Christopher Rush

Moving into the ’70s (Sort Of)

Genesis had parted ways with Jonathan King.  John Silver had been replaced by John Mayhew on drums.  The band was now signed with Charisma Records, a major source of progressive rock in the early 1970s.  With Charisma came Paul Whitehead, the graphic artist who would create the covers of Trespass, Nursery Cryme, and Foxtrot (as well as several other covers for Charisma).  Free from the constraints of Jonathan King, and having some studio recording and live performance experience under most of their belts, Genesis was poised to become one of the premiere prog-rock band of the ’70s.  But first…

Trespassing Between Folk and Prog

Trespass has suffered slight disrepute and ignominy for years (though, perhaps even a bad reputation might be better than the near-total absence of a reputation that their clandestine debut album has), though the final song “The Knife” became the first real hit of the band, both critically and live on stage.  Despite this, the album as a whole is the second part of their maturation process (their “teenage years,” if you will) — on the precipice of full-grown development.  Some may argue that their third album, Nursery Cryme, is the culmination of their maturity, leading to the high-water greatness of Foxtrot, Selling England By the Pound, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway before their next great self-reinvention after Peter Gabriel’s departure.  To a degree that is true, and we will discuss Nursery Cryme more in our next issue, but it is an underappreciated album that bears more connection to the three great albums just mentioned than it does to the hybrid-like electric folk and mellotron-powered prog rock of Trespass.

Instrumentally, Anthony Phillips, Michael Rutherford, and Tony Banks have more diversity on this album: the acoustic twelve-string guitar is prevalent, as well as the dulcimer, nylon bass, and Banks’s mellotron (made most famous by the opening sound of Foxtrot).  Without the synthesized strings and brass that mostly plagued From Genesis to Revelation (mainly because the band didn’t want them), the sound of the album is more genuine as a Genesis album.  It has a folksy feel throughout, undeniably, but that isn’t necessarily a detrimental thing.  Peter Gabriel’s vocal abilities shine through far more than they did on the limitations of their pop debut, reaching great emotional peaks during the album, especially in “Visions of Angels,” “Stagnation,” and “The Knife.”  His flute work (and tambourine work) helps create the diverse woodsy, almost Tullian feel scattered throughout.  Many critics consider the sound of the album as invoking the part-Romantic, part-Victorian idyll — though the end of “The Knife” is more of a police riot as the idyllic loss of innocence and natural purity comes to a dramatic conclusion.

The Paul Whitefield cover may not capture the essence of the album as overtly and succinctly as his covers for Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot do, but once you have listened to the album a few times (with the lyrics in front of you some of those times, though not necessarily the first time through) the relevance to the songs will make sense — it’s not a direct representation but a satisfying pastiche of many of the album’s major ideas.  The dull blue/gray dominance of the cover art might account, in part, for the general dissatisfaction with the album as a whole, but the prevalence of the empty grayness has a great deal to do with the album’s general tenor: the vital, natural days of happiness are disappearing, only to be replaced by empty nothingness.  The panoramic natural view from the window capture the idyllic aspects of the album, while the royal couple gazing upon it provide the narratorship for most of the songs here.  The Cupid-like cherub could be one of the angels all around from “Visions of Angels,” and the floral curtains could be from any song.  The mysterious face in the upper-right corner sometimes looks like a demon, sometimes a faun — perhaps you should figure it out yourself.  The most obvious connection from the cover to the album content is the giant knife cutting a swath through the entire painting — though, of the several different bladed objects mentioned during the album, to which one it is referring (if not a combination of them) is the real question.  Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the cover is the knife itself, clearly a “real” knife cutting through the painting, adding an additional layer of reality to the complexity of Genesis’s transformation.  Just as “The Knife” is about the end of life as we know it (at least the way we are used to it), the knife cuts through the final, forlorn gaze of the noble couple on the life they used to love (perhaps being blanketed by an angel and demon); superimposed on all of that Genesis itself is both cutting ties with its pop roots while also about to sever ties with the overt folk rock of Trespass in favor of all-out prog rock for the remainder of the Peter Gabriel era.

“Looking For Someone”

Genesis’s re-creation begins with an appropriate lyrical comment and attitude: “Looking for someone, I guess I’m doing that.”  The band is definitely looking for a new beginning, certainly looking for an audience, and the lack of certainty in the narrator (“I guess”) fits the transitional nature of the album as a whole — better than From Genesis to Revelation but not yet the level of Nursery Cryme (definitely not Foxtrot or Selling England by the Pound).  The narrator continues with “Trying to find a mem’ry in a dark room / Dirty man, you’re looking like a Buddha / I know you well — yeah.”  The collage of unrelated images is confusing at best, but the “mem’ry” trying to be found for this album is an early glimpse of the antique scene depicted on the cover: the memory of days long ago, better days that have been destroyed by various factors — poor memory not the least of them.  Doubtful it is that we are to associate the “I know you well” with the “Buddha,” as if the narrator has spent time searching out the mystical paths to Enlightenment and inner tranquility; one would suspect the narrator to be more self-assured were that the case — unless, of course, the narrator has spent time with Buddhism and is still confused.  The uncertainty of the narrator continues as the need to “Keep on a straight line, I don’t believe I can” is followed by more difficult tasks ahead: “Trying to find a needle in a haystack / Chilly wind you’re piercing like a dagger / It hurts me so — yeah.”  As mentioned above, the dagger is a pervasive image throughout the album, introduced here.  The brief musical force of the previous line is dimmed subito for the great ironic line, “Nobody needs to discover me / I’m back again” — this is exactly what the audience must do!  Genesis does indeed require the audience to discover them now that they are back again, now with an album more akin to their forthcoming mature sound and style.  The melodic tendency to rapidly crescendo to dramatic hits is next demonstrated by the remainder of the chorus-like section: “You see the sunlight through the / Trees to keep you warm / In peaceful shades of green. / Yet in the darkness of my mind / Damascus wasn’t far behind.”  The king and queen surveying the remnants of their territory on the cover of the album do behold a forested landscape that may well remind them of warmer, brighter days, roaming through forests free from care.  If this album is an English idyll, perhaps the reference to Damascus places the time period of this opening song after the Crusades and Richard I’s defeat (of a sort) of Saladin at the close of the twelfth century, when the king and queen on the cover remember periods of both carefree days (“sunlight through the trees”) and days of war and loss — yet both of those periods are so long ago no one can remember them clearly today.

The time period jumps ahead.  “Lost in a subway, I guess I’m losing time,” he says.  “There’s a man looking at a magazine. / You’re such a fool, your mumbo-jumbo / Never tells me anything — yeah.”  Not even periodicals and modern technology can restore the innocence and intelligence lost so long ago.  The return of the chorus, now in its modern-day dress, brings more resolve on the narrator: no one needs to discover him because he is ready to be his own man.  Genesis did not need the tutelage that led to From Genesis to Revelation, since they wanted to be their own band with their own style — perhaps that cry for independency continues through the rest of this version of the chorus: “You feel the ashes from the / Fire that kept you warm. / Its comfort disappears / But still the only friend I know / Would never tell me where to go.”  All the direction given before has lead nowhere; it is time to be autonomous, to create one’s own style.  The musical interlude that follows, the first real forceful musical outburst of Genesis’ album career, is the beginning of that autonomy (with rare tones from Peter Gabriel’s flute sprinkled throughout).

In Genesis’s attempt to find direction (“Looking for someone”), it has now found itself: “And now I’ve found myself a name” — the name of the band is the same, but the sound and direction are different (though still with the motifs and foreshadowed bits mentioned in the previous article), and the name “Genesis” is starting to become what it will mean during the rest of Gabriel’s direction.  The rest of the lyrics of this song, “Come away, leave me / All that I have I will give. / Leave me, leave me / All that I am I will give” remind the audience of their initial invitation to join them in From Genesis to Revelation, but now that the band is breaking out on its own, it is willing to give of itself all it has, provided it is left alone to be itself.  They are starting to trust their own musical and lyric instincts (still maturing though), and we are to do so as well.

“White Mountain”

“White Mountain” is as close to an E. J. Erichsen Tench fairy tale as rock music will ever get.  The opening music of the piece is mildly reminiscent of medieval Christmas ballads, furthering the pervasive Victorian-idyll mood Trespass emits.  From the opening verse (an inaccurate way to describe the narrative progression of Genesis’s material) we get the first reference to the title of the album: Fang, the traitorous wolf, has trespassed where only the leader of the wolves may go and learned of the secret crown and scepter of, perhaps, the king depicted on the cover of the album, placing the events of this song somewhere between the time periods covered in “Looking for Someone” (from the perspective that the songs on this album are connected).  One-eye, the rightful ruler of the wolves, and his followers are out for retribution, and Fang is surrounded by a web and a sleeping fox: no matter how cunning he can be, it won’t be enough; he will soon be caught, trapped by his own importunate curiosity.

Fang soon encounters the steep path of the mountain, knowing that only descent will save him — but in this, too, he betrays his wolfish nature and clan rules: “A wolf never flees in the face of his foe,” and this is exactly what Fang does, cementing his guilt and forfeiting his life.  One-eye and Fang face off in their climactic duel, but Fate has already decreed against Fang the usurper.  One-eye is said to raise the scepter and use it against Fang, blurring the lines between animal and human — adding a lycanthropic aura to the characters and song.  The next morning, the white mountain stained with Fang’s traitorous blood, One-eye buries the unlawfully uprooted crown and scepter of the gods and peace is restored in the wolf kingdom, the laurels of victory proclaiming One-eye’s rightful authority.  The idyllic twelve-string strums and haunting whistling through the deserted blood-dimmed mountains send this unusual song into the ether.

“Visions of Angels”

The theme of lost innocence and lost youth returns here, straining against musically delightful tones.  The narrator tries to look at the trees “but there’s not even one.”  He runs to the smiling stream nearby “but the water’s dry.”  He looks to his girl’s face and tries to take her hand but “she’s never there.”  Why?  We’re never told.  “I just don’t understand / The trumpets sound my whole world crumbles down.”  That’s pretty serious.  After this realization of the complete absence of life-giving nature and love, the chorus proclaims “Visions of angels all around / Dance in the sky / Leaving me here / Forever goodbye.”  Based on the propinquity of the declaration of the nearby dancing and utterly uninterested angelic realm to the declaration of the narrator’s world crumbling down, the cosmology of this world is getting increasingly desolate.  The music accompanying the talk of angels is fitting for a heavenly realm, but the irony of the angels’ disinterest in the affairs of men is inescapable.

Desperation and despondency continues in verse two: “As the leaves will crumble so will fall my love / For the fragile beauty of our lives must fade / Though I once remember echoes of my youth / Now I sense no past, no love that ends in love.”  The sentiment is clear enough.  If the narrator is the king from the cover (which would make sense, but we are not here to force a thorough-going structure onto the album — even if the narrator of this song is unrelated to the cover or any other song on the album, the interpretation is similar enough), we are back in the decline of the Middle Ages.  Not only are the warm, happy days gone, but also hope itself is fading quickly.  The situation is becoming increasingly embittering to the narrator: “Take this dream the stars have filled with light / As the blossom glides like snowflakes from the trees / In vengeance to a god no-one can reach.”  The impotent angelic realm is joined by an equally uninvolved deity.  Happiness and hope are so far gone the king’s dreams are now just vitriolic attrition against the god that has allowed this destruction to occur.  Musically, the song is part military cadence, part ballroom dance number — the confusion of sounds and styles is fitting for a song about conflicting emotions and reactions.

After another chorus reveling in the angelic realm’s disinterest in the affairs of men, the final verse sees the melancholy nostalgia of the narrator morphed into anger: “Ice is moving and world’s begun to freeze / See the sunlight stopped and deadened by the breeze / Minds are empty bodies move insensitive / Some believe that when they die they really live / I believe there never is an end / God gave up this world, its people long ago / Why she’s never there I still don’t understand.”  Does the king think God is a woman?  Perhaps — or that his thoughts have returned to his wife and her distance from him as well.  His whole world has indeed crumbled down — and the angels keep dancing all around.

“Stagnation”

The preamble to this song returns us to the present age: “To Thomas S. Eiselberg, a very rich man, who was wise enough to spend all his fortunes in burying himself many miles beneath the ground.  As the only surviving member of the human race, he inherited the whole world.”  I’m pretty sure they made this guy up, but if not, he’s one of those eccentric rich British guys from a century or two ago; in other words, a rich British guy.  The song itself is one of the more diverse and impressive on the album: it is probably getting tiresome to read comments about Genesis foreshadowing their future greatness, but this song, even more than the more popular “The Knife” at the close of the album, is a sign of the burgeoning diversity and musicality of the band.

The album thus far has been about stagnation: final glimpses of what is being lost and fading memories of what once was; yet, “Stagnation” is not about giving up and letting go.  By the end of “Stagnation,” the king (again, assuming the narrator of this song is the king from the cover) is determined, like the narrator of Dylan Thomas’s most famous poem, not to go gentle into that good night.  The song as a whole is Gabriel’s best lyrical work to date, unquestionably: “Here today the red sky tells his tale / But the only listening eyes are mine / There is peace amongst the hills / And the night will cover all my pride.”  The synesthesia is delightful, coupled by the few moments of peace in the album; instead of another angry tirade against Fate, impotent supernatural beings, and Nature, we have the quiet acceptance of one’s downfall as so often brought about by hubris.  “Blest are they who smile from bodies free / Seems to me like any other crowd / Who are waiting to be saved” ends the first verse-like section of this song.  Is he referring to the stars smiling down, free? or the previous angels vindicated for their indifference? Perhaps — just as distant and uninvolved as people, waiting to be saved, too passive.  And then comes the great turn.  Musically the song has been fast, almost careering out of control.  The realization of his connection with the natural world, and the fate of others, yields a pause in thought.  The musical interlude is more Pink Floyd than Genesis, but only temporarily.  When the hit comes again, powered by impressive sounds from Tony Banks, the king has a better self-understanding.

“Wait, there still is time for washing in the pool / Wash away the past. / Moon, my long-lost friend is smiling from above / Smiling at my tears. / Come we’ll walk the path to take us to my home / Keep outside the night. / The ice-cold knife has come to decorate the dead / Somehow.”  The knife returns again, promising to destroy all that is known — but now the king will not idly give in.  The queen whose fidelity has been questioned throughout may be back, though the king referring to it as “my home” might belie that — it matters little; what matters is the return of the resolution of the king to live and enjoy the day and keep the night of death at bay for as long as possible.

“And each will find a home / And there will still be time / For loving my friend / You are there / And will I wait for ever beside the silent mirror / And fish for bitter minnows amongst the reeds and slimy water.”  This interlude, both emotionally and musically, is the real highlight of the album.  It is a fine example of Genesis’s ability to becalm a situation and then build up to a powerful climax.  “I, I … said I want to sit down. / I, I … said I want to sit down. / I want a drink — I want a drink / To take all the dust and dirt from my throat / I want a drink — I want a drink / To wash out the filth that is deep in my guts / I want a drink.”  The climax of “Stagnation” rivals later Gabriel-era Genesis songs: Peter Gabriel’s vocal performance here is surpassed only by the unsurpassable finale of “Supper’s Ready” on Foxtrot (though, the greatness is comparatively short, and many other later songs as wholes are better than the whole of “Stagnation”).  His flute work after the climax leads to a satisfying march-like resolution supplied by the ethereal chorus: “Then let us drink / Then let us smile / Then let us go.”  The song winds down — though it certainly doesn’t stagnate — and dusk falls.

“Dusk”

“Dusk” is a good example of the band’s need to grow, especially Gabriel’s need to tighten up his lyrical creations.  The song is simple enough, though hard to place in the dual chronologies of the previous songs.  The Victorian idyll sound dominates with no break or contrary theme, which is not bad, since the song is so short it needs little variety.  It is almost a call-and-response song, with Gabriel’s voice dominating the initial verses and the ethereal chorus replying with an impressively parallel pair of choruses (and a third chorus unlike the first two).

“See my hand is moving / Touching all that’s real / And once it stroked love’s body / Now it claws the past” is verselet one.  The tone of Gabriel’s voice does not sound like the voice in previous songs, making the narrator of this song most likely a different persona from the album thus far.  The thought of the lost past continues, as the hand that once touched the body of a loved one now can only claw at the past (a good verb, though the song as a whole reminds us clearly of Gabriel’s youth and relative inexperience at creating lyrics).  The ethereal chorus responds with “The scent of a flower / The colors of the morning / Friends to believe in / Tears soon forgotten / See how the rain drives away another day.”  The disjunction of the ideas is more reminiscent to us today of any typical contemporary “Christian” chorus of seemingly unrelated Bible words than the depth and brilliance of more mature Genesis lyrics.  The musical interludes, though, help distract us away from the near-inanity of the lyrics, reminding us again of the maturing skill of Banks, Rutherford, and Gabriel (Phillips and Mayhew are maturing as well, but since they depart the band after this album, it almost doesn’t matter — Phillips has a very successful career later, but Mayhew sort of disappears into the mist).

Verse two: “If a leaf has fallen / Does the tree lie broken? / And if we draw some water / Does the well run dry?”  The questions seem deep … but they aren’t, not really, especially since the connection to the ideas that begin the song is tenuous at best.  The most impressive part of the song comes from the second chorus/response and its parallel to the first one, at least initially: “The sigh of a mother / The screaming of lovers / Like two angry tigers / They tear at each other. / See how for him lifetime’s fears disappear.”  Are the sigh and scream the two angry tigers tearing at each other, or just the screaming of the lovers tearing at each other?  I really don’t know, but I suspect neither does Peter Gabriel, so it’s okay.  Another enjoyable yet brief musical interlude sets us up for the final vocals of this brief, ambivalent song.

“Once a Jesus suffered / Heaven could not see Him. / And now my ship is sinking / The captain stands alone.”  We don’t need to get up in arms about Gabriel’s notion about Heaven unable to see Jesus — the brief references to a worse-than-deist god earlier in the album are far worse than this speculation; besides, it may be partially true that Heaven could not see Christ on the cross while He was bearing the sins of the world.  The later couplet is more pertinent to the general direction of the album (since we know Jesus recovered far better than Gabriel could imagine — either of them, really).  Instead of the kingdom sinking and the king standing alone as it has been thus far, now the narrator is a captain of a sinking ship, alone on the bridge.  The chorus’s response is enigmatic but strangely fitting for this song: “A pawn on a chessboard / A false move by God will now destroy me / But wait, on the horizon / A new dawn seems to be rising / Never to recall this passerby born to die.”  Despite the brief optimism, it is nothing like the strong renewed resolution in “Stagnation.”  Here it is another aspect of Gabriel’s lyrical growing pains.  A final twelve-string/piano chord-dominated finish leads us to the final (and one of Genesis’s most frenetic) song of this part-idyll, part-maturing transitional album.

“The Knife”

The original album jacket provides this dedication on this song: “For those that Trespass against us.”  This is the only direct reference to the album’s title other than the lyrical reference to Fang’s trespass crime in “White Mountain,” but the “knife” reference has pervaded the album, leading to this modern metaphorical usage.  Not since the ending of “Looking for Someone” have we been clearly in the contemporary time period on this album, but that changes with a stark reappearance of gun-shooting chaos by the close of this song.  Moments ago, I mentioned that “The Knife” is one of Genesis’s most frenetic songs in its entire oeuvre, and that’s true — that’s not to say they never play fast-paced songs, they do; but the pounding nature of this song, mimicking a growing cacophonous riot between constabulary and a demagogue’s posse, is rare for this band.  Even the pounding opening of “Watcher of the Skies” on Foxtrot (and sections of “Supper’s Ready” on the same album) does not reach the malevolent frenzy of “The Knife.”  The previous “knife” references on the album have been about destroying and ending.  Now, it is personified as a seemingly well-intentioned revolutionary who, essentially, is only using force to establish his own tyranny at the expense of others, bringing life as we know it to a more malicious close than the simple outright destruction of other daggers and knives.  Additionally, it may be about law enforcement representatives who are likewise readily willing to use violence to solve problems and quell disturbances.  Knives allow for little stagnation after all.

The danger of young radicals and their philosophies is delineated in the otherwise fine-sounding lyrics that spring forth with the rapid organ pounding of Tony Banks: “Tell me my life is about to begin / Tell me that I am a hero / Promise me all of your violent dreams / Light up your body with anger. / Now, in this ugly world / It is time to destroy all this evil. / Now, when I give the word / Get ready to fight for your freedom / Now — / Stand up and fight, for you know we are right / We must strike at the lies / That have spread like disease through our minds. / Soon we’ll have power, ever soldier will rest / And we’ll spread out our kindness / To all who our love now deserve.”  Such is the rallying cry of most would-be tyrants and despots who, like Marius and Enjolras, think they are doing the right thing for the right reason.  The problem with this line of “thinking” comes in Gabriel’s pointed couplet at the end of this tirade: “Some of you are going to die — / Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide.”  The motivation is clear: it is about power, not about justice or right — isn’t that often the way?

Any grip on morality is lost by the time verse two comes around: “I’ll give you the names of those you must kill / All must die with their children. / Carry their heads to the palace of old / Hang them high, let the blood flow. / Now, in this ugly world / Break all the chains around us / Now, the crusade has begun / Give us a land fit for heroes / Now —.”  The “stand up and fight” chorus returns after this.  It is clear the narrator does not truly want a land fit for heroes, since real heroes will in turn displace this power-motivated revolutionary, like Robespierre’s fate.  The lyrics of this section were changed slightly during live performances, but those emendations are irrelevant here: the point of the song is the same on the album and live on stage.

Both of those verses come out in a rapid pace, and though the audience probably thinks the song is almost over based on the number of words Gabriel has just sung/chanted at them, we are barely two minutes into a nine-minute song.  Suddenly the speed evaporates and the words disappear, and we are waiting for the mob of “freedom fighters” to attack the police barricade.  Soon a quiet and menacing chant of “We are only wanting freedom” begins, supported by other chants the attentive listener will hear, followed by modern police/riot squad responses: shots are fired over their heads and the battle commences, slowly at first, then forcefully and rapidly.  The pulsating tones during the “battle scene” help one realize why this song was so popular during early live concerts (though it sounds nothing like the “Battle of Epping Forest” forthcoming on Selling England By the Pound).  Soon the rioters win, and we can only guess how many “martyrs of freedom” have suffered for this would-be patriot soon-to-be-dictator.  Though we have come a long way from the idyll reverie of the medieval king from the cover, the pervasive knife of destruction was worked its way along the entire tapestry of the album.

“Tell Me My Life is About to Begin”

Though “The Knife” ends somewhat pessimistically, the album as a whole is a fine beginning to the real initialization of Genesis’s career.  It is an optimistic album, with a sound unlike most albums of its time and certainly unlike most albums created today.  Many more changes were about to occur in the life of the band: “The Knife” was soon released as a single, though the cover of it is anachronistic (an odd charge for the album just discussed, admittedly).  The cover bears the five-member line-up of the “classic years” of Genesis: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Steve Hackett — even though Collins and Hackett did not play on “The Knife” or Trespass and only came on after its release to replace John Mayhew and Anthony Phillips, respectively.  This line-up would create the seminal albums of Genesis’s Gabriel-era career: Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, Selling England By the Pound, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.  Having gone through their lyrical and musical pubescence, Genesis was about to become what it wanted to be: the culmination of progressive rock in the 1970s, and one of the best rock bands of all time.

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.