-eric
We heard that Tony Banks, keyboard player extraordinaire of the phenomenon known as Genesis, relied on the new Korg Wavestation for many of the sounds on the band's latest release "We Can't Dance". Subsequently, the band received an 01/WFD. To find out more about Tony's method, as well as his collaborations with the ubiquitous Phil Collins (drummer, singer, songwriter) Patches dispatched Jack Hotop, Korg Keyboard Product manager and voicing team member to seek and find two-thirds of the amazing Genesis lineup. He did. They had just a moment to spare. Here they are.
Jack Hotop(JH): How do you both feel when you approach a new instrument? Does it spark a new idea right away or does that happen the second or third time you play an instrument?
Tony: I think the first time you play an instrument it's quite exciting because there are always sounds you haven't heard, particularly recently when instruments come with great presets, whereas ten years ago that wasn't true. Now you can almost write a song the first time you hit the instrument because the sound inspires you.
Phil: Personally, I have never been one to come to grips with getting inside things, I have trouble with manuals, being a drummer, but what struck me about the Wavestation was that the sounds are so evocative that you know you are going to write something with them. Whereas with the old stuff, with things like the DX7, you had to work so hard to get sounds and had to take a barrage of effects with you to make it sound right. But the texture of the Wavestation and 01/WFD are very stimulating to me, as a non-technical keyboard player.
JH: I'm a big fan of the new album. I think I heard the Wavestation being used for a lot of voicey, pad and electric piano sounds. I didn't hear as much electric grand as I expected. Was this a consious attempt to go in a new sound direction?
Tony: Not really, but when we were writing the album, I think a lot of the time I tended to have one hand on the Wavestation and one hand on another synth and so they naturally ended up on the album a lot, particularly for lighter voices and stringy type pads and then they became the basis for quite a few songs, you know. A song like "Fading Lights," you've got pad sounds through-out, lots of Korg sounds on even the lead sound and most of the instrumental. I think it's a great instrument, I love its versatility because often you get an instrument that's good for the pads and then another that's good for the lead, but you get the range out of this one (Wavestation) and I've used it a lot. Sometimes, you mention the electric grand, it's just what you end up with while you're creating and we ended up with the Wavestation a lot.
JH: There is a unique feeling of interaction with your music. Genesis always feels like a performing band. I think it was once said (regarding Genesis, solo projects and work with other bands) it's like the comparison between a wife and a mistress where the band is like the wife and I guess it must be different working on solo projects.
Tony: Well it is different, yeah, but the wife and mistress thing, really it's not quite the same because you can admit who you've been with. Genesis is all about interaction, we bounce from one person to another, which is why on a Genesis album I play a bit more physically than I do on a solo project because I get more involved. That's because you can try something and then another person does something with that and it goes back and forth and it's enough - you don't need to add to it, whereas on your own you need to do a bit more. The method of writing is very different between the two as well.
JH: I was curious about how you guys collaborate in writing music. Do you get together at The Farm (Genesis' recording studio), jam for awhile and then record it after not having been together? Is that a common approach?
Phil: That's how everything you heard on the new album, on the "Invisible Touch" album, and on the album previous to that, with "Mama" on it which was called "Genesis," that's how all the music on all three of those albums came about. We didn't come into the studio with any ideas preplanned, we came in with no songs, no verses, no choruses and so the whole thing is relying on totally interatcting with each other.
JH: Do you guys ever have time to jam at soundchecks or write in the rooms when you're touring?
Tony: Well, very little. We have, over the years. We did write one song at soundcheck or the basis for it, it was "Paperlate," because of the way we tested the reverb. It was a phrase from one of our songs ("Dancing With the Moonlit Knight") and Phil used to sing Paperlate over and over again so that I got tired of hearing it and I just put a few chords underneath it too keep me interested. Then, as the soundchecks went on, people kept joining in and we just kept adding to it until the song was finally done. Other than that we don't tend to write much during soundcheck. I often take a keyboard into the hotel room with me to play, and I have written that way, but not much.
JH: What about musical influences?
Phil: Well I think we all go back to the early 60s, during our formative influences. The Beatles, of course, were the biggest influence of all of us. Other bands, the Yardbirds, Motown, of course, was hugely inspirational the early Stax stuff. In more recent times, some jazz, some R&B. You know, you hear people, you hear a record you like and chances are you become influenced by it in some respects.
Tony: As a songwriter, influences tend to come from the 60s like the Beatles, the Kinks and the Animals. As a keyboard player, I think Allen Price of the Animals was the first keyboard player in a rock group who conviced me you could do something exciting, and later on Mathew Fisher of Procol harum and Keith Emerson in his early days with the Nice. We stopped being influenced in the 70s, I think, because once you start touring on a regular basis you get a little bit less surprised because you tend to know a little bit more on what's going on. But then there are techniques where I got influeced like Ravel and Rachmaninoff, and to bring them into the rock arena I found to be very differnt.
JH: I know a lot of keyboard players who love the piano intro to "Firth of Fifth." Did you write the piano part first and then extend it into the instrumental piece?
Tony: I had the piano chord sequence that became the verse and the melody that became the guitar solo as three separate things. I played them for the guys, who thought they all seemed related, and we just put them together - and ended up with the song.
JH: How do you feel about sequencers or tapes along with live performance?
Phil: The only time I've ever used tapes is, instead of relying on a drum machine, we would put the part on a DAT because sometimes you would have some things coming in at certain times and you can play around with stereo outputs easier than you can with the drum machine, so thats the only time we've used tapes. I'm not in favor of having anything on tape musically, apart from the rhythm. With Clapton on tour, we went out with tapes with a couple of keyboard parts in it, wich was difficult because he likes to stretch his songs out, but Greg Phillinganes was keen on having them because he wanted all the parts in there and couldn't cover them himself. But I think we've learned the shortcomings of those kind of things.
JH: That's very understandable. Tony, when you're performing I get the feeling that you prefer not to use sequencers and that you would rather do more playing live.
Tony: I prefer to do it if the music requires it, the only time we used a sequencer was on the song "Land Of Confusion", the bass line, and we've used drum machines, but I think, really, this band works better without those things, but on solo projects I use sequencers more and I use tape machines too.
JH: Tony, do you still compose on guitar or use it as a different appraoch to writing?
Tony: Well I do sometimes, but not as much as I used to because it was sort of different in many ways, but now I'm lazy because I can get guitar sounds out of your keyboards.
Phil: We gotta go now.
JH: Well thanks, we appreciate your time guys.
Phil: Thanks very much for the input on the instruments, we really love them.
Tony: Yeah, we do a lot.
And so it ended.