Christopher Rush

Series Introduction

You don’t listen to enough Genesis.  In part to celebrate the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (sixteen years late), we present an analytical tribute.  This series of analyses is predicated on the assumption that if you know anything about Genesis, it’s probably that you have heard “Invisible Touch” on the radio and thought it was just Phil Collins.  While that’s a fine start and most likely not really your fault, you are missing out on an amazing musical world of a unique band.  Ideally, this series of analyses will entice you to get your own copies of Genesis’s oeuvre and enjoy them forever.  As much as I might want to just dive in to my favorite albums (Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound, A Trick of the Tail), it is important to take this systematically from the beginning … sort of.  The point of this series is not to give you a biographical context of the band, its members, or its critical reception (though a bit of that will be done).  Neither are we going to avail ourselves of the too-small library of literature available on the band and their music (biographies, dvd bonus interviews, and the like) — this is primarily a formalist critical approach, one listener to another.  Nor are we endeavoring to analyze Genesis’s place in propinquity with The Moody Blues, King Crimson, or Yes.  Instead, the focus is the music itself, and, so as not to get entirely unwieldy, the focus will primarily limit itself to the main studio album releases themselves.  I envision that time this year will only permit us, at best, to make it though the Peter Gabriel era and, hopefully, just preview the Phil Collins era with A Trick of the Tail.  Essentially, that means we will not get to any of the “radio hits” of the late ’70s and early ’80s incarnation this season — but that is okay.  Our main purpose, then, is to explore the creativity and unsurpassed brilliance of the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis.

In the Beginning

In 1967, four friends at Charterhouse School, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, and Anthony Phillips, gathered together and formed the band Genesis, under the direction (after a fashion) of Jonathan King.  Chis Stewart joined the band on drums and soon came the single “The Silent Sun,” an intentional pastiche of the Bee Gees’ sound (from the ’60s, remember, before their now-trademark ’70s Disco style) and nothing like the soon unmistakable Genesis sound.  Another single, “A Winter’s Tale,” followed three months later and so did Chris Stewart’s replacement, John Silver.  As the title of their first album indicates, From Genesis to Revelation is loosely based on the Bible.  Unsurprisingly, many record shops placed the album in their “religious” sections, which might account, in part, for its poor, almost non-existent, reception.  Additionally, the bandmates were 16-18 years old in 1968 when the album was made, without any prior recording experience — From Genesis to Revelation is an inaugural album in every sense of the word, but like most bands’ inaugural albums, it has a certain (perhaps sentimental) aura.

Without the members’ knowledge, producer Jonathan King overdubbed strings and horns and sequenced the songs to cement the “concept”-like nature of the album.  Shortly after its release, Genesis and Jonathan King parted ways.  King wanted to continue the radio-friendly short song format, but Genesis wanted to expand into longer, radio-unfriendly territory.  Fortunately for us all, the young lads of Genesis stuck to their creative daemons (the positive ones).  John Silver was replaced by John Mayhew, the band started working on what would become Trespass, and they signed to Charisma Records.

Though it was released on Decca Records (home of The Moody Blues), From Genesis to Revelation has been licensed to several other recording labels, which thus explains its absence from the recent Genesis 1970-1975 box set.  Its best availability now is on either a one-cd version (that contains some of the non-album singles) or a two-cd version (with even more of the non-album singles and some interview material).

“And it’s all gone wrong”

Though we stated above our primary purpose is to discuss the major studio albums of the Peter Gabriel era, some words on the initial single releases are in order first — even though they aren’t much like the Gabriel Genesis sound as we know it today.  It began with “The Silent Sun,” with “That’s Me” on the B-side.  Released, as we’ve said, as a copy of a sort of the Bee Gees’ ’60s sound, this first single was made, in part, to regain King’s interest in the band, since he was a Bee Gees fan.  As with much of From Genesis to Revelation, music fans of the era might recognize more of The Moody Blues than the Bee Gees.  Listening through these early songs, unless one knew it was Genesis (or could recognize Gabriel’s young voice), one might suspect it was The Moody Blues or The Turtles or possibly even some generic British Invasion assembly line band.  Their early demo work is proof of this: “Image Blown Out,” only recently made available to the public, is pure ’60s British pop music: you think it’s possibly Chad and Jeremy, maybe Herman’s Hermits, and then suddenly The Association shows up to provide the chorus.  “She’s So Beautiful” is better and becomes a template for “The Serpent” on From Genesis to Revelation.  “Patricia” becomes “In Hiding” on the album with lyrics added.  “Try a Little Sadness” is quintessential demo material, though its message on the importance of sadness in a maturing relationship is mildly impressive.  The completists out there (of whom I am trying to be one) will need to get the Genesis Archive 1967-75 and the Genesis 1970-1975 box sets for the rest of the demo material.

The Days of Future Passed influence is palpable in the lyrics of “The Silent Sun” (you do know, right, that Days of Future Passed is the second Moody Blues album, one of the best albums of all time?  If not, get it, listen to it, and begin your lifetime of Moody Blues listening with your lifetime of Genesis listening ).  Lyrically, the song covers a range of natural images: the sun, a tiny stone, a mountain stream chilling the sea, a star-filled night sky, snowflakes healing an otherwise ugly ground.  The variety, as you can imagine, instead of creating a unified whole leads to several discrete thoughts and images about as rambling as every band’s first song usually is.  The chorus is also about as bland as any typical love song can get: “Baby you feel so close / I wish you could see my love, / Baby you’ve changed my life / I’m trying to show you.”  Musically, the song is nice but unremarkable.  The ambiguity of some of the lyrics is the highlight of the song, in that we can see early signs of Gabriel’s lyrical ingenuity, though still in its embryonic stage.

“That’s Me” could easily be mistaken for a musical theater number from the 1960s.  Strangely enough, there’s more connected “sun” language and imagery throughout “That’s Me” than “The Silent Sun.”  As a song, the lyrics are more unified and developed, though the development is slight at best.  We see again the developing lyricism of Peter Gabriel: the narrator, at odds with society and, to a degree, the natural world, is uncertain for most of the song who he is, who he has been, and what his place is in an untrustworthy world.  By the end of the song, the narrator has realized some unsettling things about himself and ends with a plaintive cry for assistance.

The follow-up single release of “A Winter’s Tale”/“One-eyed Hound” is likewise nondescript.  “A Winter’s Tale” is a much more gentle song, lyrically and musically.  The natural world is not as hostile this time.  The chorus is very much Moody Blues-influenced, but it is still nice on its own, though some might find it a bit grating, which would be a sound engineering mixing issue — nothing under the control of the band at that time in their career.  “One-eyed Hound” is an oddity.  It would be easy to see it as a not-so-subtle sexual metaphor: “Night is the time for chasing the one-eyed hound” is repeated throughout — but that is too easy and, in context, erroneous.  The “one-eyed hound” is a person: verse two says “Have you seen the one-eyed hound? / Tell me where he’s going.”  Verse one seems to indicate the one-eyed hound has himself been “[c]hasing dogs in the moonlight,” but for some reason that is “a sin” for which “he never can win.”  The ambiguity of this song is not as impressive, lyrically, as “The Silent Sun” or “That’s Me.”  The other repeated line, “And it’s all gone wrong,” may be a much better summation of Genesis’ career at this point: at odds with their management, unsure of their own musical and lyrical abilities, unknown by the public, and mis-categorized by record stores.

Turning the Sour into Sweet

Though the band doesn’t seem to care much about these early days, and this initial album is only tenuously connected to their main oeuvre, From Genesis to Revelation did provide what all bourgeoning bands need: practice.  With this album, Gabriel got experience writing lyrics, Banks and Rutherford got experience playing and recording in the studio, and the band got experience playing together.  Not everything else was a total loss, though: some of the musical ideas can be heard in more mature forms in later albums, and many of them are turned into fuller instrumental versions during live performances.

The album begins with another musical-theatre-like opening: it sounds at first like the Sharks and the Jets are back.  Instead, Peter Gabriel is inviting the audience to join them on a musical tour of the Bible (after a fashion).  The biblical veracity of Gabriel’s invitation is tenuous at best, but for a pop song, it’s unusually substantial.  By filling our minds with love and searching for the world of future glory full of sunshine gliding in, the darkness inside us will creep out.  At this world of future glory, “where the sour turns to sweet,” we can leave our “ugly selfish shell / To melt in the glowing flames.”  It is certainly a much more Biblical idea that we are naturally selfish than the Rousseauean/Romantic idea we are naturally good.  With this invitation to join the band on a journey to transform from sour into sweet, Genesis’s real musical career begins.

From Genesis to Revelation is a remarkably disjointed album, musically, furthering the kinship to Days of Future Passed.  After the di-melodic “Where the Sour Turns to Sweet,” the album changes melodic directions with “In the Beginning.”  The album we have (in its many variations) is, whether Genesis wanted it as such or not, a concept album, and “In the Beginning” clearly initiates that.  The initial musical aspect of the song is a fine representation of the creation of the material cosmos: it is a very believable “sound of a new born world.”  Lyrically, “In the Beginning” is more reminiscent of Ovid’s Metamorphoses than the Bible.  Instead of immediate design and order, the world fashions itself through flux and a dialectical clash.  Instead of the purpose of a Divine Person, “You’re in the hands of destiny.”  One might wonder at this point why this album is being recommended, if it distorts the actual book of Genesis: the final stanza of the song brings back the lyrical splay into a more Biblical conception, at least the second half of it.  The first half continues the diverse creation myths: “Is that a chariot with stallions gold? / Is that a prince of heaven on the ground? / Is that the roar of a thunderflash?”  The chariot with gold stallions is reminiscent of Helios, and “roar of a thunderflash” has all the appearance of Zeus’s mighty thunderbolts.  The “prince of heaven on the ground” could be Satan, though it seems more likely to be either an angel or even a theophany.  The remainder of this stanza is especially relevant: “This is my world and it’s waiting to be crowned / Father, son, looks down with happiness / Life is on its way.”  Assuming the Father and Son mentioned here are the two-thirds of the Biblical Trinity, God certainly did look down with happiness, especially considering the Biblical language of humanity acting as a crown to God’s creation: life was, indeed, on its way.  Listening to this album is more beneficial than eschewing it, naïvely.

“Fireside Song” is a good foreshadowing of the musical skill that Genesis was to develop in so many of their memorable and mature albums, especially Foxtrot, Selling England By the Pound, and A Trick of the Tail.  The song continues the creation of the material world, filled with personification and evocative imagery that is sometimes undercut by the rough studio mixing.  As has been mentioned above (and will no doubt be repeated ad nauseam during The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), sometimes Genesis can be … tricky with their lyrics.  It is difficult to tell if “Fireside Song” skips to the fall of mankind or ahead to Revelation’s culmination of the world or what.  Time seems to be passing, as indicated by all the movement words: drifting, slips, creep, pass; as well as the juxtaposition of what the world was like: full of confusion, disappointment, fear, and disillusion, but “[n]ow there’s hope reborn with every morning / See the future clearly at its dawning” — a very optimistic line repeated over a soothing, Tony Banks-driven piano melody (sometimes subordinated under the mysteriously-added strings track).

Following another “concept album musical interlude/transition,” “The Serpent” is perhaps the most obvious Bible-themed song on the album.  It, too, is the forerunner of a common trope Genesis uses in most of their other Gabriel-era albums: different narrators in the same song, not always identified.  “The Serpent” is a bit easier to follow, though, in that the pronoun shift helps distinguish when Satan is talking (the “you”s and “you’re”s) and when man/Adam is talking (“I’m,” “my”).  The melodic line (adapted from the demo “She’s So Beautiful”) conveys the sneakiness of Satan and his serpent guile.  The imago dei incarnation theme is present throughout the song, highlighting in a very short song (and quite reminiscent of Milton) Satan’s estimation of this new world, the incarnation of man as a kind of imaging of God Himself (to a degree), Satan’s conception of the power and danger man will bring to him, Adam’s pristine created nature, and (and this is very Miltonian) mankind’s trepidation concerning the approach of the serpent.  The song ends with confusion for mankind and, unfortunately, confusion for the audience, as the connection to the Bible becomes extremely tenuous for a vast majority of the remainder of the album.

“Am I Very Wrong?” has an almost wedding-like beginning, though connecting that to the creation and marriage of Adam and Eve would be precarious at best.  The plaintive questions of the verses could be reminiscent, again, of Milton’s Satan or Adam, but the ambiguity is too powerful for this listener.  The chorus suddenly marks the return of The Association in a bizarre candy-coated threatening chorus that desires that they “hope your life will never end” — perhaps the “your” is the audience, perhaps it is the individual asking the questions about the mysterious “happiness machine” he/she wants to abjure along with these mindless, hive-like friends that are celebrating this birthday with about as much filial devotion as a horde of cannibalistic zombies.  I’m not even sure Peter Gabriel sings this song, not that that matters too much here.

The unmistakable sound of Peter Gabriel’s voice clearly returns with “In the Wilderness,” which may be referring, albeit highly loosely, to the Israelite years in the Wilderness.  “In the Wilderness” is another forerunner of another well-used Genesis trope: near-paradoxical disjunction between musical texture and lyrical content.  The chorus is an especially cheery rah-rah that has all the appearance of celebrating life and the vitality that music brings, until the thought descends quickly from rain falling lovely onto rooftops then sliding down the drains into the gutters of life as people run aimlessly and self-delusionally like rain through a gutter, splashing out meaninglessly, compartmentalized by time that actually controls their lives, not the other way around.  The days that pass by “[tear] pieces from our lives to feed the dawn,” which is not a pleasant thought, though it may be somewhat (metaphorically) accurate.  The connection to the Israelites potentially comes in a touch with the second verse: “Fighting enemies with weapons made to kill / Death is easy as a substitute for pride / Victors join together, happy in their bed / Leaving cold outside the children of the dead.”  The great ambiguity of the song comes in the otherwise lovely end: Tony Banks (much maligned keyboardist of Genesis for almost all its existence) plays through the chorus in a somber, slightly minor key transposition, bringing the song about death, destruction, and the futility of life to a peaceful, melodic close.

“The Conqueror” begins with a modulated version of the “In the Wilderness” chorus sound on a different instrument, no doubt an effect to continue the “concept album” feel as the classic ’60s, pre-Genesis sound is furthered by “The Conqueror.”  It’s hard to tell who this conqueror is: Satan? Genghis Khan? Robespierre? Napoleon? Antiochus Epiphanes? (I just threw that last one in for fun.)  The song doesn’t tell us.  The diverse cultural occurrences (a castle on a hill, rolling heads) could indicate the conqueror is a general description of evil in every time and generation, and the destruction that dictators, conquerors, despots and others of that ilk bring wherever they go, as long as they are unopposed, even by feckless heroes who squirm “on an empty floor.”  Justice does come eventually, though, as “words of love” seem to be the real solution to ending the conqueror in its/his many forms — words of love replace the position of the conqueror and, ironically, even the feckless hero who could not overcome the conqueror by might.  Though, the a cappella declaration that “the words of love” are lying on the floor could indicate a pyrrhic victory.

“In Hiding” is possibly the most awkwardly disconnected song on the album — even if the album weren’t a semi-concept album, the song is as unwieldy any you’ll hear.  The closest analogy I can think of is this would be the song Richard Cory would sing if he were visiting Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka).  We have moved from happiness machines to factories of truth.  The song is very much a Romantic lament: away from society, away from the city, safely on a mountain or upon a river, the narrator is “lost in the beauty” of the natural world while “[i]n hiding.”  The chorus indicates the proud self-assurance of the narrator, in that no matter what society does to him, he “[has] a mind of [his] own,” and thus enjoys the solitude, which makes the choice of “hiding” appropriately incongruous with the song.

Following another lovely instrumental transition/introduction, the album moves on to “One Day,” but the song has no apparent connection to the general plan of moving from Genesis to Revelation.  Lyrically, the song is another precursor to later Genesis songs.  Though other songs on the album deal with interactions with the natural world, as we have seen, “One Day” features personal interactions with animals, foreshadowing, perhaps, Gabriel’s on-stage characters of the fox and Batwings from Foxtrot (which led to Gabriel’s other on-stage personas during his tenure with Genesis), as well as so many songs that will be discussed later.

“Window” continues the lack of connection to the Bible, but it does further presage the frequent classical allusions replete in later Gabriel-era albums.  This time, the lyrics are a combination of Pilgrim’s Progress (mountains of truth, slough of despond, pastures of dream day), classical myth (dancing nymphs, beckoning trees), to literature and folklore (an albatross reminiscent of Coleridge plus Jack Frost himself).  After a honky-tonk intro/segue that has nothing to do with either “One Day” or “Window,” this song features one of the album’s prettiest choruses musically.  The entire song is another prime example of Genesis’s pop beginnings, but “Window” is possibly the best of the era.  The Moody Blues parallel may be strongest with this song, but it is still a great example of the potential in young Genesis.

And then suddenly Chicago Transit Authority shows up and starts accompanying The Association on “In Limbo.”  Considering Limbo is not a Biblical concept, this song’s connection to the theme of the album is likewise tenuous at best.  The narrator pleas toward the end to God for clarification on where, exactly, his soul is now, after requesting that he be taken away from the “world of fear” and “the power of [his] ambition.”  Again we see the preference for the natural world: requesting supernatural transportation from the world of fear and ambition and to “the furthest star in the sky” and “the deepest cave of the night,” the narrator is initially pleased to believe that he has “conquered time” but soon realizes that he may no longer be in control of his own destiny and person and finds himself in Limbo.  This is pleasant enough at first, but the absence of motion, direction, purpose, and activity soon becomes too much for the narrator to handle, leading to another plaintive request for the end of his existence.  What this has to do with the Bible is beyond me.  Perhaps only the first side of the album (back in the day when cds were larger, had two playable sides, and were called “records”) was intended to be pertinent to the theme of the album, since side one ended with “In the Wilderness” and side two began with “The Conqueror.”

The general disjunction of the second side or half of the album with its own concept is abetted by the appearance of two minutes and thirteen seconds of “The Silent Sun.”  The disconnected natural imagery is still there, just as it was on the song’s single release months before, but now on the studio album that is supposed to be a concept album of songs based on the Bible, it is even more out of place.  The off-the-rack ’60s pop chorus is as bubble-gummy as a stick of Juicy Fruit™.

The album ends with “A Place to Call my Own,” a song as representative of this uncertain and disjointed album as it is of the musical and lyrical fecundity that Genesis was about to exhibit in its future albums.  In one minute and six lines, Genesis essentially bids adieu to its imposed Biblical structure and theme and embraces the panoply of mythical, textual, and even sub-textual opportunities that awaited it once it sloughed off the confines of being a pop rock band and became a (if not the) progressive rock band (and this coming from the best Jethro Tull, Moody Blues, Pink Floyd, and Rush fan you’ll ever meet — give me time on Yes, King Crimson, and ELP).  The final minute of the song is another musical display of the band’s early talent and potential, ending with a quiet chorus of “ah”s and “la”s.  Genesis’s journey had begun — and so has yours.