Good musicians who make bad music: Ian Anderson’s cutting take on Genesis
It’s all very well having the musical chops that you can flaunt all over your music, but if you’re only releasing music that’s all style and no substance, then you’ve got to ask the question – who is your music even for if not just for yourself? You might be able to play guitar like Eddie Van Halen, but if you forget that he was also an exceptional songwriter as well as an incredible shredder and not trying to emulate that side of his work, then there’s no amount of fretboard tapping that is going to be able to save you from falling into the trap of becoming self-indulgent.
Yes, some artists still get praised for their flashiness, and as mentioned, they can often back up their prodigious talents by penning an excellent song to boot, but there’s often a line where an artist can take things a step too far. It’s incredibly easy to lose sight of what would make for a catchy or memorable song and, instead, find yourself delving too far into the territory of studio wankery or highlighting each musician’s technical proficiency, and progressive rock is certainly no stranger to doing this as a genre.
Jethro Tull and Genesis were both huge in the field of prog, and both were largely celebrated for their ability to write captivating songs and keep things engaging enough for fans who were after something more cerebral and complex.
However, Jethro Tull frontman Ian Anderson wasn’t a big fan of what Genesis were doing at the same time as his own band were trying to stake their ground in the annals of prog history, and he seemingly never shied away from sharing his opinion on them in various interviews over the years.
While he may not have been the biggest fan of the group, Anderson was understanding of the fact that they had done more than enough to cement themselves as one of the ‘big four’ acts in progressive rock, as he claimed to Vintage Rock in 2002. Sitting alongside bands such as Yes, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Genesis were still important enough to the genre in the eyes of Anderson, while also asserting that Pink Floyd were “the archetypal prog rock band that preceded them all”.
However, while he gave them the accolade of being among the biggest names in prog, he certainly didn’t find himself stretching to the same level of praise in terms of what they were doing musically, and in an interview with Live Music News & Review in 2019, he would assert that the group had taken things “to a bit of an extreme” with their sound and that they were “musically great but self-indulgent and perhaps pompously setting themselves apart from rank and file musicians. Like the rest of us who were still learning to play our instruments.”
This wasn’t the only interview where Anderson would bring up his dislike of the band’s music, as in a conversation with Stay Rock Brazil in 2021, he claimed that “I was never a fan of Genesis. But their musicianship is amazing.”
While Anderson isn’t overly critical of what the band did during their career here or in his previous comments, he does at least nod to how they were a talented group when it came to their technical ability while expressing a dislike for the contents of their output.
