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A button and 3 posters from the event
 
 
 



 

A backstage pass for Genesis

T-Shirt Transfer

 

Tickets



Here are some pictures and text from the program.
 
 

Compared to the other top bands in the world, Genesis are outrageously different. None of them has been busted; the News of the World hasn't managed to unearth any groupie scandals involving the band; they don't drive their Rolls Royces into swimming pools (on account of the fact that they don't drive Rolls-Royces or own swimming pools); none of them has suffered a nervous breakdown, and when it's all over tonight, they'll probably slip quietly home or unwind in front of the telly back at the hotel.

"There's a definite ordinary quality to us," says lead singer Phil Collins. "It took us ages to be persuaded to put our pictures on our album sleeves because we were convinced we all looked too normal."

'We've never known anyone in the music business or rubbed shoulders with the press down at the Speakeasy," says Mike Rutherford. "The music papers thrive on reporting exotic lifestyles, but in that respect we've been a grave disappointment. "

In every other respect, however, thanks to their inventive virtuosity, Genesis have brought nothing but excitement and pleasure to their many thousands of fans . . . and what loyal fans they have when you consider the many changes that the group has undergone during its metamorphic struggle to the top.

Carving themselves a distinct identity, Genesis have finally done away with erroneous public assumptions that they were like Yes and ELP musically, Bowie and Alice Cooper visually. Exploring the realms of one thousand melodies, Genesis swing between intelligent pop and sophisticated progressive sounds. Genesis are simply Genesis. And there is no one like them.

"We're a very melodic band," Rutherford said humming a spappy little tune, "not at all like other progressive bands. We're actually a bit poppy. A lot of people have been put off by the underground image and a lot of those people could like us. We've never been at all like ELP, Yes or the Pink Floyd."

Tony Banks agreed. "We've never been comparable to Yes. The melodies and chords we use are very thematic rather than describe the ecstasies of any particular player. We don't particularly like solos anyways," Banks yawned. "We find them boring." ,,

Individual ego frustrations are kept at a well balanced minimum for the overall well being of the group. Genesis are a band in the strictest sense of the word. Democratically run, they creatively feed off self-criticism and compromise. Sterility is avoided by changing motivations and a continual desire to grow. No one person has ever been the guiding light behind the group just as no one person will ever be Genesis. Their strength is communal.

"The talent that is Genesis is -greater than the individual, "Banks gently rationalized. "It's always been a composite thing with us anyways. The whole is greater than any one individual"

On their last American tour, a Chicago promoter eagerly welcomed the group. It had been a bad week at the box office. Peter Frampton unexpectedly didn't sell out. Jesse Colin Young pulled a moderate crowd. J. Geils cancelled a scheduled appearance due to lack of public interest. Joe Cocker attracted a minuscule audience. Two sold out Genesis concerts saved the promoter's week. They have become what the fat businessmen with tight suits and large cigars would call a viable commercial product.

Genesis have changed. Onstage and on record. Cheap hotels and greasy meals belong to the past. Tony Banks no longer wears Disneyland sweatshirts onstage. Phil Collins no longer hides exclusively behind his drum kit, often coming centre stage to flaunt his vocal drumming. Mike Rutherford now rocks back and forth expertly switching from acoustics to double necked electrics while operating a battery of bass pedals.

On the off stage, Genesis do not look like the average rock band. Nothing about their behaviour fits the archtype personality image. Tony Banks still wears Disneyland sweatshirts offstage. Despite the fact that Genesis are not orthodox rock stars, they are rather popular.

"My leaving brought a freshness and vitality to the others and to myself," Peter Gabriel said recently. And he was right. An exuberant freshness and vitality permeates all Genesis activity. This creative enthusiasm is contagious, spreading from the stage to the concert hall, from the speakers into your own front room.

Genesis have triumphed. They have turned a possibly fatal personel change into a healthy musical growth Refusing to look back, they have taken more than the proverbial one step forward. While more established contemporaries stagnate, Genesis hit mature zeniths on target.

Genesis really are a new band. In their earlier days they awkwardly tried to fuse theatrics with music. Onstage visuals were originally conceived merely as a ploy to attract attention to the music, to the songs.But the visuals eventually obscured the music, coming dangerously close to consuming the band. Peter Gabriel left but the audience remained. Now the theatre has become the music.

There are few thrills of discovery nowadays for a veteran rock and roller. Maybe he's jaded, but when he recalls the excitement of the first time he saw the Rolling Stones, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, ELP, the Mothers of Invention and Alice Cooper, he can be pardoned for thinking that no new group is going to overwhelm him as those did in the past.

But never say never, at least until you've seen Genesis. There is nothing like them. Period. And not only are they among the most creative and innovative musicians performing in pop music today, but they are masters of the magic that Alice Cooper and David Bowie are crudely (by comparison)grasping toward—theatre.

. . . it's still in the beginning for Genesis in popularity, but in accomplishment, they are already superstars.

(A1 Radio Chicago Sunday Times)

Bruce Meyer of United Press International, in a syndicated column, described Genesis as: 'the most significant rock band to happen since the Beatles . . . One simply does not often get the chance to feel or experience something wildly innovative, something that has never been done before. But that is precisely what Genesis does. . . The impact of Genesis's stage show is difficult to describe and impossible to exaggerate. Let it be said simply that they have a habit of leaving their audiences stunned, limp in their seats.'

Jim Knippenberg also found it difficult to describe Genesis's music, as he wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer:

It is not boogie stuff. It's not for foot-stomping or handclapping. Lousy for singalongs. Not good to get drunk to. Not much better to sober up to.

Nor is it hard-hitting, slammin' and smashin' English rock and roll like we get from so many other madmen across the waters.

It's something entirely different and completely unique in a world of imitation and mimicry. Tasty; tight; literate; diversified; serious without being pseudo-profound.

It's something you can listen to several hundred times without tiring out . . . music that no other rock and roll group is currently offering; music that is good for both the mind and
the body.  -

Richard Cromelin, reviewing the first gig of the three-night, six-concert engagement, described- Genesis in the Los Angeles Times as 'one of the most thoroughly sophisticated rock shows of all time', and he added:

The school of rock that it represents emphasizes control and discipline over spontaneity and release. Genesis's show is the most perfectly realized piece of rock theatre yet to come along . . . a breathtaking mélange of science fiction and fairy tale overlaid with a mythic dimension . .. it sweeps you with primitive gods and apocalyptic battles to futuristic watchers from the skies, from not-so-innocent childhood to malevolent senility. One needn't hear all the words nor spend time analyzing, because it's good theatre and these striking images hit responsive chords on an instinctual plane.

Peter Thompson, Genesis's congenial press agent since Foxtrot, felt that the band had really made it in December 1976. 'I knew it in some bizarre way when I put out a news story about the tour,' he told me, 'and it made a big picture in the final editions of the London Evening Standard. Usually, nobody sparks that kind of interest. And then they made the whole front page of the Standard just after Christmas.

'Finally, after years of trying to convince people to go and see the band, the media picked up on them . . . I mean, as the kind of band which was newsworthy.

'You could actually say something about them in the kind of daily newspapers that my mother reads—not just the rock papers. And that didn't even happen when Peter was with them.'