Post Hackett Genesis - The Good Stuff

Introduction

It was a shock when Peter Gabriel left Genesis, but Phil Collins, who had sung "More Fool Me" on "Selling England By The Pound" stepped up and with Chester Thompson helping out on drums the band produced two more excellent albums, "A Trick Of The Tale" and "Wind and Wuthering" so things still looked good, especially with the excellent Peter Gabriel solo albums, we were getting a lot of great music.

The guitarist Steve Hackett left, but Mike Rutherford is also a fine guitarist.

Now these are MY opinions and you may disagree with me, but the next album was the wittily titled "And Then There Were Three" (though I wondered if they should have titled it "Going For The One" but that is a Yes album),

The single from "And Then There Were Three" was "Follow You, Follow Me" which was the closing song from the album and on the strength of that I bought it.

Phil Collins had also produced a solo album led by the brilliant extreme minimalism of the single "In The Air Tonight" but he and the band started releasing more and more bland dross, but they still came up with some gems, and this playlist is a selection of those songs.

As I say this is MY opinion and I would love to hear yours.

"Down and Out" from "And Then There Were Three"

This is almost vicious with shades of "Dance on a Volcano/Los Endos" from "A Trick If The Tale" and when this hit the player, all my doubts dissipated, until I heard the rest of the album, although it finished well.

"Follow You, Follow Me" from "And Then There Were Three"

I love the percussive synthesiser motif that drives this, and when this came out I thought it was not as "out there" as previous releases but still, it boded well for the forthcoming album. Little did I know ....

"Behind The Lines" from Duke

A strong album opener that Phil turned into a light soul piece on his debut solo album, and that is more than acceptable but not as good as this one.

"Duchess" from "Duke"

I'm including this because of the absolutely gorgeous chorus

"Abacab" Album Title Track

Titled after the songs main chord sequence, and another piece of vicious brilliance from the band, emphasised by Rutherford's cutting guitar lines.

"Mama" from "Genesis"

The music from this is genuinely scary and it was released as a single and was a hit. Phil Collins' voice is a little light against a dark backdrop.

"Land of Confusion" from "Invisible Touch"

Another great Mike Rutherford song with some heavy guitar, but a silly Spitting Image video, but the music is brilliant.

"I Can't Dance" from "We Can't Dance"

Great song, dirty Mike Rutherford riff and a very funny video.

"Driving The Last Spike" from "We Can't Dance"

This, in my opinion, is the finest post-Hackett Genesis song. A ten-minute tale of building an American Railway with a lot of the sentiments that appeared in the Pogues' song "Navigators". It may start slowly but once it hits the six-minute mark it becomes unforgettable.

Phil Collins: I remember this book ["The Railway Navvies" by Terry Coleman] which I was sent by Dennis Waterman, because he was going to make a film of it and he sent me the book 'cos he wanted me to be in it, but er... the work that these guys did on the railway - to make the English railways - it's a very touching story because they left their families, and some of them never went home again. Some of them died very young because of the amazing conditions they were living and working in, and the accidents they had would've been horrific. And even if they did survive, they'd have a strain on their backs, you know, the physical strain of doing their job. It was just quite incredible, so I've written the words based on that - based on one person's view - you know, leaves his family not knowing if he's gonna go back, he goes to work on the railways and witnesses this horrendous accident, and the deceit - it was the people who were in charge of building the railways didn't really care - I mean they were all hush-hush on the deaths on the railways; if you weren't in that community you didn't know about it. So there's that shock of finding out that no one really cared about it, and the fact that the guys were a breed unto themselves, and he eventually becomes hardened to the whole thing. So, it's a ten-minute song so there are four pages of words.

-From the documentary Genesis: No Admittance (1991)

Thank you for listening and reading.