Ray Wilson © Armando Gallo

PB: Tell me a little bit about your background, because not many people in Australia have heard of you. Have you always been a professional singer?

RW: Yeah, well I've been singing really since the age of fourteen, I'm twenty-nine now. In 1994, in May '94, I released a single with a band called Stiltskin, and it reached number one here in the UK and in Europe, and it was released in Australia actually, it was a top forty hit in Australia - didn't do brilliantly but did quite well. The song was called 'Inside', and that was really the first time I arrived 'on the scene' if you like, my local scene. And that band eventually disbanded, and I got a call from Mike and Tony asking me if I would like to join Genesis, so I thought, well, why not! (laughs). I need a band, why not?

PB: You did audition I believe, and I understand there were quite a number of other people that did as well.

RW: Well I don't know who did really, but they basically called me up, and I think there were only about three or four people who actually auditioned in person. There were certainly hundreds of tapes sent in.

PB: Were you a fan of Genesis before you were asked to join?

RW: Yeah, I mean I first heard Genesis really when I was in my early teen years actually, I was maybe about thirteen, and I heard the album 'Selling England By The Pound', which I loved. There was a song on the album called 'The Battle Of Epping Forest' which was just so different. I heard this song and I thought, 'God, this is like nothing I've ever heard before'. And really from that moment on...a I bought the album 'Trick Of The Tail' which is probably my favourite Genesis album, and...

PB: This is quite incredible actually, because we're talking about albums that came out when you were five years old!

RW: Oh yeah, 'Selling England By The Pound' did, but 'Trick Of The Tail'... I bought 'Trick Of The Tail' when I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and that came out in, what, '75, '76? So, yeah I bought it probably six years after its release. But I think bands like Genesis, and there are many others, bands like Pink Floyd as well, and Led Zeppelin, albums that these bands release hang around for a long long time, I don't think they really have an age as such. I enjoy the older Genesis music, I really always have. I lost touch a little bit with some of the later music when it got a bit poppier and a bit lighter, it didn't interest me so much. But I've really been a fan since my early teenage years of the '70s and early '80s Genesis.

PB: So it's not that strange to you being part of a group that actually started a couple of years before you were born?

RW: Well it's bizarre if you think about it! Funnily enough I remember singing 'Supper's Ready', or a bit of it at least when we did this launch in Berlin here in Germany, and it was strange to think that it came out in 1972 and I was four! And there I am singing it as the third Genesis singer. To be honest it was a great great privilege and I just loved it. The music business is such a tough industry and I've seen the ups and downs with the rise and fall of Stiltskin and I'm just determined to enjoy what I do, I don't really think about it beyond that. It's just great to be doing the songs.

PB: From a casual listener's point of view the departure of Phil probably would have meant the end of Genesis in a lot of people's minds, so now that Genesis has continued, and continued very well with this new album, in fact the sound is still there even without Phil, which I suppose would surprise a lot of people. Why do you think that is? What is it that creates that Genesis sound, is it Mike or is it Tony or is it something else?

RW: The obvious answer is to say a combination of both, but I think really Tony is probably the main contributor to what you would perhaps regard as the Genesis sound. I say that because of the fact that Genesis has always been a keyboard-based progressive rock band, like Pink Floyd was really a guitar progressive rock band in a sense, in that David Gilmour had those blistering guitar solos, but Genesis has always been more concentrated on the keyboards really. There's no doubt about it, for me anyway, that if Tony had left you would lose Genesis, I think you would lose the Genesis sound. I mean, I'm sure the name ... you know, if Phil was there and Mike was there and Tony was replaced, I think that, OK, the band would continue because of Phil and Mike's success and the name Genesis, but I don't think it would sound truly Genesis. I think Tony Banks is really the backbone, if you like.

PB: What's going to be your approach to performing with Genesis, because Peter Gabriel was always very dramatic with the costumes and so forth, and with Phil it was audience participation. How do you approach performing or being the frontman for Genesis on stage?

RW: From my point of view, I'm a bit more straight ahead rock and roll really. Phil was a drummer who became a singer, but I've always really been a singer, I'm at my happiest when I'm standing up there in front of people, and I kind of thrive on it somewhat. So I'm really just more of a 'get up and go for it' type character. I don't intend to dress up, or tell jokes like Phil did although I do have a personality but not quite as happy-go-lucky as Phil. So the bottom line is if the music sounds good the rest comes naturally I think, and that's obviously my main objective. It's hard enough as it is I suppose without trying to think about it outside music and say 'what are you going to say, what are you going to do, how are you going to dress?' As far as I'm concerned that's secondary to the music and the singing.

PB: The writing chemistry between the three of you, I want to ask about that. Have the three of you actually sat down in a room and jammed the way that Phil, Tony and Mike used to do?

RW: Yeah, well that's how 'Not About Us' came about, and also... I mean 'Small Talk' was something I actually took a piece of music home and wrote all the lyrics to, 'There Must Be Some Other Way' was another one that came from that type of jamming session. It's a really healthy way to do it actually, I think it brings something out in you that perhaps normally you wouldn't think about. That's the beauty of what they do, they jam for hours and then they listen back and pick out the good bits, and when you don't know what the next chord is going to be - and when you're jamming that's the case - subsequently you end up maybe hitting a note that you wouldn't otherwise have naturally gone for and it creates just this second of magic that in turn you can build a song from. It's the way they do it, and I've not had a great deal of time doing that with them but there's three songs on this album that came from that type of thing, and it's very exciting actually to be able to do that on the next record.

PB: Well now that the group's got a new lease of life, with yourself, will you be recording more regularly? Because it's six years since an album came out from Genesis.

RW: Yeah well, I hope so, I mean the guys haven't got too many six year gaps left (PB laughs) in the music business. I think it would be nice if we can get another album out in the next couple of years or so, it's hard to tell really because Mike and Tony refuse to talk about anything other than the project we're working on and that includes anything for the Mechanics or any solo project Tony may have or I might have. It's always very focused on what we do, and I think that's how they've managed to keep it together. But I know that we do intend to do another album, I'm contracted for another album anyway with them, and once we've done that obviously we'll discuss it from there, but I would certainly like to have another, I don't know, eight to ten years I think. 'Cause I mean the guys are 47, the Stones are still going, they're 55-ish, so given that I'm quite a bit younger there's no reason why we can't do another two or three albums. And I think real Genesis fans'd be pleased about that, as long as we never sell ourselves short and we always give it our best because I think that's what Genesis is. And in many respects I'd like to see Genesis being a bit more retrospective, and going back to some of the style of the '70s and early '80s, I would like that to happen, even though it would be unpopular with radio stations.

PB: The new album does contain a lot of fairly complex material lyrically and musically, have you had any trouble learning it or performing it at all?

RW: Not really, my biggest problem is learning the old stuff - there's so much of it.

PB: Yeah, nineteen other albums to learn!

RW: Well this is it, yeah. And Mike and Tony aren't the greatest for making decisions. You sit down and talk to them and say, OK guys, what are we going to do? And we have a choice of fifty songs or something, and the problem is that they'll go in and rehearse them all, and then figure out which ones work best, and then eventually you get down to maybe somewhere between fifteen and twenty tracks, because a lot of the tracks are quite long. So in order to do a two and a half hour show you're maybe doing, I don't know, eighteen songs or something. Not what would normally happen in a band. So I had to learn an awful lot of material. Thankfully I knew some of it from before, and certainly the hits of the late '80s, because obviously Phil had [given the group] such a profile, there were so many songs that I already knew.

PB: Well I hope one day you do come to Australia Ray because we'd love to have you back, it's eleven years since the last Genesis tour and it's way too long.

RW: Well it'd be a good thing.

PB: It's been lovely speaking to you Ray, and please pass on our regards to Tony and Mike as well.

RW: I will, I'll see them tomorrow. I wish I was in Australia, I've never been there so it's one of my desires to go to Australia and New Zealand and parts of the Middle East as well, the Far East. That time will come I hope.

(An even more edited version of this interview was aired on Melbourne's 1377 3MP on December 16, 1997)

Peter Blight - blightpm@netspace.net.au