Genesis - The Way They Walk, from Replay Magazine, May 1993

GENESIS

The Way They Talk

Replay Magazine, May 1993

Transcribed by Mohammed M Kashem

KIT LEVINE GOES LIVE WITH GENESIS AND GETS THE LONGS AND SHORTS SORTED WITH ORIGINAL SPACE CADETS, MIKE RUTHERFORD AND TONY BANKS

In the begining there was ... Genesis? Not quite right, but a six-track demo tape featuring Messrs Banks and Rutherford from aspiring band the Anon, sent to fellow Charterhouse old boy Jonathan King, soon had our well-heeled Surrey chums renamed, and signed to Decca Records.

Since then much water has travelled under the Genesis arches of time and various band members have come and gone, including the solo career-departing Peter Gabriel, and an incoming 19-year-old actor/musician, Phil Collins on drums. Despite having experienced monumental personnel changes that would have disbanded many other acts, or reduced them to studio artists, Genesis closed ranks and have gone from strength to strength as a contemporary rock attraction.

A twenty year-plus history as a recording unit has seen them constantly on the move. After those orchestrated Decca Records debut mutterings of From Genesis To Revelation, the band then plumped for a decade and a half with Charisma Records, which spawned such a notable gems as Selling England By The Pound, A Trick Of The Tail, Abacab, and Invisible Touch, through to the opening shot of their current Virgin Records contract period, We Can't Dance.

Both as a recording and live act, Genesis have been at the sharp end for most of their career ... helping to establish the Seventies rock tradition of Album releases followed by lengthy promotional tours, they quickly established a nucleus of hard core fans. Since the band's early Eighties invention as a trio, led by Chiswick's very own `cheeky chappie', Phil Collins on vocals, Genesis have enjoyed a profile rarely glimpsed at by other artists. Among the luxuries the band can now afford themselves are solo careers, and money-for-nothing live album releases.

The band's latest waxings come in the form of two separate albums, Genesis Live - The Way We Walk, Volumes One and Two, individually titled The Shorts for volume one, and The Longs on the second issue, the album project was recorded during the band's 1992 world tour to promote We Can't Dance. Having carefully checked out both platters to see if I could spot to join, I decided it was high time that a couple of these well-respected gentlemen of fashionable middle age gave an account of themselves to the good readers of Replay. Speaking from the comfort of their semi-detached mansions in deepest, darkest Surrey, band guitarist Mike Rutherford and his keyboard cohort Tony Banks stepped out of the Genesis bubble to talk about their outrageously successful careers. I put it to Messrs Rutherford and Banks that the high quality of the live albums suggested that Genesis either play to pre-recorded tapes, or `touch-up' songs during the final mixing. "We do a stereo board mix of gigs every night and they sound pretty much like the album really," replies Mike Rutherford. "The one thing I think we do manage to do is to maintain a certain standard, so that even nights we feel we are not playing as good as we should be doing, there's still a good standard of quality musicianship there. However for a live recording I would rather choose a performance that was basically inspired, rather than one which is technically perfect but has less feeling. Virtually nothing is changed though with the tapes, we don't any kind of `layering', nothing gets added to the recording. I think a lot of the reviewers [and the *fans* for crying out loud! --ed] would be interested to hear the board type[tape? --ed] - which is what goes in through the PA each night - because it doesn't sound very much different. That's how we did the Live album.

"Nothing is pre-recorded, apart from a drum machine for some of the drum patterns, and bass synth line in Land of Confusion which is obviously a sequenced part, but that's all. I'm always amazed, but each time we do a tour it sounds better ... I don't know why it is, but I guess we're still working with our gear and improving it. The sound of the band seems to improve each time."

Tony Banks interjects: "Everything you hear on the record is us actually playing; we came through an era when there was no other way of doing it and I suppose we've got used to doing it like that. And that for me is what live playing is all about."

How long does a Genesis album take to put together these days? "It varies a lot; with the last record it took us about five months to write and record it, and with the last three or four albums we've gone into the studio with nothing prepared, and just targeted the album from scratch, says Banks. "In terms of writing, we just improvised together and the songs kind of emerged."

Was that certain magical ingredient, which is needed to work together after all these years, still there? Tony Banks: "Definitely, but the most fun for me is always writing and recording, that's what I'm in the business for... I enjoy playing live but it's just a kind of extra, and I guess it's taken up more of our time than any other aspect. I would have perhaps preferred to have spent more time making records, but we enjoy it all an d have a good time together, and it's been a lot of fun over the years."

Mike adds: "I must say, looking back now, it did stop for a while, but with this tour the magic was better than ever. The album was lot of fun, and easy to make, which I think is always a good sign, and we all enjoyed the tour very much.... and we did very so we can't really ask for more than that. At the moment we haven't got any bit plans, but Phil, Tony and myself left this tour and album in very good spirits, and with a view that we might well do it again in the future. Knowing that we've all done solo albums in the past, though, there's a lot to get under the bridge before we can talk about it."

So does that mean that all three Genesis members are now going to do their solo projects? "Yeah, Phil's off to do some film for the first part of the year, and then a solo album," says Rutherford. "He wants to get his film career moving a bit, and that requires time and effort really. I'm going to do Mike and the Mechanics, though I haven't even put my thinking cap on for that. I try and avoid deadlines - I didn't want to start writing in January, with a view to being in the studio by whenever. Once I start writing, then that gets me excited about it and I make my own deadline, but I want some time off because the last Mechanics album overlapped with the Genesis album, and that's not ideal," he adds.

"I'm looking forward to doing the Mechanics again because I haven't done it for a year now, although I want to work in a slightly more relaxed fashion for a while. I like the set up of the Mechanics... the two Pauls (Paul Young and Paul Carrack) will definitely be there but somone else may come along and play. There's more freedom than with Genesis, you can bring in a couple of guest drummers or a guest guitarist, and that could well happen. But it will only get going when I start writing some new songs."

Tony Banks adds: "I'll be writing, and hopefully doing soundtrack work for films or TV, and I hope that I'll have time to do another solo record of some kind. When I'm not looking for quite the same degree of success, although I could do with a slightly higher profile. The business at the moment is geared towards stars and individual hype, and it's difficult if you want to do it in a slightly more low-key manner. But I enjoy myself and I have a select few who follow what I do and like it, so I do okay!"

Is touring America still fun for the band? "We've been doing for so long, it's not quite as exciting as it once was," Banks admits. "We move around so fast, and it's not much fun from that point of view, but obviously the gigs themselves are great and we enjoy playing in front of an audience. I can live without the rest of it though."

Banks has a personal preference for playing smaller venues rather than huge stadiums. "On our world tour we played big venues everywhere ... anything from around thiry thousand to over a a hundred thousand people. It's exciting and we've found a way of making it work, with the screens and everything, but in all honesty if anyone were to ask where it would be best to hear us play, I would have to say a theatre. The problem though is capacity ... if we only did one or two shows in the smaller places we would get a lot of stick for that, so it's a compromise. In America there are the twenty thousand seaters and, if you're not doing stadiums, ther're quite intimate and the sound is more controllable. There are very few equvalents over here ... Wembley Arena or the N.E.C. in Birmingham, and that's just about it in England."

Do Banks and Rutherford feel that Genesis songs are an antidote to the current sampled music scene of the early Eighties? "I do think it's one reason why the band has been able to sustain its popularity while a lot of the bands providing more complex stuff have fallen by the wayside," Tony Banks reasons. "Genesis is perhaps something of a hybrid anyway - we fill a very big gap in the music industry and, perhaps because we are so well known, don't have too much competition which helps us to still be around.

"A lot of kids are looking back into earlier musical periods, back to when there was more musicality and more playing ... they're not satisfied with what they're geting from top 40 material, which at the moment tends to be very much at the simple end, like in the early Sixties before The Beatles. I think people are waiting for something little bit more ambitious to come out of it."

Mike adds: "There's always been different music fads, in fact there's new one every time we bring an album out and that's quite alright. But yes, I suppose I do think that we offer a slightly more complex type of music - I'm not saying that's good or bad, because that's what we offer - but it is a contrast to what's around."

We venture into the rather controversial waters of artist royalties for CD and DCC sales. With various rock acts bitching about their compact disc sales royalties, and refusing to allow their work to be released in the new formats, what are Rutherford and Banks' views on the subject?

"I don't know to be honest - I'm a bit out of it!," Mike admits. "CDs are too expensive, nobody understands why they cost so much to buy because they cost nothing to make, do they? ... and it's not as though the artists are getting the money! The theory is that the record companies are earning back their initial investment I belive - but they must have got it back by now, surely? It costs about one pound to make CD, with packaging and promotion, and obviously they (the record companies) have their running cost, but to my mind there is a huge figure missing somewhere. And the trouble is, in reality, nothing ever comes down in price does it?

"My feelings about the new formats (Mini-disk and Compact Cassette) are that it's like the old VHS versus BETA situation, they can't both survive, which is why we haven't licensed out our stuff yet ... we want to see which one becomes the most popular format. I feel it's rather unfair unleasing all these formats on the public. I am sure I'll complain about the royalty rates, but I'm comfortable and doing very well!"

Tony Banks adds: "It's down to record companies and artist managers to battle it out between them. From our point of view, we're getting quite enough from royalties anyway, but I'm not too sure about these formats at the moment ... it can't be the right time to launch them when people haven't got enough money; everyone's just got used to the CD, and are happy with it, and suddenly we have a whole new system introduced.

"From a royalty point of view, it's not that big a deal for us at the moment ... I don't imagine anyway that during the next couple of years the sales of these formats are going to mean that much in terms of overall royalties. Ultimately, artists will still have the same sort of clout that they have now - there's always been different percentages, depending on what stage a recording career has reached, and I don't see it will make much difference in the long run. In the short term maybe, whilst they are trying to find ways of getting these formats launched. Artist managers are quite able to manipulate record companies when necessary, and the big acts will make sure the percentages are right for them and that will filter down through the system.

"All I know is, when we came into the business we were lucky to get two-and-a-half percent of ninety percent, or whatever it was ... when an artist or band starts off, it is always low because that's the game of the record companies, but once an act starts making a lot of money, then they don't need to take such a high percentage and the group can keep more. It's capitalism, whether you like it or not ... record companies are only going to invest in new acts if they feel they are getting a proper return."

With Phil Collins' high profile solo career, do either Banks or Rutherford feel that there could be a danger of his work and that of Genesis ever becoming one and the same? "It's always difficult when you've got the same singer," acknowledges Mike, "but songs like Drive In The Last Spike and Fading Lights are nothing like you'll hear on a Phil Collins album."

Tony adds: "Phil's got a great ear for simplicity, and makes the most of that, while Genesis songs tend to be much more involved and complex. It's a similar situation to what Mike and I do on our own - people who go out and buy our records don't have any trouble distinguishing between our music and that of Genesis."

And if Phil Collins were ever to leave, would Genesis be likely to continue as a band? Both his colleagues feel that it would be unlikely. Tony Banks says: "I don't think that we would continue, if any of us were to leave .. Genesis has become very much what the three of us do together now. I can't say definitely that we would split up, as it would depend very much on how it happened, but I think it's unlikely we would continue."

Mike adds: "We get asked this question from time to time, and I wouldn't have thought we'd continue, but you never quite know, do you? But we've got to stop somewhere along the line though!"

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