Despite their The Way We Walk DVD, Genesis are feeling gloomy. Pete Clark lends a sympathetic ear

THESE are not the best of all possible times for the elder statesmen of rock music. As the world is well aware, Mick Jagger is failing to reproduce his success with the fairer sex when it comes to wooing the record-buying public. Paul McCartney's new LP is not being snatched from the shelves so as to cause them spontaneously to combust. There is a general view that the end of the dinosaur age, heralded but not actually accomplished by the punk offensive of 1977, is finally nigh.

These thoughts are never far from the minds of the three gentlemen sitting opposite me in a swanky members' club in the West End. Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, despite their individual commitments, are still collectively trading under the name of Genesis, even if it is simply to promote the release of a new DVD, the faithful record of a concert the group played at Earl's Court at the height of their powers in 1992.

I will have to declare an interest at the outset. Around about 1970, there was a series of free lunchtime concerts at the Lyceum in Drury Lane, which were held principally to corrupt impressionable schoolboys. I was one of these schoolboys, and the band I remember with most affection were Genesis, who were playing one of their earliest gigs. I knew, even then, that it was an early gig because when the youthful audience asked for more, they played a song called The Knife, which they had already played. When we asked for even more, they played The Knife yet again. This

could have gone on for a long time. Genesis wrote lots of new songs and went on for a very long time indeed. To date, they have sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, and there is hardly a square inch of the globe left untoured. Until the release of this DVD, they have been dormant for some time, but their name is still with us, and, as Tony Banks readily admits, the name takes different people different ways.

"I think one of the reasons people still like our stuff is that it's very distinctive music - you don't tend to confuse it with anyone else, particularly the longer and more complex songs. You like it or you don't, and at least as many people hate us as love us, which is good. The negative side is sometimes really important. We never tried to please everybody. If you were attracted, you stayed with us. And the knowledge that other people really hated you helped the people who liked you."

Everyone can now make up their minds for good and all. Alongside more than two-and-a-half hours of live concert in state-of-the-art sound, there are options to study each of the three members in action from 16 different camera positions, plus interviews and photos and programme details which add up to eight hours, all told. Phil Collins is quick to soothe the raising of an amused eyebrow.

"What you mustn't forget is that we are not suggesting that everybody goes out and bays this. It's there for the fans who have said they'd like it. This is just a film of a very good show" Although his general demeanour is chirpy Collins gives the impression of a man who has tired of the roundabout ride, and, when pressed, he confirms this. "You are asked to do an awful lot of things that are nothing to do with the music, and one tends to get a bit fed up with that. I no longer feel like competing at all. I'm weary of writing the songs and then getting hit from a distance by people who really don't understand or like the things you do. I should go on about that, but I don't want to go on."

COLLINS may feel sore at past criticisms, but there is no denying the group have been influential. "I'm always surprised by how many people mention bands like us, specifically us," agrees Collins. "There are people out there who really liked our music. John Taylor from Duran Duran..."

"I don't hear much influence out there," says Tony Banks glumly In a chirpy spirit, I offer up the name of Radiohead. "They acknowledged the progressive rock thing, but not us specifically" mumbles Collins. "Why not us?" queries Banks. "Well, they're not going to, are they?" replies Collins. "Their street cred ... anyway, the Dead Kennedys liked us, and Topper Headon from the Clash." Now the atmosphere is brightening. "The Foo Fighters came up to me at an airport," offers Banks.

While the DVD makes its way into an uncertain marketplace, the three musicians are doing their own things. Collins has a new solo LP ready to go, Mike Rutherford is preparing more Mike and the Mechanics songs, and Tony Banks has an orchestral project which he boasts is bound to get "the worst reviews of all time". I ask if there will be any more from Genesis. "There's nothing really going on," concedes Rutherford, "but we are all good friends. It's a tough business out there now. We had a fantastic time, but to play the game you have to play now, well, I'm not sure."

"We have a good time together," agrees Collins, "that's why we can be gloomy. We have no plans, but something could come up. It's just about writing music..."

Michael Watts, Melody Maker, Autumn 1970

THE record label boss was quite ecstatic over him. "He has a touch of evil about him when he gets onstage," said Tony StrattonSmith, solemnly and slowly, in a long-gone conversation. "He almost reminds me of Jagger at times."

Jim Morrison? Lou Reed? No? Er um. Well, then, Iggy Stooge. Wrong again, huh.

The truth is, he doesn't look much of a charismatic figure off stage. Like, he's sitting in this office while were talking and he's wearing this shapeless sweater and nondescript slacks an anxious, painful little smile keeps flickering across his face, and every time you ask him a question he looks at this other guy, another member of the band, as if he wants to be reassured that he is not talking out of turn.

He is a most unlikely pop star is Peter Gabriel, but then pop stars are most unlikely people. May be "star" indeed is unlikely word to use as yet about him.

Gabriel, in fact, is lead vocalist with Genesis, a fivepiece band who last year produced "Trespass," an album which, in its lyrical depth and flawless technique, constituted a minor masterpiece.

His vocals are among the best things on the album: with an expressive hoarseness but mostly steeped throughout in a desperate romanticism; reaching out for something that he can't quite grasp.

The band essentiallv began in 1966 as four singwriters, Gabriel, Tony Banks, Michael Rutherford and Anthony Phillips. Some of their demo tapes were heard by Jonathan King and they got a contract with a record company, whence their releases disappeared into oblivion. "Fame and fortune somehow evaded this merry combo," their press handout puts it whimsically.

Since then they have run the whole group gamut: the country cottage, the Soho hustlers, the big evanescent promises. They found a friendly soul in Stratton-Smith, however, the Matt Busby of the record business, who signed them to his recently-formed Charisma label. Under his avuncular direction they are achieving a growing reputation as one of the country's "Thinking" bands.

Over the four years the personnel has altered, not surprisingly, with Phil Collins, ex-Flaming Youth on drums, and Mick Barnard, formerly of a band called Farm, replacing Phillips on lead.

I said that from their album they seemed very much a studio band. Some critics had even suggested that "Trespass" was essentially the creation of its producer, John Anthony.

"I don't agree, it's not a producer's album." He paused a while. "I think he did a good job, a very good job, but it's always a compromise. There was very little that we didn't want done in the studio. We look on him as another member of the band, rather than the one with all the power, the one who dictates what we want and what we don't want. The group did all the arrangements and we considered the type of sound we wanted before we went into the studio."

Was he pleased with the outcome?

"I don't think people are ever really satisfied are they? By the time the album comes out the original conception has gone. You lose a part everywhere. The stage it is at its fullest is in your head, and you lose all along the line from there. Personally, I think some of the songs were too long. We started very ambitious for more adventurous, things getting out of pop but also with straightforward melodies. Ambitious, because not so much complexity . . . we take music there and work around that, as a piece, not as a song With the addition of Phil and Mick it's made me more rhythm conscious."

The band had a spot not long ago on Disco 2, which was fairly disastrous. What had been the reason for that?

"Well, I've always got an idea of what the songs should sound like, but John (Anthony) is our cohesive force. Left to ourselves, as we were on television, we were a drag. With insufficient technical knowledge. As a band we'll always need a producer.

"On that show the backing track was the same as the album but I did the vocal on top and I was very nervous on that occasion. I don't want do TV again for a long time. It was a shocking performance and I'm not trying to excuse it. I'm just not an animal, a performing animal being put through his tricks, how the sound engineer saw it.

"You should have a say in shows like that. You should have some control, like you do with an album sleeve. We're not performers to be manipulated by those people. I think the BBC has a condescending attitude to pop and pop musicians. It's only entertainers who are required to give a good performance every night, to put on a show. To try and get a BBC producer to understand what you want to do in a programme . . . The whole problem is that they don't believe the intricacies of sound balance make a difference to us. They think it's a fuss about nothing.

"When we first went out on the road we thought we'd just get the music out and play behind a black curtain, but it wasn't working out. So we have to perform a bit, but it's now just as a means to an end, to get the music across."

He paused, clenched his hands together and smiled. "I see the band as sad romantics, you see," he said quietly.

Jerry Gilbert, Sounds, 9 Sept 1972

Peter Gabriel - slightly eccentric or acute schizophrenic?

He cycles to Island Studios to begin a day's work on the new Genesis album, and unpacks a bottle of throat medicine and a wonder cure spray rather like a schoolboy would unload his textbooks.

In fact Gabriel personifies a schoolboy rather in the way a schoolboy might be portrayed at some distant point in time. His head is part shaved and his eyebrows bush out which looks a little incongruous when he's not prancing about the stage daubed with paint and make up like some nebulous apparition.

Suddenly Peter Gabriel and his cycle are in Basing Street. The singer has arrived. He might have descended in a police box but that's probably illegal. Inside, we take a peep at the new Genesis album Foxtrot and at the same time sample the strange mechanism of Peter Gabriel's mind.

He begins to talk, realises he is not quite expressing his feelings satisfactorily, gives a self-effacing shrug and trails off. We wait as he muses on the subject but invariably he fails to take up the point again.

Peter Gabriel is a mutterer and a muser - a man who amuses and minces across the stage when Genesis are in full flow. He has not climbed on the 'camp wagon' since Bowie became beautiful - he has always allowed his latent extrovert side to come out on stage and taking over in whatever way it will.

"You see certain characters I sing about I feel related to in some strange way like the little character in The Musical Box." Then he trails off again murmuring something about colouration and worrying about a more accurate explanation.

There is no question that Gabriel assumes different identities on stage but in a sense it is indicative of the way in which Genesis have grown organically and in so doing, have not caused the kind of sensation which induces the raising of eyebrows.

Nothing sensational has ever really happened to Genesis which is scarcely surprising when you consider the fact they are required, and assuming bunch of lads who came together as songwriters at public school and started from scratch.

The most remarkable aspect of the group has been their growth rate, and today they find themselves placed among the handful of top bands in Britain.

They were the only band to capture the imagination of the crowds at Reading on the Friday night which is remarkable for a brand of music which depends so heavily on subtleties.

Now things will start to happen - and for a kick-off their new album is sensational.

The feeling was already there as we studied the Paul Whitehead designed sleeve on the way over to Island. Bassist Mike Rutherford was explaining how complimentary it was to the nature of the album - and again it contains aberrations from a human situation which are so slight as to be absolutely bizarre.

Gruesome heads are seen on perplexed horsemen and as the hunt arrives at the sea there stands the beautiful lady with the fox's head - and hence the title of the album.

Like the new Yes album, one side is devoted entirely to one track, written by Gabriel and entitled Supper's Ready.

"There is a line in Revelations which says 'This supper of the mighty one'... anyway there are very straightforward levels at which you can take the lyrics if you want," explained Gabriel in typically self-effacing fashion. The song is constructed in several distinct sequences, dipping and soaring from acoustic passages to mighty barrages of sound in much the same way as songs like The Musical Box and Stagnation.

But although they have unleashed 25 minutes of sound per side, which can be damaging to the overall sound, Genesis have achieved a far more dynamic effect than on Trespass and Nursery Cryme and it is a far more interesting album.

The band intend to feature the album almost wholesale in their stage act when they go on tour with Lindisfarne next month.

Watcher of the Skies, based around Tony Banks funereal Mellotron opens the album, but one of the highlights is a song by Peter Gabriel concerning the eviction of an old couple by the winklers. The song is called Get Them out by Friday and Gabriel keeps the battle running by assuming the voices of both factions. The song is an acute protest at an increasingly threatening situation, and according to Mike Rutherford they are the best lyrics Gabriel has written.

Genesis have kept the Mellotron largely in the background although it is used predominantly in a track called Can Utility and the Coastliners which is a play on King Canute, and the stage replacement for Stagnation.

"We'll be rehearsing a completely new stage act because just about all the stuff we've done in the studio we can do one stage," explained Mike. "We'll probably keep Return of the Giant Hogweed and The Musical Box but we really need a new closing number to replace The Knife. We hope to have this within the next couple of months."

Although Genesis have not put any overt humour on the album, there are plenty of humorous moments to be found beneath the layers of sound - and plenty of effects too. For one sequence of Supper's Ready they sent out for eight children off the streets, four coloured kids and four whites to sing a choral part, and paid them 10 bob each for the privilege.

Thanks largely to a far more dynamic drum and a vocal sound and a greater studio presence, Genesis have produced a beautiful album, overcoming the unenviable problems of changing producers en route. David Hitchcock is the man responsible for completing what shall prove a highly important album.

Summing up, Mike Rutherford sees that whereas the group's style necessarily changed between Trespass and Nursery Cryme owing to personnel changes, the new album is the development of the same musicians.

"We've all had a chance to settle in now and this outcome is far more dynamic - Phil Collins drum work gives the sound an overall attack that's been missing before." Mike concluded.