“Up close and personal - part 1” - Media America radio interview with Genesis. Interview transcribed by Alan Hewitt. Memorabilia: TWR archive.

In keeping with our visits to the archive I thought this interview might prove interesting to you, some very interesting comments from the chaps within. Part Two next time…

MR: The reason we are still together is that we get on well together an I think as the years tick by if you didn’t get on well and as you get older you get less prepared to put up with things that aren’t right and so if we weren’t getting on well I am sure we still wouldn’t be dong it. It is still very much a musical thing as well, I mean we don’t get together because we are friends but because we look forward to doing the Genesis “thing”.

INT: That combination of friendship and musical compatibility has led them through good times and bad times, through health and sickness…

MR: well, when I wrote the lyrics for Land Of Confusion I was in bed with flu and the others were in the studio doing it and Phil had to come over for the lyrics and I had a temperature, I was kind of delirious and I gave him these lyrics (laughs) and I wasn’t sure if I was talking absolute drivel … PC: We had to read him the last rites (laughs) I was taking notes by his bedside .. How do you want the money divided up? (laughs) INT: Genesis founders Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Michael Rutherford and Anthony Phillips met as students in 1966. Mike Rutherford…

MR: At school there were two sort of camps, there was myself and Anthony Phillips who had Anon and Peter and Tony were together and we were like tow partnerships, two writing partnerships and we joined forces when I was about fifteen or sixteen I think. And then after that it was Genesis.

INT: Original drummer Peter Gabriel decided to out aside his drumsticks and take on the front man chores. A new drummer was recruited and fired, and then an ad was placed in the music newspaper Melody Maker. Phil Collins, at that time drumming for a band called Flaming Youth, answered the ad…

PC: Well, it didn’t say what band it was, it just said “drummer sensitive to acoustic music” and me being a professional at auditions I thought, ‘yeah, I can do that, I can do anything’ so I went along with the guy who was playing bass with Flaming Youth because they were looking for a guitar player as well. And he thought he had got the job and he said ‘I think you blew it man’ because I didn’t sound that great (laughs) and then of course, I got the job and he didn’t! INT: That job went to Steve Hackett. Genesis was complete. At around the same time the band began to experiment on stage with the visual theatrics on which they would build their reputation. That reputation was sustained by spectacles like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour in 1974. At the height of their success, and in the middle of The Lamb… tour, Peter Gabriel announced his intention to leave Genesis … Tony Banks…

TB: We had plenty of time to prepare ourselves to accept the idea of it At the time we felt that the group had been going a long time and that we might not be able to survive because obviously of Peter but we were able to in terms musically we could write an album which would be good, there was no problem there it was just a question of finding out who would sing it and of course, we were very lucky that we were able to replace Pete from within the group.

INT: Once again, the drummer becomes the singer, Phil Collins…

PC: We were looking for a singer and we were auditioning singers every Monday and guys would come down. I knew the songs so I taught them, I was the best singer in the band so I taught them what the melody was and gave them a lyric sheet and did a bit of this and a bit of that, and I was ending up sounding better than they were. So, in the end … there was no end really we just kept on looking for singers. Meanwhile we were writing music. Every day we would go in and carry on writing what was to become A Trick Of The Tail but we didn’t have a singer, so we went into Trident Studios to record it, again without a singer and we finished the backing tracks without a singer and suddenly there was nothing else to do but the singing. So, I said’ well, I’ll have a go’ and so I went in, and we did Squonk first.

INT: The original Genesis core had a definite course they a wanted to follow but we all know about the best laid plans of mice and musicians, Tony Banks…

TB: Our idea was that we wanted to write some songs. In those days there seemed to be quite a few people who did other people’s music and we just wanted to write songs for them and have hit songs. That was our idea and we just made a series of tapes and we had about thirty or forty songs and this English producer, Jonathan King, was the guy who paid for most of the sessions and stuff and with him we ended up doing one album and about three singles. All of the time though all we were trying to do was build up enough of a reputation so that we could have other people do our songs because we had no real ambition to be a performing group at that stage at all.

INT: When Mike Rutherford writes a song, which comes first? The lyric or the lick?

MR: I always start, when I am writing I always start with the music and lyrics come later. I sit down and think, now what lyrical ideas won’t go and you rule out a whole lot of things automatically. Your Own Special Way, it isn’t going to be about blood and guts, it isn’t going to be about violence, it has to be soft, it is a romantic song so automatically you have narrowed your field. Most of my writing comes not from personal experience but just from my imagination which is I think quite vivid probably.

INT: Although Genesis was slowly but surely racking up a following, the pace was too slow for the band, drastic action was required, here’s Phil Collins…

PC: Peter Frampton for instance. His live record had just done so well and it was mainly because he had just played everywhere, he had just worked constantly and played everywhere and everybody knew who he was. We had never played in the South, we had played in places that liked us, places like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Montreal, Toronto and we hadn’t played anywhere extensively so we decided to have one real last crack at it and try and break through and so we did three tours. One of places that we knew, one of places that we had played before but we weren’t particularly popular in and one of places that we had never played in and we decided to do that and a big tour of Europe and we vowed never to do that kind of touring again but fortunately at the same time as saying that, our fortunes had increased in as much as our albums sell more each time they come out and the audiences grow.

INT: And as their following grew, the band shrunk. Guitarist Steve Hackett left …

PC: By the time people are in the mood to leave you want them out and however small the numbers are, its consistent the number of people who want to be in the band so, and then there were three…

INT: And Then There Were Three was Genesis’ first gold album. Although Peter Gabriel had left the band, his presence was still felt. Phil Collins…

PC: I kind of lived a little bit in Pete’s shadow although its funny that I never think about it but yes, when I first started singing people were saying ‘oh it sounds just like Pete’ and I have my own theories, one was that my voice was there a lot of the time on Genesis records, behind Pete. I did all the backing vocals on The Lamb… for instance and all the harmony stuff so my voice was there and so when you take Peter’s away there is still something that is very familiar.

INT: Phil Collins’ mother in her role as head of an acting academy helped her son win several acting roles including on in A Hard Day’s Night …

PC: I don’t really think I even knew what film it was. I remember being outside and there was lots of commotion because there was one scene when they rushed through the stage door and there were kids looking like surprised and I think that was really what happened and nobody was really told what it was and they came through and it was a big theatre, a five or six hundred seater and there were only about sixty or seventy kids and they were moving us around to wherever they wanted us and you couldn’t hear the music. I could tell She Loves You and Tell Me Why was another song but basically you couldn’t hear much and even when the stand-ins came on, they got screamed at and anything in a suit that looked like The Beatles got screamed at. And it is one of those little things in life where you can say I was paid to see The Beatles rather than paying to see them .

INT: Moving from behind the lines of screaming fans, Phil advanced into the studio as a session musician…

PC: I was sitting at home one night watching TV and I got a ’phone call saying ’George Harrison wants a percussionist’ so I said , ’OK, where is it?’ and anyway I got there and Ringo’s chauffeur Martin was standing on the doorstep of Abbey Road and I thought God, I’ve never been here before and here I am. I’ve arrived. (laughs) and I went in and there was Phil Spector producing and Ringo was playing drums and there was George Harrison and Klaus Voorman playing bass, Badfinger playing guitars, Billy Preston and me! ( laughs) and I was sixteen years old and they showed me to my corner where my congas were and I didn’t usually play percussion because I was a drummer, but I could obviously handle it and I will never forget because Phil Spector was in the control room and he had everyone put their headphones on and said ’Ok, lets’ run the song down, lets play it with guitars, drums and basses’ and every time he said drums I started playing and then he said ’OK, lets hear it with just acoustic guitars and bass and drums’ and he went through all the different combinations right, and about an hour later my hands were red raw from playing these congas and right at the end he said ’OK congas, you play this time’ (laughs) and he had my mic closed so I had been playing for nothing! I had blisters all over hands so what I did was rush out when the album came out and frantically opened the box and looked at the credits and there was nothing anywhere and I listened to the song, and of course, and they had used another version of it. So, I was there but I have no proof, apart from the fact that I never cashed the cheque and I have still got it.

And with that wonderful image in our minds, we bring this half of the interview to a close. More revelations (!) next time folks….