No drug rehab, no punch-ups, no sex scandals… squeaky clean prog rockers Genesis are back
Thirteen years since their last gig, the supergroup are reuniting for a major UK tour. Just don’t expect any rock ’n’ roll misbehaviour as they hit the road
PHIL Collins’ typically breezy reasoning for the announcement yesterday that Genesis are reforming later this year to play their first shows in 13 years was, “Why not?” It’s a good question but there are several reasons why one of Britain’s biggest bands might have decided it was more sensible to remain in mothballs.
Not least among them are Collins’ health problems, which in recent years have included alcoholism, depression, crippling back pain and nerve damage in his hands from drumming. In 2017 he gashed his head after a fall in a hotel room. Yesterday he arrived at Broadcasting House with a cane.
Happily, however, Collins’ health has improved of late. His return to solo touring in 2017 opened the door for this reunion with his bandmates, guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboard player Tony Banks.
The trio, all aged 69, will take in 10 shows in the UK and Ireland on their hugely anticipated Last Domino arena tour at the end of 2020. Collins is no longer able to drum, so his 18-year-old son Nic will take over, having played with his father on the solo shows.
Nic’s mother is Collins’ third wife, Orianne Cevey.They divorced in 2008 but have since got back together. “He plays like me and he kind of has the same attitude as me,” said Collins of his son’s drumming attributes.
While the timing of the reunion was unexpected, Genesis have never closed the door on a reconciliation. It helps that they never fell out. “We enjoy each other’s company,” Collins said yesterday. “We enjoy playing together.”
From the mouths of any other veteran rock group rolling up for a highly lucrative pay-day, the sentiment would have sounded fanciful. However, Genesis are perhaps unique among their peers in that they have negotiated 50 years in the music industry without love ever turning to loathing.
Of all the big beasts of the progrock world, they are the most thoroughly civilised. Forget tales of tellies being thrown from hotel rooms and suites groaning with groupies. There have been no spells spent in drug rehab; no public vendettas, bankruptcies or sex scandals.
IT’S behaviour befitting the most well-bred band in rock history. Rutherford, Banks and original singer Peter Gabriel formed Genesis in 1967 while boarding at Charterhouse, one of Britain’s leading public schools. Gabriel was raised in a manor house in Surrey; Banks cut his teeth on Rachmaninoff and Ravel rather than Chuck Berry; Rutherford’s father was a high-ranking naval officer. “In my 20s I had long hair, a double-necked guitar and drugs,” the guitarist told me in 2014. “At the same age my father was taking down the Bismarck.”
Unlike contemporaries such as Led Zeppelin, the party scene around Genesis was relatively mild. US tours were fortified by Southern Comfort, Blue Nun and cannabis, rather than industrial quantities of cocaine.
Rutherford recalled being busted for possession of “a huge bag of grass” at Heathrow Airport on his return from America in 1974. He spent a night in the cells but escaped with a fine. Perhaps their closest brush with scandal comes courtesy of being named, and initially managed, by fellow Charterhouse pupil Jonathan King, the disgraced music mogul sentenced to seven years in prison in 2001 for sex crimes.
If their story is largely devoid of rock histrionics, there have been significant bumps along the way. When Peter Gabriel left in 1975, Genesis were on the cusp of breaking into the big league. “You know, then this b ***** d goes and sabotages the whole thing just as it gets successful,” says Gabriel in Mario Giammetti’s book, Genesis 1967 to 1975: The Peter Gabriel Years, published in May by Kingmaker.
“That wasn’t a popular thing to do from a career point of view.”
The singer’s focus on the more theatrical side of the band had started to cause friction. His stage persona included wearing dresses and donning a fox’s head, an Old Man face historic mask, and a bizarre “Colony of the Slippermen” costume which wouldn’t have looked out of place on Doctor Who. In a prog rock mishap worthy of the classic rock spoof This Is… Spinal Tap, whenever Gabriel appeared as the Slippermen he couldn’t get his head near enough to the microphone to sing properly.
AS THE visual displays became ever more elaborate, tensions grew within the band over the amount of attention he was receiving. According to Rutherford, Banks and Collins would take a “huff over the reviews”. Gabriel, meanwhile, had ambitions of his own he wanted to explore. Although he decided to leave the group before Genesis toured their ambitious double concept album,The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, his departure was handled with business-like efficiency. Far from flouncing off, he agreed to stay on for six months to complete the tour, and agreed not to announce his decision until after it had finished – a vow of silence that caused him considerable strain.
The tour wasn’t easy. Gabriel had conceived of a complex visual presentation involving more than 1,000 slides projected during each performance, but the concept was frequently afflicted by technical issues which sometimes overshadowed the performances.
The last date of the tour was scheduled to be a show at Parc des Expositions in Toulouse on May 24, 1975. The gig was cancelled due to poor ticket sales, however, so Gabriel’s final concert was on May 22 at the small town of Besançon near the Swiss border.