The 1974 Genesis song the band called their best moment: “A period piece”
Writing in a band like Genesis can be tricky, as there really was no limit to what they could do.
Right from the off, it was clear that Genesis were a group who didn’t intend on putting any limits on themselves, and for a while, they were pretty aligned within that creative goal. Phil Collins joined the band a little bit later, but even he could see up on starting, the group had a unique connectivity about them which allowed for the creation of some truly exceptional pieces of music.
Despite having been writing songs for a long time before joining the band, Collins decided he would take a bit of a backseat at first, as he didn’t want to intrude on what they were doing. Instead, his job was to arrange songs, ensure that things were running in the right order and that everyone was playing their part.
“The spirit of Genesis was Tony, Mike and Peter,” said Collins, “I didn’t regard myself as a songwriter then. But there were things in Genesis I was highly influential in. My strength was arranging […] I was very into the first line-up of Yes, the one with [guitarist] Peter Banks. I remember listening to them and loving the way they took other people’s songs […] And did something different with them.”
The first ten years of the band were years of experimentation and musical limitlessness. They would end up creating songs that straddled multiple genres, embracing prog rock and allowing themselves to make complex tracks that were both exciting and unpredictable. Sometimes they went too far, and the sound pushed itself well beyond its limits, to the extent that some band members disliked a lot of the tracks they made during this period.
Back to Collins, he spoke about their 1978 song ‘Burning Rope’ and condemned it, saying that he went way too far with the drumming. As previously mentioned, when you are given a lot of room to manoeuvre as a creative person, sometimes you wind up taking things a bit too far, and that’s exactly what the drummer did here.
“To me, this song is a period piece. It doesn’t make it in the 20th century. I know there are people who like this music, but I just couldn’t get up on stage and play or sing this kind of material anymore,” he said, “I had a lot of tom-toms back then. The fill just keeps going down and down and down. I think I played this kind of thing back then because I didn’t like some of the material. I was trying to come up with ways to make it interesting.”
However, when the band got things right, they got it really right. Members of Genesis were more or less in agreement that their 1974 offering on ‘Fly On A Windshield’ was a real high point. This saw the creative minds of Tony, Mike and Peter come together, as they managed to make a song that was incredibly accessible and made sense, but was also ahead of its time and genre-defining.
When reflecting on that song, Tony Banks said that it was easily some of their best work. “Peter and I,” he said, “Both agreed that probably the best moment in early Genesis is the moment when it goes loud in ‘Fly On A Windshield’.”
