June 1986.

Genesis release studio album number thirteen, Invisible Touch.

Unlucky number for some, but not this British trio.

A decade on from Peter Gabriel’s departure at the height of their prog-rock dorkyness, the band had not only survived the loss of a somewhat charismatic frontman, but had effectively thrived in his absence.

Ten years hence a further line-up change would see their Midas touch consigned to history.

More on that later ..

Meantime, let’s return to album thirteen.

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nylon sheets and blankets help to minimize the cold ..

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The success of Invisible Touch, especially in the USA - five singles which reached the Top 5, making Genesis the only non-American act to accomplish that feat on a single album - wasn’t wholly unexpected.

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The stratospheric success of Phil Collins’ solo career certainly helped to attract new fans and shift additional units. How could it not. For six or seven years from 1981 onwards everything the lad put his name to turned to gold .. be that recording, song-writing, album production or acting. He was without the doubt the hottest ticket in the entertainment industry at the time and everyone wanted a slice of his artistic pie.

• ​Lest we forget the additional interest afforded by Mike Rutherford’s Mike + The Mechanics commercially successful debut album released in 1985, and Tony Banks soundtrack work on Lorca and the Outlaws .. well maybe not that one .. you’ll find that swept under a carpet somewhere.

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Bad reviews aside, when the Invisible Touch single and album ascended to the upper reaches of the Billboard charts few eyebrows were raised. Though, ironically it would be Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer that would dislodge the single from the top of the singles chart.

• Speaking to The Guardian in 2014, Collins said: “‘Invisible Touch’ is my favourite Genesis song and it came more or less out of nowhere. We would arrive in the studio every day and just start playing. One day Mike Rutherford played a riff on the guitar, with an echo, and I suddenly sang: ‘She seems to have an invisible touch – yeah!’ It came into my head fully formed.”

• Collins also explained that IT made him realise Genesis’ approach to writing was akin to that of jazz, with the improvisational aspects making the track tick. “We weren’t afraid to make lousy noises,” he explained. “We knew each other well: if I started singing crap, no one would say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Still, there was a good percentage of crap.”

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​​​did you read the news today ..

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Jumping back to late 1985, early 1986, the band decamped to The Farm in Chiddingfold, Surrey (the studio owned by the band) to begin the process of recording the follow up to the four million selling Genesis album. The album that dropped behemoths such as Mama, That’s All and Home By The Sea into the publics welcoming lap.

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As ever, the lads arrived without anything pre-written and took to developing the material from studio improvisations/jams. Mike Rutherford: “We’d rock up, have a cup of tea, see what happened. On day one, we had no songs, no ideas, and a blank bit of paper.”

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From these sessions emerged the (subsequent) title track - all electronic drums, synths and fretless bass. Sounds horrendous (and it still does to some), but (as Yoda would say) attain that coveted US number one slot it did. Not bad for a track that grew out of a jam around The Last Domino, the second segment of the long-form track which go on to form the backbone of side two - Collins subsequently admitted he wanted to write something akin to Sheila E’s The Glamorous Life .. of which there are echoes. likewise, The Belle of St Mark from the same album.

 

Next up there’s the eight and half minute slug-fest, Tonight Tonight Tonight. With Banks’ keyboard work and a repetitive beat to the fore, had it been developed futher may have seen it bag opener status.

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As for Land of Confusion .. some liken it to work of previous years, but to my lugs it screamed chart fodder .. the Spitting Image video that accompanied the rack was corny as fuck, and boy did it grate after the repeated viewings. In Too Deep, would round off side one with another hit single. One hundred percent smaltz, it would send hardcore fans scuttling to the hills and those riding the bands coat tails on the basis of their admiration for Collins’ solo output into derisions of joy. One can only imagine Rutherford had his feet up during the development of this number, as the extended prog explorations of the yester-year were now consigned to the bin .. Collin's consumption of the band complete.

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Flip the thing over and side two gets underway with the frenzied Anything She Does before launching into the afore-mentioned Domino. Whilst most people blame Phil Collins for turning Genesis into the commercial giant it became, it’s worth remembering that responsibily for every piece of soft shite should not be nailed to his door. Throwing It All Away, one of the album's most AOR leaning moments, does include lyrics written by Rutherford.

• Mike Rutherford: “We've changed with the times. Our tastes have changed and pop music has changed. But we're still doing music that interests us."

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The album would conclude with The Brazilian, an electro, synth instrumental which has its moments, but is clearly the weakest link, filler and indicative of the jam workouts it and the album originated from.

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​​​shake it loose, cut it free, just let it go ..

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By September ’86 the band had started a world ‘stadium’ tour that would run until the following July, ending with dates at Wembley Stadium - the tour would include nine dates in Sydney and twelve in California alone for chrissakes !! Their most successful tour to that point .. 112-dates, attended by an estimated 3.5 million people.  Those of us with long memories may recall the final night of the tour (4 July 1987) being broadcast live on BBC Radio One.

• Tour rehearsals were held in Dallas, where songs like Carpet Crawlers were rehearsed but did not make the final set. Thankfully, they corrected this oversight on subsequent tours.

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After a well-earned lie down/suitable hiatus, the band would return for the We Can’t Dance album in 1991. Made with the CD generation in mind, the long player had it’s high points, but was soulless and impersonal in parts. Lacklustre would be a more adequate description. Ofcourse, this didn’t stop the accompanying 68 date tour from becoming a major success and the album doing some neat business. The Midas Touch was clearly still a thing at this point. However, that was about to change on 28 March, 1996, when Genesis officially announced Collins’ departure in a press release titled: “Genesis end twenty-year experiment, decide to replace Peter Gabriel as vocalist.”

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Perhaps it was personal issues or simply a desire to concentrate on his solo career, but after pondering the notion for a few years, leave Collins did .. Yes, he would return for a couple of tours in the years that followed, but his recording stint with the band was at an end.

 

Cue the search for a replacement .. the gig eventually being handed to Stiltskin vocalist Ray Wilson. Lest we forget that other singers auditioned for the role: Nick Van Eede (Cutting Crew), Francis Dunnery (It Bites), Kevin Gilbert (Toy Matinee, Sheryl Crow), and David Longdon (subsequently of Big Big Train).

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now see what you’ve gone and done ..

 

​Calling All Stations was the result of their labours. As an album it fared well in the UK but failed to make the Top 50 in the States. The Calling All Stations Tour saw Genesis tour Europe throughout 1998 but an American leg was booked and cancelled (twice) due to low ticket sales for the initially planned stadium jaunt and subsequently scaled-back arena dates.

 

Slated in many quarters, the album actually isn't as bad as most if us thought at the time, but the rot had set in as the quality of the material simply wasn't up to their platinum-era standards .. The American market's response to the album soon made clear the depth of Rutherford's miscalculation regards the bands ability to survive Collins departure. The band subsequently disbanded.

• Mike Rutherford: “There are some nice bits on the album .. I look at it as if it could have been the first album of another phase of Genesis. The way forward would have been to do two albums very quickly. On the first album, we learned a bit, and maybe it lacked lyrically in some places. I think had we done three albums with Ray, the first one would have been viewed as a start, but not a great one .. Ray and Tony wanted to carry on .. I just thought it was a weird time for radio, things were changing - and to make it work, we would have to do an album and tour every year for three years. And I just didn’t have it in me. I didn’t feel I could do what was required to make it work."

• Ray Wilson (speaking 2001): “They basically phoned me up and said, ‘Ray, we're not continuing.’ I've never really felt that I was out of the band as such; it's just that the band doesn't exist any more (laughs). When I heard that, it was just after the Cut tour, about a year and a half ago. I've read some articles saying that I was fired and stuff, but to be fair to them, they didn't phone me up and say, ‘Ray, you're fired. We're going to carry on and we're going to get somebody else to sing.’ Or, ‘We're going to carry on and get Phil back.’ There was never any of that. They just said, ‘We've decided not to continue because the market doesn't want us.’ I think they didn't want to completely close the door to ever doing anything again."

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And with that, Genesis as a recording/touring unit were done. A mere decade on from the stratospheric success of the Invisible Touch era, they now found theselves unable to fill arenas. As AI will tell ya .. ‘Calling All Stations was considered a "Trainwreckord" by some, marking a dramatic end to a high-selling era for the band.’ Yip, even Nick D’Virgilio’s credible impersonation of Collins’ drumming style on album closer One Man’s Fool couldn’t save it.

 

We look back at the final chapter / last book of Genesis this playlist.

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​​ALSO THIS PLAYLIST .. Be warned, if you can't abide Genesis or similar, you're unlikley to find much to whet your whistle this issue. There's nothing 'new' this time out. Though we do delve into a couple of archive releases that made the grade in recent weeks. First up, there's the reissue and remastering of The Alan Parsons Project's mighty Ammonia Avenue album - should they get round to doing likewise with Vulture Culture, a cover feature surely beckons. Second, with live dates on the horizon, Rush have dropped a rather hefty Grace Under Pressure boxset into circulation. Guaranteed to break any paving slab it comes into contact with, we rip the cellophane wrapping from the damn thing to dust off the live version of The Weapon contained within.

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ELSEWHERE .. In terms of those non-Genesis tracks complementing the narrative; we opt for the debut single from Mike Rutherford side-project Mike + The Mechanics, featuring late Sad Cafe vocalist, Paul Young. There's the afore-mentioned Peter Gabriel mega-hit that knocked Invisible Touch from the top of the US singles chart, before we round things off with a triple helping from the Phil Collins solo years, including the oft-overlooked (and vastly underrated), Like China.

 

And that's May done for another year.

MCQ returns in a couple of weeks.

Enjoy.

Ed

For Jack.

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