Okay, well it seems in terms of Genesis the band - leaving aside any solo efforts I might look into later - we have three albums left. By a staggering coincidence, two of them are the debut and their final album, so this discography can be bookended by those two, which will finish it up nicely with a sort of before and after (though not really showcasing, with either album, the best of this fascinating band).
That leaves us with this, which kind of becomes a bridge between "old", Hackett-esque Genesis and the slowly emerging pop sound to be championed by Collins, though in fairness he can't be made to shoulder all the blame.
Just most of it.
During the recording sessions for
Wind and Wuthering, Steve Hackett had been more than annoyed to find that most of the suggestions he put forward for songs to be included on the album were rejected, in favour of compositions written by mostly Tony Banks, whose work is all over that album. Added to this, the fact that he was getting burned out by touring (1976/77 had seen Genesis undergo not one but two extensive tours, supporting both albums) and had already made inroads into a solo career, he decided to quit the band in 1977, leaving Genesis as a trio composed of Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks. They would remain this way until their very last album.
...And Then There Were Three... (1978)
Although this would become something of a seachange for Genesis, as they ditched entirely the longer songs, moved away from the more progressive rock direction of previous albums (especially
Wind and Wuthering) and towards a more standard rock/pop format, it starts off as you would expect a Genesis album to, with lonely, almost keening keyboards rising into the tune, but as the guitar snarls in (yeah, it does, sort of) the percussion takes a weird kind of syncopated rhythm and we discover that “Down and Out” is one of the many songs on this album to move away from fantasy or historical themes, in somewhat the same way as its predecessor did, and more into the real world. As we listen, it's the tale of a man being fired by his boss, who seems to take pleasure in delivering the news personally. It's got a real punch to it, with Rutherford really stepping up as now the main and only guitarist, and Collins well settled in his role as the band's vocalist and revelling in it.
”Don't hedge your bets” suggests he,
”We can make a deal.” Perhaps appealing to the departing/departed Hackett? It's an interesting parallel to their own careers as he sings
”You can't go on like this forever/ So it's with regret I tell you now/ That from this moment on/ You're on your own!” Some great guitar work from Mike, with Tony's keyboards somewhat in the background but still fighting for their place, and Phil's drumming running the whole thing. “Undertow” is a more relaxed song, mostly a ballad, exhorting us to live every day as if it were our last. It's a Banks solo, one of four on the album, on which the songwriting duties are pretty evenly shared between the guitarist and the keysman, with Rutherford writing three solo, and Collins only involved on four, and none solo. A lovely soft piano opens “Undertow” with a gentle vocal from Collins, the lyric almost reflecting the album cover as he sings
”Some there are; cold/ They prepare for a sleepless night/ Maybe this will be their last fight.”
It ramps up then on the drums and into the chorus, which has a fantastic hook, one of the best Genesis have written to date. There's amazing emotion in it, as Collins's voice rises in passion as he sings, the vocal falling then at the end of the chorus and back into the softer, lower tone of the verse. It's no surprise that piano and synth rule this song, being composed by Banks, but the next one is a joint effort and, I have to say, one of the single worst Genesis songs I have ever had the misfortune to have to listen to. A real candidate for skipping over, in my case, if ever there was one. “Ballad of Big” sees the guys trying to cash in on the Country and Western folk tale, as they sing of Big Jim Cooley who tried to drive his cattle through Indian infested country, and
”Died like all good cowboys/ With his boots on/ Next to his men.” Yeah, who the f
uck cares? After the two opening tracks, this is a serious comedown and unfortunately a pointer to how the second half of the album will go. Not all of it, but much of it.
It starts off well, with a humming piano and synth line, and Tony's Pro Soloist setting up the choral vocal, then guitar takes over and the whole thing just descends into farce. It's not that it's not played well or has no melody, as it certainly does, but come on: a song about a fu
cking rancher driving his herd across a pass? On a Genesis album? What's next? A song about Mexicans trying to get into .... oh. Wait.
No, I just hate this damn song. Luckily it's followed by two standouts, the first being a gorgeous little ballad, the first written by Rutherford on his own, and “Snowbound” returns a little to the fantasy imagery on which Genesis built their early reputation, with the story of a traveller who lies down in the snow one night to awake and find he is a living snowman. The snow has covered him up, and now
”Smiling children tear your body to the ground/ Covered red that only we can see”. It's quite gory in its way, certainly for a Genesis song, and driven on some sublime twelve-string with the Pro Soloist backing it up, a gentle vocal from Collins until he reaches the chorus, where the full horror of what is happening is underlined by his powerful voice as he sings
”Pray! Pray for the snowman!”
Again, a perfect hook in the chorus and some lovely shimmering keyswork from Banks, powerful drumming from Collins punctuating the tune. But Banks has another trick up his sleeve, and “Burning Rope” closes out the second side with a triumphant flourish, its rising keyboard line climbing like the very person in the lyric who
”Climbed upon a burning rope/ To escape the mob below” with a real sense of panic and urgency in the music. The piano and synth solo that opens the song is brilliant, one of Banks's best and most jaunty, and ushers it in perfectly. Genesis have certainly acquired here the magic touch, with hooky melodies that should have yielded them several hit singles. Collins is in fine form vocally too, and to mark how much this album changes Genesis, this is the longest song at just over seven minutes.
I have no idea what it's about of course (so they haven't changed
that much!) but it seems to nod back to “Undertow” with the idea that we need to live our lives and not let time pass us by and run out on us. When Collins sings
”Don't leave today to tomorrow/ Like you were immortal” the message is clear. Perhaps the burning rope is a representation of our lives, smouldering away, shortening with every passing year, leaving us less and less options? Great guitar solo from Rutherford and a powerful declension into the final verse and chorus and a big bombastic ending.
This is, however, where the album begins to dip, and seriously. The stark ringing guitar that opens “Deep in the motherlode” is effective, but when we find out it's another song of the Old West, with its chorus
”Go West, young man/ On a dollar a day/ Just like your family said” it's to me something of a disappointment. Nevertheless, it's driven by a grinding, bouncing guitar and a thumping bass from Rutherford, and the melody is very engaging. There's a nice sort of low-key midsection, then a great growling chugging guitar from Rutherford before it heads into the final verse. “Many Too Many”, as I have already intimated in the review of
Selling England by the Pound is to me just a rewritten “More Fool Me”; it's a simple ballad, open and honest and almost painful it the vulnerability shown through the lyric -
”Thing I find strange is the way you built me up/ To knock me down again” - and runs on a beautiful piano from Banks, but to me it's more an ELO style song than a Genesis one.
Again, it's a Banks solo number, a nice ballad but it just feels a little simple and almost poppy, perhaps indicating the direction the band would soon head, leaving mostly their progressive rock roots far behind them, and shedding fans in the process. Although I like “Scenes from a Night's Dream”, and it gets everything jumping nicely after the ballad, I did think originally it was just about some kid's dreams. Now I find it's actually based on a comic book character, called Little Nemo. Hmm. Well it's boppy enough, with a hard rock guitar and the guys certainly have fun with it; it allows them to look back to their previous lyrical subjects
”Dragons breathing fire, but friendly/ Mushrooms tall as houses” --- while cocking an amused eye at them, as if saying “used we to write that kind of stuff?” Rutherford certainly enjoys himself on the guitar, driving the song along joyfully.
Things don't improve when we drop right back down again for the moody, almost film noir “Say it's Alright Joe”, a dark, jazzy look at a barfly crying into his drink and telling his problems to his bartender. It's the last solo Rutherford piece, and as he says himself it was to be something of a play on the Dean Martin “Set 'em Up Joe” idea, turning that on its head. It's very morose though, the antithesis of the previous song. Lovely strummed guitar from Mike runs it nicely, backed up by sombre piano from Banks. Fun fact: in the lyric Collins says
”Gonna build myself a tower/ No way in, no way out” and years later he would rob these lines for his second solo album, when on the song “Thru these walls” he would sing
”Ooh I'm feeling like I'm locked in a cage/ No way in, no way out”. It also I guess nods back a little to
The Lamb, where the lyric in "The Carpet Crawl" mentions "Gotta get in to get out".
The sudden change to uptempo with almost orchestral keyboard comes as a shock, and I feel doesn't gell well with the dark, bitter tone of the rest of the song. It also doesn't last, and slides quickly back down into the maudlin pit of despair the song has languished in from the start. I suppose I should be fair here: these are not terrible songs, not by any stretch of the imagination. It's just that, given how well and how strongly the album opened, pretty much right up to the end of side one, the last four tracks are quite weak in comparison. Luckily the album rallies at the end, with the bouncy but dark “The Lady Lies”, which warns against rushing in before you check what you're rushing into, as a man is lured into rescuing a lady, who is in fact a demon in disguise, and his fate is sealed. Using her feminine wiles she seduces him, and as Collins declares
”Who can escape what he desires?” Great piano, howling synth and some strong guitar make this another standout, with some of that almost “Enossification” in the voices at the end when the demon reveals itself, grinning
”So glad you could make it/ We've had everything arranged/ So glad you saw fit to pay a call”. Powerful piano ending to fade, and then we're into the closer.
There surely can't be anyone, even those many who hate Genesis, who don't know their most famous and commercially successful single, and “Follow You Follow Me”, while weak and insipid as a closer, hit a chord with general music fans and took them to the number seven slot in the UK charts, and allowed them their first ever break into the US top 40. The album itself got to number three in the UK, their highest ever placing. The song rides on a soft, gentle guitar melody with crooning synth from Banks, and it's the simplest of simple love songs, which may explain why it did so well when other singles down the years bombed. If anything, though it was a clear indication of a change in direction by Genesis to a more commercial, pop-oriented format, this was the first nail, as it were, in the coffin of their progressive rock past. Would the fans then, follow them?
TRACK LISTING
Down and Out
Undertow
Ballad of Big
Snowbound
Burning Rope
Deep in the Motherlode
Many Too Many
Scenes from a Night's Dream
Say it's Alright Joe
The Lady Lies
Follow You Follow Me
Whatever you think of them though, Genesis had proved with this album that not only were they survivors, having lost a longtime member (again), but that they could capitalise on their talents, band together and release an album that would be their most successful ever, and even give them a top ten hit, introducing the band, if only through that song, to those outside of their fanbase and outside of progressive rock, something that had really never happened before. “I Know What I Like” had broken them into the charts but was quickly forgotten after the initial success, and for those outside of the Genesis camp, the band faded away into obscurity. With “Follow You Follow Me”, they had written a lovesong anthem that would never be forgotten, and produced an album that, while pushing them in ever a more standard rock/pop direction, was certainly consolidating their success and making sure that they would survive the death of prog rock as the seventies drew to a close.
Rating: 7.9/10