FIRTH OF FIFTH
Selling England By The Pound, 1973
Tony Banks’ finest hour? OK there’s plenty of contenders for that honour, but the piano intro to the live favourite is so exquisite that you marvel at the fact that Genesis left it off the previous album. Writing-wise, it was primarily Banks’ baby, though he collaborated with Rutherford on the lyrics, which the latter pooh-poohed as among the worst he’d ever been involved with. Well, a pun on Scotland’s River Forth isn’t everybody’s idea of a relatable starting point. Yet when Banks’ classically influenced tinkling begins, you’re drawn in to the subsequent perversely complex time signatures, shifting tempos, and melancholy duelling between Gabriel’s flute and Hackett’s reiteration of the same on guitars, which sound more like violins. For him, too, this is a career high. It’s usually one of the crowning glories of his live set to this day. In the context of the album, it lifts Side One into its next phase beautifully, responding to the relative levity of I Know What I Like with a reminder that nobody does elegant epics quite like this band: The Cinema Show serves a similar function at a kindred crossroads on Side Two. Even if Gabriel too was unimpressed with the lyrics – he wasn’t the sole wordsmith at this point, and it hardly dovetailed with the prescient state-ofthe-nation themes he was exploring – Firth Of Fifth just flows like, well, like a river. “I was just following the idea of a river and then I got a bit caught up in the cosmos and I don’t quite know where I ended up, really,” said Banks in Songfacts. “But it just about stands up, I think. For me musically it’s got two or three very strong moments in it and fortunately they really carried us along. It’s become one of the Genesis classics, and I’m very happy for that.” CR
“I f it is true, as it is true, that the two fundamental components of progressive rock are, in fact, rock and the classical musical heritage, I think that Firth Of Fifth can be considered one of the highest points of this musical world. The creative imagination of Genesis, as always, produces something magic, which, replayed today, perhaps, sounds even greater.”
– FABIO FRIZZI, COMPOsER