Genesis – …And Then There Were Three
“If this were the last day of your life, my friend, Tell me, what do you think you would do then?”
While promoting the Seconds Out live album prior to its October 14th release date, the band disclosed that guitarist Steve Hackett had decided to leave the band. Like Gabriel’s announcement two years earlier, the band had already worked on the follow up, which in this case was pretty much done by this point. The remaining trio of Collins, Banks and Rutherford had already written Dance On A Volcano, Squonk, Apocalypse in 9/8 from Supper’s Ready and the instrumental section of The Cinema Show without Hackett so I believe they felt confident they could carry on without him. The band ended up shrinking in size to a threesome and to some degree the breadth of their music shrunk as well (at least for the most part). Mike Rutherford would take over the lead guitar duties along with his bass responsibilities. Banks was now the only one in the band with one job though he has probably stated somewhere that he did the most…I kid…sorry it is just so easy to make fun of Tony. I think it is because he seldom smiles and likes to criticize things that fans consider great and then claim I Can’t Dance is a great song…I can’t control him.
The band rehearsed for about 6 weeks before returning to the same studio they used for Wind & Wuthering in The Netherlands, with David Hentschel along for his third kick at the can. Recording …And Then There Were Three took a couple of weeks in September of 1977. The band considered trying to find a replacement for Hackett but found recording much easier as a trio and Rutherford felt comfortable taking on lead guitar as well. I’m guessing that they also found it easier as there was no longer anyone to compete with for material as Collins at this point wasn’t bringing material to the band.
I haven’t really talked about cover art for Genesis albums so far so here goes. From Genesis To Revelation – not sure who designed it but I’m pretty sure Spinal Tap stole it. Trespass, Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot were all designed by Paul Whitehead and had a very specific look that ties the three albums together wonderfully as the music is all drawing from a similar pool. Selling England By The Pound was a painting by artist Betty Stanwick who added a lawn mower into one of her originals to give it a tie to the album as she didn’t have time to come up with a brand new painting in the timeline given. The band then moved on to the highly popular design group Hipgnosis who at that point had done all the Pink Floyd albums from A Saucerful Of Secrets through Dark Side Of The Moon plus bands such as Led Zeppelin, ELO, The Nice, Syd Barrett, T.Rex, Rennaissance and many others. The Lamb artwork reflects various scenes from the story and A Trick Of The Tail utilized beautiful line drawings of characters from the songs within. Wind and Wuthering is a beautifully painted autumnal scene by Colin Elgie that captures the beauty of the music and was inspired by a scene from the movie The War Lord. For their fourth cover with Hipgnosis Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell presided. I’ve read that they were aiming for something along the lines of light trails telling a story. I’m not even sure what that means other than maybe too much weed that night. My personal interpretation is two…maybe three people being electrocuted in front of a nice dusk sky…and maybe someone in a car – there might be a drug deal going down? It is for me one of the band’s worst album covers and I always think to myself – nice sky…someone was having a heart attack when they designed it.
…And Then There Were Three, the band’s ninth studio album, was released on either March 28 1978 or March 31st until someone tells me otherwise. It is a distinct change in direction for the band. There are 11 songs, the most of any album to date apart from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and all of them are 4-6 minutes in length apart from Burning Rope at 7:10. As far as this album was concerned the long songs Genesis were notorious for were distinctly absent, though they wouldn’t be forever. I think the band took Hackett’s departure and made a decision to shift direction, probably more-so than any of their albums to date. Rutherford needed to find his own identity and despite the impression that it is an intentional stab at commercial radio, it isn’t exactly Invisible Touch yet. It is shorter prog inspired pop songs and I hate to disappoint anyone, but it has always been one of my least favourite Genesis albums…so um…if you love it you might want to stop reading here as I’m in a bit of a mood.
OK Side 1 starts with the song Down and Out which I think is an amazing opener. The keyboards are pretty awesome and with its complex time signature for me is probably the best song on the album.
Next up is Undertow which is a song I have always loved and I still to this day find it beautiful with one of Phil Collins’ best vocals on any Genesis album. The tension/build in it is pretty phenomenal. It is an epic track. It was actually written by Banks with a keyboard solo intro, but it was dropped before recording and ultimately appeared as From The Undertow on his first solo album A Curious Feeling a couple years later.
The Ballad Of Big starts well enough with some blippity blip sounds but the verses are kind of clunky to me. The choruses are much better, and the keyboards are actually great on this song. Basically, I like the sections in 4/4 time but the verses feel too disparate for me. It isn’t too bad…It has gotten better with age.
Song 4 is Snowbound and I don’t know, this one feels intentionally overwrought and over dramatic to me. Also, the chorus is “Hey there’s a snowman” and I’m from Canada. Nothing about snow really gets you excited…it makes me want turn off the record and fly to some COVID free tropical island somewhere. Then again it is possible that the song is about a coke dealer which might make it more interesting in hindsight. Anyway, it gets a big Meh for me. It is also around the point on the album where I start thinking…didn’t Genesis used to have guitars in their music?
Finally, side 1 ends with Banks’ Burning Rope, the epic of the album at a paltry 7:07 which by Genesis standards is merely an intro compared to days past. However, I’ll forgive them for that since the important thing is, is the song any good…which for me the answer is…sort of. The keyboards really bug me on this song suffering from a very 70s preset blandness. I also don’t really like Rutherford’s riff which just mimics the piano or vice versa…doesn’t really matter as the sum of them is something less interesting than it could be. The chorus doesn’t really do much for me either – parts of it are good but I don’t know…lots of people love this song but in the end I find it just kind of OK – it doesn’t really do much for me…even the solo section…plus parts of it sound like Undertow to me…unless it is a 12” single or a Neil Young record only one version of a song should appear on an album…Burning Rope is a bit of a swing and a miss…flip the album…maybe things will get better…
OK Side 2 kicks off with Deep In The Motherlode. I think this song was actually responsible for me becoming a Genesis fan. To my ears it is a phenomenal song that has lost none of its grandeur. I mean I LOVE this song and have never once listened to it not thought it was incredible song. It is totally unique sounding for them and is like the perfect synthesis of prog and pop. Phil doing his own harmonies sound great on this song. The middle 8 is also great…Banks’ keyboards sound like Hackett at times as well…one of the best Genesis 3.0 songs. The guitar pic slide into the Taurus pedals at the end is fan-fucking-tastic. If your body isn’t vibrating while you listen to Deep In The Motherlode you aren’t listening to it loud enough.
Many Too Many is another Banks composition and again I feel like it is a song I should love but like Snowbound it feels overwrought and over dramatic, though not quite as badly. It sounds a bit like the band were kind of bored recording it to me. The other song he sang about Mama a few albums later is much better. This one suffers from distinctly uninteresting guitar riffs. For me it is a song that sound like it wants to sound more grandiose than it actually is and in the end it feels kind of like just another meh track…like they could have faded it out half way through and no one would have been any worse off or even noticed…actually I think that is what they did upon reassessment.
Scenes From A Night’s Dream is next. OK I like this song almost as much as I like All In A Mouse’s Night, meaning I find it to be irritating on a profound level. The music is good, just as the Rodent song mentioned is, but man the lyrics just drive me up the wall. Both these songs should be instrumentals. I don’t even have a desire to try to probe the meaning of these songs cause I’m worried they might even turn out to be worse than I think and when I listen to them on vinyl I’m too lazy to get up and skip the song….Poor Little Nemo…Poor Little Fans – the best thing about it is that it is only 3:29 long and fades out just as it has already overstayed its welcome. Sorry fans of Scenes From A Mouse’s Night’s Dream. I choose more sleep over both.
Say It’s All Right Joe – zzzzzz jesus get to the point – who is Joe and why do I care? strum…pause….strum….pause….pause….blippity bloppity….strum…. then some upbeat stuff which is pretty good and sounds like it should be in the middle of One For The Vine not bookended by a snooze fest. Usually during this song I think I should have got up before Scene’s From A Night’s Dream and skipped both but again it is only 4:18 long.
Next is this thing called The Lady Lies which is the second longest song on the album. Lots of people love this song as well – the swirly keyboards at the beginning make me think again that next time I listen to the album I should go from Many Too Many to Follow You Follow Me…but then the brief middle 8 parts are quite good. Overall though I feel like it just kind of clumsily lumbers along in an awkward time signature. It fumbles around like Ballad Of Big where I really like part of the song and really dislike others so in the end I feel frustrated and irritable. The piano in this song is great, especially the ascending motifs.
Last up is Follow You Follow Me aka how to end an album on a high note. I think this song is great and deserves all the credit it gets and none of the criticisms. It is a beautifully written and played love song and it just grooves along perfectly. All the instruments are excellent, even the Caribbean sounding drums. It is a song that doesn’t sound like it even belongs on this album. It would fit in on Wind And Wuthering very easily. I love it and so should you all you haters of simple love songs. It is 100 times better than a thousand other love songs.
SO where does that leave me…Basically I Love Down And Out, Undertow, Deep In The Motherlode and Follow You Follow Me. Ballad Of Big, Burning Rope, Many Too Many and The Lady Lies I like half of each. Snowbound has too much snow. Scenes From A Night’s Dream and Say It’s All Right Joe are both Bagels for me. I used to complain a lot about the sameness of the keyboard sounds Tony used on this record. I guess my misgivings about the record on reassessment are somewhat founded but I don’t think it is the keyboards so much. I think the real problem is the loss of Hackett which had a profound effect on their sound. Despite Rutherford being an excellent rhythm guitarist, he simply couldn’t make up for Hackett’s absence…at least not on this album. Tony kind of filled in the blanks but in the end the other major problem I have with the album is actually the material itself. It isn’t the end of the line though for me, just a dip in the road that resets on the next few albums with some excellent results…then some not so excellent ones…more on those later.
The album would prove to be a game changer in the success of the band when Follow You Follow Me b/w Ballad Of Big hit #7 in the UK singles charts and #23 in the US Billboard charts. It is a song that is still, to this day played on many radio stations around the world, and the specific point in time where the band began a gradual shift from albums to singles driving their success. The album itself would reach #3 in the UK album charts and #14 in the US Billboard chart. It wasn’t instantaneous and the band grew through each phase leading up to one of the biggest selling albums of the 1980s before things more or less fell apart. The other single from the album was Many Too Many which didn’t fare nearly as well as Follow You Follow Me. It is noteworthy, however, as it contained two b-sides which were difficult to find prior to their release on the Archive 2 Box set. The Day The Lights Went Out and Vancouver are both actually quite good songs. Vancouver in particular is a bit of lost gem and lyrically a precursor to Face Value and the divorce turmoil Collins would deal with. Better than some of the material that ended up on ATTWT in my opinion and worth checking out. Finally, in Japan and North America Deep In The Motherlode b/w Scenes From A Nightmare was also released as a single under the title Go West Young Man (In The Motherlode). Whoever came up with that alternate title was hopefully fired.
Recommended Listening – Down And Out, Undertow, Deep In The Motherlode, Follow You Follow Me
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