Released - October 1972
Genre - Progressive Rock
Producer - Dave Hitchcock & Genesis
Selected Personnel - Peter Gabriel (Vocals/Flute/Percussion); Steve Hackett (Guitar); Tony Banks (Organ/Piano/Keyboards/Mellotron); Mike Rutherford (Bass/Cello); Phil Collins (Drums/Percussion)
Standout Track - Supper's Ready
I mentioned in my review of Yes's self-titled debut album that they were one of the acts to go down in history as one of the major prog bands who I resisted for a long time even after becoming a self-proclaimed prog fan. Eventually, I gave in and Yes became one of my favourite bands, but if there's one major prog band that I really struggled to get into, and that I still have my problems with even today, it's Genesis. (Emerson, Lake & Palmer are the other big one I still have major issues with, and ultimately I prefer Genesis and think they're less prone to fits of indulgence, but the difference is that the ELP material I did like, most notably 1973's Brain Salad Surgery, I liked instantly, whereas I spent a long time insisting to myself that I just plain didn't like Genesis until a bit of patience got me to start appreciating them). I think a major part of the problem was the fact that the first Genesis album I listened to in its entirety was 1971's Nursery Cryme, an album I still find really tedious even today, and really doesn't measure up to their other early albums. Due to my being seriously unimpressed by Nursery Cryme, I held off on listening to anything else for a long time. Furthermore, I was vaguely aware of Genesis's 80s material, most of which is appallingly bad. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of loud, colourful, daft 80s pop music, but only when it's done with conviction and heart and by people who have a real talent for it - the aforementioned Yes managed to find a way to make popular, lowest-common-denominator pop-rock music in the 80s that still packed a punch and sounded exciting and was played with undeniable commitment and skill, and even the solo career of Genesis's drummer and future lead vocalist Phil Collins is full of unashamed 80s pop classics. But most of Genesis's own 80s material is insipidly mass-appeal in a way that feels desperate rather than inspired. Just listen to Abacab if you need an example of how low they could stoop. So, Genesis remained a long way from my list of artists I needed to listen to, until eventually I felt that their standing in the annals of prog meant I really did need to give them more of a chance. Moreover, by this time Marillion had become one of my new all-time favourite bands. Marillion emerged from the unprecedented (and generally unpopular) resurgence of prog in the 80s, and their early work, particularly the vocal theatrics of lead singer Fish, were compared more than any other band to Genesis and lead singer Peter Gabriel. So I took a chance on 1973's Selling England By The Pound and was surprised to find I loved what I found, and my dislike of Genesis began to see a reversal. Ultimately, they're still a band that have never been able to really grasp my attention, but they are undeniably a talented and important band who delivered a good handful of great work before slowly metamorphosing into one of the most shameless of all the 70s acts to sell out and go for the mainstream by the jugular in the following decade.
I'll confess to having not listened to every Genesis album, not even in the early Gabriel-led era, but in my estimation, from what I listened to, they made three albums of really essential material that rank well alongside the prog classics of Yes, Pink Floyd and King Crimson. 1972's Foxtrot is the first of those three. Genesis had first arrived in 1969 with the album From Genesis To Revelation, comprised mostly of Bee Gees-inspired pop, before gradually metamorphosing into a more musically complex and ambitious prog outfit, influenced by the changing musical landscape around them. 1971 saw the arrival of their classic lineup due to the recruitment of guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Collins. Unfortunately, that lineup's debut was the aforementioned Nursery Cryme, and it wasn't until the following year that they really made something essential. Quite what it is that makes Foxtrot such a superior album is difficult to pin down - it's just as ridiculously pompous and overtly theatrical, just as lyrically ludicrous, just as self-indulgent in its extended instrumental sections, but the songs these elements are attached to just seem to follow more interesting and unusual directions, and the performances are more committed, more convincing. The band in general feels driven by the twin musical personalities of Gabriel and keyboardist Tony Banks, who were the two founding members. Gabriel's vocals are difficult to get accustomed to (and would undergo a maturation and tonal shift before he relaunched himself as a solo artist producing sonically ambitious art rock music in the late 70s) - it's a sort of reedy, piping sound prone to hiccuping and yelping theatrics, and the comparisons made when Fish appeared on the scene in the 80s are all justified. It's a difficult voice to love, but it also suits the clownish, theatrical music of Genesis perfectly - this is a long way from the free-form nightmare jazz fusion of Crimson or the melodically perfect folk-style rock of Yes. These songs are melodically weird, hopping from one organ riff to another with reckless abandon while Gabriel leaps from note to note. Banks, meanwhile, is the driving musical force behind most of the songs, all of which seem to be constructed around the keyboards or organ, with Hackett's guitar generally providing additional colour and decoration rather than being the centrepiece of a song.
Nowhere is this more evident than on "Watcher Of The Skies," a monumental opener that starts with Banks's overpowering, stark two-chord Mellotron part which drowns the listener in aggressive, confrontational walls of sound before an insistent, staccato one-note piano riff brings in the song itself, a reflection on what an alien visitor to the Earth would make of it. Lyrically, Genesis have always struggled to make much of an impression on me. Of course, the lyrics aren't really the point - the melody is more there for Gabriel to leap and dart his way through than for it to really impart some kind of lyrical message, but of all the nonsense that makes up the lyrical content of a prog band's ouvre, Genesis are guilty of some of the worst excesses. It's difficult to take seriously any claims that the likes of "Supper's Ready" is about a spiritual experience when so much of it contains refrains like "Dad-tiddly-office, Mum-tiddly-washing." Don't get me wrong, it's one of Gabriel's most inspired and gloriously silly lyrical moments and I love it, but I find it difficult to consider a Genesis song as anything other than an opportunity for impressive keyboard solos and vocal theatrics from Gabriel. Meaning be damned, I'm afraid. Another similarly absurd lyric is the story of another album highlight, "Get 'Em Out By Friday," a dystopian tale of a future society in which human height has been given restrictions in order to allow a corporation more space to build accommodation. All total nonsense, but knowingly and gloriously so, and it doesn't really matter when the song itself is so great - another syncopated, staccato organ riff at the beginning and a languid, ascendant flute melody courtesy of Gabriel himself in the song's closing refrains being particular highlights (Gabriel's flute was one of his major instrumental contributions to early Genesis, and something he seemed quick to abandon after moving onto solo material).
"Can-Utility And The Coastliners," a vaguely tongue-in-cheek account of the legend of King Canute, starts fairly directionless but soon becomes a highlight once Hackett's repeated guitar riff and Collins's drum fills kick in. It's one of the few songs built around Hackett rather than Banks, although Banks's dramatic organ part that kicks in with Gabriel's cry of "offerings fell" is a standout moment, as is a rare moment for bassist Mike Rutherford to shine courtesy of a frantic one-note solo shortly afterwards. After a short solo acoustic guitar number from Hackett, "Horizons," it's on to the album's true highlight, the magnificent "Supper's Ready." (Just to continue the parallel analysis of Genesis and Marillion at the same time, one of Marillion's early B-sides would be a lengthy and brilliantly stupid song called "Grendel" that's almost a carbon copy of "Supper's Ready" in places, though it retains just enough of its own charm to get away with it). "Supper's Ready" is another one of the all-time greats in the stakes of side-long multi-part prog epics, and it's also one of the sillier ones so manages to get away with its self-indulgence more than some of the more serious ones do. Pink Floyd's "Echoes" justifies itself by its sheer musical brilliance, but some of the pomp and indulgence of, say, King Crimson's "Lizard" occasionally feels that bit too much. But, despite Gabriel's claim that it represents some great spiritual message, what's ultimately great about it is its sheer ridiculousness. No song that features something as bright, colourful and zany as the "Willow Farm" section of "Supper's Ready" could ever really be taken totally seriously - "There's Winston Churchill dressed in drag, he used to be a British flag, plastic bag, what a drag." As the song builds in pace and intensity from its meditative opening over Hackett's delicately picked guitar, Gabriel is given greater reign to really indulge his theatrical side, nowhere more so than on the aforementioned "Willow Farm" and on the best section of the song, titled "Apocalypse In 9/8," which sees Gabriel's vocals becoming uncharacteristically strident and guttural over the pounding, relentless and repetitive guitar riff before the climactic, almost transcendental section defined by Hackett's soaring guitar moments, one of the few moments on the album where he really makes his presence known rather than just doing things by-the-numbers. It's a magnificent piece, admittedly ridiculous and clownish and daft but never really unaware of that.
I suppose that's one of the key virtues of Genesis, really - like Jethro Tull, they were at least vaguely aware of how ridiculous prog rock really was. Of course, with the likes of Crimson and Floyd there's a die-hard seriousness and commitment to the music they're making, and there's also the songwriting ability and the musical talent and imagination to really make something special. For my tastes, the songwriting with Genesis just isn't up to the general standard of their contemporaries, so that sense of pantomime theatricality really helps them to feel fresh and different and to deliver something that other prog bands weren't. I've no idea if this was a deliberate stance by Gabriel and co. - perhaps they meant all this deathly seriously and it's just never really captivated me enough to make me feel the same way about it. As it is, I really enjoy this album but largely for its zest and spirit and energy rather than necessarily for its musical daring or ability. The following year the upward trajectory in Genesis's material would continue as they released their best album, the album that first convinced me they were actually worth a shot in the first place.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Tony Banks; Phil Collins; Peter Gabriel; Steve Hackett & Mike Rutherford
1. Watcher Of The Skies
2. Time Table
3. Get 'Em Out By Friday
4. Can-Utility And The Coastliners
5. Horizons
6. Supper's Ready
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