Mike Rutherford on his three favourite Genesis moments
The prog-rock scene would look completely different were it not for Genesis. Although acts like Pink Floyd may have been labelled progressive rock after they flirted with genres like space rock and psychedelia, Genesis were the complete package from the beginning of their second album, mining songs that went in wildly different directions and often changed time signatures and keys faster than most fans could process them. The journey may have lasted decades, but Mike Rutherford was one of the few who lived through it all.
From their first album, From Genesis to Revelation, to their final shows with Phil Collins, only Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks have been in the group from start to finish. When looking back on the major moments of his career, Rutherford mentioned three distinct periods where things began to turn a corner. Regarding prog ambition, Rutherford first singled out the song ‘Supper’s Ready’ off their album Foxtrot, noting to Steve Houk: “It was one of the first times that we really worked together like that. Those sort of longer pieces”.
Taking up most of the album’s second side, ‘Supper’s Ready’ tends to feel more like an audio play than a song, with the band taking the listener through many distinctive movements with Peter Gabriel’s brilliant vocals and dramatic character portraits. This might have been the era where Genesis could experiment, but everything came to a screeching halt once Gabriel opted out of the band to care for his child after their double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
After struggling to find a lead singer, Rutherford pointed to the album The Trick of the Tail as another highlight, continuing, “It could have gone over or could have gone under, but the first time writing like that, it took off”. Although this was the first record where Phil Collins stepped behind the microphone, the band didn’t miss a beat, playing songs that were as catchy as they were complex, like the opener ‘Dance on a Volcano’.
Despite Collins’ reputation that he single-handedly ruined the band by bringing pop music into the mix, it was never that cut and dry. While the band did manage to notch up a few hits during their prog years like ‘Follow You Follow Me’, it was a gradual switch to the sounds of radio-friendly albums like Invisible Touch and I Can’t Dance, with the band still flexing their muscles where they could by expanding their singles to massive proportions like ‘Tonight Tonight Tonight’.
By that point, the band no longer relied on making longer pieces plotted out from beginning to end before they walked into the studio. Rutherford remembered the joy from the sessions during the 1980s, saying, “The last two or three albums with Phil and Tony, we just wrote it with no ideas at all. We went into the studio with a blank bit of paper, not a single idea in our head, plugged the gear in, and just kicked off. And it just worked every time. The writing just flew out of the box”.
Although showing up with no A-material might be a daunting task, Genesis approached the new style like seasoned veterans, creating some of their best work before Collins’s departure to focus on his solo career in the early ’90s. For all of the blood, sweat and tears that went into making the first masterpieces, Genesis had put enough hours behind their instruments to reverse their songwriting process, jamming in the studio until they finally had a pop gem at their fingertips.
