The William Golding novel that inspired a classic Genesis song
The first seeds of Genesis were planted in 1967 when Charterhouse School students Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Peter Gabriel and Anthony Philips decided to venture off-piste in music class. Their plan was to push the boundaries of art, picking up where The Beatles’ psychedelic odyssey in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band left off, and they followed through rather impressively.
After a slow rise to success, Genesis hit an early nadir with the departure of guitarist Anthony Phillips and the underwhelming release of Trespass, their second studio album. “Genesis seemed to be dying a death around our second album,” Gabriel told Q Magazine in 2011.
A crucial turning point came with the induction of drummer Phil Collins and replacement guitarist Steve Hackett. With these two auditions, Genesis took on the eccentrically accessible form that would conquer the prog-rock scene of the early ’70s.
“My only knowledge of Genesis was through seeing the ads for their gigs. It seemed like they were constantly working. I thought, ‘At least I’m going to be working if I get the gig’,” Collins reflected on his audition in August 1970 via Genesis: Chapter and Verse.
“It was a combination of things,” Banks added, discussing the new recruit. “[Collins] could make it swing a little bit … he could also tell good jokes and make us laugh … And he could sing, which was an advantage because Mike and I were not very good at backup vocals.”
Genesis made headway with the release of Nursery Cryme in November 1971. The album was by no means a masterpiece, and its foggy production let it down, but with Collins’ explosive energy and Gabriel’s strange, Ziggy Stardust-rivalling stage presence, the live shows began to gain significant attention.
Over the first half of the 1970s, Genesis maintained a healthy global following over several more albums, with Gabriel in the driving seat. However, Gabriel began to outgrow his position and wanted to explore a new musical direction as a solo act. On August 15th, 1975, he left the band after several weeks of speculation, stating at the time that he would focus on “other literary and experimental interests outside of music”.
“There was all this big-time stuff happening with long tours being planned way in the future, and I just felt I was getting to be part of a machine,” Gabriel said in the documentary Genesis: A History. “I felt I was becoming a sort of stereotype, sort of ‘rock star,’ or falling into wanting that ego gratification. I didn’t like myself, I didn’t like the situation, and I didn’t feel free”.
The double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was the band’s last with Gabriel, who had expected Genesis to throw in the towel in his absence. The remaining members, however, pooled their resolve to begin work on a new album with Collins anointed as the new lead vocalist.
The first song the band recorded without Gabriel was ‘A Trick of the Tail’, the eponymous lead single for their seventh studio album. Although Collins took lead vocals, the song was written by Banks, who was inspired by William Golding’s celebrated novel, The Inheritors.
“It’s about a race who were on earth before man, and it’s the story of the last survivor of this race,” Banks commented on the novel. “The very last chapter deals with our reaction to him, whereas the rest of the story is his reaction to us. It’s about an alien with horns and a tail who appears in a modern city and how people react to him”.
Commenting on the album as a whole, Rutherford added: “It’s good ’cause this album was quite suddenly a big challenge as far as lyric writing went. In the past, Pete [Gabriel] did about half the lyrics. The album turned out to be strongly vocal. Possibly there was less friction between vocals and instrumentals”.
He added: “On some albums, we’ve had great instrumentals with great vocals over them, but the two together were just too much. Peter’s going has made us more of a band. Phil was really easy to work with. In a way, he wasn’t sure whether he could do it. It’s the first time he’s sung loud, powerful tracks”.
Golding was best known for his debut novel Lord of the Flies and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Other prominent acts with material inspired by Golding’s novels include Iron Maiden, U2 and The Offspring.
Listen to Genesis’ 1976 single ‘A Trick Of The Tail’ below.
