Genesis – Duke
“All she had to do was step into the light, And everyone would start to roar”
We’re gonna need another guitarist here…The band mapped out another 100 live shows to support the …And Then There Were Three album. The tour lasted from March 28 1978 starting in Binghampton New York through Tokyo, Japan December 3 1978 and included 3 US legs, 2 European legs, 1 Japanese leg and only a single show in the UK June 24 headlining the Knebworth festival. Since Rutherford only wanted to play lead guitar on the new material and bass/12 string on the rest, they needed to find a touring guitarist who could both play bass and also lead well enough to cover Hackett’s intricate style. Initially Alphonso Johnson was approached, I’m guessing as Chester Thompson had played with him in Weather Report, however they ended up at Johnson’s suggestion, going with Daryl Stuermer who was a member of Jean-Luc Ponty’s band and had also played with George Duke. This lineup of Collins/Banks/Rutherford along with Chester Thompson and Stuermer would be the live Genesis band from this tour through the 2007 reunion with he exception of the Calling All Stations tour. This tour would see the band further focus on songs drawn from the Collins led catalog with only a select number of tunes from the Gabriel era. Something that I believe drove a bit of a wedge between long-time Gabriel era fans who still supported the band but probably felt they were being ignored, and fans who didn’t hold such strong feelings of betrayal. This is a division that exists to this day and can be seen playing out in real time in just about every thread about the band on social media. I’m not kidding. Look at any post and there is likely to be some kind of fight about Gabriel vs Collins. I think the dividing line is around this album and tour, the other being the Abacab album. They did however, bring back I Know What I Like for the shows and surprisingly The Fountain of Salmacis for one last spin. They haven’t played Foutain again since this tour. Also a couple one off performances of Dancing With The Moonlit Knight, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and Scene From A Night’s Dream. Other than that only The Cinema Show and In The Cage would be performed from the Gabriel led albums. It was a massive tour with breaks for family time and as a result every subsequent tour would have less shows. Like the previous tour, most of the shows started with a song from the preceding album – in this case Eleventh Earl Of Mar. It wouldn’t be played live again in full following this tour though the beginning was played as part of the Old Medley through 1984. There is a great BBC documentary called Three Dates with Genesis ’78 which you can see here – https://youtu.be/WV3F3l_G-BY.
Following the tour the band took their first proper break in 10 years. For context they were all around just around 30 years old and had been performing steadily since 1970ish, and had recorded NINE studio albums. To celebrate their time off Mike and Tony recorded their first solo albums (Smallcreep’s Day and A Curious Feeling respectively), and Phil moved to Vancouver Canada to try to salvage (unsuccessfully) his failing marriage. Phil returned to the UK in April ’79 to work with Brand X on their Product album including a short tour and started writing material for what would become his first solo album Face Value. Before that however, Genesis reconvened at the end of 1979 to begin work on their next LP at Collins’ place in Shalford. While in Japan on the preceding tour Mike Rutherford visited the Roland factory and ended up purchasing Roland CR-78 drum machines for each of the three band members. This primitive beatbox would very much alter the sound of the band and also how they were able to work creatively.
Upon reconvening, Collins for the first time was in a position where he had more material to consider for the band than either Banks or Rutherford due to their respective solo albums. They decided each would contribute two songs for the band to work on. Rutherford provided Man Of Our Times and Alone Tonight, Banks provided Heathaze and Cul-de-Sac and Collins provided Misunderstanding and Please Don’t Ask. To this day Collins insists he presented In The Air Tonight for consideration but it was rejected. Banks seems to not recall ever hearing it. Either way it would be the song that launched a thousand air drummers several years later. The rest of the album would be written together in rehearsals where the new drum machine could be utilized for the band to play while Collins could actually sing as well. The new group approach to song writing by live jamming and improvisation vs pre-written songs, was something the band would continue to do for the rest of their recording career. The album was recorded for the last time by David Hentschel at Polar Studios in Stockholm Sweden where both Rutherford and Banks had recorded their solo albums. It took about 6 weeks to complete at the end of 1979 and was released at the end of March 1980. It was their most successful album to date commercially spending 2 weeks at number 1 in the UK charts and peaking at number 11 on the Billboard charts, much due to the success of the Turn It On Again and Misunderstanding singles and to a lesser degree Duchess.
I’m just going state here that I love Duke. I think it is a fantastic record…my favorite of the Trio era for sure. So let’s get down to the nitty gritty, let’s get this show on the road…(let’s see if anyone gets that reference and connection). Genesis always seem to bookend their albums with great songs…Looking For Someone/The Knife, The Musical Box/The Fountain Of Salmacis, Watcher Of The Skies/Supper’s Ready, The Lamb/It, Dancing With The Moonlit Knight/The Cinema Show/Aisle of Plenty, Dance On A Volcano/Los Endos, Eleventh Earl of Mar/Afterglow, Down and Out/Follow You Follow Me. Duke is no exception.
The album starts out with the vibrant and confident Behind The Lines. If ever a song was written to start a concert in a stadium this is it. It launches right in at full tilt before it settles back half way through. Rutherford sounds like he has learned how to play lead guitar, Collins sounds excellent and Banks has clearly purchased an electric piano which actually sounds great. The song shuffles around for five and half minutes of varying tempos and time signatures and vocal melodies. An auspicious beginning after the somewhat flaccid And Then There Were Three album (at least to my ears). Collins would end up recording a more scaled back version of this song for Face Value. His solo version is good but not this good – though it totally fits .
Behind the Lines ends by dropping out leaving only the aforementioned drum machine as a bridge to Duchess which is probably my favourite song of the entire Trio era. It is an absolutely gorgeous song about the rise and fall of fame. It takes its time setting the mood with Tony’s keys hitting the mark perfectly. It is like the calm between two storms and again several minutes into the song it erupts both musically and vocally. The drums sound particularly awesome as do those mid end taurus pedals…me brain melts every time. Duchess blows my mind every time I listen to it even for the 1000th time. It makes Duke worth the price of admission alone. A perfect Prog-Pop song. The song ends as it began with just the drum machine and Tony’s piano that morphs into the third song of this opening trio, the short but beautiful Guide Vocal. It is the sorrowful denouement to the Duchess story which in hindsight prophetically encapsulates the story of the band themselves.
Next up is the Rutherford song Man Of Our Times. This is another tune that seems to divide fans. Some people absolutely loathe it and others love it. I’m in the latter camp. I love the rhythm, the vocals, the tension of the breaks and the grand sweeping keyboards in the choruses. I love that they were still pulling off complicated rhythmic ideas even 10 albums into their career. Maybe someone can point out what they don’t actually like about this song cause I’ve been listening to it for 40 years and I’ve loved it every single time. The “Tonight, Tonight” line would reappear a few albums later which ironically a lot of people love and which actually drives me crazy. Always go with your first idea as I mentioned on a previous post.
Misunderstanding follows and was a pretty big hit in North America at the time. It is still to this day a staple of classic rock and MOR/Top 40 Hits radio stations. I have a bit of on/off relationship with this creepy story of possibly a required restraining order due to stalking. The reality is it is one of the songs Collins was writing that was directly related to his marriage falling apart. There are some pretty sad heavy songs from this period – all of which ended up on the phenomenal Face Value album which I won’t review but suffice it to say it is a truly incredible piece of work and set Phil up for an entirely different career outside of Genesis. I kind of feel like Misunderstanding is more suited for that album. In its Genesis form I find song a bit repetitive and Rutherford’s guitar riff is good but gets tired quickly. It is a solid song in arrangement and execution but in the end it comes up a bit flat and doesn’t improve with increased listens. Let’s put it this way…the sign of a great song isn’t that it seems a lot longer than it actually is. I’ll leave it at that.
Heathaze is one of the songs Tony Banks brought to the party and rounds out side 1 of the album. Hmm…It starts off sounding like something that could have been on And Then There Were Three which isn’t a ringing endorsement for me. It kind of stutters for the first minute and a half and then it sucks me in as it turns into something quite beautiful. Even the verse that follows, though similar to the beginning, I end up loving. I think it is just the beginning of the song that suffers for me and I immediately think I don’t want to listen to it but end up loving it. It is a very earnestly delivered vocal by Collins which I mean with great respect. He handles the song really well and it isn’t an intuitively easy song to sing well.
Much like Behind The Lines, Turn It On Again starts side 2 of the album with a bang up catchy song. It was originally a shorter song comprised of a bit of discarded material from Rutherford’s solo album and another piece from Banks that they joined together and then built out into a full song. It was released as a single and was their most successful one to that point. I’d say for some fans who hadn’t accepted that bands change, but had skated through the previous album, Turn It On Again may have been the point where they opted to Turn If Off. In hindsight it seems almost unfathomable that a driving upbeat rock and roll song would actually be so divisive but in all fairness it is miles away from Watcher Of The Skies or even Dance On A Volcano. Funny that a progressive rock band that actually strived to change and evolve in a progressive manner, who absorbed new instruments and technology into their arsenal, would end up so maligned by fans who only love the static or regressive part of progressive rock music. Oh well, Fuck em if they can’t take a joke as my Rabbi used to say. I think the song is in 5/4 time though I’m not sure cause I suck at figuring out time signatures that aren’t 4/4. I’m not even good at figuring out if they are in 4/4. Someone more rhythmically adept can let me know. For all I know it is in 11/8 time.
Alone Tonight is a Rutherford penned song which at first sounds like something that maybe I shouldn’t like but again like Heathaze I end up just loving it. It is a pretty straightforward love song with a bit of added complexity. Once you let your guard down, though it really soars. I kind of think with songs like this that if you really dislike it, you are probably really trying hard to dislike it. Or maybe you just dislike it. But I submit to the beauty of it and let it be what it is, which is a pretty sweet sounding song most musicians would probably kill to be able to write.
Cul-de-Sac is the other Banks provided song which you can tell immediately. There is a little part at the beginning which always makes me think they are going to go into Robbery Assault and Battery. A lot of people love this song. It is a pretty over the top grandiose statement musically. For me honestly, I feel like it is a tad overearnest and I think in the end if feels like a bunch of ideas that they have done better on other songs. I feel like it should be called the sum of lesser parts. I don’t even know if there is any guitar on this song. Maybe Banks replaced them with 12 keyboard tracks…I kid…Tony…such an easy target. I’m sure he’d smile if he read this…
Please Don’t Ask is the other Collins penned song. You can tell this song is something that easily could have fit on Face Value. It oozes that post-divorce grief. It might even seem like it shouldn’t be on Duke at all, but I will vehemently defend it because it is such a freaking awesome song. Collins as never sounded more sincere or sad in his delivery of a song. His backing vocals are astoundingly beautiful. I might even go so far as to say this is the best song Collins contributed to Genesis. It is a rare and remarkably touching, sorrowful song about the grief of loss of family.
Finally, after barely enough time to pick yourself off the floor and blow your nose, comes the double instrumental finale of Duke’s Travels/Duke’s End. Duke’s Travels is an almost 9-minute tour-de-force of Genesis prog. If you took Los Endos and Unquiet Slumbers For Sleepers and dosed it up on steroids and gave it a line of coke this is what you’d get. It is a bloody phenomenal piece of music. If you are a fan of “Old” Genesis – Gabriel era stuff – and you don’t like this song I really don’t know what to say other than you probably aren’t listening with an open mind. Duke’s End bookends the album with a shorter piece drawn from Behind the Lines and Turn It On Again to loop the whole thing back on itself in one final spurt of awesomeness. Neil Young isn’t the only one who figured out how to do this well.
Originally the album was to comprise a side long “song” about a character called Albert who falls for a rising star named Duchess. Albert is actually on the cover of the album which was designed by Bill Smith based on a character in a book by Lionel Koechlin. The songs that comprised the planned side long suite were Behind The Lines, Duchess, Guide Vocal, Turn It On Again which at the time was just a short joining section and finally Duke’s Travels, and Duke’s End – the whole suite of songs being referred to as “Duke”, hence the album title. Eventually the band decided against this approach and ended up splitting up the songs and developing out Turn It On Again into a proper song on its own. They were worried about comparisons with Supper’s Ready though they did end up performing it in this order on the Duke Tour. Check out this link of the full show from May 6/7 1980 in London https://youtu.be/IzudrABgitE. Phil tells a parody version of “The Story Of Albert” at 33 minutes into the show if you are interested. The whole video is a great document from that period.
Duke is a long album at 55:06 and 12 songs (it also might be my longest review…actually Abacab is longer). Some people consider it to be the last great Genesis album. I think that there is a pretty steady progression toward more mainstream/pop from A Trick Of The Tail all the way through Invisible Touch. For me Duke is kind of like Grace Under Pressure by Rush in that it is a perfect mix of prog but with commercial undertones. It isn’t quite either especially compared to what they were and what they would become and maybe that is why it is viewed as a dividing line of sorts for many fans. The Duke Suite is a wonderful aborted concept but this album just bristles with confidence in song writing, singing and playing. I think this is actually Rutherford’s best album as a guitarist and Phil’s best as a vocalist.
Two songs that were recorded during the album sessions but didn’t make the cut are Evidence of Autumn and Open Door but I think I’ll discuss them when I get to Three Sides Live.
Recommended Listening – Behind The Lines, Duchess, Guide Vocal, Man Of Our Times, Please Don’t Ask, Duke’s Travels, Duke’s End
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