"Mike Wasn't Always A Mechanic… First There Was Smallcreep…" - TWR takes a brief look at Mike’s first two solo albums. Memorabilia: TWR Archive. Photos: Kenny Brown.
Mike’s solo career began long before Mike & The Mechanics were even thought of and took shape during the extended hiatus which followed the completion of the extensive tour promoting Genesis's And Then There Were Three album. With Phil Collins temporarily relocating to Vancouver to try and resolve his marriage issues, it was deemed the right time for both Tony and Mike to get their own solo albums ready. Solo albums had been a vexed point within Genesis, and had already caused the departure of Steve Hackett when it was deemed that he was flying the nest too soon. By now the band were properly established both at home and abroad, and the opportunity to stretch their legs as solo artists appealed to both of them as Mike explained…
“I think the feeling was that it was the right time to do it. Steve was a bit unlucky, he left before the band had reached this stage; where the band was successful enough for us to take a year off or so and it just felt right to have a break from each other and try some solo stuff…”
Mike's album, based in part on the book by Peter Currell-Brown and titled Smallcreep’s Day was the first to be released. Using the book’s central theme of a factory worker’s curiosity about what the product was at the end of the production line as it's basis half of the album was given over to the concept and the other was made up of unrelated songs. Released in the UK on 15th February 1979 and in the USA with the release over there being on the same record label as Mike’s erstwhile band mate, Anthony Phillips - Passport Records. The album was quite successful attaining the number 13 spot in the UK album charts.
The album features what, for most Rutherford fans, are some of his strongest songs. An album which deserves to be curated properly and yet it is one which Mike himself seems strangely unattached to. Having been bitten by the concept album bug many years ago in Genesis, perhaps Mike was quite concerned with the idea of dedicating another album to one concept… |
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“I was thinking about writing shorter songs as well and I was worried that a whole concept album might be too stodgy, too heavy in a sense…”
One of the more interesting aspects of the album was the appearance of Anthony Phillips on keyboards. The pair had not worked together since The Geese & The Ghost and Anthony explained how this came about to TWR…
“He chose me to play the keyboards because I was reasonably technically adept and because I knew his style. He knew that I would know what he meant and millions don't because he can't explain himself! (laughs).He knew that I would be able to do it because I wouldn't be asking him anything incredibly technical and I intuitively knew what he wanted.
My input wasn't great actually, in terms of composition, it was mainly playing…”
Another person whose talents made the album such a success was vocalist Noel McCalla who explained how he became involved in the album…
“After my last album, Night Emotions with Epic Records which was produced by Trevor Rabin, I sought release from the label. Unknown to me it was then that I heard rumours that I was shortlisted for Genesis and so was Paul Carrack but he was unavailable to do the vocals on Smallcreep’s Day that meant that I was the next choice. Paul is an amazing singer and great writer so I was lucky to get a look in!
The material was pretty much sorted by the time I was called in. There were adjustments made along the way as melodies were adjusted. You must remember that we didn't have the technology to transpose keys at the push of a button back then. Mike only had a rough idea of my vocal range so my input was mainly coming up with alternative melodies.
To be honest, I found Mike somewhat dour, friendly enough but distant. Working on this album and with it being a concept album, everybody needed to be focussed so there wasn't much time for fun and laughter. There was a lot of hard graft from beginning to end. To this day I can't remember how long it took for me to complete my parts…” |
Noel McCalla and Alan Hewitt
at Trading Boundaries
16th Nov 2019
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There was to be no time for any thoughts of shows to promote the album as Mike was soon in the throes of recording what would be Genesis's next album; Duke and so Smallcreep's Day was sadly consigned to the history books.
Regarded as one of Mike's finest albums, he remains strangely unmoved by the requests for the album to be remastered. Long since deleted on both the Charisma/Virgin and Passport imprints, it was eventually reissued to no fanfare at all in 2007 by the Dutch Music On CD label.
Two years later and Mike had another go at a solo album this time taking the brave step of tackling the vocals himself. In a strange occurrence of synchronicity, at roughly the same time Steve Hackett, Anthony Phillips and Tony Banks all decided to do the same thing on their latest albums.
An altogether heavier effort than its predecessor, Acting Very Strange was not very well received at the time. Not all of this is down to the fact that Mike, by his own admission is NOT a singer, but also to some of the material itself. Although the album is redeemed by several cuts including Half Way There, Acting Very Strange, Maxine and Hideaway a couple of these tracks were to prove their worth live by their inclusion in the set on the first Mechanics tour in 1986.
The critics, by now usually totally dismissive of anything from within the Genesis camp were surprisingly complimentary about this one as the review by Hugh Fielder in Sounds shows…
“If Mike Rutherford’s first solo album dropped too easily into the ‘solo-contribution- from-a-member-of-a-famous-band’ category, then the second makes no such mistakes and contains virtually no reference to his day job. Instead it contains more reference and clues to Mike’s own character and musical tastes than he has ever revealed on one piece of vinyl before. The self confidence this requires is there in abundance and suddenly he’s not hiding behind the songs anymore…”
With Phil Collins already choosing to depart the Charisma stable, Mike too opted to change labels for this one and the album was released on the WEA label and certainly showed the heavier side to Mike's character along with some rather surreal humour especially on Couldn't Get Arrested which he even released as a single with a 12” “nix mix” . The humour was lost on the fans however as the single bombed. Neither this or it's preceding single, the much more acceptable Half Way There troubled the charts although Half Way There did give fans the first ever promotional video from Mike, a rather (acting very) strange one at that! |
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Mike explained the idea behind the album to TWR…
“I look at it as something you have to do once in your career. Looking back at the album bits weren't great but probably what made me realise after the album became a struggle was that as a songwriter if you want the best voice in the world to sing, you can get someone to do it. So I thought I probably got it out of my system and I did it once and it made me decide that I would never do it again. I can't really sing that well and with someone who can't sing it's all a
bit frustrating…”
The album was released on 10th September 1982, the same day that Peter Gabriel released his fourth solo album. The album still managed to get a top thirty slot which, given its style etc is quite surprising. What isn't surprising however, is Mike's reluctance to revisit this one either which is a shame as it does have some fine moments.
Having got that out of his system Mike decided to look elsewhere for his solo work and you can read all about that later in this edition.
