“We were a little ahead of England”: The 1974 album Genesis claim they accidentally invented punk with
Lots of people like to put Genesis down for having been too over-the-top and too eager to flaunt their musical excellence, but as highfalutin as their ideas may have been, you’ve also got to give them credit where due for how inventive they were as a group.
This is especially true of the Peter Gabriel era, where they were almost solely focused on being a progressive rock band rather than gunning for commercial success like they did in their later years under the guidance of drummer-turned-frontman Phil Collins. However, despite having been a band who were so quintessentially English in their early years, their decision to release a conceptual double album set in New York City for what would become the final album of Gabriel’s tenure certainly raised eyebrows among those who had been staunch defenders of the band.
Looking back on it now, the decision ultimately paid off, but it wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience for the band to make such a record. Gabriel was becoming even more distant from the other members, and guitarist Steve Hackett noted during a press conference in anticipation of the album’s 50th anniversary that they were all going through their own personal struggles that hampered their ability to work on an album of such magnitude.
Gabriel, however, took the opportunity to defend his decision to make New York the setting of the story, which follows the story of Puerto Rican immigrant Rael as he embarks on a journey through a surreal and nightmarish version of the bustling city. Wanting to create some distance from the traditional English setting of the band’s previous albums, Gabriel thought it would offer a greater opportunity to challenge himself when writing the lyrics.
“When you first go to New York, it is one of the most exciting cities in the world,” he noted of his own personal experiences in the city. “I felt it would be easier for me and easier for the story to be accepted if there was some distance there.”
He continued, expressing a profound love for Stephen Sondheim’s lyrical choices in the creation of West Side Story and citing them as a significant influence, while also acknowledging how the works of Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, such as El Topo and The Holy Mountain, allowed him to give the album its surrealist edge. “It was in a sense a search into the self but through this persona of this Puerto Rican kid,” Gabriel added.
However, perhaps the most curious revelation about the album that stemmed from the band’s retrospective look back on its creation was when Hackett pondered as to whether Gabriel had inadvertently given rise to the idea of punk rock. “We were a little ahead of England,” Gabriel replied. “There was probably something emerging in New York.”
This is perhaps a little far-fetched, especially given how uncomplicated punk has tended to always be in its approach, making an act like Genesis totally at odds with the entire ethos of punk in terms of its musical identity.
That being said, it’s probably a little more rebellious than anything they’d done before, and as for the album’s themes of revolution, anti-consumerist satire and alienation, they were as thematically close to punk as they’d ever get, not that they’d really have much of an impact on that world going forward.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Punk Newsletter
All the latest Punk content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.