The ’70s were defined by change for Genesis. Their first album of the decade, 1970’s Trespass, became their last with co-founder Anthony Phillips. And so it went.
Phil Collins and Steve Hackett first appeared on 1971’s Nursery Cryme and 1972’s Foxtrot, and they’d both have career-shifting influences on the group – even if Hackett’s tenure was far shorter. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Genesis’ concept-album follow up to 1973’s Selling England by the Pound, was the last with original frontman Peter Gabriel.
Two more 1976 albums, A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering, then marked the end of the Hackett era. By the time 1978’s aptly named And Then There Were Three arrived, Genesis was pared down to Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford.
READ MORE: Top 10 Phil Collins-Era Genesis Songs
They were already shifting the group’s musical approach ahead of a rocket ride to superstardom in the decade to come: After scoring four consecutive gold-selling albums, the less-dense, more radio-ready And Then There Were Three became their first platinum success in the U.S.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, these ever-shifting lineups brought a thrilling diversity of creativity and perspective. Arrivals and departures changed Genesis forever – and that’s reflected in the music, lyrics and production. Here’s a look back at Genesis’ best songs from the ’70s:
No. 10. “Ripples”
From: Trick of the Tail (1976)
The moment when Phil Collins started to become Phil Collins. Genesis was never the same: A Trick of the Tail matched their best-ever U.K. chart finish at No. 3 and launched them into the U.S. Top 40 for the very first time – a place in which Genesis would soon become very comfortable. They did it by shedding their prog pretensions, slowly at first and then at a feverish pace. “Ripples” begins that journey, yet still retains enough of their earlier approach to make the perfect bridge. Collins’ vocal, sad then soaring, sits atop a complex musical track that builds off a 12-string guitar piece from Rutherford toward a piano-driven middle section written by Banks.
No. 9. “The Knife”
From Trespass (1970)
Unlike so many other Gabriel-era albums, Trespass hasn’t enjoyed a significant critical reevaluation. It remains, in many ways, an album without an audience — more famous for what it mapped out than for anything it actually accomplished. Still, “The Knife” shows how much Genesis had evolved after hammering themselves into shape with a merciless touring schedule. Playing almost nightly, a sound — something, finally, that was distinct to the group — started to emerge. Out on the road, they began to play louder, better and longer, moving confidently away from original Genesis producer Jonathan King’s more commercial song-based approach. “The Knife” is the sound of a band finding itself.
No. 8. “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight”
From: Selling England by the Pound (1973)
Named after a lyric in this song, Selling England by the Pound was at that point a commercial peak for the group — reaching No. 3 in the UK and going gold in America. Moments like “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” are the reason why: A crescendoing, Mellotron-driven epic that moved from acapella reverie to brawny rock bravura, even as Steve Hackett employed both his unique tapping technique as well as an interesting sweep-picking sound. “What I was doing was something that was akin to a violinist’s bow technique, where you are picking across the strings and then back again very quickly,” Hackett later remembered. “It was just another way of playing very, very fast. Violinists, J.S. Bach, they all would have been there first, of course.”
No. 7. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”
From: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
Gabriel would soon depart for a celebrated solo career. He left behind an album that remains this bundle of contradictions, mysteries, narrative twists and real-life turns. Same goes for its title track. Gabriel’s larger narrative follows a half-Puerto Rican street tough named Rael roaming through a hellish New York City, trying to rescue his lost sibling. Still, as complicated and full of strange imagery as this song (and the LP) can sometimes be, Genesis catches an undeniable groove. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” is one reason its parent album became one of the most musically approachable of the Gabriel era.
No. 6. “Deep in the Motherlode”
From: And Then There Were Three (1978)
Though a Rutherford composition, “Deep in the Motherlode” boasts a keyboard-driven main theme that initially places Banks in a more central role. Collins shines, however, during a quiet middle section that provides the soul of this track, as he describes the main character’s search for fame and fortune – well, mostly fortune – during the American West’s gold-rush era. Everything builds toward a powerful exhortation to “Go West, young man.” (The phrase is often credited to Horace Greeley, an 1800s-era newspaperman who famously editorialized in favor of American expansion to the Pacific.) Genesis were on their own quest for gold. Gold-selling albums, that is.
No. 5. “Carpet Crawlers”
From: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)
More respected than necessarily understood, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway became Genesis’ biggest seller in their native U.K. to that point, but also marked the end of Gabriel’s time in the band. The era – and certainly this LP – had been marked by impish turns of phrase and mind-bending imagery. Yet, the diaphanous off-topic ruminations from “Carpet Crawlers” (“we’ve got to get in to get out“) ended up having the most emotional resonance. Gabriel’s billowing, layered vocal also provided some of the first hints at the darker, less-reedy complexity that would mark his approach as a solo artist.
No. 4. “Eleventh Earl of Mar”
From: Wind & Wuthering (1976)
Hackett took a career-defining turn on “Eleventh Earl of Mar,” this engrossing retelling of an ancient Scottish uprising, just before losing his own battle for a place at Genesis’ creative table. The second post-Gabriel album arrived as disagreements between the soon-to-depart Hackett and Banks reached a high-water mark. In fact, the guitarist had already released Voyage of the Acolyte, his 1975 solo debut, in an effort to get around the four-man lineup’s creative logjam. Nothing worked: Banks received writing credits on six of the nine songs on Wind & Wuthering, then Hackett was gone.
No. 3. “The Musical Box”
From: Nursery Cryme (1971)
Phil Collins and Steve Hackett, the final two pieces of the puzzle, arrived to complete Genesis’ classic five-piece lineup – and Nursery Cryme promptly became their first Top 40 U.K. hit. Originally an instrumental by the newly departed Anthony Phillips, “The Musical Box” later emerged as a soft-then-thunderously loud band collaboration with lyrics based on a Victorian fairy tale courtesy of Gabriel and an eye-popping turn by Hackett. The guitarist brilliantly updated his sound through the use of a new fretboard technique – now simply known as “tapping” – that Eddie Van Halen later brought to a wider audience.
No. 2. “Watcher of the Skies”
From: Foxtrot (1972)
“Watcher of the Skies” heralded a series of ever-lengthening collaborative breakthroughs, and Genesis’ first great album. They finally found a way to balance the whimsy of the group’s earliest music, their quickly developing flair for long-form narratives and a newly discovered rock brawn – setting a template for a sequence of sometimes overblown ’70s-era prog-rock triumphs. Hackett’s guitar, often the centerpiece during his 1971-77 tenure, is complemented by Banks’ distinctive turns on a newly acquired Mellotron. Later, Mellotron manufacturers Streetly Electronics even added a preset called the “Watcher Mix” that mimicked Banks’ sound perfectly.
No. 1. “Firth of Fifth”
From: Selling England by the Pound (1973)
Featuring one of Hackett’s most memorable interludes, this rhythmically complex Banks track finds the guitarist echoing Gabriel’s flute melody and then building upon it – creating a stirring, violin-esque narrative. The song itself brings in a stirring mixture of musical flavors, from folk to church music, from blues to Asian sounds, from Eric Satie to King Crimson. Hackett returns to the melody again and again, building on the statement of theme like jazz, while breaking the soloing mold for a guitarist more apt to craft brief bursts of imagination. “Firth of Fifth” remains one of Hackett’s best and longest-ever recorded solos.
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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