by Phil Collins
These are days of merry, itinerant, sofa-surfing, wee-hours chaos. I’ll occasionally pop back to 453 Hanworth Road, as it’s still not sold, hopping out of the van sometime in the middle of the night. Or, if we have a gig the next day, I’ll crash with one of the guys, usually Richard MacPhail. Some late-night/early-morning cornflakes, a small joint, sleep, more cornflakes, and we’re off again.
We push on, and on. In October 1972, eleven months after the release of Nursery Cryme, comes Foxtrot. Genesis’ fourth album, my second with the band, is recorded with co-producer Dave Hitchcock and engineer John Burns at Island Studios in Notting Hill—the place where, two years previously, Led Zeppelin recorded IV and Jethro Tull recorded Aqualung. Twelve years later I’ll be back there, recording “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” with Band Aid.
Foxtrot features “Supper’s Ready,” the 23-minute song suite that will, for much of the seventies, contribute to the public perception of the band. A lot of Genesis “heads” regard it as our magnum opus, and I’d go along with that. It’s greater than the sum of its parts, though some of those parts are brilliant, notably “Apocalypse in 9/8 (Co-Starring the Delicious Talents of Gabble Ratchet)” and “As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs (Aching Men’s Feet).”
This time, the writing for the album takes place a million miles from a country pile: prior to going into Island Studios, we bunker in the basement of the Una Billings School for Dance in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. Where previously we could smell freshly cut grass, we’re now high on the odor of ballet pumps. We set up our equipment in Una’s basement, and start writing.
I am absent from Una Billings for a few hours one day, and when I return Tony, Mike and Steve have messed around with a riff in 9/8. I haven’t a clue what is happening, and just start to play. At some points I play with the riff, at others I join Tony. I’m still immensely proud of the final recorded performance of the piece which became “Apocalypse in 9/8,” which captures me making it up as I go along.
Most of all, though, credit must go to Tony, Mike and Peter for seeing that all those parts could fit and be more than just five songs strung together over twenty-three minutes.
Nonetheless, we are worried about “Supper’s Ready” actually fitting on the album: the more music you have on a vinyl LP, the shallower the grooves, and the lower the volume will be. Twenty-three minutes is pushing the limit for one side of a 33-rpm long-player. Worse, if you have an eight-track cassette in your car—as most people do in 1972—it fades in and out three or four times. It’s mad to think now of such physical limitations on music.
As a consequence, Genesis are literally pushing the boundaries of what bands can do on an album. The only other equally ambitious, similarly sized piece of music at this time is Tubular Bells. In the wake of its release seven months after Foxtrot, at our gigs we habitually play Mike Oldfield’s groundbreaking debut over the PA system. It’s there to vibe up the audience before we come onstage, and also to help us schedule our preparations. We’d know where we were by any particular section. “Oh, it’s ‘Bagpipe Guitars,’ boys, time to get dressed!”
Performing “Supper’s Ready” brings its own challenges. The first dozen or so times we do it, including its unveiling at Brunel University on November 10, 1972, the five of us are constantly trying to catch up with each other, such is the concentration needed to perform a long piece of music. However, from the off, it’s a hit with our audiences, and we always breathe a sigh of relief when we reach the end. Especially if we reach the end at the same time. If only that were the only challenge with which we’re wrestling onstage.
On September 19, 1972, the month before the release of Foxtrot, we’re booked to play the National Stadium in Dublin. I view playing this 2,000-capacity boxing arena with some nervousness. It’s our first time in Ireland, and I fear we’re pushing our luck in a venue of this size and type.
But we roll onstage and get stuck into the set. Presently we come to the instrumental section of Nursery Cryme’s opening track, “The Musical Box,” which is quite lengthy. Lengthy enough, in fact, to put on a dress.
Having taken himself offstage, Peter now re-emerges from the wings. I catch him out of the corner of my eye, gingerly feeling his way back to his microphone. Why’s he taking so long? Normally he’d be back onstage with the “old man mask,” a prop Peter had made that he pulled over his head, immediately making him a grizzly, balding codger. This was always worn during the finale of “The Musical Box.”
As the stage lights catch him, the confusion lifts, only to be replaced by perplexity: Peter’s wearing a frock (his wife Jill’s, we later learn) and a fox’s head. Jaws are dropping, on- and offstage. This is as much a surprise to Mike, Tony, Steve and me as it is to 2,000 Dubliners.
In the dressing room afterward, Peter isn’t about to take on board any comments from the band committee with regards to his fantastic Mrs. Fox outfit. Once he gets his paws dug in, he isn’t budging. So, while there are no shouts of “Boy, that was fantastic!,” nor is there arguing. There’s just a collective shrug of: “OK…” Peter offers no explanation for his thinking, and I offer no protest. The music is still center stage, so I’m not really bothered. It’s just Pete doing his thing. He’d always be getting up to something when we were digging into some long instrumental sections.
Prior to this there have been no hints that Peter was considering a new fancy-dress direction. Equally, moving forward, there is no flagging up of the flower mask he will wear for the “Willow Farm” section of “Supper’s Ready,” nor the triangular box head he wears for the next section, “Apocalypse in 9/8.” We see none of it before the audience sees it. He will not entertain any ideas of a band decision. To his mind, such democracy on matters theatrical will only slow down the process and lead to debates over what color the dress should be and whether the flower is a hardy annual or a perennial.
This is what Peter Gabriel now does onstage with Genesis. After Dublin, Mrs. Fox appears at every show, at the same point in the set. We quickly become used to it, as well we should: a photograph of Peter in his new get-up goes straight on the cover of Melody Maker, and immediately puts a nought on Genesis’ booking fee. We go from being a £35-a-night band to a £350-a-night band.
—
It’s getting close to the end of 1972, and I have no idea that Dad is ill. He’s moved lock, stock and barrel down to Weston and rarely comes up to London. But 453 Hanworth Road has finally been sold, it’s the end of an era, and my life has to go on. I start renting a damp flat in Downs Avenue, Epsom, in a cheaply converted, dilapidated Georgian house. The walls are paper-thin; when it rains, it’s as wet on the inside as it is outside.
In December 1972 we play our first two American shows. Our landfall in the new world is not incredibly auspicious. We arrive to discover that our U.S. manager, Ed Goodgold, also manager of Woodstock heroes Sha Na Na, has booked us a show at Brandeis University near Boston, Massachusetts. At lunchtime. So our first show on American soil is an unceremonious, crashing disappointment. New England students are less keen on English rock bands than we’d assumed, and seem more interested in their studying or their sandwiches. This does not bode well for Genesis’ fortunes in the United States of America.
Approaching New York for the first time, we’re overwhelmed, the sheer enormity of the city bearing down on a band whose heads are already bowed after the letdown of Boston. But driving in over the George Washington Bridge at dusk, the Manhattan skyline is winking into life, illuminated by millions of lights. New York! We’ve seen it in the movies, and now we’re here.
My senses reeling from the sight of steam billowing from sewer vents, the smell of pretzels cooking, the incessant honking of yellow cabs and the giddy views down the canyons of steel, that first visit to New York will stay with me no matter how many times I return.
We check into our hotel, The Gorham, an arty, slightly run-down place in Midtown near 5th Avenue. We do a little exploring, then we sleep. Next day we take some promotional photos in Cent
ral Park and outside legendary Greenwich Village venue The Bitter End. Then it’s over to the Philharmonic Hall for our soundcheck and the discovery of a major problem: the different power system in the U.S. means that the motored instruments run on sixty cycles, not fifty cycles as in the U.K. This means the Mellotron (a new toy we’ve acquired from King Crimson) and the Hammond organ are out of tune with the guitars.
We devise a makeshift solution and, that night, muddle through our set. The audience doesn’t seem to notice anything untoward, but, despite the five of us being telepathically in sync, for Genesis the show is a shambles. We come offstage, get into the lift up to the dressing room and the air is blue with rage. Even years later the mention of this first New York show rattles everyone’s cages as all the horrific memories return.
But, all things considered, I fly back to the U.K. on something of a high. So Genesis’ first trip to America wasn’t entirely auspicious—at least I’ve been there, which is not something many people I know in 1972 can say.
Christmas is looming and I ring my dad to check that he’s still coming back to London from Weston-super-Mare for the “family” festivities. I haven’t seen him for many a month, and the plan is that the splintered Collins clan will reconvene at Barbara Speake’s home in Ealing for something approaching a merry Christmas. He assures me he is.
Then, out of the blue, Clive receives a phone call: Dad’s had a heart attack. The doctor assures Clive that Dad’s OK to travel, so he drives down to Weston to collect him.
When he arrives at Clive’s home in Leigh-on-Sea, Dad spends a restful night. But the next morning he takes a turn for the worse, and Clive takes him to hospital in nearby Southend, where he has yet another bad turn. It’s Christmas Eve.
Dad dies on Christmas Day at 8 a.m.
Truthfully, I’m perhaps too preoccupied to feel distraught (that comes later), even when my brother recounts the sad state of my dad’s living conditions: so much damp that it was visible all down the walls of the small cottage he was living in—a terribly unhealthy environment, especially for someone with heart problems. It’s also likely he had diabetes, and when he’d arrived in hospital they were considering amputating both his legs. Mum and Clive both agreed that Dad would not have wanted to live had that happened to him.
Dad’s funeral is on January 1, 1973. I’m in a daze. I remember the coffin entering the crematorium oven, and them playing “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” one of his favorite Bach pieces. I don’t remember crying. I may have done. But certainly the grief has increased as I’ve got older. With each of my five children, I’m far more aware of my role in their lives as a result of losing my father at such a young age. Christmas, too, always comes with more than a hint of sadness.
Dad never did grasp the idea of me wanting to play music for a living. He had little or no interest in music generally, especially in the kind that was being made in the sixties. In fact, pretty much the only musical memory I have of Dad is him singing, “Hi-diddle-dee-dee, an actor’s life for me…” as he let go of my bicycle saddle for the first time when I was a small boy. I pedaled on, unaware I was flying solo.
I’m twenty-one. My adult life—my professional life—has begun, but my dad has died.
Everything feels muted, flattened. I find myself thinking something that will preoccupy me at various moments, in various shades, for years to come: did Dad, at the end, think his son had made the right decision? Was he impressed by my finally making a living, albeit via an unorthodox route? Was it a point of some fatherly satisfaction to Grev Collins that his youngest had made it across the Atlantic?
I’d like to think he would, ultimately, have been proud, but I’ve often wondered what would have been the tipping point. Maybe filling four nights at Wembley? Or: “My son, playing for the Prince of Wales—marvelous.” The royal seal of approval would have bestowed the paternal seal of approval. That would have clinched it.
Postscript: During the writing of this book, I realized that Dad never had a marker put where his ashes were placed. I vowed to fix this, and Clive carried out some inquiries. My brother discovered that due to a mix-up between him and Mum, Dad’s ashes were in fact never picked up. So Dad’s earthly remains were left languishing in Southend Crematorium. To this day, no one knows where he is.
Or: cracking America and cracking up
Luckily, perhaps, I don’t have too long to dwell on my dad’s death. The Foxtrot tour resumes in Croydon, south London, on January 7, 1973, six days after his funeral. It continues through the rest of Europe, returns to the U.K. again and then moves to North America, where we play Carnegie Hall. We won’t finish until we reach Paris and Brussels on May 7 and 8. A heavy bout of touring to deal with at a heavy time, with Peter’s costumes becoming more outlandish as the tour progresses.
For “Watcher of the Skies” he wears fluorescent face paint, a cape and bat wings on his head. That’s not the finale; that’s the opening song in the set. The sense of drama is heightened by Tony playing a long, moody introduction on the Mellotron (now running on the correct cycles).
Peter’s theatricality is now integrated into the live set. It is, as far as press and public are concerned, What Genesis Do. And in the early-seventies context it doesn’t seem so crazy. Alice Cooper is doing weird things with snakes, Elton John is dressing like a duck and wearing glasses bigger than his head, The Who are making concept albums left, right and center. Ours, though, is a different kind of quirkiness, a strange English thing, which is perhaps one of the reasons it will do so well in the U.S.
In the words of the Rolling Stone review of that year’s Genesis Live, released in July 1973: “…this album goes a long way toward capturing the gripping power and mysticism that has many fans acclaiming Genesis as ‘the greatest live band ever.’ Titles like ‘Get ’Em Out by Friday’ and ‘The Return of the Giant Hogweed’ tell much about this band’s modus operandi: a strange, visionary moralism highly reminiscent of both Yes and Jethro Tull. Genesis predated both of those bands in audio-visual productions though, and their dues-paying days are well documented by the high degree to which they develop multiple themes on both lyrical and instrumental levels.”
After the release of Genesis Live we barely pause before gathering at a lovely but slightly fading country house in Chessington, Surrey, to write the next album. I can’t remember how we got there, but the owners were a nice couple and I know there were some attractive daughters involved. We set up our gear in their living room, so I can only assume the couple were absent.
It is in this oddly domestic setting that “The Battle of Epping Forest” and, more importantly, “The Cinema Show” are born. Based on a guitar riff of Mike’s in 7/8, “The Cinema Show” will become a huge stage favorite for years to come. Also completed at Chessington is a song we began at Una Billings during the Foxtrot sessions, “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe).”
The resulting album, Selling England by the Pound, is released in October (again I sing lead vocal on one track, “More Fool Me”), and we’re already back on tour. We won’t stop until May 1974, by which time “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)” has given us our first Top 30 single in the U.K.
In the studio the song didn’t strike us as particularly “pop,” though it was of pop-single duration. We had got hold of a sitar-guitar, something used by The Beatles. Steve played the basic riff, which sounded good, I started to play a Beatle-ish groove, and it went from there. Peter’s lyrics came in quite late, because they were influenced by the Betty Swanwick painting (The Dream) on the album cover. On the track, my voice is in there, in a kind of duet with Peter. And that’s it. Genesis have their first hit. Top of the Pops here we come.
Except we don’t. We decline an offer from the BBC’s weekly institution because we think our fans will object to us appearing on such a mainstream show. Fundamentally, we object, too. We’re forging our own path and, for the same reason we don’t trust festivals (we can’t control the staging, it’s not our audience), we don’t tru
st television. Plus, by now we pride ourselves on our presentation, and “I Know What I Like” doesn’t readily lend itself to much in the way of presentation. Not yet, anyway. Touring the album, Peter will don a pointy hat, somewhat reminiscent of a Boer War military helmet, and, with some straw clamped between his teeth, mime the mowing of a lawn along with the drone that starts the song.
It’s around this time that Adrian Selby’s poor bookkeeping catches up with us and we discover that Genesis are in debt to the tune of £150,000. A fortune in those days, around £2 million in today’s money. But we still say no to the biggest bit of TV promotion in the land.
This is where Tony Smith enters the picture. Just to clarify: he’s not to be confused with Tony Stratton-Smith. Strat was our manager, and also boss of our label, Charisma. He’d kick-started things and kept Genesis rolling for a good while, but inevitably that created a conflict of interest when it came to negotiations between manager and record company. So although we all love and trust him, we have to be businesslike and consider our future. Especially when there are eye-watering debts to consider.
Tony Smith, on the other hand, is a partner in an established concert promotion business with Mike Alfandary and Harvey Goldsmith. Tony’s dad, John, was a promoter too—he promoted The Beatles and Frank Sinatra—and Tony had a top-of-the-range apprenticeship with him. In fact, they also promoted the Charisma Package Tour. So Tony knows all the people to befriend, or to avoid, including notorious managers like Don Arden and Peter Grant. But he decides to sacrifice all that sure-fire concert income and manage a band which is clearly going places—most notably at this point, the bankruptcy court.
The Selling England tour is the first of Genesis’ epic treks around North America, and Tony Smith’s first major undertaking with us. We’d done a month’s worth of shows there on the Foxtrot tour, but here’s a shock: it was going to take a lot more than that to “break” the U.S. and Canada. So off we go.