Looking
back on 1970 from a combination of artefact, video-clip and (very) youthful
reminiscence, it is striking how there was, in England, an air of expectancy
that the future was going to be A Magical Thing Indeed.
Man
had landed on the Moon (or in a film studio just outside of Shepperton,
depending on how paranoid you fancied being). Kubrick's 2001 - A Space Odyssey
was packing impressionable young longhairs into cinema theatres armed with the
apposite hallucinogenics, for "the ultimate trip". Any cursory
examination of the television schedules reveals a fascination with science
fiction that is imbued with an optimism about The Future, complete with jet
cars, shiny silver suits, and Gabrielle Drake with purple hair.
And
yet, parallel to this, what was the big "underground trend" of the
time musically? In the sprawling metropolis of London, psychedelia was shedding
its skin, and developing the Royal College of Music iridescence that would lead
to the wacky world of Progressive Rock, although it's fair to point out
(somewhere else, hopefully) that what passed for progressive rock in 1970 was
some distance from what we would now associate with the genre. The Floyd were
still perceived as banner-carriers of "Space-Rock", despite the most
tenuous of links to the genre, where they were joined by those doyens of the
free festival, Hawkwind.
No.
Actually, and in a typically British affinity for pointedly staring in the
opposite direction, the big thing of the new decade was folk music. Amplified
folk music, but folk music nonetheless. Albums that spring to mind from 1970,
which owe much to the compositional skills of Mr Trad. Arr. ("Trad" to
his friends) would include Led Zeppelin 3, Jethro Tull's Benefit, Just A
Collection of Antiques and Curios by the Strawbs, Liege and Lief from Fairport
Convention (which was actually from 1969 but why let facts get in the way of a
good theory?). Oh, and the second album from a group of 20 year olds dipping
their toes back into the music business after having been failures as teenage
pop stars.
It
is my opinion, which will be dragged out and waved about in a "compare and
contrast" type fashion over the next few hundred words, that the line-up
and approach favoured by Genesis in the material immediately preceding and
recorded on Trespass, was genre specific to the prevailing folk/medieval
"movement" of the time, and that consequentially, Trespass leaves a
tantalising blueprint of what might have transpired had the line-up not
experienced the cataclysmic change that followed Anthony Phillips'
departure.
Having
mentioned recorded work prior to Trespass, it seems appropriate to bring the
uninitiated up to speed with Adventures in The World Of the Old Carthusian. Five
boys from Charterhouse Public School (bastion of the upper middle classes,
Sports Days, Dormitories, and fried eggs for the fifth-formers. All very Tom
Browns Schooldays) with aspirations towards pop stardom are taken under the wing
of ex student Jonathan King, prior to him developing the ego that swallowed the
world. He gives them a modicum of artistic guidance, a name, and via his
contacts, a record contract with Decca, the label that lost The Beatles.
Unfortunately, as producer of their first album, he also gives their youthfully
toothsome naiveté some of the worst string arrangements heard outside of your
local supermarket muzak. Which has oft been cited as evidence for the
prosecution, in the case of The First Genesis Album vs. Good Taste, but is a
useful diversion from the underlying fact that the songs underneath the
arrangements really weren't very much to write home about anyway. So….the
album flops, the band dispense with Mr King's services, and gather under the
protective wing of Mr Tony Stratton-Smith, and a recording contract with his
Charisma Records label.
In
between the demise of King, and the deal with Virgin that saw the end of one of
England's finest independent labels (Charisma an "indie" label? All
part of life's rich irony), Tony Stratton-Smith was in the writer's opinion the
most important individual in the development of Genesis, having as he did the
patience and faith that epitomised the era of record labels that were driven by
concerns other than the "bottom line". To be fair, "Strat"'s
ability to do this was fuelled in part by an ability to fund Charisma without
worrying too much about where his next guinea was coming from - nevertheless, it
should always be borne in mind that neither Genesis, nor any number of bands of
this era, would have lasted much past their second album in today's
ultra-commercial environment. Not necessarily a criticism, merely an
observation.
So,
our lads have acquired a new mentor, and have, thanks to the benevolence of
their not-entirely poverty-stricken families, had the sine die use of a Home
Counties cottage in order to hone their composition and performance skills.
Which is nice.
What
resulted from this retreat can for ease of reference be split into two types of
song : the Banks/Gabriel song, which would have a discernible but heavily
removed R&B influence, and would tend towards a more aggressive delivery,
and the Phillips/Rutherford songs, which would featured the much-vaunted
"unique" 12-string sound. Personally the only unique thing about it
was the uniquely small terms of reference that those describing it as a
revelation must have had: both the Incredible String Band on this side of the
Atlantic, and Crosby Stills & Nash on the other, had enmeshed 12-string
guitar sounds on their albums, and it is highly unlikely that these were not
unnoticed by Phillips and Rutherford. A rather twee fixation with the medieval
also appeared to feature, especially in the unreleased (until the Archive box
set) material from this period - Pacidy, The Shepherd, and Let Us Now Make Love
being the tracks in question. Mentioning this medieval fixation in contrast with
their label mates Van Der Graaf Generator is interesting - whilst Genesis
concentrate on the romantic chivalry encapsulated in both Elstree and Hollywood
(examples of this can be found down through the catalogue -
"Dusk"/"Harlequin"/"Time Table", Van Der Graaf
were intent on presenting a much more empirical and non-sugared version of the
period - Darkness (11/11) and White Hammer being two contemporaneous examples.
Convening
in the spring/early summer of 1970 under the eye (and ear) of John Anthony, who
had by this time produced the first Van Der Graaf Generator album for Charisma
- The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other - Trespass starts with the
plaintive neo-acapella of Gabriel, and the de rigeur (for the time) organ of
Tony Banks, which shortly develops into the strange potpourri of Looking For
Someone. Imagine if you will a singer desperately trying to evoke the soul of
Otis Redding, trapped within the polite clipped melodies of Banks and presumably
Phillips. Add to this the clean and polite lines that Gabriel combines on flute,
and a strange mixture is indeed the result. Stranger still, the middle section,
where the band, seriously hampered by the one-dimensional drumming of John
Mayhew, attempt to accelerate into a crescendo, which would have sounded
appreciably more majestic had the conclusive phrase not been a very close,
slowed-down, relative of the main riff from Deep Purple's Speed King. Following
the denouement, a short, cute acoustic noodle leads back into a
vocal/instrumental coda, where we first encounter the arpeggiated organ style
that launched a thousand neo-prog bands nary ten years later. Altogether far too
much of a song patched together by pieces of Meccano to be a satisfying
listening experience.
We
now take you to some of the most twee lyrical passages known to man (or wolf),
and the newly spinning grave of Jack London. White Mountain, when taken
musically, is a beautifully constructed and sensitive acoustic piece of music,
almost good enough to excuse the cartoon-type effect of the organ/drum sections
that would conventionally pass for a chorus. The lyrics, however, are, even for
a group of callow youths, painful in the extreme. Telling the saga of
internecine strife between generations of wolves over who gets to be King Wolf
(honestly: I'm not making this up), Fang (son of Great Fang - these things are
important), gets his courtesy of One-Eye. After all,
"Only
the King sees the Crown of the Gods, and he, the Usurper must die"
That's
Fang (son of Great Fang) told then.
On
to much more socially acceptable rock'n'roll lyrical territory, with the
prosaically titled Visions of Angels - a song apparently about Anthony Phillips
rather fancying Jill Moore, who was the future Mrs. Gabriel. This being Genesis,
the song isn't exactly My Best Friend's Girl, but it is the first piece of music
on Trespass that doesn't sound like it was constructed by committee, and is all
the better for it. The tempo of the song is at a level sufficiently pedestrian
to enable the drumming to be tolerated, and the instrumental parts are given a
certain charm by both the backing vocals, and the lack of solo work, which shows
a degree of restraint entirely appropriate to the song. In fact, the backing
vocals on this track are something of an anachronism - after this album, Genesis
would rely on close harmony work between Gabriel and Collins, and so this is one
of the few opportunities to hear a more chorale-esque approach, which personally
I rather like. It may also be worth pointing out that this is one of the areas
where the music most closely resemble that of King Crimson, whose debut album In
The Court Of The Crimson King was staple listening material back at The Cottage.
Certainly there are elements (but only in arrangement terms) in common between
this track and the title track of the Crimson album, as there are between Dusk,
and Epitaph.
The
choral effect continues over the other side of the record, on Stagnation, which
is the album's tour-de-force. A short vocal passage presages delicate acoustic
guitar work, which in turn introduces an amazing keyboard solo. In an era when
bigger, better and faster was very much the keyboard player's credo, the solo on
Stagnation illustrates the virtue of constructing a solo that is complimentary
to the music within which it is set, rather than illustrating how well one knows
one's scales. Not until Rick Wright's work on Wish You Were Here can I think of
a comparable display of musical taste by a keyboard player in a mainstream band.
The coda to Stagnation features a melody that is now well known as the
"play-out" melody to post-Seconds Out versions of I Know What I Like,
and here sits as an effective conclusion to perhaps the first genuine classic in
the Genesis canon. Parallels also here in the coda to Matty Groves otherwise
known as the Orange Blossom Special, from the Liege & Lief album (itself a
seminal album in the field of "electrified folk", recorded by Fairport
Convention in 1969)
Sitting
between this and The Knife, lies Dusk. A short but quite important piece, this
is in some ways as close as we get to a purely Anthony-Phillips-led Genesis
sound, yet echoes of this style of writing can be heard as far down the line as
songs such as Entangled (from Trick Of The Tail).
Lyrically
it ploughs the furrow of post-adolescent miserablism that would allow many an
Afghan- coated colt to affect being "deep and sensitive" in the
presence of their braided ladyfriends, as long as they remembered to whip off
the LP before it got to The Knife.
Which
brings us, to The Knife. Which will be a Genesis classic, as soon as half the
band that perform on it do the decent thing and leave, and the bassist learns to
play the instrument he's been saddled with.
Leaving
the polemic aside, from a composition rather than an execution point of view,
The Knife is a Genesis archetype. Composed mainly by Banks, the jig-like organ
introduction leads into an apparent parody of a protest song, where the
constantly accelerating lyrical delivery deliberately adds to the air of being
swept along by the onrush of "the mob". The musical sections of the
song mimic those of battle, with ebbs and flows, and the exultant musical
climax, upon victory framed by the knowing couplet
"Some
of you are going to die/Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall
provide"
So
far, so good. The problem is in the performance. Mayhew drums as though his
entire history in percussion has been limited to clattering coconut shells for
horse's hooves in a Radio Special Effects unit somewhere. Rutherford's bass work
is of a similarly lumpen standard, although it must in his favour be pointed out
that he was the bassist by default, and his playing would improve immeasurably
within the space of a couple of years.
However,
it is Anthony Phillips' work that I would like to concentrate on here.
Commentators with varying degrees of rose-tint on their spectacles have made
much of what may have happened had Phillips remained within Genesis, and have
even gone as far as to suggest that his was the defining voice of the band.
A
cursory listen to The Knife illustrates clearly an alternative thesis - that
Genesis would never have been able to expand out of a very small niche market
with such an appalling lead guitarist. For all his undoubted ability and
dexterity as a composer, and for all that his lead guitar work much later on in
his career improves beyond measure, one is inescapably drawn to the conclusion
that the guitar solo in The Knife (and if we're being honest, the electric
guitar parts in Looking For Someone), are at best inspired amateurism, and at
worst plain awful. The production on Trespass generally is quite muddy, which in
places is a distinct disadvantage, but in the case of the electric guitar work
probably rescues it from the "fingernails down a blackboard" tone that
it very nearly aspires to.
To
be fair, the band have said on several occasions that Ant's departure was a
seminal point in the band's history, but this can be just as adequately
explained by Phillips being a motivational force throughout whilst other
members' academic and artistic careers provided viable vocational alternatives
(Banks was ready to resume a University career; Gabriel had opportunities open
at Film School).
To
counterbalance these criticisms, attention should be drawn to Banks' and
Gabriel's performance on The Knife. Gabriel shows the ability to project a
powerful and aggressive vocal part, whilst lyrically underscoring the cynicism
that lies behind most revolutionary movements at their apex. His flute work
enmeshed with Banks' intelligent use of organ textures in the middle section of
the piece is of a high standard, and is fully blossomed by the time of the Live
album rendition, which is not entirely unconnected to the calibre of Mayhew's
and Phillips' replacements. But that's me getting ahead of
myself………………………….
To
conclude, the "difficult" second album is indeed precisely that.
Difficult. At times overstretched, at times immature, but capable of occasional
flashes of genius. A glimpse of what might have been had Phillips stayed, but in
my opinion a glimpse that would have led into a cul-de-sac, where the bands
ambitions would have been curtailed by their lack of ability.
Copyright Manir Donaghue ©2000