GENESIS INTO THE
THIRD DIMENSION?

From Sounds - January 12, 1974 - by Jeremy Gilbert

TO MANY people Genesis are something of an ironic friendship - making their acquaintance requires a good deal of tolerance, but having established the breakthrough, they are one of the most eminently dependable groups in Britain.

Over the past four or five years they have acquired an ever increasing band of supporters and yet there are still people whom their magic eludes - people who admit quite candidly that they have never persevered with the band long enough to find that affinity with the music.

STEVE HACKETT: "Can't survive without America."

That's not to say that anyone who latched onto the band round the time of "Trespass" needed until "Selling England By The Pound" in order to make up their minds, but their meticulous compositions show a self-indulgence that only matures with time.

Misconceptions

The added verve of their more recent exploits - the surrealist overtones projected by Peter Gabriel have induced a number of misconceptions. There are those who believe that Genesis depend wholly on Gabriel's powerful stage act, and that he writes all the material whereas the whole concept of Genesis has always been that of five equal members and on that basis the band was formed back at Charterhouse School many years ago.

But as many ponder the question "How much further can Peter Gabriel develop his frighteningly surrealistic masks?" - new and equally fascinating nuances are developing from within, cast mainly by guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Phil Collins.

In their respective ways they are two of the finest musicians in Britain today - the only two who didn't feature in the original Genesis - and now their musical freedom, as opposed to the freedom within which the entire group functions, has instigated a measure of much needed improvisation within [difficult, wasn't it?].

Steve Hackett made the point when I spoke to him last week that he was always being asked why continually played the same solos in certain numbers. The answer is simple. "Those solos are written over a period and they are as much a part of the overall composition as anything else," he says. For a musician of Steve's capacity playing pre-arranged carbon copy riffs has its frustrations and hence we are only now beginning to see he and Phil adding a new layer of sound to the band.

Possibly the recent American tour, which paradoxically peaked on the West coast where the band were making their first visit, has helped to inspire confidence, for attention was divided equally among the band rather than the usual homing in on Gabriel. In LA they played a week at the Roxy Club and the opportunity of sussing out the ambience of a place over a five day period inspired the band to do the same in Britain - hence they are playing three consecutive nights at Drury Lane's Theatre Royal this month. It's as near a self-assurance they will get when it comes to achieving the right sound. "We were given God-like treatment in LA and the final night at the Roxy was a complete party, quite unlike our normal gigs which tend to be a bit stiff or formal. But the audience had largely been there all five nights," explained Steve.

For a band who have always been readily available to the British masses, the incentive for concentrating on America is self-evident. In Britain the band have been carefully nurtured, their fans have watched them blossom slowly whereas in America they arrived suddenly without warning, swathed in a kind of British charisma and exuding an underground mysticism which just about brought New York to its knees.

By the third US visit people were seen wandering around with Gabriel-styled flower masks, and on February 28 the band return for their fourth and most demanding tour.

Steve Hackett was quite candid about Genesis' future. "It's a dreadful thing to say, but I really see our future as lying more in the States. You see, the band has been in existence for six years and for at least four and a half of them we've been easily accessible in Britain. Now there's the fact that we can't survive financially without America. I'm sure it'll make a lot of people bitter the fact that they can't pay 50p to see Genesis at their local disco anymore, but we've only built up any sort of charisma through withdrawal."

Inevitably they are still losing money on American tours, such is the enormity of the Genesis machinery, but the kind of acclaim they have been receiving - coupled with the success of "Selling England By The Pound" - can only be seen as a long term insurance policy.

Then, of course, there's the identity problem. "More solo work will be creeping in because it's difficult to get individual identities across when the band is personified as a whole by Peter. This does create a problem in the band - no bitterness towards Peter - but there are some terrible misconceptions and it becomes frustrating when people are wrongly credited with doing certain things. In America though we're considered very much a five man thing."

There are no plans at present to change the existing stage show other than by in corporating a few new visual aids, for as yet British audiences have scarcely had much opportunity of sampling the new wares. "The last album was the most rewarding we've done," says Steve, "though in a sense it was the least demanding. The playing and production were better - also the interpretation of the material, although I'm not sure about the material itself."

He emphasised that a single would be issued in the near future - never really a momentous occasion for the band, but nevertheless Steve thinks that 'I Know What I Like' has possibilities. "I think personally it's a bit late to release that now, and overall I'm disappointed no-one's listened to my suggestions for singles in the past. 'Willow Farm', for instance, would have been great, and though 'I Know What I Like' is OK, I'm not sure about the timing."

In terms of timing he sees that now is the time for changes to be instigated within the band. "It's difficult to see exactly where it's going, but the music is definitely changing and it's important that the Genesis formula doesn't becomme over-worked. It's not totally satisfying to go onstage and create something fuge all the time, and Phil and I are moving towards jazzier things so there's already improvisation taking place onstage. I think people want to see what we are capable of doing and I think we've got to give them just enough that's new."

Mistakes

Before he joined Genesis Steve had worked as a session guitarist and cut an album with a band called Quiet World - "a dismal failure in terms of success but a success in terms of learning from one's mistakes." Now he is full of ideas for enhancing the band both visually and musically.

"I'd like to get into things called holograms," which are 3D projections onto thin air, some examples of which we saw in the States. "I'd already dreamt the idea up in my head before realising that it is possible to project an image into thin air." He hopes the band will get to the source of such an invention and thereby check out the possibilities of putting it to the test. Eventually he sees the band disappearing before the audiences's eyes onstage.

"Roll on laser beam projection," he exclaimed with a final flourish that makes one wonder exactly what Genesis do have in store for us this year.

JERRY GILBERT

Thanks to Jeff Kaa for providing this article for The Path