Tripping the Light Fantastic

Rip It Up, Issue 112, 1 November 1986, Page 12

Tripping the Light Fantastic

GENESIS Let There Be Light

A free trip to Philadelphia to see Genesis in concert. Wow! Sounds like \ fun, count me in. Jeez, it’s a bit like hard work getting ; there. Like it’s really tuff trying to read the breakfast menu at 7am beside Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, when you’ve been on a plane for hours, you’re not hungry, you didn’t bring your togs and a Royal Hawaiian Hotel orange Juice costs $U56.95

It’s also tuff finding Philadelphia when you haven’t got a map. Travelling with the concert promoter, Mr Hugh Lynn, there’s no map in the hire car — but there is a telephone. So matters can be discussed with the Auckland office as we travel south from New York at an orderly 50 mph. But soon we find ourselves in the suburbs of Philly and not sure which way to turn. Giggling gets us nowhere, so we decide to follow an overhead railway that must go into town, but end up in what must be the most depressed real estate in Philly. As the dour Bill Carter of the Screaming Blue Messiahs said of the very same street, “It’s not a place to stall your car...” But we eventually arrive, and moments later we’re ensconced in the lounge of the Four Seasons,the same hotel in which Genesis are staying. Good God Almighty. Upmarket? Foodtown shopping bags are uncool here, mate! In fact the only slice of reality I encountered in three days at the hotel was Phil Collins’ legs. Nobody else would dare commute in the Four Seasons’ lift in a T-shirt and shorts.

Genesis are BIG in Philadelphia — the four nights at the 17,000 seater venue sold out in four hours. The biggest grossing concert in America that week; the total box-office take was $U51,214,773. The Spectrum Stadium was the site of Rocky’s victory fight (shortly after he ran up Philly’s art museum steps; we walked up), and the security staff are courteous and speak English. On the plane across America we had read a Phil Collins interview in Rollingstone, a Phil Collins interview in Playboy and it made us want to

ask questions of the other members of Genesis, questions about ... Phil Collins. But at the appointed time for interviews — the afternoon of the first concert — Phil is unlikely to be available. Good, I reason, he’s over-interviewed. I volunteer to asKquestions of keyboardist Tony Banks, as it’s invariably the quiet ones that run the show. After tennis, Mr Banks and Mr Rutherford arrive. While the latter speaks to Mr Hogg of the NZ Herald, I face Tony Banks at the other end of the room. As Mr Hogg pursues questions concerning the solo star Mr Collins, Tony Banks’ attention drifts to Mike Rutherford’s answers and he politely apologises before resuming his line of thought. Ten years ago, did you expect to be embarking on a major tour in 1986? “No. We did our first single in 1968, Mike and I were in the original group. There’s no way you’d think you’d still be going now. The group is more

popular than it was last year.” Every member of the band is active with solo work. Are you going through a phase of workaholism?

"No, not really, not in my case. I do a lot of music and a lot of things outside music. We’ve been doing Genesis as a part-time thing since about 1978, 50/50 with other things. Phil likes to work the most, but then he has the most offers of work. So he has more to choose from.”

Behind the Lines In recent years Tony Banks has done two film soundtracks, the best of which are compiled on the album Soundtracks, and he is also partial to being home with his family. He thinks of himself as “more of a country person than a town person.”

So do you write songs in seclusion and bring them to a Genesis session? “No, the last two albums we’ve written the whole thing in the studio, we haven’t done anything before, we just improvise and the songs crystallise over a period of weeks. Some songs happen very quickly and we record as soon as it has any shape at all. “What most people consider to be the classic Genesis tracks have all been written by the group as a whole. ‘Supper’s Ready’ from the early days and much of The Lamb Lies Down on

Broadway — these kinds of songs have always been written by all the people that were in the group at the time. “We got to the stage with the LP Then There Were Three where it was mainly individual songs by Mike and I and the group were performing them. It was almost like we were session musicians on each others’ songs. “We wanted to get back to group writing and on Duke we did three or four group-written songs — they were the much stronger songs on the LP, ‘Turn it On Again’ and ‘Duchess.’ Abacab was mainly group written and the last two albums totally. There’s no song that would’ve been anything like the way it is if the three of us hadn’t been in the room at the same time.” Why have you not done a compilation or “best of” LP?

“We’d probably never agree on what the best tracks are — I’m certain the audience wouldn’t agree. It would be very difficult to make a single album, because you’d want to include a song like ‘Supper’s Ready,’ which is half the side of an album. Hopefully people will go back into the past and listen to the earlier albums. An album like Trespass that sold nothing at the time it was out, about 5000, it’s probably sold 500,000 now.”

You’ve had one Genesis reunion concert with Peter Gabriel to raise money for the WOMAD festival. Is that likely to be repeated? “It’s not important to us, it was nice to do it. Peter Gabriel and Genesis have been apart 11 years — it’s a long time. It might happen again but it’s not something we plan to do.”

And Then There Were Three When you were looking for a replacement for Gabriel, were you reluctant to use your drummer, Phil Collins, as the new singer? “He’s got a good voice and he’d obviously done a lot of singing on the Genesis albums, but we were never sure he could do the powerful singing which is always a very important part of Genesis music. We even went so far as trying someone on the song ‘Squonk’ on Trick of the Tale. But we couldn’t find anyone and we decided that he would sing all the songs on the album.” The rest is history — Genesis got another drummer instead of another singer. “The audience found it very easy to accept someone from the band. It would have been difficult for old fans to find somebody else out front.” In the early days of Genesis visual qualities were very important. Have you grown tired of theatrics? “I still think Genesis is a very visual band, but

now we use lights rather than any theatre. The theatrical stuff was something Peter Gabriel.enjoyed doing. We did a very extensive show involving lots of slides and effects called The Land Lies Down on Broadway, but it tends to distract from the music — so we decided to do it with just lights.” In the 70s there was a variety of sources of inspiration for rock music. Do you find the 80s as stimulating? “I’ve never been very conscious of what everyone else is doing. My influences probably still stem from the 60s — I’m influenced more by the Beatles than anything that’s happening now. I don’t really listen that much to contemporary rock music. I don’t find it that interesting, with obvious notable exceptions. In the main, most of what I hear is very dull. I’ve always hated just dance music, what is nowadays called soul music but bears no relation to the sort of soul music I was listening to in the 60s, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding.” The Genesis sound is changing — how British are you now?

“I think we’re British because we’re British. I don’t think Genesis has ever particularly sounded like anybody else. We used to be lumped with people like Pink Floyd and Yes, but I don’t think any of us sounded that similar. But we were trying to do something different than having hit singles all the time. Nowadays we throw a few hit singles in as well, but still do some of the more adventurous stuff.”

Philadelphia has been a Genesis stonghold since their early US tours. Was your pgpularity in university cities? “No, in England we never appealed to the universities, they like the simpler kind of form. When I went through university it was people like the Incredible String Band and Tyrannosaurus Rex, and then in the late 70s it was the punk thing. Universities like bare bones type of music. Genesis is a group that provides more thinking music for a cross section of audiences from all areas. These days there isn’t that much competition in that area, apart from people like Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush or Sting, most people tend to be a bit more straight ahead.”

Banks, Collins and Rutherford have worked with the same rhythm section for nearly 10 years — Daryl Stuermer (bass/guitar) and Chester Thompson (drums). Are they permanent members of Genesis?

“They’re members of Genesis live, they’re as permanent as they want to be. We’re very happy to have them every year. But studio-wise we have within the group the capabilities in all the areas we want.”

The Musical Box

At this stage of your career, you call the shots. Do you find it incongruent that you use an outside producer? “Well, we use a co-producer really. We try and find someone who’s going to do it without us having to shout at him all the time. In the past, we’ve had problems, particularly on Foxtrot. \Ne went through two producers on that. The first one we didn’t get on with at all, nor he with us, so he left in the middle of it. And the second guy we had was just so useless that we kind of bypassed him. What we try and do since then is try and have someone we feel is sympathetic to what we're trying to do. “Obviously they’ve also got to be able to pro-

vide a certain amount of input. Hugh Padgham was primarily an engineer, but he does quite a bit of production as well. He can kind of second guess us all the time, and that’s why it’s a good relationship.”

Are you all there for mixing, or is that one person’s role?

“We’re all there, all the time, if we can be. Hugh likes to have a bit of fun when he’s starting, fiddling around with drum sounds, but we like to do mixes quickly. We try for spontaneity. We’d rather do five quick mixes than one laboured mix.” The band has existed at a time when recording equipment has just changed remarkably. Are you still pushing the boundaries of recording equipment?

“We’re using the best stuff that’s around, I suppose, although that hasn’t always been important to us. The previous album we used a fairly lowkey system. What’s important is what you do with the equipment that’s there.

I think because the basic instruments have changed so much over the years, that’s much more crucial. Things like the Emulator, which I use quite a bit, has almost been responsible for

two or three songs that would never have come into existence without it.”

Has the synth age got still more areas to explore and experiment? “It certainly has. Whether it improves the music is a matter of opinion — to a certain extent, it gets a bit dull. Rhythm machines particularly, which we use a lot, tend to make you end up in time signatures such as 4/4 or 6/8, the very simple time signatures. I think there’s a long way to go with these instruments. “In order to get the variety of sounds I want, I’m having to use far more keyboards than I want to. I’d much rather just have one good quality synthesiser sampling machine, with maybe three keyboards — you’d be able to do everything. That’s probably the ultimate keyboard system, which will no doubt exist in a short time.”

Have you made an active step away from the complexity of the 32-track machines — does Invisible Touch reflect a desire for a simpler sound? “The thing about 48-track mixing with the computer, which is what we used on the last album, it doesn’t have to necessarily complicate things. You can just keep the sounds separate for longer, it means you can do sub-mixes, you can try getting the vocals right 20 times, and you can keep 20 vocals as opposed to just keeping one and improve on it. “It gives you freedom, you can keep the drums on separate tracks, particularly on rhythm machines, you ban keep all the little percussion noises separate, put a different echo on it, a different position, all that kind of thing. You tend to find yourself using it more that way, it’s not a question of endless layering, we don’t start with one guitar and then put on another guitar, then another — you tend to get a bit extravagant with the tracks, but it does give you a certain freedom.” Moonlit Knights

A behind-the-scenes concert role is assumed by Banks and Rutherford, as designers of the Genesis lightshow. They use Verri-lights — a high-tech system the band has helped evolve. “With Verri-lights you can use any colour you want, it moves in any direction and the whole system is computer controlled, so you can use any combination of colour, light and beam size that you want. Mike and I do most of the pre-set design with the lighting operator. We get what we consider extreme light moments, very impressive ones, and tie those lighting moments into places in the music that we think work well.” “What we can do with them is really staggering. I think when you see the show you’ll understand what I’m talking about because the sort of thing you can create with the lights, they’re not just lights, you can use them as effects. You

can build monster lighting effects, like lasers but more impressive than that because you’ve got more sources. We also move the truss about. There’s some very stunning things that happen, when it works, which it does normally work.”

Banks admits that neither he nor Rutherford like to speak on stage. They leave the betweensongs communication to Phil Collins and let their E.T. lighting programme unfold before the multitude.

Our interview draws to a close, we bid farewell, "Seeya down under” and so on, and it’s off to explore the metropolis of Philadelphia. Genesis was the buzz on Market Street, seemed every person was talking about not having tickets for the Genesis show tonight.

But it’s soon showtime at the Spectrum. There’s little “first-night-in-a-new-city” tension backstage, and Phil Collins ambles amongst the crew. The audience is busy eating — they can even buy beer at a refreshment stand.

With lights out, Genesis can do no wrong. A new song (scream), an old song (scream), an older song (scream scream), then ‘lnvisible Touch’ (scream scream scream). For the slow numbers, the audience return obediently to their seats, and even the amiable security guards at the front of stage would sit down. For ‘Mama,’ just one spot illuminates Phil Collins’ face from below, for ‘Home By the Sea,’ the lights amaze. Sometimes the lights are like an additional soloist, and they’re used more extensively on instrumental or less poppy numbers. They’re particularly handy when Collins retreats to his drumkit at the rear of the stage. But Genesis’s concert appeal is not all high tech. Collins has got the voice and the charm to communicate without the synthetic extras, he was in a constant barrage of flowers in Philly, and he bashfully welcomed it all, even the bra that got thrown his way. The band cover all the Genesis hits, and with so much material to choose from, it’s no wonder that Collins doesn’t do any of his solo material. The modern Genesis with their current album embrace a part of the solo persona and sound of Phil Collins. Their surprise lighthearted encore would have been unimaginable from Genesis ten years ago. Phil Collins in a Blues Brothers jacket, hat and ray bans? The times they are are changing. . .

Well, after one interview, two shows and three visits to the Funk-o-Mart it was time to leave Philadelphia. We found our way to the airport without a map — we only went the wrong way up an eight lane one way street, once. Even in rush hours Americans are so polite.

Murray Cammick