genesis: duke

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

According to Collins, the song was modeled after The Beach Boys' "Sail On, Sailor", Sly and the Family Stone's "Hot Fun in the Summertime" and Toto's "Hold the Line".

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:43 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed also that's a way better song...if, as suggested upthread, he brought them "In the Air Tonight" and they passed I think that, while it's not totally in line with the rest of Duke, would have injected some menace instead of seeming like a little breezy out of place pop song.

'Man on the Corner' does fit in better on Abacab than 'Misunderstanding' does on Duke, but I think 'Misunderstanding' is the superior song.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

A tangent from upthread re: 80s Clapton/Collins collabs, I was listening to bits of August yesterday ("Hung Up On Your Love," "Bad Influence"). Underneath the schlocky/glossy overproduction, the rhythm section work is fuckin stellar.

Y'know, as much as I dislike large portions of his solo work - and concentrating solely on the music here - I still think that Collins has taken a lot of unwarranted shit over the years. The guy deserves a knighthood for his drumming on 'The Musical Box' alone, and his drumming throughout Genesis' catalogue, even as late on as ...And Then There Were Three and Duke has been great. I think 'In The Air Tonight' is the very definition of classic, and the relative poppiness of the '80s era was as much down to Banks and Rutherford as it was down to Collins. They never really stopped being a prog band until the very end of Collins' stint with the band, I think - even as late as Invisible Touch, you can tell the difference between a Genesis record and a Phil Collins solo record and the proggy tendencies are still there. The guy has also been a session drummer on a number of very good to great records and he has a great, expressive, immediately identifiable voice. With all this in mind, I really wish I could get more out of Collins' solo work - but I don't, and that's perfectly fine because it's only a very, very small part of what the guy has done and not representative of his entire career. I dislike 'Sussudio' (it's always been a weak version of '1999' musically) and I loathe 'Another Day in Paradise' ... but it's a very small fraction of what he does.

one of the things i love about abacab is that the obvious collins solo track ("man on the corner") really fits into the overall texture of the record where "misunderstanding" doesn't

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Wednesday, July 5, 2017 4:43 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed also that's a way better song...if, as suggested upthread, he brought them "In the Air Tonight" and they passed I think that, while it's not totally in line with the rest of Duke, would have injected some menace instead of seeming like a little breezy out of place pop song.

― Universal LULU Nation (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

See my post above; and...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8h0Wz6Z5nU

Yeah that would be a lot better Misunderstanding

Disagree about Turn It on Again though, that totally fits and is one of their best songs

Collins's drumming has always been melodic and hooky. It's something Bill Bruford doesn't quite capture on Seconds Out.

Another hooky contemporaneous deep cut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsV-1FDLTW0

Something like 'Anything She Does' strikes me as being the sort of thing which would be misattributed to Collins, though as far as I'm aware it is primarily the work of Tony Banks

I imagine it's a much-loathed song by a certain type of Genesis fan, but to me it absolutely blows away the breezy pop in a similar mould on 'No Jacket Required', i.e. 'Don't Lose My Number'

Also in the rarefied company of Van Halen's I'll Wait and J. Geils Band Centerfold of songs about a guy in love with a magazine centerfold model.

I imagine it's a much-loathed song by a certain type of Genesis fan, but to me it absolutely blows away the breezy pop in a similar mould on 'No Jacket Required', i.e. 'Don't Lose My Number'

he shouts a lot

"Man on the Corner" is a Collins solos song for all intents and purposes. Even the synthesizer style is closer to what Collins would play..

'Anything She Does' rules and I agree, it's much better than songs that are in the same mould on No Jacket Required.

It's not better than Who Said I Would or I Don't Wanna Know.

wish he could have recorded this own version of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XVu5Xp9w5k

'I Don't Want To Know' has that neat trick of going into 6/4 for the chorus, which isn't quite as strong as the one on 'Anything She Does' ... 'Who Said I Would' is a bit nothingy.

"I Don't Wanna Know" has that oddly syncopated solo after the second chorus. It's a monster of a percussion track.

speaking of Collins the drummer, I'm not a huge fan of Brand X (I like the first album ok) they are a little fuzak for my taste but damn the stuff he plays in that band makes his Genesis drumming seem like the Ramones

I think my favourite drumming on a Genesis track is on 'Dance on a Volcano', simultaneously ferocious and technical... it's a great bit of drumming. I always preferred it when '70s Genesis went for it rather than do these extended folky things.

Good song!

Huh, I always thought of Brand X as full on Weather Report-esque fusion, not fuzak. Him and Percy Jones make for a great rhythm section (which is why they sound so good backing Eno on those handful of tracks).

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wau stompage

I'm now on a full-on Genesis kick for the first time in a very long time - both Gabriel and Collins era...

His drumming on the live Lamb discs from that weird overdubbed box set is smoking. Gives credence to his claim of being high behind the kit for much of that tour.

Pot and booze, maybe, but Rutherford was the coke dude. Collins was just obsessed with playing and practicing all the time.

I did wonder, when watching their Wembley 86/87 (?) show for work a few years ago, just how coked up phil seemed for the R'n'B medley at the end (which I bet Tony moaned the fuck about all through the tour)

Wait.

Coke.

These three? Collins said recently that Banks would fall over if he just smelled wine.

Finding it kinda hard to picture Mike Rutherford on coke

lol

Fantastic Genesis doc on BBC4. Tony Banks - possibly the worst man in rock ever. Makes Mike Rutherford look like Mark E Smith.

— luke haines❌ (@LukeHaines_News) May 6, 2017

Tony is dreadful tbf. Possesses complete inability to mute his hair-up-my-ass shrillness and difficultness even in the presence of video cameras

Finding it kinda hard to picture Mike Rutherford on coke

― PaulTMA, Friday, July 7, 2017 7

he could've used some tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezQr9GDK0cs

Anyway:

Did the drugs ever become a problem? Rutherford points to his nose. “I had to have my septum operated on in the late 70s,” he says, matter-of-factly. “Yuh, you know, that bit in the middle of your nostrils.”

Apparently several years of cocaine use had taken its toll on the membranes. “This was pre-social, though, pre-social,” he insists. “Cocaine was simply taken as a way to keep you going on the road. Never by Tony or Pete, though.”

As for Phil, he doesn't skirt away from substance abuse in his book, but it's alcohol that's the real problem, especially (much) later. I think he's just an eager to please theatre kid, which to be fair could be confused for cocaine fiend.

If you watch his stage antics and demeanor on the 1980 tour clips up on YT you'd prob think right off "coked up and have n' fun" or, yeah, showoffy theatre kid. Great either way.

* havin' fun

As for Phil, he doesn't skirt away from substance abuse in his book, but it's alcohol that's the real problem, especially (much) later. I think he's just an eager to please theatre kid, which to be fair could be confused for cocaine fiend.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, July 7, 2017

I actually believe him when he said he barely touched booze + drugs during the '80s and '90s – he was too damn busy! Look at those credits and the pace at which he accumulated them and tremble.

Yeah, he never turns down a gig.

While I have no doubt that Collins had an ego, particularly during the '80s, it is a bit strange that a lot of scorn gets directed at him from various angles - sometimes more than a little unfairly - when Tony Banks is a far easier personality to dislike. I could at least imagine being stood at a bar having a relaxed chat with Collins, whereas Banks would get on my tits within seconds.

Also, man these guys loved using pedal tone/changing chords over the top of a sustained bass note... it's pretty much their defining musical characteristic throughout all eras.

In that Genesis doc from a couple of years back, Tony is still a total dick. You can see Pete just patiently putting up with him during the interviews.

I think a lot of the hate Collins gets/got in the media was in part because he was infinitely more visible than Tony, infinitely more successful, but also a class thing - Phil's the oik trying too hard to impress, Tony's the snidey cunt at boarding school cutting everyone else down to size. Kind of feel a lot of journos, etc, in the 70s/80s would have identified more with Tony than Phil, though this is just conjecture.

He really is just trying so hard during those R'n'B medleys at Wembley though, much as I loved them when I was a kid.

Yeah, Collins couldn't have been any more visible during the '80s - he was pretty much inescapable and a huge celebrity, and if you remain too visible and too successful for too long, people start to look for ways of tearing that down.

and he mugged as awfully as McCartney. No wonder they detested each other.

As for Banks... well Banks, Rutherford and Gabriel are all old Carthusians, able to be put through private education by comfortably well-off families... in the UK, this is an exception rather than the rule. Gabriel and Rutherford come across as being self-aware and seem to understand how lucky and fortunate they are, Rutherford even coming across as someone who wanted to rebel against his background. Banks, on the other hand, comes across as a spoilt and entitled brat who doesn't actually seem to have left school. The way he acts at times, it's like "of course I had a great education and I ended up in a huge-selling band, it was my right."

Pretty otm. He also seems like the one to boast that music played better is better.

BTW, there was an intriguing letter in the New Yorker re: the prog essay.

Sanneh’s excellent survey of prog rock overlooked one explanation for why it came to dominate the United States mainstream in the seventies: its first fans were the last children of America’s peak middlebrow culture, whether or not they’d call it that. This was a generation reared on Liberace and regularly exposed to opera and classical performances alongside their pop idols on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” It’s perfectly logical that they would embrace a strain of rock that aspired to cultural and technical sophistication. With the disappearance of classical music from television, so went the ability to understand how anyone could like prog rock. For prog artists with lofty pretensions to high art, “middlebrow” may be the most stinging insult of all.

Banks had Gabriel's voice mixed down during the end section of 'The Musical Box' because he felt that Gabriel was "singing over his bit" ...

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAzSglBXYAAygNK.jpg