"Oh not that bloody book again!"
(Photo: A Hewitt/TWR)
So Tony… do you still listen to any of the old stuff?
TB: I still listen to things from the past… some of the old things… I haven't listened to A Curious Feeling for a while I thought that for a long time that that was the best thing I had done and then after a certain point I wasn't so sure really and I think more of individual songs from albums really… Still stands up really well and I was listening to something from Bankstatement the other day that sounded pretty good. I don't know… I feel a little bit contrary anyhow in the sense that if a thing hasn't done well I like it more sometimes (laughs) There are things that got missed… particularly on Bankstatement The More I Hide It and I'll Be Waiting you know they are two songs that I think are really good songs and that I think would have been good in any other context and it is a shame to see them not really… there.
I mean you are bound to think like that. If you don’t like your own stuff you can't expect anybody else to like it so you might as well like it a lot.
You haven't really revisited the Genesis catalogue and played Genesis albums much though...?
TB: Well. we have been doing these 5.1 mixes at the moment and so we have been listening to The Lamb… and A Trick Of The Tail recently. I do listen to them… I don't... the album I enjoyed the most was the second Archive album, actually because it had all those B sides on it. Because I felt that some of those tracks were really good … On The Shoreline was one of my favourite tracks from We Can’t Dance but I was shouted down by the other two (laughs) and I wanted to put it on and we had that awful Since I Lost You on it and I can't understand why we didn't use On The Shoreline.The other one too which was good on that was Hearts On Fire which was a good track and I really think that those two should have been on that album. Because I think there are a couple of moments on We Can't Dance that are not really as good as the rest that is just how things worked out at the time. It is funny now because I talk about it to both Mike and Phil and they say… "Yeah, they are great tracks, we should have put them on…" and I go… "Bastards!" (laughs) . It wasn't even much to do with Mike it was just the idea of them and I thought they sounded great
They could end upon the SACD I suppose?
TB: Yeah, well they are there and the question is with these 5.1 things is whether we put some of these other tracks back on them or not. I don't know to be honest, we haven’t quite decided yet. Obviously The Lamb… is complete in itself but something like A Trick Of The Tail there is Its Yourself which was from the same session and it ties in with Los Endos.What is the reluctance, where does that come from…?
TB: Well, I just think that you left them off because you thought they were weaker and therefore you don't want to weaken an album by putting more stuff on just for the hell of it because these might become what you would call the "Definitive" versions of these albums in the future and I certainly wouldn't want to put something like Match Of The Day for example, on Wind & Wuthering, because I think that was a crap track. On the other hand, I think Pigeons was good and the other one: Inside & Out was good as well so you could put those on. But then you get selective and .. we did think at the time of Wind & Wuthering that it would be good to have the simple tracks on because it became quite a heavy album that one with all the big tracks and it would have been nice to put the simpler tracks on it might have slightly changed the emphasis of the album a bit and it might have been quite good in a way, but…You were at The Farm yesterday, I believe listening to The Lamb… ?
TB: Yeah... The Lamb… listening to the 5.1 now that we have finally put that all together. It sounds great, I mean we tried very hard not to make it sound… not changing it radically at all. It is the same… I mean to the casual ear… if you had it on the radio it would sound very similar but you can make it sound a lot better and particularly the bottom end; the drums and the bass you can get a lot more.. but also the 5.1 makes it so much better.Certainly the key thing for me because I knew nothing about 5.1 and had never heard anything on a 5.1 system, being sat there in the middle of the control room and Nick put on two or three of his favourite bits and the thing that got me was that it was almost as if I was in the room when you guys were writing the stuff because it comes at you from every direction….
TB: Yeah it does… it gives you sort of acoustic help it is good fun. There are tracks though and coming back to A Trick Of The Tail… what is interesting is that the tracks that are perhaps best known off that album which are Dance On A Volcano and Squonk and they don't sound half as good as the best sounding track… Entangled sounds beautiful as does Mad Man Moon and to some extent Ripples although Ripples the verse part sounds ok but the middle part of it I am not so sure about whereas Dance On A Volcano sounds… ok… (laughs) it's funny but something like that has dated more, to be honest.Maybe because it was performed so well live..?
TB: Yeah, that is true it sounded much better live. That is true in a way I think and also I think that in those days Phil sang the softer songs a lot better than he did the loud songs. It took him a while to get used to singing with power and so you get that slightly with that one but it is a good album.How far back are you going with these albums?
B: We shall keep on doing them and we shall do them all in the end I suppose. There are some albums that will change more than others in terms of sound. Obviously anything prior to The Lamb… if you can improve quite a bit and even on The Lamb…we were hurrying on the final mixes because we ran out of time. Also the ones we did.. particularly Duke can sound a lot better than it does… just the mix. We did that at Maison Rouge or whatever and I just don't think that that was a particularly good studio. And so the resultant sound is really lacking and we had to beef up the bottom end for the re-masters we did what we could and you really need to go back to the tracks to get the sound right particularly on things like Behind The Lines and Turn It On Again because they could sound a lot better.
You are more involved in the quality control of the re-mastering process than Mike….
TB: No we are both do.. I suppose I care slightly more because I have got time on my hands I suppose (laughs) like with things like the archive and the selection of tracks I was more involved than Mike with that.While on the vexed subject of the archives… the webmaster has mentioned this trip back through memory lane for live recordings or whatever…
"Oh not that bloody book again!" (Photo: A Hewitt/TWR) |
TB: Oh you mean old things? We have stacks of them and do you mean put them out so that people can … we have talked about this, yeah and we do have a lot of tapes actually. Hundreds of the things actually from quite early days and also there are all the rehearsal tapes too. We were quite surprised about one thing that didn't get a particularly good response off the archive album which was the Mama thing which we put on and I thought that was really good and that was one of the things I enjoyed most of all …. It was all we could find actually.. we were looking for the Home By The Sea stuff which we have three reels of that improvisation stuff at the end which we sort of selected out of those bits but we couldn't find it. The reel we came across was the Mama and it was quite fun because it showed how the middle obviously wasn't developed at that point and there were a couple of extra bits that I thought were quite nice and I thought I would have liked that more than anything else had I been a sort of… fan. But I thought it sounded intriguing. There was another Abacab but it didn't sound that much different than the version we had and so there wasn't much point in using that. |
How far back do the live recordings go?
TB: I am not sure how much stuff but we do have extensive stuff from A Trick Of The Tail onwards but there is probably some stuff from before that as well. We came across another version… there are always these things (laughs) another version of The Lamb… a multi track recording of The Lamb… which DID have It on it this time so we could have used that I am not sure actually where it is from I don't really remember which gigs we recorded at the time or where it tuned up from but it is not radically different from the Shrine one.
In terms of cassettes… there are Board tapes which I guess is what people are mainly talking about we have got an awful lot of them really and we would just put them out warts and all really so you can hear all the bum notes !
I think with the 5.1 releases you are really hitting the fans and so is quality control quite so crucial with the archive releases?
TB: Well to some extent but as I said before they could well become ultimately if everyone switches over to these things.. and they have got stereo on them as well so you can play them on a regular CD player..I meant that the archive releases are not so crucial quality wise…
TB: Well we put those two archival albums where some people
thought you can't put that track on but we did and we each had one which we
didn't want on really and Phil objected to Me & Virgil because he read the
lyric to it and maybe felt a bit self conscious about it and I think musically
it is quite a good song… I would not have minded that but Match Of The Day I
think is one of the worst things we have ever done and I was mainly responsible
for that and I can’t stand it … the lyric was embarrassing but also the riff
which I had pretty much used previously on Carpet Crawlers..
Are you involved in deciding which shows you would consider putting
out ..?
TB: Not really… that is something we have to consider when we get the web site which is not set up properly at the moment. I know that we could do it and obviously we have seen it as a way of financing the web site really because it does cost us quite a bit of money and it would be something to do to make it tick over and I know people would enjoy it. I know people want it and it is just a matter of organising it really and as I said we are not totally happy with the way the web site is at the moment and so once we have sorted all that out we will do that. I have no particular desire to do it…(laughs) Phil always seems quite happy to do it and I think that Mike and I will be happy to do it ..
Is Peter the stumbling block…?
TB: Well… with Peter we would have to go back to the stuff with Peter and… nightmare! (laughter) to have all of us back for that… the Milton Keynes thing was bad enough… I love Peter but...
It would be nice to round off the whole thing really with some sort of event …
TB: Yeah, but we felt that we had done that quite happily before the last time we played… or the time before that… or the time before that and Milton Keynes kind of wrapped up the Peter era if you like for us… You can go on doing things forever and there are certain groups such as Yes who are going out and doing very well these days… I don’t know what you should call the "Classic" line up… For me it should definitely have Bill Bruford in it and I would put Tony Kaye in there myself as opposed to Rick Wakeman… I think the sound on that album… the Yes album with that distorted organ was the great thing about them I think… I was never a fan of Rick Wakeman… I know he is a great player; I preferred Tony Kaye because he was simpler and that worked better for me but I am not a particularly big fan of theirs anyway.I find it a shame that after Calling All Stations you didn’t go back and do a second album …
TB: Well I was quite keen to do it… I wasn't keen to do the first one but then once we had done one album I was quite keen to do the second one. Mike in many ways persuaded me to do the Calling All Stations project and I thought… "Why not? Let's give it a go…" And once we had done it I thought we should do another one because I thought we were learning a bit how to use Ray's voice and I felt it warranted another one but Mike wasn't keen. I think he felt that there was a very big fall in sales and the response was variable and also we had quite a bit of stick because of the way the posters were done and it looked as if Peter had rejoined… nothing to do with us... and we just decided that we couldn’t be bothered with all of this.. we really couldn’t …we didn’t need it and we could do things on our own and Mike has done The Mechanics and I had the chance to do this Classical thing and you know there comes a time and I think it is possible that we have worked out what Mike and I can do together might have run its course really… I don't know. If we are going to work in that way when we are both writing at the same time then we might play on each other's pieces like we did in the very early days and it is a certain way of writing and I did feel during the Calling All Stations period that maybe I had run out of ways of playing chords against a repeated riff and there are only so many chords you can use and I felt that I had done this so many times and I just can’t do this again.It sounds an obvious question but did you miss Phil's involvement?
| TB: Yeah we did very much and I needed…to have someone who is singing at the same time and also rhythmically obviously he was much more inventive but it was just another person and the way Mike and I found ourselves writing was as we had done as a five piece but just the two of us and one guy would be so plugged down trying to hold the whole thing together with some sort of basis and the other guy is going mad and it doesn't seem to work whereas if you have three of you doing it even with Phil who usually tended to stick to either singing or playing drums it just gave us that greater flexibility and also he had his own qualities and obviously he had his own way of working and maybe he emphasised the simpler end of what we did but it was just an easier way of working for many years and it seemed to come very easily and we were never lacking for ideas particularly for Invisible Touch and We Can’t Dance where we had so many ideas and we came into the studio with nothing and that was a really entertaining thing to do and I am sure we could have done it again but I am surprised that Phil didn't leave a long time ago because once he had the other options… why not? |  "So you bought the other copy of A Curious Feeling?" Mark Hughes & Tony Banks (Photo: A Hewitt/TWR) |
And that is it folks… thanks again to Tony for giving up his Saturday
afternoon.