Sorry, but it's tremendously out of date. Oh well, for the record, anyway... Todd Satogata satogata@calvin.fnal.gov
(On Icarus, from _Road_ by the Paul Winter Consort) "I've never heard that before, but it sounds very much like Steve Hackett. I know he doesn't use cello in his stuff, but the actual chords on the acoustic guitar and the melody lines sound very much like something from _Voyage of the Acolyte_. I like this kid of music."...
(Later in same comment) "This kind of thing is why I was impressed with early Genesis. The melodies they used to come up with were outrageous. The mood was great. In a word, brilliant."
Wow!
Guitar for the Practicing Musician, August, 1984, p. 44
INTRO:
Starting off in a new territory, which they would define with other bands like Yes and ELP, Genesis used the keyboard-heavy grandeur of classical influences, with folk tale storytelling to create a sound far removed from the usual blues base of rock 'n' roll. The heroes of their early lyrics were fantasy figures more at home in Middle Earth than Middle America. Crowd favorites like "Supper's Ready" were of epic length and more technically dazzling than emotionally heartfelt. But as the players changed (there were three drummers before Phil Collins, two ex-guitarists, Anthony Phillips and Steve Hackett, and one ex-vocalist, Peter Gabriel) so did their plays. Shorter songs, love songs and real people appeared with real feelings. The thick "art rock" sound slowly gave way to the sparser, looser, slightly R 'n' B-flavored taste that first appeared on _Abacab_. It's also brought Genesis to the top of the charts.
Besides performing a musical flip-flop that proved politically palatable to their fans, the individual members of Genesis: Phil Collins (drums/vocals), Tony Banks (keyboards), and Mike Rutherford (bass/guitar) have taken advantage of the absence-makes-the-heart- grow-fonder platitude to keep their music fresh. Time off culminated in a Genesis reunion on record simply called _Genesis_. Beyond just being the next phase of their stripped-down sound, _Genesis_ yielded the first chance in years for the band-members to write and play together as a band. The charts and concert crowds say it was a success; more importantly for their future, so does charter Genesis member Mike Rutherford.
GPM: The _Genesis_ album is a group effort with a capital G, isn't it?
MR: That was one of the main reasons we originally decided to build our own studio, just so we could write in it. The first time you write anything, there's a piece of magic there which we want to get on tape. With _Abacab_, the studio was slow in being built so we didn't do much of that. For _Genesis_ we really had our first shot at doing it together. It was strange at first because it was new, but it worked fantastically. As you probably figured out from the album cover, it is a group album. The way we look at it now is that we work a lot away from each other. So when we are together we really want to work together, and do what we do best, which is writing together. So we went in and jammed and improvised. That's how every song got its start. A song like "Mama" wouldn't have happened if we had not gotten it on tape very early on.
GPM: So all the songs are based on jam sessions?
MR: Yes. "Home by the Sea", for example, was based on an hour-long jam. We thought it sounded great but it all happened so slowly that we just condensed it. You find one section you like and you cruise on it for a bit. Then the next thing happens. What takes a minute and a half on the album takes 50 minutes to jam. So everything we play might get on the record. That's the exciting thing. All the songs are done like this. Normally we start with a drum machine pattern or a chord sequence. "Whodunnit" (sic) was a jam. "Mama" started with a particular Linn Drum Machine sound going into an AMS Reverb. It's an amazing idea. You send your expensive Linn Drum Machine into an even more expensive AMS Reverb unit and, having done that, send it into a Yamaha guitar amplifier on the edge of distortion. This is how I like to use equipment. There are no boundaries, it's whatever sounds good.
GPM: Besides composing/jamming together, were there any other new ideas introduced for the recording of _Genesis_?
MR: Another thing that was different was that we recorded the whole album with drum machines and Phil singing. Having the voice there sounded so good. You get a feel for the song. Phil did his drums as an overdub on most tracks. The other thing about overdubbing drums is, if your song is well written before you do it, then obviously you thought out the drum part quite a bit. The way we were putting it down, it's in a very early stage; therefore if you put the drums down you have to keep them. Very often songs change afterwards but the drums are stuck. So we put the basic track down and maybe the bass. I put the guitar down first.
GPM: It used to be the rhythm section of bass and drums were kept for the basic tracks. You have reversed that situation.
MR: The reason I jam with guitar is because it changes the track more than the bass does. The guitar is more essential to the writing of the song. The first thing you put down should tell you as much as possible about the song.
GPM: Do you consider yourself a guitarist who plays bass?
MR: Yes. I'm more of a guitarist who plays bass, although I'm more proficient on the bass. To be honest, the only times I play bass are on stage or in the studio. I never pick it up in between. One thing I've always liked is that on guitar if I haven't played it for several weeks, I pick it up and feel rusty. On bass I pick it up to do the first overdub and I feel at home straight away. I always feel very comfortable on the bass.
GPM: How did you get started on the bass?
MR: I started on guitar. But when we did our first album, Ant was a much better guitarist than I, so I took over the bass. I had no idea how the hell to play it. I just felt my way around on stage and in the rehearsal room writing. There's a whole thing about playing the bass. People often think bass is easy and that anyone who can play a bit of guitar can pick up the bass and play the right notes for the song. That isn't difficult, but to get the bass to do something more, like give a song a lift, to take it up a step, is something else. For example, when I'm doing overdub parts it often takes a long time because I'm coming in cold. The others have been playing or improvising around the songs for a while. For me it's the first time I've played bass on that song. The bass also changes a song so much. I mess around and get a rough part. I can put a bass part down in the first ten minutes and it sounds okay. But then I have to search to find something that really adds to the song. And when you do, it really sounds good. Until I get that part I'm always disappointed.
GPM: Can you give me specific example?
MR: On "Taking It All Too Hard" the bass part is simply meant not to get in the way. I probably played that part in the first ten minutes of playing the song. I ended up deciding that the bass couldn't add anything. On the first part of "Home By The Sea" (where Mike uses a Steinberger fretless) it sounded very different before the bass line went on and the guitar followed it. A song like "Roundabout" {ED: a Yes song, for you Yes fans out there} also uses the bass as a basis for part of the tune.
GPM: Can you elaborate more specifically how you developed from a guitar player into a bass player?
MR: You have to be part arranger. I really learned the bass because we spent a long time writing before we recorded _Trespass_. I started to get the feel for what the bass can do and how it could fit it. It was done purely by ear.
GPM: Was it to your advantage that at the time you were doing technically hard pieces that would force you to get your chops together?
MR: Definitely. In those days we were technically minded. I had to learn a lot quickly or I'd be left behind. I went through a stage where I wanted to prove myself and it forced me to develop. When we started I was a pretty bad bass player/guitarist. A lot of things we did were quite hard and we enjoyed it. I still enjoy it. But one gets past the stage of wanting to prove things. It's now the economy of things that's important, rather than putting in endless beats.
GPM: Isn't that something you have to grow through?
MR: Right, you can't just switch it on. Starting with _Abacab_ it started to get harder to record, where you think it would be easier. A song like "Keep It Dark" is so simple that it's not a question of playing the right notes and you're halfway there. It's all down to feel. The idea is to capture the sound and get something special on it. In the past, with certain Genesis songs, if you played all the right notes and it was technically competent, it would get you a long way there. "Keep It Dark" took months of recording until it jelled. Unless there was some magic there it didn't sound like anything special at all. It was all down to feel.
GPM: Before _Abacab_, the Genesis albums sounded European to me. There was a distinct lack of blues elements. Did you reject that style, or did it just never come up?
MR: I can remember I was into the blues before I started writing my own stuff. Then I really went off blues and decided I didn't enjoy those notes and phrases. I must say, I've gotten back into it a lot more.
GPM: I noticed on stage that you've become a Steinberger man. {ED: Geddy Lee of Rush also uses these exclusively.}
MR: I've gotten into those basses because I like the sound and the feel of playing them. It's so smooth all over. On a few of the older songs I use a new doubleneck called the Strata. It's an English version of the Steinberger. A funny thing about this last tour is that I didn't see Daryl Stuermer, our live guitarist, very much between tours and we both decided to use the Steinberger and the Roland Guitar Synthesizer without the synth as our instruments. I use different instruments in the studio. I recorded a lot of the songs on _Genesis_ on a three-pickup Gibson SG Custom. I also use the Chet Atkins nylon string electric, which is lovely.
GPM: Genesis has been around since '68, yet it seems that a musician's influences stop about the time he makes his first recordings. After 13 albums and years of touring, where did you go for inspiration?
MR: To be honest, there's two phases in your life. One is before you really start playing seriously and doing it yourself. That's when you're influenced. People say, "Who influenced you?", and it's always bands like the Stones, the Kinks and the Yardbirds, who were the bands I listened to before I started doing it myself. Once you start making music yourself things don't register quite the same ever again. You are so busy making music you haven't time to spend listening to something else. Someone I like very much right now is Paul Young. He is not very well known over here, but his voice is fantastic.
GPM: Do you ever play other people's songs just for fun? {ED: We can see the answer that's coming!! :-) }
MR: We did our first covers on stage during this last tour. "Turn It On Again", which is 13/4, was our last encore, and from there we broke into the Stones' "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love". Daryl plays the riff from "The Last Time" and I play "You Really Got Me" underneath. We've also done "Midnight Hour" (sic). I guess even if you go off your early influences you can't help slipping back now and then.