R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis

As noted in some of my older entries in this blog, I did some freelance writing for the Taiwan-based music service KKBox as part of their attempt to establish themselves in the Malaysia-Singapore market. Most of the articles I wrote for them can be found here. However, KKBox seemingly abandoned this effort last year (or so I was told), with the result that one or two of my later articles were never published online. Most notably, only the first part of my long article on the Genesis collection R-Kive was published. While I wrote a separate (and less commercial, so to speak) entry on the set for this blog, I'd like to make the entire original article available here as well. I thought about just putting the second part here, but it seemed better to have it all in one place. For the sake of any readers who may have read part 1 on the KKBox website, I've included subheadings for the two parts, so you can just scroll down to part two.

R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis (Part 1)

Genesis was one of the longest-lasting and most commercially successful bands in rock history. Not only did the group itself sell tens of millions of albums, but the band’s key members had successful solo careers, and two of them became superstars. The recently released three CD collection R-Kive provides an excellent chronological overview of the band’s history. Not only does it include many of the band’s best known tracks, it provides listeners with a taste of the band members’ solo careers by including three solo tracks from each of the band’s five chief members. As founding member and original lead vocalist Peter Gabriel says, it shows “different musical histories merging together in a powerful way.”

Genesis was founded in the late 1960s by public school students and aspiring songwriters Tony Banks (keyboard/guitar), Peter Gabriel (vocals), Mike Rutherford (bass/guitar) and Anthony Phillips (guitar). Recruiting a classmate as drummer, they formed a band to perform their own songs, soon evolving a style that emphasized long, complex songs in the genre that came to be known as progressive rock. R-Kive opens with “The Knife”, a song from the band’s second album Trespass and their first in this genre. After Phillips left in 1970, the remaining three added Phil Collins as drummer and backing vocalist and Steve Hackett as lead guitarist, creating the group’s classic five man lineup and quickly becoming one of England’s top progressive rock bands. It is this lineup that features on fan favorites like “The Musical Box” from 1971’s Nursery Cryme and the epic 23-minute “Supper’s Ready” from 1972’s Foxtrot. Two songs from the 1973 album Selling England by the Pound are included, “The Cinema Show”, which included a lengthy instrumental section that became a concert staple, and “I Know What I Like”, the band’s first UK hit single. The band’s last album with Peter Gabriel, the 1974 double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, is represented by the title track, the unusually hard-edged “Back in NYC” (later covered by Jeff Buckley) and the lovely “Carpet Crawlers”. The first disc of R-Kive closes with “Ace of Wands”, a track from Steve Hackett’s 1975 solo album Voyage of the Acolyte, the first solo venture by any of the five group members.

After Gabriel’s departure, Genesis continued as a four piece with Phil Collins taking over on lead vocals. This period is represented by “Ripples” and “Afterglow” from the well-received 1976 albums Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering. The beginnings of Gabriel’s solo career are represented by the hit single off his debut self-titled album, the excellent “Solsbury Hill” (in part about his departure from Genesis). Hackett also decided to quit Genesis for a solo career, but Banks, Collins and Rutherford carried on with the ironically-titled And Then There Were Three, which featured the hit “Follow You Follow Me”, and also represented a trend toward shorter, more straightforward songs. Tony Banks, in some way the most important member of Genesis in terms of songwriting and overall sound, released his first solo album A Curious Feeling in 1979 (represented here by “For a While”, featuring vocalist Kim Beacon), and Rutherford released an album as well. Neither was a big commercial success; nor for that matter were Hackett’s solo albums, but albums like 1979’s Spectral Mornings, which opened with “Every Day” (featuring vocalist Peter Hicks), attracted praise from critics and a following of loyal fans. Peter Gabriel’s third album, released in 1980, was both a critical and commercial success, and included the anti-apartheid anthem “Biko”. That same year Genesis released Duke, a mix of progressive and pop rock that became their best selling album yet. For the first time, Collins took an equal share in the writing with Banks and Rutherford, and the group began writing more and more songs together, including the energetic hit “Turn It on Again”. Collins released his own debut solo album Face Value in 1981, launching the most commercially successful solo career of all with the iconic hit “In the Air Tonight”. That same year, the band itself moved further toward pop with Abacab, but as the hit title track shows, their music was still highly distinctive. Their self-titled 1983 album contained the quirkily inventive “Mama” and the very catchy “That’s All”, big hits in the UK and the US respectively. Meanwhile, Collins was reaching his commercial peak as a solo artist, a period represented here by “Easy Lover”, his 1984 hit duet with Philip Bailey. The following year, Mike Rutherford found commercial success outside Genesis with his band Mike & the Mechanics, starting with their self-titled debut album and the hit “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” (featuring vocals by Paul Carrack, who sang lead on all three Mike & the Mechanics songs on this collection), which closes the second disc of R-Kive.


R-Kive – A Musical History of Genesis (Part 2)

In 1986, Tony Banks, Phil Collins and Mike Rutherford reconvened for the most commercially successful Genesis album of all, Invisible Touch, including the infectious US chart-topping title track and the excellent top five hits “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” and “Land of Confusion”, which open the third disc of R-Kive. Mike & the Mechanics had their biggest hit three years later with “The Living Years”. Tony Banks, meanwhile, had also continued his solo career with albums like the underrated The Fugitive (on which he did the lead vocals himself). In 1991, he released what many consider his best solo album, Still, featuring several guest vocalists including Nik Kershaw, who sang and wrote the lyrics for the excellent “Red Day on Blue Street”, but commercial success remained elusive. Genesis reunited once more later in 1991 for what proved to be their last studio album with Phil Collins, We Can’t Dance, which included the hits “I Can’t Dance”, “No Son of Mine” and “Hold on My Heart”. Mike & the Mechanics had another hit in 1995 with “Over My Shoulder” from Beggar on a Beach of Gold. In 1997, Banks and Rutherford, having recruited vocalist Ray Wilson, released what has (so far) proved to be the last new Genesis studio album, Calling All Stations (here represented by the title track), which sold well in Europe but made little impact in the US. Though Banks, Collins and Rutherford reunited for a last concert tour, and all five members of the classic early 1970s lineup have participated in projects such as this one, Genesis as a band has not released any new material this century, so the final tracks on the collection are from solo projects. Gabriel has continued to release solo albums that have been well-received critically and have sold well, though his commercial peak, like the band’s, was in the mid-1980s. Here he has included one of his more recent releases, the highly original “Signal to Noise” from 2002’s Up. From the same year, Testify, Phil Collins’ last album of original songs to date, is represented by the opening track, “Wake Up Call”. Steve Hackett has also continued to release interesting new material, such as “Nomads” from his 2009 album Out of the Tunnel’s Mouth. Tony Banks, meanwhile, has concentrated on classical music in recent years, releasing two albums. The final track on R-Kive, “Siren”, is from the second of these, 2012’s Six Pieces for Orchestra.

This Genesis retrospective provides an excellent musical history of the band and its members’ solo efforts. Of course, any dedicated fan will find a lot of favorite songs missing, from early tracks like “Watcher of the Skies”, “Firth of Fifth”, “Dance on a Volcano” and “One For the Vine” to later ones such as “Misunderstanding”, “Keep It Dark”, “Home by the Sea”, “Throwing It All Away”, “Jesus He Knows Me” and “Driving the Last Spike”. Many will also notice that some of the biggest songs from the peak of the two vocalists’ superstar solo careers were also left out, including Gabriel’s “Here Comes the Flood”, “Shock the Monkey”, “Sledgehammer”, “In Your Eyes”, and “Digging in the Dirt” and Collins’ “Against All Odds”, “Take Me Home” “One More Night”, “Sussudio”, “Another Day in Paradise” and “I Wish It Would Rain”, among many others, and fans of the others’ solo albums may also regret the lack of more of their songs. But that is inevitable for a band with as long a history as Genesis and with so many members with prominent solo careers. So while fans might quibble about a few of the selections, there is no doubt that R-Kive is just about the best introduction to Genesis and the solo ventures of its members that one could hope for in a single package. As Rutherford says, “it’s a wonderfully impressive array and variety of songs.”

As noted above, I wrote an additional commentary on R-Kive for this blog, including some thoughts on how I might have changed to song selection if I had been in charge. It also includes further links to some of my other Genesis-related writing, including overviews of the careers of each major member of the band. One day I hope to put together my own deluxe version of R-Kive with a lot of the most significant ommissions from the band's career and at least one more song from each solo career added in, though I suspect I may have to make it a five CD set.