Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins interviewed on WIOQ Radio in 1978. Memorabilia: TWR Archive.

INT: A colleague said that Genesis keep on getting better when they lose somebody and he couldn’t wait until you were a solo act!

MR: There are a lot of jokes about that now.

INT: Well, you are a three piece now with Phil Collins and Tony Banks. Do you want to talk about what happened with Steve Hackett?

MR: Sure. It was very simple really, he wanted more money! (laughs) I think his solo career became more important to him to get more of his material out than he could get on the Genesis albums each year and he just decided to pursue a solo career and the compromises he was making within the group became unsatisfactory and he went off on his own. It had built up over a long time and it was pretty clean cut really.

INT: Was it different in a sense from when Peter Gabriel left?

MR: I think so. It was much more emotional with Pete, really. Once we had gone through it with Pete you know we had got used to it.

PC: We knew that if we could survive Pete leaving we could survive Steve leaving.

INT: Well, you certainly survived Peter leaving if you don’t mind my saying so. Have you ever thought what it might have been like if you hadn’t been around to carry on with that?

PC: It would have been a lot harder and the whole situation would have been different if we had tried to replace Peter with somebody and to replace Steve with somebody.

INT: So you’re not…?

PC: It is kind of weird to talk about Genesis as a three piece because we are just about to start going on the road with Daryl and Chester and of course they are in the group and it is kind of weird because we are a three piece group but we are also a five piece group.

INT: How about on the next record, do you plan on using them on the record or haven’t you decided yet?

MR: We don’t plan to ever close the door but I felt that the last one worked very well with the three of us providing that I improve a bit. I made a start on the last one. We work very well in the studio I think

INT: Writing is also important I guess…

PC: We have got enough material between the three of us we don’t really need anybody… it is not as if we have a lack of material, we always have stuff left over.

MR: That was part of the problem really, given that the three of us made the last album and there was too much to use anyway, there were two songs we recorded and didn’t use and a lot of stuff that we didn’t even bother to carry on with.

INT: This one is incredible, eleven songs on a Genesis record!

PC: we have always crammed a lot of minutes and the mastering engineer always pulls his hair out when he sees us coming! (laughs) because he knows he is going to have a tough job getting it all on.

INT: And some record company guy has got to be saying, ’hey, you can make a two record set out of this…’

MR: They usually do! (laughs).

INT: This album is really nice and it is so new that we really haven’t had time to digest all of it as there is so much new music. The one that hits me immediately is Burning Rope.

PC: Inside & Out was recorded at the time of Wind & Wuthering which is on the Spot The Pigeon EP in England.

INT: Were they left over tracks form Wind & Wuthering is that what they were?

PC: Well they weren’t actually left over. I mean we over record as much as we can and tracks begin to emerge as definites and others maybe appear to be secondary tracks but I think with those three, well definitely two of them, we wanted to try and get them on the album, Inside & Out and Pigeons we wanted to try and get on but there just wasn’t just time and so rather than just shelve them and forget about them we put out the EP because they are of interest. They are not B tracks but they are just tracks that we couldn’t fit on.

INT: Not to dwell on Steve but did you feel that you didn’t want him to leave the band as it seems to me that the band is finally really happening nationally the way it has here in Philadelphia for years and it seemed strange to me when Bill Bruford left Yes and so on…

PC: You see the one overriding thing is that you don’t want anybody in the group who isn’t into it. If anybody is in the group, you have to be 100% into it or we don’t want you around really. As soon as those kind of seeds of discontent are starting to grow then you think if that’s the situation, let’s go.

Fascinating comments from Phil, Mike and Steve during these two interviews from such an important period in both the band’s and Steve’s solo careers. We hope you find them interesting