And I thought it would never work on a guitar, but it just sounded great.
To me, Genesis is a style already, that it's not country,
it's not rock, it's not jazz, you know, it's Genesis.
MUSIC: Deep In The Motherlode
# All along the dusty trail
# 17 years not over a day
# Like children in the wild
# Your mother's milk still wet on your face... #
ANNOUNCER: The road crew who had travelled through the night start to
unload five tonnes of equipment from three giant trucks.
Sound and lighting rigs are taken into the theatre in preparation
for the evening concert.
CROWD CHEERING
I've come here so early as to meet the band. Get the autographs.
Yeah, get the autographs.
Got quite a few. You can tell who the real fans are.
OK, cheers.
Yeah, I think Genesis cover a wide range of musical taste.
The earlier material as well.
Yeah, which will appeal to far more people than, say,
just heavy metal bands.
I mean, Genesis appeals to basically everyone.
JOURNALIST: What about your mates?
I get a lot of slagging off because of Genesis,
they're not a vogue band to like.
I have no idea what it's all about when people say -
"I listen to Genesis but don't tell anyone."
What is it all about? I mean, I really don't know.
It's melodic, it's inoffensive, it's just good music.
I don't know why there's a stigma about Genesis.
But I am happy to say that, "I'm out, I'm out, I'm proud.
"I'm not afraid if someone's..."
I mean, I haven't had to sit my family down over
Sunday lunch and say,
"I've something to tell you all - I'm a Genesis fan."
But I don't mind being -
I don't mind the brickbats that come with it.
It's a bit a mystery, I don't know what the problem is.
It's an entrenched view in British rock appreciation that
when the hits start coming the band's gone off the boil.
# All I need is a TV show
# That and the radio
# Down on my luck again
# I can show you
# Some of the people in my life
# I can show you I can show you
# Some of the people in my life
# It's driving me mad
# Just another way of passing the day
# I, I get so lonely when she's not there... #
The post-Gabriel albums, certainly the first three or
four, are perhaps better than they're given credit for.
And then by the time of Duke they were getting - starting to
get the next level of sound, which was more stadium-friendly.
When we did Duke, which is probably my favourite album in many ways,
my personal favourite track on the album, and also one that
I suppose is shorter, although it's quite long, is Duchess, which sort
of starts in a very sort of loose kind of way and then builds
to a very concise pop song and then goes meandering again at the end.
It's one of my favourite tracks we ever did.
# Times were good
# She never thought about the future
# She just did what she would
# Oh, but she really cared
# About her music
# It all seemed so important then... #
When my marriage broke up I had an empty house.
I just used to go down the pub, and I kind of lived there.
It became my social life.
And I would go home and I'd start thrashing around on a piano
and start writing songs, some of..
you know, some of them were pretty sad.
# Oh, I cry a bit
# I don't sleep too good
# But I'm fine... #
Please Don't Ask was probably the most personal song
I'd ever written, and this was me really...
..baring my soul, if you like.
# ..When can I touch you
# Again and again... #
And very, very personal.
And, you know, it was strange, I found myself thinking,
"What am I doing singing this song on a Genesis record, this is..."
Because I know the people that buy Genesis's record aren't really...
they're not going to be touched by this.
But I don't think he'd written a really particularly good lyric
until he found his voice, which was really after, you know,
obviously, his marriage break-up and everything
and he had time on his own, he started writing these songs.
I played this stuff to Mike and Tony.
I said, "This is what I've been doing, pick whatever you want."
We really liked Please Don't Ask.
He played that to us, a few others like that he played.
And, at the time, if we'd said,
"We want to do all of them," he would have said, "OK."
That was kind of, how it was really,
you know, everything went into the pot.
A question of choosing one other song.
Misunderstanding, we knew we were going to do,
we'd heard that a lot, liked it very much.
# There must be some misunderstanding
# There must be some kind of mistake... #
Now, one of the extraordinary and unique things about the band,
and this is probably also why they've survived so long,
is that all the members of the classic line-up have managed
to follow solo careers and yet still work together.
I think the thing that's always overlooked is what an amazing
singer Gabriel was and is.
His voice was always incredibly special.
His first album,
the first Peter Gabriel album was really interesting.
There's, you know, suddenly a hit single - Solsbury Hill,
you know, the last thing you would have imagined.
# Climbing up on Solsbury Hill
# I could see the city light
# Wind was blowing Time stood still
# Eagle flew out of the night... #
Solsbury Hill is a song of absolute liberation. It's uplifting.
It's almost like word paint in a way, it climbs up,
the idea of the expanse that he's looking over
and the potential of what the future could be.
I think it's a masterpiece of elation, that record.
# ..I just had to trust imagination
# My heart going boom, boom, boom
# "Son," he said
# "Grab your things I've come to take you home." #
MUSIC: The South Bank Show Theme by Julian Lloyd Webber
Hello. Peter Gabriel made his name in the rock world in the early
'70s as a singer-songwriter and often wildly-theatrical performer
with the rock band Genesis.
He left them in 1975,
and since then he's built a new
reputation as a thoughtful solo artist who takes immense
care in writing and producing his own material.
His highly acclaimed third album placed him at the forefront
of one of the most significant recent developments in rock,
the increasing use of synthesisers
and sophisticated electronic technology.
MUSIC: Games Without Frontiers
# Hans plays with Lotte
# Lotte plays with Jane
# Jane plays with Willi... #
Peter didn't have a band around the time of the third album
and so I said, "Well, I'm doing nothing,"
because I'd been through my great sorrow, so I volunteered my services
as a drummer, and Peter said,
"I don't want any cymbals, I don't want any cymbals on this."
And for a drummer that was... You know, that was a big deal, you know?
"Oh, hang on, well, what's this hand supposed to do?"
So we set up the drums so that there was a drum instead
of a cymbal in that particular position in case I had the urge.
LAUGHTER You know, it was like...
Peter Gabriel's album was a dream come true for a recording engineer,
because we were doing, you know,
so much sort of experimentation with sound.
Just the wind in the pipe is quite nice.
You think? Yeah. 'It was just great fun, you know.'
DRUMBEAT PLAYS
So this is Intruder and it starts off with the drum pattern.
I asked Phil to do a really simple pattern there,
and it just sounded like the future of drums.
I was so blown away that I wanted to strip everything
back off the track and have this be the absolute centre of it.
Mr Padgham...
Because Hugh Padgham was the engineer,
the man with the hands on, that's the reason why I befriended him
and thought he'd be the man to make my first album.
And I think all creative people, in the end, are just like dogs
in the park, you know, you sniff something interesting
and you try and jump on it. And, you know...
Speak for yourself.
We've always been like that I think, you know.
You can always tell where we've been sniffing. Yeah.
LAUGHTER
At a very early stage I established a principle that the two,
the solo careers
and the Genesis career were always maintained as very separate things.
We never mixed them.
There was never a time when we said,
"Oh, let's do a Phil Collins song on a Genesis show," or vice versa.
We always kept the two things very separate.
I think Phil went off to do this own thing
because it was very clear that that career was there for him.
He was probably the last of the band to make a solo album.
I mean, actually, they had all gone off and done other things.
He just went off and did it rather more publicly
because he was a huge success at it.
# I can feel it coming in the air tonight
# Oh, Lord
# And I've been waiting for this moment for all my life
# Oh, Lord
# Can you feel it coming in the air tonight... #
I think it was probably a very good thing we didn't do it.
If Genesis had done it, I think we'd have complicated it up.
But, of course, that's its whole charm,
it's what works about it, is the fact that it's so repetitive.
# ..I can feel it coming in the air tonight
# Oh, Lord... #
I'm glad, you know, I'm glad we didn't use it because,
obviously, I was left to my own devices on most of the material.
It's down in history now that Tony Banks claims that
I didn't play him In The Air Tonight, but I did.
And he didn't play In The Air Tonight.
It doesn't matter what anybody tells you.
I don't remember the moment when I played In The Air Tonight.
I just was very proud of it, so I don't understand why
I would not have done, because at that point I hadn't
made my record, so I didn't know how good or bad it was going to be.
Phil Collins, when he started writing about the break-up
of his marriage and these love songs, initially on his solo career,
but there was obviously a cross-over between the songs he was writing
for both parties, it did introduce an element of confessional.
# How can I just let you walk away
# Just let you leave without a trace... #
I think what Collins did in terms of channelling those emotions
in terms of what had happened in his personal life into his music,
was something that the band had never done, as far as we were aware.
He was very, very emotional, something,
if I may say, that we British tend not to show emotion so much, do we?
You know, the old stiff upper lip.
In a way, he's the master of the romcom romance, isn't he?
These are extremely emotional songs.
All through the '80s, growing up, I thought of him
as the guy playing the piano with the pot of paint on it,
you know, the sort of, the heartbreaking plaintive ballads.
# ..Now take a look at me now
# Cos there's just an empty space
# But to wait for you is all I can do
# And that's what I've got to face
# Take a good look at me now... #
We are unique in the fact that I can't think of any other band
who's done this solo/main band career
and run it for many years afterwards, you know?
We always felt that whatever we were doing is the main
thing at the time, the band or solo.
But it wasn't like, if you're doing that you can't do that, you know?
And I'm sure it helped us keep going, actually, the variety
of work and music was, I think, gave us a freshness as a main band.
# Look up on the wall
# There on the floor
# Under the pillow
# Behind the door... #
I know people who picked up on us on, say, Abacab or something
and think that's the best album, you know?
We always liked to throw in a bit more sort of thinking kind of music
in there, did long songs and tried to do a few things
that were slightly more, you know,
slightly less predictable, if you like.
# I didn't, I didn't
# I didn't do it, uh-ow!
# I didn't, I didn't
# I didn't do it, uh-uh-ah
# I didn't, I didn't
# I didn't do it, guv, honest
# I didn't, I didn't
# I didn't do it, I didn't
# I didn't, I didn't do it... #
Another record that was really big at the time
was Grandmaster Flash and it was called "The Message",
and it had this sort of "hoo-hoo-ha-ha-ha-ha"
sort of laugh in it.
# Don't push me cos I'm close to the edge
# I'm trying not to lose my head
# Ha-ha, ha-ha! #
Ha-ha, ha!
# Ha-ha, ha-ha! #
And we all thought, "That's fantastic," you know? That laugh.
What a fantastic idea to have on a record, a laugh, you know?
I mean not since The Laughing Policeman
was there such a laugh on a record.
And I just started going, "Ha-ha-ha.
"Ha-ha-ha!" And everyone would kind of, you know,
we were playing, and sort of looked and laughed and smiled,
but I knew that it wasn't getting a grimace, it was getting a smile,
you know? So I thought, "OK, well, I'll remember that."
And the lyrics of Mama were improvised.
I was kind of, that's my kind of Lennon.
HE HUMS MELODY
Lennon sort of influence, kind of with the echo, Be-Bop-A-Lula.
It was just kind of compression.
It sounded a bit like a Lennon song.
# I can't see you, Mama... #
You had to sort of sneer a bit when you were singing it.
# I can't see you, Mama
# But I can hardly wait... #
# But I can hardly wait
# Ooh, to touch... #
Ha-ha, ha-ha. Oh...
In all the years, no-one ever asked, "Why the laugh?"
Because I thought that people would be surprised, you know?
Genesis. Grandmaster Flash.
Surely not?
MUSIC: That's All
# Just as I thought it was going all right
# I found out I'm wrong when I thought I was right
# S'always the same
# It's just a shame, that's all
# I could say day and you'd say night
# Tell me it's black when I know that it's white
# Always the same
# It's just a shame and that's all... #
The albums that became huge in America and Britain,
they're concise, they're effective.
For me, they're a little clinical but effective.
The soul and art rock, if you will, of the previous albums
has been side-lined.
They're more like a well-oiled machine by that point.
# ..If I knew you were looking at me It's always the same
# It's just a shame, that's all. #
Stick at a thing for long enough, you know?
No, I loved it. It was great having hits.
You know, I'd been brought up in the era of hits.
In the '60s, you know, the next Beatles song coming out
was the sort of high point of my existence, really,
and all this stuff, you know? So hits for me were, you know,
I loved hits. And to suddenly have records in the charts,
having your record... I mean it's still a thrill for me now
to hear a record on the radio.
Right now, for the very first time on Top Of The Pops, it's Genesis.
MUSIC: Turn It On Again
Less obvious hits like Turn It On Again and Mama,
neither of which are very totally straightforward pop songs,
were able to be hits because we were kind of, we were accepted now,
we could be played on Radio One, whereas in the old days
we could only be played on sort of deepest, darkest sort of something.
# All I need is a TV show
# That and the radio... #
Hi, I'm Phil Collins. I'm Mike Rutherford.
And I'm Tony Banks. Of Genesis,
and you're watching MTV,
the world's first all day/all night video music channel.
TOGETHER: In stereo.
This MTV thing meant that a hit song was so high-profile
that it was on every bar, every restaurant all round the world.
MUSIC: Invisible Touch
Once it got to Invisible Touch and we had, you know,
in America we had
a number one single suddenly, you know. Extraordinary.
And, you know, half a dozen songs off that album,
because the way America calculated charts
was on radio play as much as on sales,
and we were played everywhere, so we had all these songs that were hits.
# ..Nothing could go wrong
# Now I know... #
Right now, ladies and gentlemen, Genesis.
Genesis!
The almost all-Genesis weekend.
Start by casting your vote in the next round
of the Friday night video clash.
# ..She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah
# She reaches in and grabs right hold of your heart
# She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah
# It takes control and slowly tears you apart
# Well, I don't really know her
# I only know her name
# Ooh but she crawls under your skin
# You're never quite the same
# And now I know
# She's got something you just can't trust
# And it's something mysterious
# And now it seems, I'm falling
# Falling for her. #
# I want to be
# Your sledgehammer
# Why don't you call my name?
# Ha
# You better call the sledgehammer... #
The impact of MTV was enormously influential
for Genesis and for Peter Gabriel.
They were always a very theatrical band but, of course,
to very limited audiences of a few thousand here
and 20,000 there, or whatever.
To suddenly be able to channel those theatrical impulses
into video on MTV changed their fortunes for ever.
MTV brings you Genesis tonight.
10pm Eastern, 9pm Central.
7pm Pacific.
I think the solo careers of Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks
are always going to be over-shadowed by those of Collins and Gabriel,
because they were the vocalists and, you know, as is always the case.
I actually thought about doing a solo album
before Trick Of The Tail, so I did it and, you know,
I wrote A Curious Feeling.
# It sure felt good for a while... #
I was obviously hoping for more success than it had,
I have to be honest about it, really.
But it did make the top 20, so, you know, it can't be too bad.
# Do what you want
You've got to... #
So I did a load of those albums, you know,
I did about half a dozen albums, five albums, I think, solo albums.
But then the idea came, perhaps just before I concede,
I should have a go at doing stuff with an orchestra,
and I wrote a couple of pieces that I thought would work
really well with an orchestra.
And, you know, I actually got some quite good reviews
from the classical people, even.
You know, I mean most of them were sort of, you know, don't want
to know about rock guys doing classical music,
it's somehow beyond the pale.
But it was, it got some good reviews.
Actually it sold quite well,
far better than anything I'd done before.
# I said go if you want to go
# Stay if you want to stay
# I didn't care if you hung around me
# I didn't care if you went away... #
In order to be a solo artist, you have to be a singer.
Without that, it's a bit tough, as I found out.
If you write a good song, you want a great voice
and that great voice isn't me.
# ..All I need is a miracle
# All I need is you
# All I need is a miracle
# All I need is you... #
The fastest rising hit in Britain and the States,
written by Scotland's BA Robertson and Mike Rutherford of Genesis.
It's called The Living Years from Mike and the Mechanics.
# Say it, say it, say it loud
# Say it clear
# Oh, say it clear
# You can listen as well as you hear... #
I find the act of collaboration the exciting part.
You're sort of, you're feeding off what the other person's doing.
# Looking back
# Over my shoulder
# I can see
# That look in your eye... #
I would have always probably carried on co-writing, because I like that.
I was being given fantastic opportunities, if you like,
and I just think, "Yeah, how can I say no to that, you know?
"Because maybe I won't get asked again, I should do that,
"it'll be great fun, you know?" Whereas in fact you end up
being everywhere and in people's faces the whole time.
# You can't hurry love
# No, you'll just have to wait
# She said don't love come easy
# It's a game of give and take... #
Ladies and gentlemen, Phil Collins.
Congratulations on the five Emmy Awards.
Yes, the Grammys, yeah. Grammys, right.
# ..How many heartaches must I stand
# Before I find a love to let me live again... #
So how about the fellas in Genesis, are they furious?
Oh, no, no, no, no. They're spitting blood I heard.
The rumour in the music press is they're spitting blood.
I mean, it was great for him, you know,
he was our friend, we wanted him to do well but, you know,
we didn't want him to do that well, not initially.
But, you know, it was the thing and it kind of never went away.
# ..No, you'll just have to wait
# She said love don't come easy
# It's a game of give and take... #
He was ubiquitous for about 15 years, you know?
You couldn't get away from him, it was a nightmare.
# You'll be in my heart
# No matter what they say
# You'll be here in my heart
# Always... #
Peter's music changed once he left Genesis,
because he wasn't under the Genesis umbrella.
Now it's true, of course, that all the members of Genesis
were having hits, but it was Peter who was the one becoming more
and more involved in politics and political causes.
I think the stuff Peter Gabriel has done politically
is enormously important.
And I think he was always ahead of the curve.
You know, he always kind of knew what was going on.
I mean, songs that I know people probably get sick to death
of people banging on about, songs like Biko and stuff,
but, you know, nobody else was doing it.
A man who was imprisoned, tortured and killed in a jail in South Africa.
This is for Stephen Biko.
Biko's death may have done more damage to South Africa's image
abroad than he could have achieved alive with 1,000 speeches.
Why were you drawn at the time to write a song about Biko?
I think it was a tremendous shock because I think no-one...
There'd been a certain amount of publicity about his arrest
and no-one was expecting him to be killed.
# The outside world is black and white
# With only one colour dead
# Oh, Biko
# Biko, because Biko... #
I think had he been allowed to live he could have been
a great African statesman, perhaps sort of crystallised the hopes
of a lot of young people in the way that Kennedy did in America.
And I think it's tragic the way, you know,
he was, his life was cut short.
We'd dreamt of having our own studio for years, you know, because going
to these holes in the ground in sort of, first of all, in London
and stuff, we just thought it would be so nice, and then you could
actually sort of write and record
in the same place with no time pressures.
Invisible Touch was the first album we did here.
And when we got here it was fantastic.
And the key thing was being able to sort of focus,
because otherwise you have to write an album, rehearse it quite well
and then go and record it.
So you'd already sort of decided how it was going to sound,
whereas, because we owned the place, we could sort of write
and almost record at the same time and mess around.
It just it made the whole thing a lot freer and I think better for us.
# She don't like losing
# To her it's just a game
# And though she will fuck up your life
# You want her just the same
# Ask me, I know
# She's got this built-in ability
# To touch everything she sees
# And now it seems
# I've fallen, fallen for her
# She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah... #
I think all the other albums at that time were,
to a certain extent, treading water.
The big one was Invisible Touch,
that was the one that moved them to the level where
they could create an album that 14.5 million people would buy.
And they never really topped that moment.
# I'm so lonely
# I feel so boxed in
# I've lost my wife... #
I'd become one of the people of the '80s -
that was one of the reasons why people didn't like it.
Just do that small lean forward, please.
I used to travel to England a lot and do videos for Genesis
and Phil and other bands there, and I always watched Spitting Image
on television, because it was a great show.
And one time they had a video of Phil,
and he was like crying, and it was about his wife leaving him.
# As you packed your toothbrush in your bag
# At once my spine began to tingle
# As you shoved the door keys up my nose... #
I thought to myself, "This is really cool, they have a Phil puppet."
And for a long time I was thinking it would be great to do
a puppet video with them.
I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear,
that I will faithfully execute
the office of the President of the United States.
Mr President, we have an idea...
It wasn't a fun decade at all.
You had such division in the country. You had riots
with the police.
Thatcher was such an abrasive and divisive person.
Do you have any piranha?
As indeed was Reagan.
# Did you read the news today?
# They say the danger's gone away
# But I can see the fire's still alight... #
It's a song that is the nearest I've ever come to actually making
an out in the open statement.
I normally make little comments about things in a subtle
sort of an aside way.
It's really about how we live in a very nice world
and what a mess we're making of it,
and how it should all be so easy and how it's all so difficult.
It's a kind of '80s protest song.
# ..This is the time
# This is the place
# So we look for the future... #
The sad thing is, you know, the puppets are in better shape
than the people we're caricaturing these days, you know?
I hope Phil's doing well compared to his puppet.
# ..This is the world we live in... #
Yeah, I bought one of my heads.
Someone in Texas has bought my head.
Slightly worries me actually. What's he doing with it?
I mean, we're just popular, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, we just got more popular.
I won't take the credit and I won't take the blame, you know?
With MTV and videos, a hit single overshadowed the whole album,
and people started sort of saying, "Well, you know,
"you stopped doing long songs."
We never did, really.
You know, every album had a sort of 15 minute song on it
till the very end, but they're album tracks,
and so they weren't on the television,
they weren't on the radio, but live they're a big part of the set.
I always knew the long songs would always grab them.
A - they were good songs,
B - visually they were very impressive,
with the varied lights and the staging.
# Blood on the windows
# Millions of ordinary people are there
# They gaze at the scenery... #
So, in a sense, I think those who came to see us
because of the singles and the short songs and the radio tracks
went away with a different impression of us.
# ..But there's nothing you can do when you're next in line
# And you've got to go domino... #
When we played live, the songs that have really stood out
are things like Domino and Home By the Sea,
which are probably the classic songs from the later period.
# Images of sorrow Pictures of delight
# Things that go to make up a life
# Endless days of summer Longer nights of gloom
# Just waiting for that morning light... #
Well, neither of those were singles
or even any attempt at being a single,
and yet they worked so well live.
You really build to a climax with both those songs.
# ..Help us, someone
# Let us out of here
# Living here so long undisturbed
# Dreaming of the time we were free
# So many years ago
# Before the time when we first heard
# Welcome to the home by the sea... #
It was extraordinary really, and you knew it couldn't last, actually.
It was on a divine visitation that the Lord told me
that I was to go on the television.
'Ernest Angley, and he talked like that,
'and he was very affected'
and he would,
with his beautiful leisure suit and a very bad wig,
and he would...
"Out of the screen, you devil!" You know, it was awful stuff.
I mean, it was very, you know, Bible-belt eccentric.
# Do you see the face on the TV screen
# Coming at you every Sunday?
# See the face on the billboard
# Well, that man is me
# I'm the colour of a magazine
# There's no question why I'm smiling
# You buy a piece of paradise
# You buy a piece of me... #
I just had a problem with the whole, you know, TV evangelists.
I mean, when I was growing there was Billy Graham, you know,
and that was it.
# ..Jesus, he knows me
# And He knows I'm right
# I've been talking to Jesus
# All my life
# Ah, yes, he knows me
# And he knows I'm right... #
We were improvising and trying different things,
and eventually when I was singing. I'd sing, "Jesus, he knows me."
And I don't know if Tony and Mike were really kind of hearing it.
I don't think they were too sure about the lyric
until I'd, you know, finished it.
Because it was a satire in the end.
I think they kind of thought that it was a bit serious.
It was quite fun, I mean, you know?
We had the girls in the middle, didn't we? Yeah.
We insisted. We'd made so many videos and we just wanted
one time to do a video like David Lee Roth...
To be near naked women. Yeah!
So we had this bit in the middle of that,
which was an excuse for it, really.
# ..God will take good care of you
# But just do as I say don't do as I do... #
I can't remember quite when we started writing We Can't Dance,
but it was done in a pretty...
You know, once we started we kept going till we'd finished it.
It didn't take a ridiculous amount of time to write We Can't Dance.
# I can't dance
# I can't sing... #
But I wrote a lot of lyrics on We Can't Dance,
and I think I was allowed to do that.
You know, I mean I still...
I still play third in line.
Unless the lyrics are right. We're in now.
We'll probably come back to a vocal, I don't know where.
If you want me to sing, George, I'll sing.
Want me to sing, I'll sing. If you don't want me to sing, I won't sing.
I'm still the new boy, even now.
It's kind of amazing, isn't it?
CHEERING
When we put out We Can't Dance,
we were very confident at that point.
The line "something about the way we walk",
I thought was the sort of funniest line in it, so the feeling I had
was we should do the choruses with a silly walk.
Now, the silly walk was his, you know? He'd have this walk around
which apparently you used to do at stage school or something.
Yeah, I was at a drama school... Drama school.
It wasn't that good.
You could always tell the people that really shouldn't
be doing dancing, you know,
because they'd do the same foot and the same hand.
And it just always struck me as funny, that.
# No, I can't dance
# I can't talk
# The only thing about me is the way I walk
# No, I can't dance
# I can't sing
# I'm just standing here selling everything... #
And obviously that did well, the album did very well.
It was sort of towards the end of that period
when we released our final single from that album,
a song called Tell Me Why, that I sort of felt suddenly it was...
Something had changed, and we didn't get played on radio and stuff.
And really from then on, you know,
suddenly Genesis was sort of phtt, like that.
And these things sort of sometimes suddenly happen
and you don't quite know why.
I think the fans thought that they'd seen the last of Genesis,
so it came as a real joyous surprise when they announced that they
were getting back together for a final tour in 2006.
It certainly was a surprise to me.
I think it is the fact that regardless of your age, race,
genre, colour - everybody loves a little bit of Genesis.
Have you been waiting long?
We've been waiting for you 15 years.
Darling, darling.
'They're a band that's managed to straddle so many different phases
'in the history of British rock music and they're still around.'
They were sensible enough to realise that
what they had was worth more than the parts.
Yeah, there are a couple of old songs in their entirety.
Well, just try a few and see what happens.
People will investigate that back catalogue and really realise
that there really is some wonderful, artistic, intelligent
stuff in there, which is exactly what we're always crying out for.
We're always moaning, "Where is the art, where is the intelligence,
"where is the ambition in today's simplistic music?"
Well, it's there.
# Cry, cry at the top of my voice
# Crying at the... #
I think the secret to Genesis's longevity
is that they are the progressive rock band who progressed.
And progressive rock bands, according to their fans,
are supposed to stop about two albums into progressing
and progress no more, and that's why they've survived.
They're great musicians, great writers of music, great lyricists.
And I love the fact that they also expand
and explore with other musicians.
They have straddled so many periods.
They have been hugely successful within prog rock in the '70s,
as a pop and rock band in the '80s.
Gabriel's had a solo career that's spanned, you know, decades.
I think they will be remembered
because they've written great songs and they are great musicians
and, at the end of the day, that's what's important.
# And need I say I love you?
# Need I say I care?
# Need I say that emotions
# Are something we don't share... #
I think it's very flattering, you know, to be part of something
that people call the soundtrack of their lives.
But they say, you know, like, "I grew up with your music,
"and so therefore, you know, you're pretty special to me."
You know, and that's like, it's...
I mean, that's fantastic for someone that writes.
I mean, that kind of almost negates all the negative stuff.
You can't keep doing exactly the same thing for ever and ever.
I don't think. And I think the reason we lasted so long
was those changes, which gave us the chance to actually
be a bit different each time.
# Throwing it all away
# Throwing it all away... #
We just carried on doing what we'd always done.
We just used to write.
We probably got better at doing the shorter stuff,
there's no doubt about that.
We always liked to throw in a bit more sort of thinking
kind of music in there.
Did long songs, and tried to do a few things that were slightly
more... You know, slightly less predictable, if you like.
But I mean we just...
It's a very difficult thing to know, you just do what you want
at the time with a particular combination of people you've got.
# ..We're throwing it all away... #
Never underestimate what difference you could make or what you could do.
I've seen other people, you know, at every stage with everything
I've done, who are smarter and better than I am,
and that hasn't deterred me.
So that's what I say to young people everywhere, you know,
don't limit yourself or limit your expectations
because if you want to make a difference,
if you want to change the world, it's all there.
The secret?
Well, the music. Are we being serious for a bit?
For a bit. Yeah. For a bit. OK.
# Carpet crawlers
# Heed their callers
# We've got to get in to get out oh, oh
# We've got to get in to get out
# Oh, oh
# We've got to get in
# To get out. #