I’d been riding for a couple of months – no chargers – when a friend rang up and asked if I want to compete in a celebrity charity event at Tetbury in Gloucestershire. It didn’t sound too bad: a bit of jumping round a little course and then some against-the-clock off-road driving in a 4 x 4. It wasn’t until we were nearly there and I saw the big RAC signs on all the surrounding roads that a bell went off. We were parking the car when none other Captain Mark Phillips, then married to Princess Anne, came over: ‘Oh, Mike! Good man, you’re in my team!’
I’d just about trotted over the odd straw bale at home, but as I walked the course at Tetbury, it turned out to be a load of high dry-stone walls and bloody upturned boats. I’ve never known fear like it to this day. I’d managed to look like the real thing, except my top lip was sticking to my teeth because my mouth was so dry. I was borrowing a horse that I’d never ridden before, and which seemed absolutely huge. Somehow he got me round.
The only problem was that I then had to negotiate the driving part of the event and I couldn’t accelerate because my foot was shaking so much. After repeatedly seeing my life flash in front of me over the course of the day, I’d decided eventing wasn’t for me.
I missed having the blokes around and the camaraderie. That’s when Gordon and Anita Roddick came to the rescue. Angie had been discussing her concerns with Anita and felt I needed a hobby of some sort as I’d said, ‘I’m thinking of moving back to London’. Gordon played polo and invited me along to Terry Hanlon’s yard. We all had bacon rolls and coffee, and then played polo, which was more like rugby on horseback, followed by the pub for lunch. At last, I’d found my hobby.
The problem was that I had soon became overly keen and had got myself a pony. I’d only been playing polo for about a season when Terry suggested I get a second pony in case the one I had went lame. That seemed like a good idea, so I did. A few weeks later, Terry found another pony which he thought was better than the first pony I’d bought. However, if I bought this new pony, pony number three, Terry was sure he could arrange a quick sale of pony number one. This happened a few more times as the months passed.
Angie offered to go and collect the ponies for me at the end of the season. I was pretty sure I still only had two ponies, but when she arrived at the yard, a groom was waiting there with five. Angie got them loaded in and was just about to drive off when the yard owner appeared: ‘See you later for the next lot?’ It turned out I’d got ten.
* * *
In 1980 I was thirty. In my mind the past ten years had been a lifetime: we’d made ten albums, lost Pete and Steve, played Knebworth, toured Japan . . . Of course, none of us knew that we hadn’t yet gone very far at all.
Touring was becoming an increasingly big deal and in America and Europe we’d often find ourselves doing a runner: a dash from the show to the next town that we were playing. While we were on stage playing our encore, the tour manager would be putting friends, families and some drinks in the waiting limos, the engines would be revved up, and as soon as we’d finished we’d rush off stage, grab our robes, jump in the car and off we’d go with our police escort. By the time the last person had left the stadium we’d already be at the airport on the plane to the next date. It was always exciting, although sometimes the excitement would get a bit infectious. We were in Germany when it all got a bit much for one of our drivers and he started getting impatient with some slow-moving traffic. We heard this scraping noise as he started nudging cars out of his path.
After playing such big venues it was always nice to play smaller places again – we were reminded that the music still worked even without all the lights and production – and so in spring 1980 we decided on a ‘thank you’ tour of the smaller English venues in which we’d begun our career. It would be both a return to our roots and a way of showing the fans how much we appreciated their support.
It was odd being back in the old places. We’d played them so often in the early days that even now I can picture them: Bradford St George’s Hall with its tapering balcony and wrought-iron pillars; Birmingham Town Hall with its grand museum-like facade and cramped backstage . . . We even went back to the Blue Boar to see if it was as crap as we’d remembered it: it was.
With Angie pregnant with Tom, and my wanting to be at home more, I drove myself to most of the gigs. The whole tour was filmed by a TV crew who, in the way of all these documentaries, seemed at least as interested in the trucks, flight cases and roadies as the band. Probably more so. I think my parents would have preferred the BBC, rather than ITV, but telly was still telly. As a band there was no danger of fame going to our heads: when we went on to play the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles in May, the security crew wouldn’t allow us back onstage for an encore because we hadn’t got our passes.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Conversations about where we were going musically didn’t tend to happen very often. And normally when they did it was because we’d been drinking. Tony’s tongue was always loosened by a drink, but you had to catch him between the first couple of glasses and the start of the second bottle when he began getting difficult. The only problem was that in the old days by the time you’d convinced Tony about whatever it was, Pete would be so pissed and past caring you’d lost him altogether. I could keep going for longer than both of them but that wasn’t difficult.
In 1981 one of the conversations Tony and I did have over a drink was whether we should change our name. You know when you chat about something knowing that you’re never going to do it? It was one of those conversations. We still talked about it quite enthusiastically anyway.
We’d now reached a point in our careers where we felt we were in danger of becoming a caricature of ourselves and with our new album we wanted to break with the past. Not disassociate ourselves from it, but not repeat it either. We didn’t want to make another album whereby I’d contribute a couple of my acoustic songs, Tony would contribute a couple of his bigger, grander songs, and we’d carry on in the same pattern. This meant less long songs, which was an idea that Tony was less sure about than Phil and me because those were more his area, but we all wanted to move on.
In the end I don’t think we even got as far as seriously putting forward any alternative names – I can’t remember any of them if we did, put it like that. We definitely never mentioned them to Tony Smith: we weren’t that stupid. But Tony’s great strength is that, even if we had, he’d probably have calmly said, ‘Okay . . . let me think about it’ – while screaming silently inside – and then come back to us a few days later and said, ‘On reflection, I think no, probably not.’ He doesn’t overreact, Tony. Which is good.
* * *
We were in the early stages of writing Abacab when ‘In the Air Tonight’, the first single from Face Value, was released. It went to number 2; the album was released a month later and went to number 1. Phil came in the next morning and we all looked at each other: ‘That’s not bad, is it?’ We were all quite surprised, Phil included.
The timing was important: had Face Value been released during a gap for Genesis then it’s possible that Phil might have considered not returning. I’d have understood it if he had moved off – but as it was the songs we were working on were sounding good and Phil, like Tony and me, was the kind of person who would get very engrossed in the here and now. Plus, I think Phil enjoyed what we did as a band too much to leave. The fact that we carried on making group albums even after his solo career took off seems to me to speak for itself.
Face Value was produced by Hugh Padgham, who had also worked with Pete since he had gone solo. We now brought him in as a co-producer on Abacab. Hugh was the first person to make us sound on record like we sounded live. We had real fire playing live but we had never really captured it on record before. Hugh, like Phil, also worked fast. Writing and recording had already got much quicker now that there were just three of us in the band. Two yeses and a no, two no thanks and a yes: done. In any case, we wanted to move faster than Pete. ‘It’s coming out at Easter,�
�� Peter would always say when you asked him about his latest album. ‘Which Easter?’ you’d say. (It always struck me as ironic that one of the things that bothered Pete about Genesis was not having enough time to write the lyrics. It was only when he began to make his own solo records that he discovered it wasn’t Genesis that was the problem. Lyrics have their own tempo.)
Personally my own preference would always be to do three albums in the time it would take other more self-conscious artists to produce one. Two of the albums would be likely to be good, and one perhaps would turn out bad, but it would be better to let the songs have their own life rather than labour them and lose the momentum. I’ve always felt that what we produced was, literally, a record of a certain moment in time. In another year we’d be sounding a different way and be writing different things, so what was important was capturing how we sounded right at that minute.
Phil had used the Phenix Horns on Face Value and was keen to try some brass on Abacab. Tony wasn’t sure, but I was open to the idea and so flew with Phil and Hugh out to LA, where the Phenix Horns were based. Phil had been building them up as an incredibly tight, iconic four-piece and I was ready to be impressed. I soon had to revise my expectations. The first hour and a half was spent sorting out various demands: drugs, food, drink . . . Fair enough, I thought, but then we went in for the first take and it was appalling. I looked round at Phil and Hugh, and Phil and Hugh very definitely didn’t look back at me. The second take wasn’t much better and probably slightly worse: out of time, out of tune, all over the shop.
Hugh, in those days, had a slightly boyish look and always wore a big, slightly frayed sweater. He’d have a grin that he used to pull out when it was going well – his eyes would light up – and a frown that came out when it wasn’t going how he thought it should. It wasn’t a mega-frown: just a worried look. Concerned. We’d all seen it when we were trying to prove to him that a bit we were working on was actually okay.
Hugh had taken his sweater off in LA but he was definitely wearing that little concerned look of his. ‘Is there a problem?’ I asked eventually. ‘No . . . ’ Hugh said slowly. ‘They’ll get there . . . ’
And when they did – and they really did – their sound was unique. But it was a lot of work – a lot of work – partly because they were all such characters. Don Myrick, the saxophonist, was eventually killed in a drug bust in 1993. Louis Satterfield, the trombone player, hurt his lip at one point and while he couldn’t play, locked himself in a hotel room and went room-service mad to the tune of $5,000 in a single night.
* * *
I’ve often thought that the reason why British bands tend to last longer than American ones is that in America it’s easy to find yourself surrounded by people who believe your hype. In Britain you can go into a pub and people will fall over themselves not to notice you.
This was one of the nice things about moving to the country, although when the band bought Fisher Lane Farm in Chiddingfold, Surrey, with the idea of turning it into a residential recording studios, the locals weren’t best pleased. Chiddingfold is a quiet English village and the idea of a rock band descending caused a bit of a stir. However, the roadies soon ingratiated themselves at Chiddingfold Working Men’s Club – especially after they’d discovered the beer was subsidized. After that the policy generally seemed to be to turn a blind eye. The only person who ever caused any bother in Chiddingfold was a guy who thought he’d used his powers of telepathy to write all our songs. Having then communicated them to us subliminally, he’d got a bit annoyed when we started passing them off as our own and now he was after his royalties. He wrote to us quite regularly and occasionally he’d appear at ‘The Farm’, as the studios became known. One of the roadies would drive him back down the road, plonk him in the middle of the village green and off he’d go until the next time.
The Farm was perfect for what we wanted. It began as quite a funky old building with a barn in which we stowed the gear, and a milking shed that we used as a garage. As time went on we developed the accommodation for crew and engineers and built a stone-clad drum room based on the one at Virgin’s Townhouse Studios. Hugh was involved in designing it – drums and voice were Hugh’s forte – and that drum room was another reason why we began to sound on record like we really did as musicians.
The process of finding The Farm hadn’t been easy, though. Just like back in the days when we had needed to negotiate drop-offs on our way back to London after gigs, delicate logistical negotiations had been involved.
After I’d moved out to the country, I often felt that I’d started an exodus: Tony and Margaret came down soon after, then Tony Smith and then Phil. Phil was just down the road from me: I’d always been touched by the way he rang me before buying his house to check that I didn’t mind his being next door.
Phil’s house, Tony Banks’s house and my house now formed a triangle, but the problem was that it was unequal, meaning that one person’s house would always be nearer than the other two to the studio we were considering. The aim, obviously, was for our own to be the nearest, but none of us would ever say that when we were being shown somewhere further away. ‘It’s very nice but I’m not sure about the acoustics. I think maybe we should keep on looking a bit longer . . . ’
We even considered a four-sided farmhouse set round a courtyard with a galleried hall – but it was so nice that the idea of filling it with roadies just didn’t seem right.
Not that the roadies ever had any complaints about The Farm, despite its remoteness from London: on sunny days they’d even sit outside on the lawn in front of the studio in deckchairs. Being in a studio with a window was a big plus for us as a band. Prior to this, we’d always been locked away in basements – but there were downsides and watching the roadies tanning upevery summer wasone of them. I know they did it to annoy us.
* * *
Most of our crew had been with us for years by this point: Bison, Pud, Little Geoff and Dale (no one knows how Dale escaped having a nickname: he was Noodlemier for a while but it never took hold). Pud was Welsh and called Steve Jones but there were four other Steve Jones in his class at school so, being small and round, he ended up as Pud. Bison was stocky with thick black hair.
Bison had been part of Genesis legend since the last night of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour when he appeared naked on stage as Rael’s body-double. Normally, at the climactic moment, Pete would appear on one side of the stage and a mannequin dressed in Rael’s leather jacket would appear on the other. On this particular night Bison decided he’d take the place of the mannequin, not only without the leather jacket, but without anything else on either. Full frontal. There was a strobe going and I remember very clearly how every part of his body was an odd grey-blue.
Bison had a fantastically quick sense of humour but you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. A few years after he joined us we were playing a gig in Germany and there was a drunken heckler in the front row. ‘Can you have a word?’ I said to Bison. I then watched as he walked calmly down to the front of the stage, made his way towards to the troublemaker, and Bap! knocked him out cold. I was trying to play but for the next song and a half all I could think about was whether Bison had actually killed the guy. The man’s body was now hanging over the aluminium safety fence, waving slightly like seaweed as the barriers heaved.
The crew worked all hours. I’ve always said that if there was a roadie’s union, touring would be impossible, although the work was a matter of pride for them, too. But it was no secret that the only way they could keep it up was with chemical help, and that was where Howie came in.
Howie was from the Bronx. We first met him when he was selling illegal merchandise at the back of a venue. He looked exactly like the kind of guy you’d imagine would do that: a skinny face and you never knew how old he was. He had a bad shoulder, too: he claimed he’d been hit by a stray bullet but you suspected that it might not have gone that wide.
Howie supplied the road crew with the various substanc
es they needed to keep them awake but no one ever mentioned that was his official role. His official position was court jester and he was so good at it that occasionally you’d just have to turn him off. We would all enjoy the patter for a while but then he just wouldn’t shut up. Mostly, though, everyone loved Howie. He would interact effortlessly with anyone – fans, crew, the band, the record companies – and then when he’d finished a tour with us, he’d join the Pink Floyd road crew and carry on in the same vein.
Nick Mason, the drummer with Pink Floyd, once told me that when the band were invited to Cape Canaveral to meet some astronauts, Howie was somehow in tow, and he was greeted by everyone there like a long lost friend. And when Genesis played at Atlantic’s fortieth anniversary party in Madison Square Garden, an event hosted by Michael Douglas, as soon as we walked into the dressing room it was Howie who was greeted with a load of high fives. Even Michael Douglas seemed to know who he was.
He got everywhere. At the end of one American tour we said our goodbyes and left for England, only to see him a few days later looking very at home at The Farm for the first time. He soon became a regular fixture. Not only that, he went on to play himself in with the locals so well that he even became Chairman of the Chiddingfold Working Men’s Club. I’m not sure he was selling his wares to the local OAPs but they always looked very pleased to see him.
Eventually, Howie had to leave us. He was obviously a guy who was used to flying close to the wind and eventually he got a bit too close. Nevertheless, undeterred, he managed to find a job as a postman at the post office in Woking – which, bearing in mind his line of delivery work, I thought showed great initiative.
The Living Years Page 19