I have, as those who have read my writings before are aware, a bugbear about bands who title any album other than their first with their name. I understand the idea behind self-titling your debut: you want to get your name out there, you want the album to reflect who you are, or maybe you just can't think up a cool title. That's okay. You can even call your other albums
[Insert band name here] II, III, IV etc. No problem with that. But when you've released eleven albums, with creative titles like
Wind and Wuthering,
Nursery Cryme and
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, you're surely not stuck for ideas. So maybe the album title was conceived in a last-ditch attempt to show people that the Genesis on
Abacab was not the real Genesis, that here they were getting back to basics?
Well, that's a fine idea, but the trouble is that the twelfth album did nothing of the sort. While I was glad to hear the mellotron back in service after so long away, and the album does have one epic, fairly progressive-ish song, generally it's a continuation of the previous outing, with pop songs and a lot of humour too, some of it perhaps very misplaced, as I shall explain later. This, after all, was the album that
Kerrang! Called “A Genesis album for people who hate Genesis.” Not good. Not good at all.
Genesis (1983)
Nevertheless, despite or perhaps even because of that, they scored another number one with the album and their highest ever single chart placing, when “Mama”, the opening track, went to number four in the UK. Even in the hard-to-crack US market, it hit number nine. So maybe they made the right decision. Well, commercially they had of course, but I'm sure they began shedding fans by the cartload with the onslaught begun by
Abacab, continued here and with the next album almost banging in the final nails in what was Genesis's progressive rock coffin. Naturally, millions stayed true to them, but for diehard Genesis fans who had grown up on the seventies material, well, if they wanted slick pop songs there was hundreds of bands they could listen to, and they must have wondered, as did I at the time, where their band had gone?
It is however an encouraging start, as “Mama” opens with breathy, determined drumming from Collins and then that familiar wailing keyboard from Tony Banks opens the song, although I see from the lineup that the drumming was done by a machine, operated by Rutherford! Says it all, really. The most signature sound to this album, almost, and it's not even the drummer making, or even operating the machine that's making it. The vocal contains a harsh, almost mocking laugh from Collins, followed by a sort of groan, which became the hook in the song, because to be honest it's not that super a track otherwise. It's interesting, and it sold, as I say, taking it to the fourth position in the charts in the UK, the highest Genesis had ever been in their career, but at its heart it's a song about a man wanting to visit a hooker, and let's be honest here, that's not the sort of subject matter we've been used to hearing Genesis sing about. They had left the airy-fairy castles, as I think Gabriel referred to their earlier lyrics, behind with the earthy honesty of
The Lamb, but sort of returned to them for the first two albums without him, whereas with
... And Then There Were Three..., Duke and
Abacab they had returned slightly there, with songs like “The lady lies”, “Cul de sac” and “Dodo”, among others, but here they were taking a stab at being a sort of “urban” band, without the real street cred to do so.
The song is also too long at nearly seven minutes, though it does work well. Generally speaking however, it is pretty much the same melody running through it, and very much the verse/verse/chorus/verse structure they had so actively tried to keep away from in the early days. If that wasn't bad enough, the next track, another single, bops along like some latter-day Beatles pop song (written in fact by Collins in tribute to the Fab Four; that's fine, but why didn't he keep it for his solo albums?) and “That's all” demonstrates the ordinary, chart-pleasing direction in which most if not all of Genesis's music was heading at this point. It's okay; I like the song, but there's no way anyone would recognise it as a Genesis song. Driven on a bouncy bass and jangly guitar with Banks relegated to some honky-tonk piano, it's not quite “The Fountain of Salmacis”, now is it? It didn't do as well as “Mama” here (though it reached number six in Ireland, shame on us!) but oddly performed much better across the great shining sea, where the Americans lapped up its easy pop sensibilities and pushed it to number six. Sigh.
The only real relief then comes in the form of the only song on the album that could really be called progressive rock, a two-part semi-suite (sorry Tom!) in which the first, shorter part is called “Home by the sea” and is vocal, the second, far longer one being an instrumental, almost, up until the point Collins comes in with a reprise of the lyric from the first part, and it's called, ingeniously, “Second home by the sea”. It's still my favourite on the album by miles, with its hard-edged guitar riff opening it, Banks then coming in with the familiar lush keyboards we've missed so much, a bouncy vocal from Collins reminding me in ways of “Robbery, assault and battery”. I think it's about a haunted place, but I really don't know. As Collins sings
”Help us someone! Let us out of here!/ We're living here so long undisturbed/ Dreaming of a time we were free” you get the idea of people being trapped here, unable to leave and relating their story to new arrivals, who perhaps then get trapped too.
The second part of the song, as I say, “Second home by the sea”, runs for over six minutes --- actually there's not the huge difference between the two that I thought: one is 4:46 and the other 6:22 --- and slips easily in from the first part, driven on powerful drumming and a trumpeting keyboard, with some fine and even funky guitar licks from Mike Rutherford, and it's a small echo of the Genesis I used to know until it fades almost away, to be replaced by this new “pop” band who call themselves Genesis. It's interesting when the vocal comes back in at the end; you've more or less expected this will be an instrumental all the way, then, like “Duke's travels” the vocal just slides in, and it's quite effective.
The rest of the album is garbage. That's not fair, but in all fairness, it struggles to recover from the execrable “Illegal alien”, where Genesis go out of their way to mock Mexicans, and come very close to racism, all in the name of humour. That's all very well, but when you say things in the lyric like
”Over the border there/ Lies the promised land/ Where everything comes easy/ You just hold out your hand” and
”I've got a sister who'll/ Be willing to oblige/ She will do anything now/ To help me get to the outside” you can't help but think they're denigrating a whole country and their attempts to carve out a new life for themselves in the USA. And they're not even American! The video for the single (yes, it was released as a single, and flopped badly, especially in America) doesn't help, with the guys dressed as Mexicans and affecting the accent, demonstrating every Mexican stereotype you can think of. It's a poppy, boppy song which introduces for I think the first time trumpet on a Genesis album, played by Phil Collins (Oh no I'm wrong aren't I? They had a whole damn horn section on
Abacab) just to give it that “authentic” Mexican flavour. Madre de dos dios! I really have a problem with this song. If they had even engaged some Mexican musicians to help on it, it might have given it a bit more credibility, but as it stands it just seems like one of the nastiest, most racist songs written in the eighties, all under the guise of “comedy” or “satire”. Yeah, I know: it's all in good fun. But is it?
It's a poor crop after that. Almost as if there is a dark spirit hovering over the album, nothing can really lift the feeling of anger and disgust that lingers after “Illegal alien”, and while “Taking it all too hard” might be the band's unconscious attempts to say “Look man, it was just a joke!” it doesn't work. Collins ditches the false moustache and sombrero, and the terrible accent, and knuckles down to what is essentially a ballad, the first on the album, but the sentiments don't ring true and it just sounds to me like a half-hearted attempt at a not-really-sincere apology. Nice bright keys from Banks, a soft sort of laidback feel to the song, but the opening verse, when Collins sings
”I know you'll never admit/ You were ever really to blame/ Everything's a game to you” sound like the response of the fans (or ex-fans) south of the border. The lines
”I cannot help you/ It's much too late” seem to say it all.
Then again, it could be deeper and perhaps darker than that. I realise I'm making my own interpretation of the lyric here, and could be totally wrong (wouldn't be the first time) but when I think about it now, this almost seems more like Genesis castigating the fans who won't get on board with the new sound. When Collins sings
"Oh no, not the same mistakes again/ You're taking it all too hard" he could be venting exasperation at the "old" fans, while this almost seems to be backed up by
"The old days are gone/ And they're better left alone/ I cannot help you/ It's much too late" which really seems to be a smack in the teeth for the older fans. Mind you, there is a line which looks to be a sort of possible regret, when Collins mutters, almost ashamedly,
"But I still miss you/ I keep it to myself."
If I may digress slightly here (who am I talking to? Nobody's reading this!) one of the things that really annoys me about prog rock bands is their eventual need to distance themselves from the label. Marillion are the same, and though I love them, it's hard to hear that your idols are now essentially denigrating their past work. I mean, when Genesis were churning out top prog albums like
Trespass and
Foxtrot they didn't have a problem being called progressive rock. They even gloried in it to an extent. But now, suddenly, in the space of five years, they're turning their back on their roots and their old fans. Talk about ungrateful. They're not the only ones, but it hurts, coming from a band I've followed pretty much all my life.
“Just a job to do” merges the world of “new” Genesis and Collins's own solo career in a sort of fast, funky number which seems to refer to (allegorically or otherwise) a hitman of some sort, but again aspects of the possible apology for “Illegal alien” persist as he sings the opening lines
”It's no use saying that it's all right”. Indeed. The shouts of
”Bang! Bang! Bang!/ And down you go!” are a world away from
”Crawlers covered the floor/ In the red and ochre corridor”. The tune itself is okay and there's a great melody to it, but it's so un-Genesis (or what I thought of as Genesis anyway) it just hurts. “Silver rainbow” is probably one of the weakest tracks on the album, and does nothing for me with its marching beat and semi-sexual innuendo in the lyric; the vocal harmonies are terrible (something Genesis used to be able to do so well) and the obvious theft of some of Gabriel's own solo rhythms for the opening is almost sad. The lyric is terrible:
”If you're sitting there beside her/ And a bear comes in the room” --- uh, what? The chorus is just awful and thrown together.
There's some respite at the end, as the album makes a valiant effort to rally and almost allows the band to pull it out of the fire in the eleventh hour, with a song that perhaps makes a promise, a promise the band failed to keep on the next album. “It's gonna get better” swells up on Banks's swirling Hammond organ and has a really old-style Genesis melody about it, another ballad yes but a good one. It's not good enough though for me to ignore the last four tracks, and I ended the album more on a hopeful note than an expectant one with this ringing in my ears. Had I known what was coming, perhaps I would just have left it at that.
TRACKLISTING AND RATINGS
Mama
That's all
Home by the sea
Second home by the sea
Illegal alien
Taking it all too hard
Just a job to do
Silver rainbow
It's gonna get better
It's hard to see why Genesis changed so much over the course of three albums ---- well, no it isn't. It's all about popularity, money and chart singles of course. Probably on the back of the success both of “Follow you follow me” and Collins's solo career taking off, Genesis must have realised this was the way to go, and certainly with a chart-topping single of his own under his belt, Collins was likely to bring more chart-friendly ideas to his songwriting, and the other two would have been possibly influenced by this. Or maybe they were just fed-up being a band who could sell out huge arenas but had had no chart success. Whatever the reason, it seems they actively went after hit singles here, and the closing line on this album,
"It's time for a change” left little doubt that they were preparing to, and working towards, leaving behind their roots and becoming just another pop band.
As the next album would unreservedly show.