The Living Years

by Mike Rutherford

  We also needed a look. Pete, who, like my father, believed in the right outfit for the occasion, suggested that we should all go to Carnaby Street to buy clothes for Top of the Pops. Pete was more aware of image than the rest of us, who hadn’t even realized that we needed an image. The fact that Top of the Pops hadn’t asked us on yet didn’t really come into it: it was obviously only a matter of time.

  Swinging London was then at its height and Carnaby Street was the centre of the fashion world. There was something about turning the corner off Regent’s Street, going left and seeing that sign that was exciting.

  Pete’s plan was that we should all have black-and-white outfits and the look is preserved for posterity in Genesis’s first publicity shot. I look dopey, if you ask me. Chris Stewart, our drummer, is the moody one, but all of us look like we seriously think it’s about to take off.

  And, of course, we’d spend the next few years selling fuck all.

  ‘The Silent Sun’, our first single, was released on Decca in February 1968. Soon after Kenny Everett played it on the BBC, which was wonderfully legitimizing – the BBC was official, the real thing, the voice of authority. God, it sounded fantastic. I’m sure Jonathan must have had a word with Kenny – ‘Play this for me, mate.’ But when I first heard us on the radio, standing in Ant’s kitchen, I was convinced it was all about to happen. Here we go boys, I thought. Stand back.

  By this time I’d left Charterhouse, although Ant had stayed on to do A levels. We were also without a drummer. One of my last jobs at Charterhouse was to fire Chris. (Which was probably a good career move, seeing as he would later write the bestselling Driving over Lemons.) The plan had been that Ant and John Al would come with me as backups. When I opened the door to Chris’s study bedroom and started with ‘Chris: Ant, John Al and I think . . . ’ I looked over my shoulder to discover that they’d pissed off.

  New Musical Express called ‘The Silent Sun’, ‘a disc of many facets and great depth’ although ‘it might be a bit too complex for the average fan’. We also got a good review in Melody Maker, which was the one we really wanted to be in. Melody Maker had a quality to it – musicians read it and believed it.

  Sadly our next single, ‘A Winter’s Tale’, generated zero interest. The only way it was going to be played on Radio 1 was if someone took an acetate up to Broadcasting House and shoved it in Tony Blackburn’s hands as he came out. Which is exactly what Pete suggested doing. Somehow it was Tony Banks who ended up being the one standing outside the door in Portland Place. Unfortunately Tony gets a bit aggressive when he gets nervous and I think Blackburn thought he was going to be beaten up.

  * * *

  I was seventeen in 1968 and growing up fast. In the spring Cliff had performed ‘Congratulations’ at the Eurovision Song Contest and he now definitely looked dated to me. (To be fair, I still think he has a great voice: give him the right song. But I wasn’t ten anymore. Cliff who? It was like we’d never known each other.) I was also a year into my A levels at Farnborough Tech studying English (which I enjoyed); French (which might come in handy); and Economics (which I didn’t understand).

  By my age, my father had finished his training at the Naval College in Osborne on the Isle of Wight and, later, Dartmouth. He’d already undertaken two tours on the training battleship HMS Thunderer and had joined the battleship Revenge, part of the Atlantic Fleet, as a Naval Cadet. Eight months later he was promoted to Midshipman and joined the cruiser Danae, which was based at Malta.

  By the time he was twenty-one he’d sailed along the Suez Canal on his way to Singapore and Hong Kong, and was back on land to study for further exams at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. It wasn’t all work:

  The glittering London season was underway. With my parents on occasions I did various events such as the Royal Academy, Chelsea Flower Show, the Derby, Royal Tournament, Varsity and Eton and Harrow match and so on.

  To take part in these splendid events a suitable wardrobe was essential.

  If going around town in daytime, a bowler hat and rolled umbrella were needed. If going out informally or to the West End at all in the evening a dinner jacket with boiled shirt, wing collar and black tie was worn. This was surmounted by an opera hat, a cunning device like a conjuror’s top hat which could be collapsed and put under a theatre seat and at a flip of the wrist sprung out into shape.

  He’d also got himself a car, a two-seater Morris Cowley, which had a canvas hood and one door. On the passenger side. This meant that ‘If the passenger was a lovely girl in long evening dress and satin shoes . . . it could be the end of a beautiful friendship.’ (When I was his age I had a yellow Ford Anglia with brown rust weeping down the right wing and was stuck in Farnham.)

  After my father had finished his two terms in Greenwich, he went to train in Gunnery, Torpedo and Navigation at Whale Island, where he would take command thirty years later.

  [Training] ended with a nightmare three weeks of exams ranging from abstruse mathematics to drilling a company or instructing a fifteen-inch turret’s crew.

  These surmounted, I was appointed to the junior staff of the Gunnery School at Chatham which, unlike Whale Island, was not an independent command but an integral part of the Royal Naval Barracks. Besides being instructors at the School, we were also Barrack’s Officers.

  I was made parade training officer so – basilisk-eyed and all boots, black gaiters and silver-plated whistle chain – marched myself about the parade ground bringing alarm and despondency to the classes going through the hoop thereon.

  Regarding my own future career, I’d tried to get my dad to let me study for A levels in London but after being thrown out of Charterhouse by Chare (albeit with ten O levels) my stock wasn’t high. Like most boys leaving the school I had also been sent for an aptitude test at King’s College, Cambridge, to see what kind of career might suit me. The results probably hadn’t impressed Dad much either:

  Rutherford, M. J.

  A fluent and perhaps rather disorderly boy, distinctly below average in IQ. If he has talents they seem likely to emerge on the arts side rather than in the sciences. My impression is that he might do much better outside the confines of conventional education.

  Meanwhile Pete was studying at Davies, Laing and Dick in Notting Hill Gate, the coolest crammer in the country, and generally leading the life I wanted to lead. He’d bought a London taxi and wore a long black coat and a big scarf. His persona was changing. He was becoming more outgoing and looked part of the cool London set. As for Jonathan King – who was only a few years older than us – he was driving around London in a white Rolls-Royce and living in a mews house. (I used to wonder about his bathroom: it was all mirrors so that when you sat on the loo seat, you saw yourself going on forever and ever. We all thought he might be gay, but in those days that kind of thing wasn’t discussed.) Tony, who was a year ahead of Pete and me, was finishing his A levels at Charterhouse and getting ready to study Chemistry at Sussex University. And there I was, out in the sticks.

  I did at least have some freedom in Farnham. Mum had found me some smart digs – she wasn’t going to have me living in a bedsit – although the downside was that the odd character who ran the place was way too sharp for me to sneak my girlfriend past him. I think he’d been in service as a butler somewhere once, but he was now silver-haired with permanently brown, nicotine-stained fingers. There’d often be a tap on the door if he thought something funny was going on: ‘Is everything all right in there?’ He’d then lean on the door post, leering at you slightly. Fortunately my girlfriend Josie’s digs were owned by a deaf old lady so I could sneak through the front door without being heard.

  Josie was pretty, blonde and also a student at Farnborough Tech. When I wasn’t having long lunches in the pub (I had no intention of doing any work after Charterhouse), I spent most of my time with her. We even went away for a week in Wales together. I didn’t think my parents would miss me now that I was living away from home but, to be on the safe side, I told them I w
as going away with Ant. Unfortunately Ant then rang Hill Cottage one day, which slightly blew that one.

  ‘Hello Captain Rutherford, is Michael there?’

  ‘He’s with you. Isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh . . . ? Yes!’

  My father summoned me into the dining room the next time I went home. ‘Your mother and I are very disappointed to learn you’ve lied to us.’

  Dad would always say ‘your mother and I’ in situations like this. Perhaps he felt it made more of an impact because Mum and I were closer.

  You always think you can pull the wool over your parents’ eyes and I was planning to busk my way out of it. I quickly realized it wasn’t going to work this time. Dad would never shout but he was furious: the morality of it he wasn’t going to get into, but the lying was a very serious thing as far as he was concerned.

  I had an enjoyable, carefree time for the first year that I was with Josie. Her own father had either died or left when she was younger and I think she saw me as a bit of a father figure. Then the band started to take off and I would spend the next two years trying to figure out ways of bringing the relationship gently to an end.

  * * *

  From Genesis to Revelation, the first Genesis album, was made in three days working non-stop. We were staying at the flat of a friend, David Thomas, in Earl’s Court and didn’t see light the whole time.

  By this point Pete had found us a new drummer, John Silver, who was a good jazz drummer, but when we all went into Regent B studios off Charing Cross Road none of us really had any idea what we were doing. We were trying to hang on and play our parts just about well enough, which was quite a struggle in those days. I could barely play my bass. In fact, I was without doubt the least good musician in the band but at the time I was more concerned with wanting to be part of the scene than necessarily getting the music right. To be making an album at seventeen felt so up there that it didn’t matter that Regent B studios was basically a basement off the Charing Cross Road. It felt like a government building – there was a sense that you might be marched off for interrogation at any moment. As for what was going on in the control room, none of us had a clue.

  Looking back now, From Genesis to Revelation seems surprisingly dark: it’s folky and poppy but the atmosphere grabs you. While Ant and I were writing hippyish lyrics about trees and leaves and boats and albatrosses, Pete was already writing songs like ‘The Conqueror’:

  He climbs inside the looking glass

  And points at everything he hates.

  He calls to you ‘Hey, look out, son,

  There’s a gun they’re pointing at your pretty face.’

  He was painting pictures with words that would capture an emotion and, without your thinking about them, go straight into your body.

  Although all the songs were credited to us as a band, the truth was we were more like two gangs of friends, Ant and I and Tony and Peter. Neither Ant nor I had really got going as songwriters at this point. Our attitude was always ‘One for all and all for one’, but From Genesis to Revelation was mostly Peter and Tony.

  We were all too insecure to tell Jonathan King to piss off when he suggested basing the album around a religious theme – had it been the following album, we probably would have done. At the time, though, the idea seemed like something cohesive to work with, so we went along with it. Legend has it that From Genesis to Revelation ended up being shelved in the religious music section of record shops as a result, but the fact is we only sold 600 copies so it can’t have been in many record shops in any case. I can’t remember ever seeing it, and I did look.

  * * *

  Although I wasn’t yet committed to the path we were taking, Ant had never had any doubt. His life was music, nothing else: it was all-consuming. As a result he was more susceptible than the rest of us to the ups and downs. When Jonathan King got Arthur Greenslade to put some weak strings arrangements on the album, I was pretty annoyed. But it just about killed Ant.

  Not that Ant or I bought records ourselves: we’d go up to Rich Macphail’s flat in London and listen to his. After Millfield, Rich had gone on to live on a kibbutz in Israel where he’d spent the past few months doing the cooking, listening to music and getting stoned. (He was eventually busted and fined, and had sailed to England via Cyprus, Piraeus, Athens, Naples, Genoa and Marseilles.)

  It was at Rich’s flat that I first heard a song in stereo. It was ‘A Salty Dog’ by Procol Harum. I put the headphones on and it was like your skull opening up: an extra dimension; a huge, pastoral picture in strings. It would have been intense even without the dope we were both smoking.

  Rich’s flat was also where I had my first acid trip, although unlike the dope that was completely unintentional.

  I hadn’t really encountered any drugs at the Marquee Club when I’d skived off from Charterhouse to see gigs there. I’m sure all kinds of things were happening at the back but I was always at the front.

  On this particular night I’d been to the Marquee to see the Cream, who’d been fantastic: the volume alone blew my head off. I was wearing my jeans and Afghan but must still have looked liked someone trying a bit too hard to be cool because someone spiked my Coca-Cola.

  It didn’t hit me until I got back to Rich’s flat. Then it really hit me. At some point in the early hours I tried to crawl from my bedroom to the bathroom but the problem was that the corridor between the two kept getting longer and longer. Years and years passed while I was on my hands and knees and every time I looked up, I was never any closer.

  That was bad but what was worse was to come. I was due to meet my parents at eleven o’clock the next morning at the Station Hotel in Victoria: we were all going off for a family weekend in Paris.

  I arrived just a few minutes late but completely out of my tree, still dripping in sweat and shaking. Mum took one look at me and knew straightaway what the problem was.

  ‘Mikey! Darling! You poor boy! What terrible flu!’

  I’m pretty sure Dad had an idea what was going down but Mum was convinced that I needed to be put to bed with hot water bottles. Whether or not these helped I don’t know, but I had recovered enough by the morning to make the trip.

  My parents’ idea was that it would be an educational, sightseeing tour. We’d go to the galleries, the Sacré-Coeur, Montmartre and so on. What they didn’t know was how much my mind had already been expanded in the past twenty-four hours.

  * * *

  I finished my A levels in 1969 and applied to Edinburgh University to read English. It was so far away I thought no one else would want to go there so I’d stand a chance of getting in. Pete was planning to go to the London Film School, Tony was wondering whether to take a year out from his degree at Sussex University and John Silver was going off in the autumn to study in America. Only Ant was totally committed to our music but his enthusiasm was enough to inspire us to spend the summer rehearsing as a band.

  Ant and I had previously rehearsed together in Granny Malimore’s house. She was quite fierce, a tough old thing, but she’d bring Ant and me marmalade sandwiches while we took the chairs and table out of her dining room to make space. (I’m sure Dad sold it to her: ‘It’s all right, it’s just a hobby. He’s going to university in September.’)

  Luckily for Granny Malimore, during the summer most of our Charterhouse friends’ parents’ were away, so we were able to work our way round their empty houses instead.

  We normally had a two-week stint in each because that was how long our parents were away for. We spent two weeks in David Thomas’s house in South Marlborough – a stunning white mansion with a swimming pool; two weeks in Ant’s house, which was hung-tiled and covered in creeper; and two weeks at Peter’s house, in Chobham. There’s a picture of us outside Ant’s house loading our gear into Pete’s sister’s horsebox, which I think rather sums up Genesis at this point in time. Other bands were rehearsing in north London basements, while we were moving our stuff around in a horse trailer still full of straw and horse shit. No one ha
d thought to clear it out.

  The house of Brian Roberts’s granny, where we also spent two weeks, was on a gated estate in East Grinstead. While we were there we all watched the moon landings on a tiny TV in a huge wooden frame. Brian also got a journalist from the East Grinstead Courier down to write a story about us for the paper:

  With a curious combination of all-acoustic sounds and vocal harmonies they have so far had three singles released on Decca and one album ‘From Genesis to Revelation’ produced by singer and controversial ‘pop’ columnist Jonathan King.

  Brian Roberts, now an assistant cameraman, said: ‘We all met at school at Charterhouse and began writing together. A group was formed from this. I began to record work and have continued to do so.’

  So far all their work has been done from the recording studio. But thinking very seriously of becoming professional, they are looking for the type of work where audiences are prepared to sit down and listen – as on the present college circuits. Their music is essentially for the listener, not the raver.

  True: you really couldn’t get anything out of the music we were making back then unless you sat down and went on the journey. Although, of course, we hadn’t actually performed for an audience at all yet. The East Grinstead Courier covered that up rather nicely, I thought.

  In all the houses in which we were staying, the noise we were making seemed scarily loud. And sometimes you’d be aware of another strange sound, too, coming from down a corridor. When you went to investigate you’d find Pete tucked up in a telephone alcove, playing the flute.

  A lot of the time you felt that Pete’s brain might have been somewhere else whereas Tony always lived in the now. He liked everything to be organized, planned and perfect. Pete was also a perfectionist but he was happy to get there the meandering way. He could deal with chaos and mismanagement, and things going wrong – such as the moment when we were at Chobham and his parents suddenly rang to say that they were coming back early. He remained calm even though we only had a couple of hours to tidy up and be off the premises. Somehow we got the house cleared and were just thinking that we’d made it when Tony’s bloody car wouldn’t start.