Tony Banks of Genesis

As it happens, a number of my favorite bands, such as the Beatles, Queen, and Genesis, have multiple songwriters. This is not entirely coincidental, of course, because a band with more than one songwriter will often have a greater variety of song styles, something I always appreciate. When looking at the careers of bands like these, it’s sometimes fun to separate out the contributions of each songwriter in the band, so I will be making a number of blog entries of this sort in the future.

Around the time I was in college, I was particularly into Genesis, collecting all of their music and quite a bit of the various band members’ solo work (incidentally, my starting point was the band’s mid 1980s work, so I’ve never had the frankly irrational prejudice some have against their more “pop” sounding material). While nowadays there are a number of artists I listen to more often, I recently acquired the Genesis box sets with the new remixes of their albums, so I have been listening to a lot of their music. Since March 27 is the 62nd birthday of Tony Banks (and his second classical album is scheduled to be released this week), it seemed like an appropriate time to do an article on him and his work with Genesis.


Tony Banks (full name Anthony George Banks) was a founding member of Genesis and, along with Mike Rutherford, the only member of the band who was with it through its entire history (at the moment the band is essentially defunct, though a slight possibility remains that they may get together again someday). His primary instrument was the keyboard, but in the band’s early years he also played acoustic guitar on some songs, and he also sang some backing vocals. A number of people both in and outside the band have commented that Banks was in many ways the group’s most important member. His keyboards were generally the most prominent part of the band’s sound, and probably no other member contributed more in the songwriting department, at least as far as music was concerned (in the early years Peter Gabriel wrote a somewhat larger share of the lyrics, though Banks wrote a fair amount, and continued to contribute a lot of the band’s lyrics all the way through the Phil Collins era). He is highly regarded by his fellow keyboard players, even though he was never as flashy as some of his fellow progressive rock keyboardists like Keith Emerson. As a number of critics have pointed out, this was chiefly because in Genesis, the songs came first; Banks played in ways that served the song, rather than to show off.

Genesis released its first single in 1968 and its first album in 1969. The band released a total of six albums with Peter Gabriel as lead singer, up to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 1974. On all these albums, the songs were credited to the group as a whole. However, in numerous interviews, the band members have revealed that many songs were written by individual members or by various combinations within the band. Even when most or all members contributed to a song, it was often the case that particular sections were written by one or two of them (for example, the opening section of “Supper’s Ready”, which is reprised several times, was written by Tony Banks, the Willow Farm section of the same song was by Gabriel, and the Apocalypse section was by Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins). While no information is available on some songs, from those that have been discussed in interviews it is evident that Tony Banks contributed to the majority of the songs from this period in some way, and in a number of cases he was the main or only songwriter.

For the first three albums after Peter Gabriel left and Phil Collins took over on vocals, songwriting attribution is fairly straightforward, as songs were credited individually, though for songs where credit is shared it is not always clear who did what, unless this has been mentioned in interviews (for example, “Entangled” is credited to Steve Hackett and Tony Banks; in fact, Hackett wrote the lyrics and the music for the verse sections, while the music for the chorus was by Banks). But starting with the 1980 album Duke, the three remaining members (Banks, Collins and Rutherford) wrote most of the songs together. These were genuine collaborations, written by the three as they jammed together. However, even in this period the music of some songs seems to have come a bit more from one or another member of the band, and the lyrics were generally written by one person, often the one who contributed more musically to the song, or at least felt most attached to the music that had been written.

So when it comes to listing the highlights of Tony Banks’s songwriting contributions to Genesis, from the early years I have selected a few songs from those which based on interviews can be mainly (or in two cases solely) attributed to him. Of course there are many others which he wrote key parts of, such as the abovementioned “Supper’s Ready”, “The Return of the Giant Hogweed”, “Get ‘Em Out By Friday” and many more, and there are other songs that he may well have written most or all of but have not been mentioned in interviews (for instance, I strongly suspect that he wrote “Seven Stones”, but I’ve never seen any quote to confirm of this -- several online sources do attribute the lyrics to him, but they also attribute the lyrics of "The Fountain of Salmacis" to Mike Rutherford, when Banks stated in Genesis: Chapter & Verse that he and Peter wrote them). For the late 1970s I included the best of the songs attributed solely to him (co-written songs have been excluded, even if his contribution was fairly substantial). From the remaining albums I’ve picked the best of the songs that seem musically to be primarily his (though this is obviously guesswork in many cases) and which he is known to have written the lyrics to, plus an instrumental that features a lot of his keyboard playing. On the first CD, I have also included “Shepherd”, a song recorded in 1970 that was first released in 1998. I have seen no information about who wrote this, but it is piano-based, which points to Banks (though Gabriel and Anthony Phillips also occasionally wrote on piano), and more importantly, Banks actually sings some lead vocals on the song. Not only does this also point to him being the author, but as the only Genesis recording to feature him on lead vocals, it seems appropriate to include it on that basis alone.

My intention was originally to select songs for a single CD, but it proved too difficult to fit everything I wanted to pick onto one CD (it doesn’t help that many of the songs are eight or nine minutes long). So I expanded it to 2 CDs, and even then had to limit myself a lot, particularly on songs from the early and late period. Once again, I want to emphasize that I restricted myself to songs which were entirely or mostly written by Banks, i.e., well over 50%, so songs like "Supper's Ready" (where he probably wrote a slightly larger share of the music than anyone else, but no more than half of it, and none of the lyrics) weren't even considered. Even of those songs that were considered, I put good songs that he wrote all of over great songs that he wrote most of. As a result, many of the “honorable mentions” below are as good or even better than the songs I picked, but as they were less fully attributable to Banks, I decided to leave them out (a desire to include tracks from as many albums as possible also played a role, as did space; for instance, I would have picked "Dodo/Lurker" over "Keep It Dark", but it was too long). The CDs are mostly chronological, though “Firth of Fifth” seemed the best opening track and “Afterglow” the best closer on the first CD.

It seems appropriate here to add a brief assessment of Banks’ songwriting as shown in his Genesis work (I’ll talk about his solo work momentarily). Musically, as I said earlier, he is in many ways the most important member of Genesis, and as I like the band, of course I like most of the music Banks wrote for them. Throughout their career, his keyboards are one of the main things that kept the band sounding interesting, with the variety of textures and sounds that he used, whether it was on the early material with Peter Gabriel or during their commercial peak in the 1980s. He wrote many of the band’s most outstanding epics, such as “Firth of Fifth” and “One for the Vine”, as well as contributing excellent melodies for many of the group’s best short songs like “That’s All”. In fact, I am inclined to agree with those who say that he is the most important member of the band. A band with him and any single other member of the classic group (e.g., Rutherford, as on Calling All Stations, but Collins, Gabriel or Hackett would do as well) would probably still sound like Genesis, but the same would not be true of any two of the rest. This is not to minimize the contributions of the others, of course. The material that the others contributed, which was often very different stylistically, provided a balance to what Banks wrote, and even on songs he wrote entirely on his own, the playing and singing of the other members of the group helped bring it to life. For both of these reasons, Banks’ solo work has not been nearly as consistent as his work with Genesis.

This is not to say that even his Genesis work was perfect. He did sometimes get slightly carried away with all the layers of keyboards he put on some songs, particularly on albums like And Then There Were Three. His most obvious weak point is lyrics, where he was very inconsistent. There aren’t many songs where I think the lyrics he wrote are bad all the way through, but he frequently wrote some rather awkward lines. On the other hand, he also wrote some lyrics that were quite good, often in the same song as the bad ones; “Burning Rope”, for instance, has some great lines and some that are, well, not so good, and the same can be said of many songs he wrote. There are a few which are pretty solid all the way through, like “Home by the Sea”, and I would say that on the whole I like more of the lyrics that he wrote with Genesis than I dislike – it’s just that the occasional bad lines do detract from otherwise good work. He himself admitted that it was only when he did vocal demos for "Me and Sarah Jane" and "Keep It Dark" that he realized "what I had been putting Pete and Phil through over the years...giving them weird lyrics like 'bread-bin'." Speaking of Banks' lyrics, I might note here that I’ve noticed a number of people expressing a particular dislike for the lyrics of “Time Table”, which Banks confirmed he wrote in an offhand comment in the 2007 Reissues Interview, but I think they are actually pretty decent (I suspect the dislike has more to do with the fact that the song is short and relatively simple, whereas a lot of prog rock fans reject anything that is less than 6 minutes long with multiple key changes and wordy, obtuse lyrics; I like the latter kind of song myself on occasion, just not exclusively…but I digress).

Another area where Banks is somewhat unfairly the target of critical comments is in his relationship with other band members. It is true that personality played a role in Banks' dominance of the group almost as much as his obvious talent; about the band's early years, he has been quoted as saying "my tastes controlled the group more than the others, perhaps because I got the most unpleasant if people disagreed with me". From what both he and the others have said in multiple interviews, Banks could be quite insistent about getting his way, and he and Peter Gabriel, in particular, argued frequently. Steve Hackett in the period after he left also complained about Banks having too much control. In Genesis: Chapter & Verse, Banks himself commented that "[Hackett] said...that I was controlling it too much -- and he's probably right. I think he always thought that for some reason I had it in for him, but I really didn't. That's just my way. I always appear to be like that." Banks is also known for being extremely reserved; several new members of the group, from Hackett to touring member Daryl Stuermer, commented that at first they thought Banks disliked them or their playing because he always looked grim and never said anything. But the idea that some perpetuate that he and Hackett, for example, hate each other is clearly absurd to anyone who actually bothers to read their interviews closely. Judging from interviews, Banks is in fact very honest and forthright even about his own flaws, as the above quotes show, and probably quite likeable once you get past his initial reserve (I suspect he has also mellowed as he's gotten older). He also has an extremely sharp memory, and is perhaps the most informative about the band's history. I remember reading one interview with him and Mike Rutherford where the interviewer for some reason gave them a brief trivia quiz about the Genesis back catalog. Rutherford couldn't answer any of the questions, but Banks got them all of them. If he wasn't a brilliant musician, he'd probably make a good historian, like his former bandmate Phil Collins, who recently published a book about the Alamo.

Anyway, enough rambling, here are my Best of Tony Banks with Genesis CDs:

The Best of Tony Banks with Genesis

CD1
Firth of Fifth (Banks [one source says Rutherford helped on lyrics])
Shepherd (Unknown; probably Banks and perhaps Gabriel)
Fountain of Salmacis (Music: mostly Banks; Lyrics: Banks and Gabriel)
Time Table (Banks)
Anyway (Music: Banks; Lyrics: Gabriel)
Mad Man Moon (Banks)
A Trick of the Tail (Banks)
One For The Vine (Banks)
Undertow (Banks)
Burning Rope (Banks)
Many Too Many (Banks)
The Lady Lies (Banks)
Afterglow (Banks)

Honorable Mentions: Seven Stones (primarily Banks), Watcher of the Skies (Music: Banks[primarily]/Gabriel/Collins[/Hackett/Rutherford?]; Lyrics: Banks/Rutherford), The Cinema Show (second section) (Music: Banks/Rutherford/Collins), The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (Music: Banks/Gabriel; Lyrics: Gabriel), The Lamia (Music: Banks; Lyrics: Gabriel), In the Cage (Music: Banks[primarily]/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel), The Colony of Slippermen (Music: Banks[primarily]/Collins/Hackett/Rutherford; Lyrics: Gabriel), Robbery, Assault and Battery (Banks/Collins), All in a Mouse’s Night (Banks)

CD2
The Day the Light Went Out (Banks)
Guide Vocal (Banks)
Heathaze (Banks)
Cul-De-Sac (Banks)
Evidence of Autumn (Banks)
Me and Sarah Jane (Banks)
Keep It Dark (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)
Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)
Silver Rainbow (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)
Domino (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)
The Brazilian (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford)
Feeding The Fire (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)
Fading Lights (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)

Honorable Mentions: Duchess (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), Dodo/Lurker (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), Do the Neurotic (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford), Living Forever (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), On the Shoreline (Music: Banks/Collins/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), Alien Afternoon (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), Uncertain Weather (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks), One Man's Fool (Music: Banks/Rutherford; Lyrics: Banks)

Tony Banks Solo

As I mentioned above, I would say that Tony Banks did most of his best work to date with Genesis. This is not to say, however, that he didn’t have any good solo songs. There is easily enough excellent material to fill a CD on his five solo albums plus his Soundtracks album, even excluding his classical CD (which is also pretty good). His first album, A Curious Feeling, was the one for which I had the most difficulty picking out particular tracks. This is in part because it is a concept album. Musically it is his only solo album that is progressive rock, and there are quite a few good bits scattered throughout. Some of the keyboard sounds he uses I don’t really care for (though he was far from the only late 1970s keyboardist with this problem), but overall the album is fairly strong musically, if not equal to most Genesis albums. The album’s main flaw is the lyrics, which include a relatively high proportion of cringe-worth lines. Banks has said that he originally based the album on the excellent story Flowers for Algernon, but that while working on it he learned that a stage musical based on the same story was set to premier before the album came out, and he was advised to avoid using the same story in case the musical was a hit (which it wasn’t). So he went back and rewrote some of the lyrics to change the overall story. He now says he regrets not sticking to Flowers for Algernon, and I heartily agree, as the new story is not nearly as good and the song that is the key to the new plot, “The Lie”, contains some of the album’s worst lyrics (which is all the more regrettable because musically it’s quite good, perhaps the best on the album). But none of the songs here is among his best lyrical efforts, and since the many good musical moments are equally spread among different songs, it was hard to settle on just two or three. Really the album should be heard in its entirety at least a few times, weak lyrics and all.

Of his other albums, I would say The Fugitive and Still are definitely the best (in fact I like them a little better than A Curious Feeling overall). Still in particular has a lot of excellent songs. They sound more varied than the songs on his other albums, too, in part because he used five different singers (including himself), though I think he also varied his songwriting more on this album than elsewhere (it may also not be entirely coincidence that three of the best songs are the ones on which his guest vocalists wrote the lyrics, though a couple of the lyrics he wrote himself are quite good). The Fugitive is the only album where Banks himself sang lead on all the songs (on Bankstatement and Still he sings one song each), and while he’s not a great singer, he actually does a respectable job on most of them. While the album is very much 1980s pop rock, the songs are more complex than most pop songs, and the distinctive Banks sound that Genesis fans are familiar with pops up fairly often. There are still some songs here that don’t impress me much, and a few on Still as well, but overall these two albums are worth seeking out. His other two albums, Bankstatement and Strictly Inc., are noticeably weaker, though both have some good moments. Several songs on Bankstatement are decent, though the only real standout track is “The Border”. Strictly Inc. is slightly better, though I have to say I haven’t listened to it as much (by the time it came out I was not obsessed with Genesis the way I had been a few years earlier, and I had a lot of other CDs to listen to).

Best of Tony Banks Solo
(All songs written by Tony Banks except where otherwise noted)

The Waters of Lethe
For A While
This Is Love
At the Edge of Night
Moving Under
Shortcut To Somewhere (Lyrics: Fish)
The Border
I Wanna Change The Score (Lyrics: Nick Kershaw)
Water Out Of Wine
Another Murder Of A Day (Lyrics: Fish)
The Final Curtain
An Island In The Darkness

Honorable Mentions: From the Undertow, A Curious Feeling, Forever Morning, You, And The Wheels Keep Turning, Raincloud, A House Needs a Roof, Red Day On Blue Street (Lyrics: Nick Kershaw), Walls Of Sound

Album Review – Sail Away by Randy Newman

Album Title: Sail Away
Artist: Randy Newman
Release Date: May 1972

Side One
Sail Away
Lonely at the Top
He Gives Us All His Love
Last Night I Had a Dream
Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear
Old Man

Side Two
Political Science
Burn On
Memo to My Son
Dayton, Ohio - 1903
You Can Leave Your Hat On
God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

All songs written by Randy Newman

Randy Newman is one of the greatest American songwriters of the last half century, and Sail Away is, in my opinion and that of many others, his best album. One thing that I should acknowledge from the outset is that, like another great American songwriter named Bob Dylan, Randy Newman doesn’t have the most attractive voice out there. Therefore, many listeners may enjoy his songs more when they are sung by others (most of the songs on this album, like many of his other songs, have been covered by other artists). However, there is usually something to be said for hearing songs sung by the person who wrote them, and that is particularly true of Randy Newman’s songs, which are generally full of an irony that others often can’t convey like he can, if they even realize it’s there in the first place.

The ironic nature of Newman’s songs is one of their key features; rarely does a song of his mean exactly what it says. One reason for this is another characteristic feature of his work, namely his use of characters. His songs are generally sung from the viewpoint of some unusual character. These characters are often oddballs, misfits or just seriously flawed. In some cases, Newman is just presenting an interesting character to the listener (in much the same manner that Mark Knopfler, who has stated that Newman inspired him in this regard, tells the tale of a narrow-minded store clerk in Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing”). In others, he is using them to make a statement about something, such as bigotry, racism, or greed.

Sail Away not only includes some of Randy Newman’s best songs, including the title track, “Lonely at the Top”, “Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear” and “Political Science”, just to name a few, but it also presents them in the most effective way, striking a middle ground between his heavily orchestral debut and the sparse arrangements of 12 Songs. While he has many other songs as brilliant as those here, and many of them receive settings as effective as these (a number of the songs on the latter day album Bad Love, for instance, have especially great arrangements), none of his other albums have quite equaled this one in overall consistency. This album often appears in lists of all-time best albums, and supposedly was a big help to Brian Wilson in the depths of depression in the early 1970s.

Sail Away Song by Song

Sail Away: The title track of Sail Away combines brilliant lyrics and an excellent melody, making one of Randy Newman’s best songs in a career filled with high-quality songwriting. Someone who wasn’t paying enough attention to the lyrics might think it was a patriotic song about immigrating to America, but a closer look reveals that the narrator is a slave “recruiter” coaxing Africans on board to sail to Charleston, where they will be sold. The song positively drips with irony, the best example being where he sings “In America, every man is free…”, bringing to mind the idealistic view of America as the land of the free, only to add after a pause “to take care of his home and his family”, since the slaves of course will not be free – demonstrating the hypocrisy behind the American ideal. This song has been covered numerous times, including versions by artists such as Etta James, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (with backing from Arlo Guthrie), Linda Ronstadt, Bobby Darin and even Ray Charles, but Newman’s own version is as good or better than any of the others that I’ve heard.

Lonely at the Top: Another great set of tongue-in-cheek lyrics combined with a simple yet effective melody, this song, which first appeared the previous year on Randy Newman Live, is another of the album’s standout tracks. Newman says he wrote it with Frank Sinatra in mind, but Sinatra turned it down. He also offered it to Barbara Streisand, who recorded several other Newman songs, but she said (probably correctly) that people would miss the irony and think she really meant it. Several other artists did cover it, including an amusing duet version with altered lyrics by Cher and Carol Burnett.

He Gives Us All His Love: This song, which first appeared in the film Cold Turkey (Newman’s first film work in a career which has seen 20 Academy Award nominations and two wins – as he said on the latter occasion, "my percentages aren't great"), on the surface sounds like a gospel song in praise of God, and in fact has been covered by a number of Christian artists. However, given that Newman’s true view of religion is more accurately indicated by the last song on this album, it is obvious that the song is ironic, particularly with lines like “He hears the babies crying / he sees the old folks dying”.

Last Night I Had a Dreamhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif: Another song that first appeared on Randy Newman Live, this is an odd little track filled with strange imagery – just like many dreams. There’s a psychedelic rock version of the song that only appeared on a promo single (Newman himself called it "one of the worst records ever made", but I think it's actually rather interesting).

Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear: This is one of Randy Newman’s best known songs, having been a big hit for the Alan Price Set back in 1967 and covered by a number of other artists (it was even performed on the Muppet Show by Scooter and – of course – Fozzie the Bear). The jaunty melody conceals the pathos of a song in which the narrator and his bear perform for whatever well-to-do passers-by deign to toss to them.

Old Man: A beautiful melody combined with an excellent but very depressing set of lyrics that certainly don’t make atheism sound very attractive (ironic considering that Newman is an atheist). A great version of this is the wonderfully sung cover by Art Garfunkel from his album Angel Claire.

Political Science: As Randy Newman himself said, this song is as close as he ever got to Tom Lehrer. It’s amazing how apropos these brilliantly sarcastic lyrics sung from the viewpoint of a redneck American nationalist (who wants to “set everybody free” by bombing them into oblivion) seemed during the George W. Bush era 30 years later.

Burn On: In 1969, the badly polluted Cuyahoga River that flows through Cleveland caught fire, inspiring this heavily ironic track that remains among the best of Newman’s many songs about different places in America.

Memo to My Son: A short little song that nevertheless does a great job of portraying the kind of fathers who, as Newman says “can’t get into their kids until the kid can talk.” An especially great bit is where the narrator tells his baby he’ll show him “how smart I am” by repeating overworked sports clichés like “winners never quit”.

Dayton, Ohio – 1903: This song first appeared on the excellent Harry Nilsson album Nilsson Sings Newman. It presents an idyllic – and deliberately clichéd – portrait of turn-of-the-[20th]-century Middle America.

You Can Leave Your Hat On: Another of Newman’s best known – or in this case, notorious – songs, thanks to Joe Cocker’s version (not to mention the Tom Jones version featured in the movie The Full Monty). Of course Newman himself was portraying a somewhat perverted character in his usual ironic fashion.

God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind): The album closer is a much more direct attack on religion than the subtler “He Gives Us All His Love”, and as such evokes a very divided reaction. Some consider it one of the highlights of the album, while many religious listeners were offended by it. My own feelings are more mixed. I don’t have a problem with the message, and some of it is cleverly done, but a few of the lines just don’t work as well for me as most of Newman’s lyrics. But while I wouldn’t consider it one of the best tracks on the album, that’s as much due to the strength of the competition as the minor weaknesses of the song itself. It still makes a good closer to an excellent album.