entrevista a tony y mike

una entrevista a tony y mike que se publicó en una revista holandesa y que alguien tradujo de holandés a inglés. estaba en el hilo de preguntas frecuentes (f.a.q.) del antiguo foro oficial de genesis, y yo me lo había guardado en un documento de word.

es de la época en la que salieron el platinum collection y el video show.

que la disfrutéis.

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when you look back on your first television performance, you can hardly imagine that genesis would become such a huge band.

mike: indeed, but television was never a good way to get our music across. for us, it was always about creating an atmosphere. you can't do that on television. on stage you've got lights, echoes and a lot of people that help to bring the music to live.

tony: i can remember the performance in question. it was somewhere in 1970, we were playing ‘the knife’ and the guy who was going to take care of the echos on peter's voice was ill. for peter, this was horrible. we had looked forward to this performance, but in the end it was ruined due to these kind of technical problems. peter started to throw the microphone around because of his nerves – the director wasn't happy with that at all.


i think it's good of you not to spare yourself on the new dvd – the ‘video show’. it's got some brilliant videos, but there are also some bits on it that i personally would never ever have shown people, if i were you.

mike: well, you can look back on your own history this way. and it's got some embarrassing moments, yes. the video for ‘a trick of the tail’ is one of those. but i can live with the rest of them. you can see clearly that tony and i are no actors; phil is. his acting-background has helped the band, on stage and on television. the three of us are big monty python fans, but phil is the only one who can copy every scene, with all the little details.

tony: we always played the good, decent boys and phil played the rebel. i never wanted to be an actor.


we are here in the farm, your famous studio. how important is this studio for you?

tony: actually, we began using the farm to its fullest before the recording of ‘invisible touch’. prior to that, we only made our demos here. we were sick of all the other studios, becasue everytime we went in to a studio to record an album, i had this feeling we were walking into this dark hole. especially the trident studios in london were a disaster. that stuffy atmosphere was not always good for the music we were making.

mike: we are all guys who grew up in the countryside and we live or have lived there for years. the farm is situated exactly between tony's house and my house. here you get the feeling the whole world is watching along from the sky. it's a fantastic place.

tony: our biggest frustration has always been that we had great ideas but that we couldn't immediately work them out to something good. in the 70s that wasn’t possible for us. if we could record ‘the lamb’ now, the result would be much more impressive. due to the time pressure we had to record the music first, and afterwards quickly peter's vocals as well.


i was informed that peter just hadn't finished his vocal bits and that that caused for some irritation on your side.

mike: of course, but if we would have had more time on our hands, we would have been able to change some things and record them again. that wasn't possible. the only altering we could do was in the mix – and that wasn't really a succes.

tony: that limitation was most noticeable during the recording of ‘selling england’. before we went in the studio to record, we had played the songs a lot of times already. we had to. we had to know every note by heart because we only had a couple of weeks to record the songs. in that way you destroy the creativity and the ideas. a song like ‘the battle of epping forest’ therefore never became the song it could and should have been.


what direction was genesis heading in the beginning?

mike: genesis had no plan. we were just 4 guys with too much good ideas, who made music together in a small room. without any limitations. that was the strength of the band. even in the beginning, when we didn't really sell records, there was no one who said we should do things differently to become more successful. the way we worked on ‘tresspass’ wasn't really very much different from the way we worked on ‘we can't dance’.

tony: i think that basic idea behind genesis can be found even further back. when we got together to record ‘from genesis to revelation’, we didn't plan to form a band as such. we just wanted to record some of our ideas, but we never had the intention to be professional musicians. when we did ‘tresspass’, we got the idea that genesis might even grow to become a real band. then after that phil and steve joined, and we created a strong songwriters collective. mike, peter and i decided the course and phil and steve payed good attention, so that they could develop themselves as good songwriters.


peter gabriel presented himself as the main lyricist. i believe you didn't always agree with that.

tony: hmm... i would like to see a small contest amongst fans to guess what songs peter wrote, what songs mike wrote and what songs i wrote. i think they'd be surprised.

mike: the one who made the most noise usually got his ideas through. it sounds like a bad thing but it really isn't. when someone was really passionate about one of his ideas, he'd usually get what he wanted. sometimes the ideas didn't work and then the rest of the band would be happy to let you know. it happened to us, but also to peter.


phil collins's joining in august 1970 created a stronger balance in the group. i have heard that he had already a very typical personality when he was just a teenager.

tony: mike, peter and i come from very serious english families, where your own opinion not always counted – especially when you were just a kid. but we did have very well developed musical ideas. when phil joined, it was a relief really. he was not only a fantastic drummer, but he was also very social, independent and very funny. in that respect, phil became the catalyst for our seriousness. it was his job to make up a joke before each gig, to take away our nerves. that's how he got his job in genesis.

mike: phil was also very relaxed, while tony and i always had the tendency to swear and curse when something didn't go smoothly.

tony: i remeber this time in charleroi, belgium, when we had to play on a stage that was the size of two billiard tables. phil had to reduce his huge drumkit to a three-piece kit. we would have exploded with rage, whereas phil just sighed a bit.


according to a lot of fans, ‘foxtrot’ is the best album of the classic banks/collins/gabriel/hackett/rutherford line-up. agreed?

mike: yes. i think that around that time, we were doing things in a very naïve way. songs like ‘supper's ready’ came about in a very loose manner. it just suddenly was there. and when peter came with these excentric lyrics, we realised we had created a small masterpiece. in the 80s we played ‘supper's ready’ during the american tours. these people didn't know the song, but despite of the length, they liked it anyway. your best stuff usually comes about in a very relaxed atmosphere, your worst comes about with lots of arguing and headaches.


in that time peter used to wear lots of crazy outfits. did you think his costumes overshadowed the music?

tony: we were pretty annoyed that all the attention went to peter's costumes. the question what peter would be wearing this gig became more important than what new songs genesis played. next to that peter got the most of attention, a little too much. he wasn't happy with that himself either, but it did put genesis in the spotlights. so it became a great dilemma. for a serious group like us, that works very frustrating. it led to a lot of frustration within the group. halfway through the 70s, a journalist even compared us to kiss. that was the band's all time low.


how do you look back on ‘the lamb’ tour? peter's costumes really seemed to have gotten out of hand.

tony: i hated it. we were over-nervous because we didn't know if the next act was going to work or not. we performed the whole album and the story, which was already very heavy stuff for the fans. but the insecurity whether the visual aspect would work out fine or not, made it even tougher.

mike: peter said to us before the tour that he was going to leave the group. to postpone that moment we just kept on booking more venues.


how did you cope with peter's departure?

tony: well it had a certain positive effect on the band, in my opinion. i have to admit though that i begged him not to leave. we always stayed the best of friends, but seen from a creative point of view it was good that he left, because his acts caused for ill feeling. we noticed that when we did ‘a trick of the tail’ which became a great success. a lot of fans and the media were also through with pete's costumes.

mike: in addition, peter's life had changed drastically, because he had become a father. if you don't have kids yourself and you can focus completely on the band, it is hard to understand the ones that do have kids and therefore don't have time to only focus on the band. the same thing happened later with phil.

tony: mike and i became fathers when genesis could afford to take some time off. in that respect you can say that we had a better timing. *laughter*