‘Follow You Follow Me’: The Genesis song Mike Rutherford called “unlike us”
Any progressive rock band will want to push themselves in different directions however they can. From the far-reaching sounds of classical music to the free expression that comes from jazz, no genre is off the table in progressive music, which has led to bands like Rush and Yes pioneering different ways of approaching rock music. Although Genesis may have had their unique ways of defying trends in rock music, Mike Rutherford considered one of the band’s biggest tracks to be the antithesis of what they usually did.
Throughout the band’s early years, though, they were still trying to find out what their trademark sound was. Although the band’s debut, From Genesis to Revelation, featured various pieces of baroque pop, it wasn’t until they released Trespass that things began falling into place, with Peter Gabriel coming into his own as a frontman.
While the band still weren’t on the same level as prog giants like King Crimson, Gabriel made his presence known every time he took to the stage, putting together lavish costumes that made him impossible to ignore for the touring cycles for Foxtrot and Selling England By the Pound. Even though the band quickly dominated the album charts, Gabriel knew he wasn’t meant to stay in the band much longer.
Electing to part ways with the group to watch over his young daughter, Gabriel left for a solo career, leaving the band to soldier on with Phil Collins behind the mix. While Collins had a slightly different vocal timbre than Gabriel, the music was still what many would have expected from Genesis, featuring wild time signature changes and drawn-out exercises on A Trick of the Tail.
As the band entered the 1980s, they started to flirt with different commercial music. Although they never intended to become pop superstars overnight, Rutherford knew that they had hit upon something different when he came up with the idea for ‘Follow You Follow Me’.
Compared to the other singles from their catalogue, no other song had been this pop-friendly, featuring a simple lyric and a cascading guitar figure that spreads out throughout the entire song. While Rutherford was proud to have written it, he thought the track wasn’t suited for the Genesis treatment.
When putting the song together, Rutherford remembered how different it was compared to their other material, telling Classic Rock Stories, saying, “I consciously wrote simple lyrics. They really didn’t say much, but they just sound right for the song. They sound warm and friendly, which is unlike us, really”.
Little did the band know that those kinds of empathetic lyrics would drastically affect their music as the years went on. As Collins balanced his solo career, Genesis would find their footing as radio-friendly prog giants, turning in songs that wouldn’t be out of place on the hit parade like ‘Invisible Touch’ and ‘Throwing It All Away’. For all of the prog rock songs that kept the listener at a distance, Rutherford quickly learned that the band could do no wrong once they opened themselves up to their audience.
