Genesis-“Mama” Album- Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford,Tony Banks
Prepping for another significant album interview, specifically the quadruple platinum Genesis (’83), the sheer prolific output of the English progressive rock band became obvious: Genesis was already in double figures for studio album releases by the early Eighties. Between 1980 and 1986, the British trio Genesis released a series of four consecutive hit albums, each one more successful than its predecessor by as many as five times. Because drummer/singer/songwriter Phil Collins had a parallel solo career take off during that same time period, several critical reviews from respected music writers in this time imply that Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks unwittingly, if not unwillingly, were somehow led by Collins in a more mainstream pop direction. However, the simple facts evidenced by just actually listening to those Genesis albums don’t bear out that assumption.
On the 1983 eponymously titled album Genesis, songs such as the dirge-like “Mama” and the spectacular showstopper “Home by the Sea/Second Home” were nowhere near the pop mainstream. “That’s All “, “Illegal Alien”, and “Taking It All Too Hard” were indeed mainstream hits, but in Rutherford’s “Just a Job to Do”, Genesis addressed the issue of state-supported shadowy covert surveillance and even torture, later the subjects of major films Rendition and Zero Dark Thirty, as well as US Congressional hearings. Not exactly the stuff of your typical pop pablum. Barely three years later the astonishing 15 million-seller Invisible Touch , with “Land of Confusion” going Top Five as a single, would say a lot more about the changing mainstream tastes in 1986 rather than any musical agenda by the Genesis band, and by running over nine minutes long, the #3 hit “Tonight, Tonight, Tonight” would effectively silence any silly debate about pop vs. rock or hidden agendas!
Moreover, it wasn’t just Collins who was branching out: by the time his 1982 second solo album Hello I Must Be Going made Phil a star in his own right, Rutherford and Banks had each done no less than two solo efforts apiece. Instead of siphoning off creativity and diluting Genesis of strong material, my guests Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Phil Collins maintain that their respective multiple solo albums clearly inspired the group to lift any self-imposed restrictions to the Genesis sound, as you will hear in my classic rock interview In The Studio about which the guys still refer to as their “Mama Album”. -Redbeard
