Tony was the worst (or the best, depending on how you looked at it). He’d go on so long that in the end he’d just wear you down. Eventually, in later years, I found out that if you let him go on long enough he’d suddenly say, ‘But then again, you may be right . . .’ and start arguing the other way. You had to catch him at just the right moment.
My mind was on the guitarist who’d come to audition with Phil, Ronnie Caryl, his friend from Flaming Youth. The thing about Ronnie was that he was a blues guitarist. I could tell he didn’t have a feel for our folky, harmony, tinkly guitar stuff, so if I had any reservations that day it was probably because I was worried that Ronnie and Phil might come as a job lot.
Fortunately, they didn’t.
* * *
It had been Ant’s leaving that had made us decide that as well as a new guitarist, we really needed a new drummer to replace John Mayhew. But although we’d now solved one part of the problem, we were still a man down. That summer Genesis played quite a few shows as a four-piece, Tony playing lead lines on his Hohner Pianet that he put through a fuzz box and me playing guitar and bass pedals. It’s a forgotten era now but it was an important time for the band: the moment when Tony and I began to get closer together musically. We were the chords in the middle, Tony and I, the core of the Genesis sound. Even on From Genesis to Revelation you can hear it: the repeating riff with the changing chords laid over the top, and Tony responding to me or vice versa.
This didn’t mean that things within the band were all that harmonious. Soon after Phil joined in August 1970 we moved into The Maltings in Farnham to rehearse and row full time.
The Maltings was a vast building, a huge expanse of dusty wooden floorboards that had once been a maltworks but now only had pigeons in it. And pigeon shit. We would set up in one corner of the place on some rugs and in the morning our gear would be completely covered. It was always a surprise to find Rich, who stayed there and slept on the floor as security, had escaped the bird droppings untouched.
Perhaps it was because Tony and I had effectively found our workload doubled that it was such a tense period. We were also all driven not so much to succeed in terms of fame, but to achieve what we wanted to achieve musically. The arguing was a terrible waste of time, but we were worried about getting it right, making our ideas work. It must have been violent, though, because the first few times we started rowing, I could see Phil thought we were breaking up, it was all over. Then after a few days he got over the shock and I could see him thinking: ‘It really doesn’t matter, guys!’
We weren’t quite on the same planet as Phil. He always had a bloke-next-door, happy-go-lucky demeanour about him: let’s have a drink in the pub, crack a joke, smoke a cigarette or a joint. Life is good. I think that’s one of the things Pete liked about Phil: the fact that Phil wasn’t from the same background, hadn’t come from the same rather narrow world as us. Pete was always less stiff than Tony and me, much more in touch with emotions and feelings, much more interested in the wider world.
There was a musical bond between Pete and Phil too: because of Pete’s sense of rhythm, he and Phil seemed to lock in from day one. They were both intuitive about music in the same way. It wasn’t cerebral, as it was with Tony – with Pete and Phil it came from the gut. Plus Phil, having joined later, wasn’t part of our old playground dynamic, which was why there was often a bit more respect for his opinion. And why he was often left twiddling his drumsticks while the rest of us fought.
Among the songs we were working on at The Maltings was ‘Musical Box’, which to me was ‘Stagnation’ one stage on. It was a quirky, fantasy fairytale story that started quietly, built up and, at the end, had a huge dramatic finish that would be one of our best bits for a long time to come. Even today when I hear Pete sing ‘Now, now, now, now, now’ it raises the hairs on the back of my neck. It’s almost annoying: as I’m not a singer, I could never do something so simple that would sound so emotional.
Maybe that’s not quite true.
The Maltings had a terrific echo and I found that, if I left my guitar plugged in when I slammed it down in the middle of a row, it made a tremendous noise. And Tony would make sure his keyboards were turned up to full volume when he whacked them and stormed out.
The Maltings wasn’t far from Hill Cottage so Phil and I stayed there while Tony stayed with Pete. It felt good, like a new beginning, to have Phil around and my parents liked him, too. I think they always found Pete a bit of a mystery, but they could relate to Phil more.
They moved the dining table out in to the hall where there was more space and then Mum did what most mothers do and tried to stuff us. The more we ate, the better job she’d done, so there’d often be starters and a main. I didn’t really see much of Dad in that period – he’d pass through and he was glad we were there, but he’d quickly take himself off to read the newspaper. I think my parents were pleased to see how hard we worked and how obsessed and committed we were, and they were happy to support us in any way they could. I had thought taking me to my first gig aged ten was as it good as it was ever going to get.
Phil stayed at Hill Cottage, in my sister’s old bedroom, for a week or so and then we swapped over and Tony came to stay with me while Phil went to stay with Pete. The idea was that it would allow Pete to get to know Phil better, but no one ever told Phil that. He always thought it was because I didn’t like him and had rung up Pete to complain: ‘Oh for God’s sake, Pete, you have him for a while, he’s a right pain in the arse.’
It didn’t matter to Mum who she had staying, and both my parents thought Tony was very polite. Tony and I did miss a meal one evening when Mum nearly set fire to the house.
We were sitting chatting when we heard a voice from the kitchen.
‘Um, fire. Fire, Mikey, fire.’
This was in her normal voice. Then it got a little bit louder.
‘Um, Mikey, fire? Fire, Mikey?’ she said again as though there still might be some doubt about it. I went into the kitchen and flames had completely engulfed a saucepan, licking up the sides of the thing. I had to rush it out to the garden and dump it in a flowerbed while Tony watched. (He’s never been one for the front line of the action.)
* * *
Before the Second World War, the Navy was the largest public relations organization in the world. The idea was that trade followed the flag, which meant my father was often part of what were called ‘hurrah cruises’, meant to win hearts and minds and show taxpaying members of the Commonwealth that they were getting value for money. It was a social whirl, as Dad discovered in South Africa in 1929:
Ball suppers were held in basements where at trestle tables on wooden chairs we washed down ham, tongue, jellies and blancmange with South Africa’s more light-hearted and acidulated wines.
The stay always included a ship’s dance, children’s party and being open to visitors who wandered all over the place, and I found a family one afternoon standing raptly at the wardroom door gazing at the not-very-attractive picture of one of the watch-keeping officers taking a post-luncheon forty winks in an armchair.
Mother was saying, ‘I say the poor boy is tired but your father says he’s drunk like all sailors. But we can’t have a bet on it as it wouldn’t be right to wake him up and find out.’
To be fair, it was an exhausting schedule:
I still have the programme of a four-day visit to Accra where all not on duty lived ashore each with a suitcase packed according to a list like a new boy at school. We moved from function to function, the only stable element being where we slept the night, provided that we could remember where it was.
In 1970, Genesis played over a hundred gigs. We moved from pub to club to college and the only stable element was Rich’s food, although it was less ham and tongue, more sausages and baked potatoes. At the cottage he’d always pack some food before we set off in the bread van because we simply couldn’t to afford to eat out – and anyway, where else would you put a hard-boiled egg if not a hamper? But that didn
’t stop other bands from expecting a scene from Henley regatta whenever we rocked up.
If anything, I felt Charterhouse had actually given us a better grounding than most for life on the road. We’d been beaten down and got used to living quite basically in a tough environment without home comforts. What’s more, while our peers who had gone on to university were continuing to live a rather bubble-like, privileged existence, we were learning about life in the real world, where everyone seemed to be against us because of our background. In our case it felt like everyone was doubly against us because our music was so odd.
We had to pay our dues like every other band, lugging our equipment around, earning the respect of roadies and crew. Where things got a bit strange for us was when paying our dues also meant entertaining our contemporaries at their Oxbridge May Balls.
It seemed weird to be back in a world of arches, cloisters and stone pillars again in such different circumstances, but if the setting brought back memories of Charterhouse, then there was absolutely no comparison in terms of the audience. At Charterhouse, you’d always be cheered – not so much because of what you were playing but because the masters obviously hated it. Putting them through pain made it all the more pleasurable. May Balls were just painful for everyone: us and the audience. The big act would be on at midnight so by three or four in the morning when we were on we’d be fighting to stay awake – it was so late that we would have got pissed, got over the hangover and got sober again. Those left in the audience that weren’t comatose on the floor, throwing-up drunk or acid-ed out were very, very few.
Around the time Ant left the band, the bread van passed its sell-by date and we began to rent a transit van from an East End guy named Reg King, who had a link with Strat. The good thing about Reg’s vans was that if anything went wrong with them – which it always would – you could drop them back at Reg’s base where a burly mechanic would come out with a sledgehammer, take a swing at whichever part you thought wasn’t right, charge you £20, and send you on our way. The bad part about Reg King’s vans was dealing with Reg King, which was Rich’s job.
Reg was Andrew Loog Oldham’s chauffeur – Andrew Loog Oldham as in the Stones’ manager and ‘chauffeur’ as in minder. The first time Rich met Reg was in Reg’s office in Soho Square. There was a trail of blood up the stairs, the result of Reg’s previous appointment. Reg rang Gail Colson, Strat’s assistant at Charisma, afterwards: ‘Rich has just left. He’s a bit freaked out. He saw the claret.’
We never knew if we were going to make it to a gig in a Reg King van. There was one show in Aberystwyth when the van broke down four times on the way from London. We got there so late we missed our booking, and had to turn round and start the drive straight back home. Whereupon the van instantly broke down again. This was in the middle of nowhere and the middle of the night: we managed to call for help from an AA box but then everyone fell asleep waiting.
I woke up to this strange whine – a kind of ‘Neoooeeeooo’ sound. The funny thing was, it seemed to be coming from the AA box. I got out of the van, went over to the box and opened it up nervously, not sure what I was going to find inside. What I found was Pete. He was sitting inside on a shelf, wrapped in a towel to keep warm, playing his oboe.
If we weren’t in one of Reg’s vans then we were piled into someone’s car, which wasn’t much better. Driving anywhere was always a source of friction: as a driver Tony was so slow that journeys would go on forever but Pete was too erratic. He’d be talking away and completely forget about changing gear – you’d end up shaking so much you felt like you were leaving body parts in the road. When he suddenly remembered that there was such a thing as fourth, you’d feel the car breathe a sigh of relief.
This meant that I would make a dash for the driving role, but Tony didn’t like that because he didn’t trust me not to fall asleep. He’d start by singing Beatles songs to keep everyone awake and then, when they’d all tailed off, he’d just keep on prodding me. The flaw in his plan was that sometimes he couldn’t stay awake either, and when that happened I did occasionally rest my eyes in the shut position.
When I fell asleep and went over a large roundabout, I could pass it off as a just a large bump in the road. It was more difficult when I fell asleep on the M4 and drove over an oil drum that was marking some roadworks. Sparks were flying everywhere – it was like a rocket re-entering orbit – and the noise alone was enough to convince me that we were going to die. Even worse, we weren’t in one of our vans at the time. We had borrowed Lindisfarne’s vehicle, which was a brand-new transit and had smart airplane seats with headphone sockets. It wasn’t quite as brand-new when Lindisfarne got it back.
Naturally all this driving meant that service stations were an important part of our lives. We’re probably the only people ever to have looked forward to getting to the Blue Boar on the M1 at Watford Gap. It’d be 3 a.m., you’d be cold and shivery, and your body would almost go into shock at those horrible fluorescent service station lights – but God, the taste of a greasy full English breakfast would be great.
* * *
It was after we left The Maltings that we found our next guitarist: Mick Barnard of Princes Risborough.
Mick had a Binson Echo – a great delay sound, very novel at the time – and was a really nice guy. We really weren’t very nice to him.
To get to gigs, Mick would always drive part of the way from Princes Risborough to meet us, park his car somewhere convenient such as a service station, and then wait for us to pick him up in the van; on the way home, we’d do the same thing in reverse. The incident that really sticks in my mind was when we were driving home on a horrible, cold, wet winter’s night when there was no one around and Mick had been having problems with his car. We were on the opposite side of the motorway from the service station car park so Mick asked us to wait until he’d crossed over the footbridge and made sure his car would start before we drove off.
‘Course we will, Mick.’
We didn’t exactly bugger off the minute his back was turned, it was more that we sort of instantly forgot about him. And then the next thing we knew, we were a mile down the road. It turned out to be a long night for Mick.
Maybe we were so awful to him because we felt he wasn’t quite the one, but I still feel guilty about that night now.
In truth, I was too set on finding ‘the son of Ant’. I still missed him, although it wasn’t as though he’d vanished from my life completely. He came to a couple of shows – it was a bit frosty, but not that bad. There was a great sadness for me, though, because I knew it’d never be the same between us. He would never be able to share the memories and the jokes that the rest of the band were going to share.
For Pete and Tony, however, it was much less complicated: we needed a new guitarist, simple as that. And so when I fell ill with a stomach ulcer, they simply went and got another one to replace Mick.
* * *
You don’t usually get a stomach ulcer at twenty but the Blue Boar 3 a.m. fry-ups and lack of sleep had taken their toll. Having now finally split up with Josie after several unhappy attempts I went home to Hill Cottage to recover.
I’d worried and fretted about breaking up with Josie so much in advance but when it came to it, it wasn’t as terrible as I’d feared. It was just a relief to both of us to finally acknowledge that it wasn’t working. Meanwhile, Mum loved having me back. ‘You should stay in bed till you’re right,’ she’d say, and then I would hear her go downstairs to Dad. ‘I don’t think he should leave till he’s better.’
But while I was laid up in my old teenage bedroom – still with the same green bedcover, the same orange lampshade, the same psychedelic UFO club poster on the wall – Pete had seen an advert in Melody Maker: ‘Imaginative guitarist/writer seeks involvement with receptive musicians determined to strive beyond existing stagnant forms.’ This was Steve Hackett, who was then living in Pimlico.
By the time Pete and Tony brought Steve down to Hill Cottage I think they’d already deci
ded he was in the band but were still a bit worried about getting it past me. I sensed it was a slight ambush: ‘Catch him while he’s weak and in bed, he’s bound to say yes.’ In any case they waited downstairs while Steve came up to my bedroom to meet me. This time I was definitely wearing a dressing gown.
Steve didn’t look like us. He looked like an art student. Black corduroy jacket, black jeans, black scarf, black shirt. And black hair and a black moustache. For years Steve was all black. ‘He’s very quiet, isn’t he?’ Mum said when he’d gone. But he wasn’t quiet or shy on the guitar. Mick had a lovely, warm sound but he wasn’t brave sonically, whereas Steve had lots of weird effects boxes. But what was unusual about Steve was that he liked acoustic guitar too – until now, all the replacement guitarists I’d found were either electric or acoustic, not both. Straightaway I felt as though we understood each other – although I’m not sure Steve, seeing me in my dressing gown, felt the same.
As we found over the years, Phil had a huge capacity for taking alcohol and not showing it. Steve’s first gig, at University College London in January 1971, was one of the exceptions. We’d been for a few pints beforehand but no one realized that Phil had drunk a few more pints than everyone else and was pissed. Phil was such a good drummer that he could pull most things off, but that night he went for his big fill and nothing happened. Silence. He’d played it perfectly but he was just six inches to the side of every drum.
Poor Steve: it was his first gig, he was nervous and we’d got a drunk drummer. Tony and I gave Phil such a hard time afterwards, which didn’t bother Phil but Steve unfortunately thought that we were arguing about him: we hated him and wanted him out. As usual, it never occurred to anyone to tell the newcomer what was really going on.
Soon after this we set off on the Charisma Records Six Bob Tour. It was like a little Charisma hurrah cruise and one of Strat’s best ideas: take a musical package tour around the country, introduce people to three different Charisma acts and charge them virtually nothing (six bob was peanuts) for a ticket. The other two bands on the bill, Lindisfarne and Van der Graaf Generator, took it in turns to headline, but we were the junior partners so would go on first and get the seats warm for when everyone arrived.
The Living Years Page 9