The Genesis album Phil Collins called his “least favourite”
In the early 1970s, Genesis were a far cry from the power pop group they would become by the decade’s end. After forming in 1967, Charterhouse School students Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Peter Gabriel and Anthony Philips looked to push the boundaries of art, picking up where The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band left off.
The early lineup of Genesis managed to garner limited attention befitting of such an experimental group. The band only began to turn with the induction of drummer Phil Collins and guitarist Steve Hackett. With these recruits, Genesis took on the eccentrically accessible form that would conquer the prog-rock scene of the early ’70s.
With Gabriel’s exit in 1974 and Hackett’s following in 1977, the good ship Genesis was left in the capable hands of Collins. The drummer took on lead vocals and began to steer the group in a more chart-orientated direction. The first album released under this leaner lineup was aptly titled …And Then There Were Three…, Genesis’ ninth album overall and Collins’ least favourite.
It might feel harsh, but having a least favourite album of work you’ve made is par for the course for musicians. The very nature of creative work means that as soon as you have created a song or album, you are somewhat disappointed with it. From one breath to another, an artist can fall in love and be disgusted by their own work. For Phil Collins, it was an album some people love having.
“This is probably my least favourite record,” Collins admitted in an interview with Mario Giammetti for Genesis: 1975 to 2021 – The Phil Collins Years. “But maybe that’s just because it wasn’t a particularly happy period in my life. I contributed little bits. But the songs were kind of short, a little inconsequential.”
Is there any greater insult than “inconsequential” for a piece of art? It quite literally affected nothing in the eyes of Phil Collins. But he wasn’t full of complete bile for the record: “I felt, apart from ‘Follow You Follow Me’, which I thought was great. I remember writing some lyrics for different things. But certainly not the kind of lyrics I would go on to write a couple of years later [on Genesis’s next album, Duke], which were much more personal.”
“I suppose there are a couple of lyrics in there that I might have written based on personal experiences. But I was still writing some fantasy things, based on what the Genesis history was. As opposed to what I would become. I was always more direct, while Genesis were always more ’round the houses’ storytellers,” he added.
Collins discussed the album in a separate interview conducted for the box set Genesis 1976-1982. “It’s just another step on that ladder, you know, that made us a bigger band that we were before,” he said. “Playing to more people, more interest, playing more on the radio. Suddenly a few girls in the audience.”
Continuing, Collins addressed ‘Follow You Follow Me’ as the highlight and appeared proud that it had received endorsement from one of his favourite contemporary bands. “When Chester Thompson joined the live band playing drums, he said that on the Weather Report bus, they always used to play that song,” Collins remembered. “I thought: ‘All right! God, we’ve done something right. If Weather Report like it. If Wayne Shorter and Josef Zawinul often listen to this and say, ‘This English stuff is cool’. I thought we’ve done something right.'”
Listen to Genesis’ ‘Follow You Follow Me’ below.
