On front cover: Genesis - has the hard-rocking trio taken its biggest gamble yet with 'Abacab'?
In table of contents: Genesis - This incredible shrinking band from Surrey, England turns it on again with Abacab. Keyboardist Tony Banks tells how in a special report.
Genesis fans of five continents are asking what 'Abacab' means. Is the new album title an anagram (as one medical student believes) for "Ace bandages avert corrosive acid burns?" Or is it some government scheme to trap corrupt taxi drivers in a web of scandal?
The truth is almost as bizarre as these well-intended but misguided explanations. The letters in 'Abacab' stand for the sections of a rondo form popularized by Mozart, who's been out of the music scene some 190 years. The late Amadeus's peak success with his own abacab looks like an ice cube in hell compared to the worldwide sales of Genesis records.
"The band is one of our five biggest acts," boasts Perry Cooper, Director of Artist Relations/Video at Atlantic Records. "The group has a formula that works. It was actually a whole big plan," he says, to get them to the top.
In the past four years the British trio has sold nearly a million American copies each of its last two albums, 'And Then There Were Three' and 'Duke'. The "Misunderstanding" single was Top 10 here, while "Turn It On Again" and the recent "Abacab" 45 both went to #1 overseas. The band was voted into top place in each of six divisions of Britain's 1980 Melody Maker poll. An announcement of four Christmastime gigs in Britain brought in a million ticket applications last fall. Even when two shows were added, all but a few thousand fans had to be turned away.
Reaching this level of celebrity seemed an unlikely turn of events for a band many thought was finished after stars Peter Gabriel and Steve Hacket quit in the mid-'60s. Genesis surprised almost everyone with its recent switch to a harder-rocking direction. But the strangest twist in the Genesis story appeared in the pastoral environment where heavy sounds of 'Abacab' were created, for the calm surroundings were filled with unexpected problems.
In a quiet corner of Surrey, England, Mike Rutherford watched his two musical partners as they twisted the dials on their private control board. The day's sessions had been productive, but there was a fly in the studio ointment.
"I remember watching Phil and Tony working the tape recorders," bassist Rutherford recalls. "It can be nerve-wracking if you've never done it before - sweat was dripping off them in the booth."
Rutherford was doing his share of sweating, too. Along with organist Tony Banks and singer Phil Collins, he was under the gun to prove that Genesis could make a hit LP without a producer; to make things even tougher, engineer Hugh Padgham was sick in bed.
The band had bought a Surrey farm only 45 minutes' drive from each member's home, and had turned its thatched buildings into a 24-track studio, an equipment room and a practice site. After three months' rehearsal, Genesis was set for 14 weeks' recording. Rutherford put aside most of his guitars and concentrated on the booming bass parts. Collins played drums in a brick-lined room for a loud, slappy effect. The biggest change was that bandleader Tony Banks abandoned his familiar piano arpeggios and mellotron cadences in favor of a Booker T. Jones-style organ and subtle Beach Boys keyboard and tape effects.
Some long-time fans are dismayed, for Banks' mythic imprint on the Genesis sound seems gone forever.
"It's a strange prejudice the British progressive bands have, trying to copy Americans," says U.S. rock singer Ian Lloyd. "For me, it's the classical side of Genesis that makes them progressive, and their trying to sound American on 'No Reply at All' leaves me cold."
"I can understand it when some of our older fans feel disillusioned by our recent success," counters brown-haired Tony Banks. "It's a psychological thing, I think." When Genesis stopped being a cult item, Banks reasons, many of those who'd followed the group in the '70s lost a sense of private possession. It was the move to a hit-oriented style that dispossessed them.
Whatever alteration in sound or musical direction Genesis makes is usually at the instigation of Tony Banks. He has always maintained an interest in Top 40 music, and he originally aspired to be a hit songwriter, not a performer. "Tony will always be the quiet authority of the Genesis 'democracy'," former lead guitarist Steve Hackett says cynically. "If Genesis ever ends up as only one person, it will be Tony Banks."
A pupil at Surrey's exclusive Charterhouse School, Anthony Banks first teamed wtih schoolmate Peter Gabriel to play pop and soul songs on the dining hall piano in 1963. The other original members of Genesis, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, entered Charterhouse in the course of the following two years, but it was from the Banks/Gabriel friendship that the band's impetus sprang.
"There were songs that appealed to both of us," Banks remembers, "and we worked out things like 'I Put a Spell on You' and 'Try a Little Tenderness.'" 13-year-old Tony was also receiving classical piano training at the encouragement of his mother, Nora. When Banks combined the classicism of Mahler and Rachmaninoff with the rhythm of the Animals and the pop of the Beatles, the key elements of the Genesis sound began to jell.
"Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel were dedicated to playing music, rushing to the piano whenever they could," Charterhouse master John Marriott told Italian journalist Armando Gallo. But something about the boys' choice of songs rankled the crotchety Marriott. "I really had to stress the point that the piano should be used by those boys who were studying classical music. Peter, though, was terribly easy to get along with, and somehow got his way. Tony was not so easy as a person."
Faced with the nitpicking authoritarians of Charterhouse, the shy Tony Banks and his cohorts turned more and more to music. In September '68 he entered Sussex University to continue his studies in physics; the move was almost Genesis's undoing. But an album deal that produced 'From Genesis to Revelation' (1969) changed Tony's mind; he turned to music full-time. Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined in the winter of '70-'71, replacing John Mayhew and Ant Phillips (who's still friendly with Genesis; his LP 'The Geese and the Ghost', just reserviced by Passport Records, spotlights guest performances by Collins and Rutherford). At Christmas 1972, Genesis played its first U.S. gig - a charity concert at New York's Philharmonic Hall.
"No one who was there will ever forget that concert," says Ian Lloyd. "When Banks played the mellotron swirls on 'Watcher of the Skies,' the crowd was just amazed - and it was an audience of hard-to-please record company people. Banks's classical training shows [witness the title, 'Abacab') and he's one of the few rock keyboardists with an identifiable style."
Genesis's perfectionism and Tony's prominence in the group led to bitter in-fighting. "They were always arguing backstage after shows," confides Armando Gallo. "They hardly had any fun."
Steve Hackett, who, like Peter Gabriel, wanted a change of air for Genesis, recalls an unpleasant incident involving Tony. Hackett had discovered a magnificent pipe organ while the band was touring California. Rushing back to the hotel to tell Banks of his find, he saw that Tony was nonplussed. "He didn't even put his newspaper down," claims Hackett. "All I got from him was a bored, 'Oh, really?'" Unable to convince Banks or the others ("Dictators," he calls them) to accept his ideas or many of his songs, Hackett quit in '77 and now records solo. One of his songs is called "Time to Get Out."
After Peter and Steve left, Banks and the others continued to build on the band's established strengths. Explains Perry Cooper:
"In Genesis, you're dealing with professionals, not with kids who were going to say, 'Hackett left! Gabriel left! What are we going to do?' Genesis has always had a plan. This sounds terrible, I know; it sounds like certain governments with five or ten year plans. Either their country goes bankrupt or it flourishes. This group is flourishing." And with the success, Tony Banks has mellowed.
"I think he's grown up in the last couple of years," says Gallo. "In the days of 'Wind and Wuthering', he dominated the group completely; if he had an eleven-minute song, the others had to play it no matter how many songs they might have written themselves. But since Phil Collins had his solo hit ['Face Value'], Tony's been more relaxed about Genesis."
Genesis is now prosperous enough to alternate a month together on the road with a month apart. The just-completed first leg of the 1981 U.S./European tour that took the band from Madison, Wisconsin (November 12) to Birmingham, England (December 22) is being followed by a period of individual activities in England for the month of January. Following the example of Anthony Phillips, each current member has built a home studio to work on new song ideas.
"The word 'studio' is a bit grand," says Banks modestly of his tape room. Still, that's where he'll pass any time he doesn't spend with his wife Margaret, his son Benjamin, three and a half, and his new baby daughter. After the month home come more European dates and a late winter jaunt through the western United States. A single, "Paperlate", left from the 'Abacab' sessions, should be coming out before spring, and a tour of the Far East is in the offing. All legs of the tour are crucial to the promotion of 'Abacab'.
"The record represents quite a change for us," Banks admits. "But I suppose we've just developed as musicians. It's very apparent to us that we change all the time. 'Abacab' is the first album since 'From Genesis to Revelation' that we used extra musicians on.
"We did have an engineer, but in terms of deciding the *kind* of sound, we made the decision. It allowed us to make our own mistakes," he adds candidly. "It's sometimes because you make mistakes that you find new things." Among the original effects Banks worked out was the synthesized trumpet in the first stanza of "Me and Sarah Jane," the most fully-realized song he's written. Over a beautiful melody its words tell of the drowning of two lovers and their apparent return, as spirits, to a blacked-out earth that's fallen apart.
"It's sort of doomy stuff," he confides. "I do tend to write sad songs, or, if they're happy, they're happy/sad. But I'm not really as melancholy a person as people think," he says with a chuckle.
"I thought he was a really straight guy," says Genesis touring drummer Chester Thompson. "He seemed almost stern at times. But the memory that sticks out from the time I stayed at his house to rehearse was that we spent the whole week laughing! We practiced, but we played ping pong, too, and we got drunk every night. He is very serious, but during that week he was more relaxed that I've ever seen him."
"Tony trusts the others in the band more," adds Armando Gallo. "When Mike and Phil went to L.A. to record the Earth, Wind and Fire horns for the new LP, Tony just stayed in England. He said, Do whatever you want with 'No Reply at All'. They came back with a funk track."
"Tony has been as much the moving spirit of Genesis as anyone, past or present, in the band," says Charisma Records Chairman Tony Stratton-Smith. "He seems to be a man of very steady purpose who doesn't flap easily."
It's from such musicians that self-produced albums and 10-year plans for success come. Says Banks softly: "I expect we'll have ten more."
Caption under picture of Phil in trench coat and hat: Singer Phil Collins uses his acting background to create lively stagings of Genesis songs. On LP he's the drummer.
Caption under picture of Tony playing the keyboard: Tony Banks's keyboards have been a Genesis trademark for 13 years. Banks's classical training shows even in the title of 'Abacab'. Banks wrote "Me and Sarah Jane", "One for the Vine", and "Afterglow", and composed much of 'Duke'.
Caption under picture of Mike playing the double neck guitar: Bassist Mike Rutherford is the son of a naval officer. Mike combined church music with his love of pop-rock in such compositions as "Time and Time Again", "Moonshine", "Duke's End" and "Like It or Not."