MIKE RUTHERFORD

Smallcreep’s Day MUSIC ON CD Genesis man’s overlooked solo album, long overdue re-evaluation.

By the turn of the 80s, any admirer of Genesis needed deep pockets. Aside from the group’s own releases, Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips had all issued solo records. Granted, Phil Collins had still to embark on his own stellar career, yet he’d already amassed a separate catalogue with Brand X.

Mike Rutherford was comparatively late to the party with his own solo debut, Smallcreep’s Day, and as a result, when making decisions on expenditure, many gave it a miss. More fool them. Produced by David Hentschel, featuring Anthony Phillips on keyboards, and like Duke and Banks’ A Curious Feeling, recorded at ABBA’s POLAR Studios, it proves to be a true missing link in the Genesis story.

Rutherford’s very invisibility within Genesis has sometimes worked against him. Whereas it is crystal clear what other members bring to the table, Rutherford is a shapeshifter, under-appreciated as a bassist and overlooked as a guitarist. Smallcreep’s Day came at the wrong time – released a month before Duke – and seemed out of step with its moment; concepts and side-long suites were rather old hat.

Based on Peter Currell Brown’s 1965 novel of the same name, the seven-part, 24-minute title track that takes up the original album’s side one explores Smallcreep’s journey to find out exactly what happens at other parts of the factory he’s worked at for 40 years. Vocalist Noel McCalla – once considered to replace Gabriel in Genesis – acquits himself admirably, and the churning modernism of the fourth part, Cats And Rats (In This Neighbourhood), hints to what was heard later on Abacab and Genesis.

Among the second side’s five pop songs, Romani has a nice jazzy chorus, Every Road is the sort of arms-round-a-mate end-of-night-anthem that Mike + The Mechanics went on to do so well, and Time And Time Again is a maximum-strength Rutherford ballad in the vein of Your Own Special Way and Follow You, Follow Me. Sonically, Smallcreep’s Day has the crisp, Scandinavian modernity of the ABBA records of the age, and the playing is unsurprisingly world class.

It reached a respectable No.13 in the UK, though it’s hard to shake the feeling that had it been given a less quaintly estoreric title, Smallcreep’s Day may have had more appeal to the more mainstream music fans that Genesis were increasingly attracting. But as with everything Rutherford, it was all frightfully understated. The album quietly disappeared, and was unavailable for years. Still, if the last domino has truly fallen on Genesis’ career, a return to Smallcreep’s Day will provide some consolation.

IT PROVES TO BE A TRUE MISSING LINK IN THE GENESIS STORY.