HP: Was it a conscious thing from the very inception of Genesis to do those little 'set' pieces on stage where each song is a story that you're telling?

Peter: The thing is that the Iyrical content of the songs appealed to us most of all. We just like the idea of telling stories and to some extent, it's been there from a very early stage. As far as what I do in between numbers on stage: it evolved through having three or four 12-stringguitars which need regular tuning. This means there are large silences between each number. So we were lucky if we held a - tenth of the audience's attention during these moments. I just had to fill it and some of the stories became somewhat irrelevant and still are—start running a bit fast from images ...

NP: They may be irrelevant, but they seem to be in keeping with the general tone you set. Did you start out that way, or were you playing MIDNIGHTHOUR and WHAT'D I SAY and then go on from there?

Peter: Not with this band actually. But I think we've all played it in one form or another. This band started about six years ago as songwriters joining together. The songs we were writing then were very simple, but they were still a bit ... the Iyrics were a bit pretentious, full of images. We've been recording since we were about seventeen and as we've grown older so has the material. But then we went through one or two stages in which we began to tell stories with the music and it seemed that things we liked playing were very varied in their moods and we like that, that contrast, some sort of structure other than the usual verse-chorus. verse-chorus-end.

HP: What about the literary content of the music? It's a very strange but interesting form of literary science-fantasy, fantasy-fantasy, reality-fantasy type of tradition that has happened, I guess, from the year one. Who's involved in creating the actual songs for Genesis?

Peter: We all do some words but I think it varies. Sort of pick up influences from Grimm's Fairy Tales To Vonnegut. Myself, I like lots of people: Edgar Allen Poe, Louis Carroll ...

HP: Do you see other ways of expressing this, say books or movies?

Peter: Yes, films, very much. I see what we're doing as very close to film. And we're investigating various techniques to bring film closer to what we do on stage. Hopefully we should leave the stories, get the material so set that they hold up by themselves and so it might be suitable for video cassettes or video discs when that type of approach becomes a bit more of a reality.

HP: When you make v our music and tell your stories on video cassettes, do you see the hand as the visual or an independent visual which you'll create?

Peter: Video cassettes would be completely clear of the band. But on stage I think we'd do a bit of both. I think it's important that you should come over to the audience and that's something that we don't do as much as we'd like to do— people should be able to relate to what's upon stage.

HP: One of the problems with video is that the record industry has a tendency to think that the picture on the screen is going to be the band...

Peter: It seems to me that that would be an immature approach, because if things are good enough, and I think it's quite possible for it to be good enough, for it to be coordinated, then you can much more accurately convey something with the orchestra and some sort of conventional classical approach. It's in the orchestra pit, the band I don't think will fill that role but will certainly fill a less important role. Really, there's always going to be an audience for a trained live band, but I think it'll be probably the biggest audience for stories ... sort of either video cassettes or films of one sort or another which are a selection of visual images or a coordinated idea ...
 

HP: Something to watch...

Peter: Yeah, where the band doesn't come in. And I think, probably, it'll be coordinated by artists. We've yet to see an artist emerge as a rock star, which is something that I think will happen. I've seen that with someone who works with the visual images so that they do fifty or even eighty percent of the video cassette while the band creates the music for it.

HP: Have you thought about video live on stage, like the video projection systems that are available?

Peter: We're getting into these things at the moment.

HP: You use a variety of costumes and stage techniques which range from very satanic personages to things which are very funny, like the flower and stuff. How much time do you put into coming up with these things? What motivates them?

Peter: Well, it really evolved for our first headlining tour of England. When we were given the opportunity by promoters and our own finances to do something beyond what we had been doing, then I sat down with my mask maker and started doing some things.

HP: You have a mask maker? Is he a professional mask maker?

Peter: Well, he is now. He's very good. Virtually anything that I want he can find a way to do.

HP: The concept of the mask as opposed to the costume is a tradition that's interesting—the player with the mask. Are you conscious of that, that it's been part of something that's been going on for a long time, smile and frown masks if nothing else?

Peter: Well, I'm becoming conscious of it. I look upon everything as things to be learned and I hope to develop a lot more of the things I want to do.

HP: People like Bowie are also giving shows ...

Peter: I think I can see a fundamental difference between the way we would like to use that sort of thing and Bowie. At the moment he seems to be sort of like creating a fantasy situation and then playing music like any other band rather than like what we're doing. With us what happens is evolving straight from the act of story telling from each different number. Rather than setting or scenery and then just being a rock show. The trouble with the visuals used by most rock bands so far is that they're very uncoordinated—just half-hearted grasping at images and, for the most part, the only thing that's worked for me is a very fast succession of images that give you this hypnotic effect and sensation of speed, but I've never been really happy with the visuals of rock bands.

HP: One of the problems with these visuals is that they're not repeatable. You pay to go and see them and that's it. You can't replay them, see them again when you want to.

Peter: That's one of the things we want to do ... just a book sort of. We put together a book which will be on sale depending on how much it will cost for color reproductions of the visual things. So people can have them to get on with the music, and this again hasn't really been done properly. The nearest thing I've seen to it was the Procol Harum Grand Hotel book, just sort of very simple designs. I thought it was very tasteful and that sort of idea is what we wanted to do on this last tour. Hopefully we'll have it together in the future.

HP: Do you think of yourself as a rock musical or do you feel as if you're from another area of the arts?

Peter: No, not from another area, but just more interested in looking at things as well as listening to things. And, well take painting, I'm no good at it, but it does seem that when I write Iyrics I always get very strong visual images which I would try to put into words, but other than the other way around—writing words and getting images from that—it seems a pity that some of that isn't getting through at all.

HP: Do British and American audiences have different perceptions of what you're doing on stage?

Peter: I think there's the obvious things ... because the American market has more money, you're met with the most professional acts. you're met with the most ... it's much more of a profession out here than it is in England. In England if you're amateurish you can get along alright, you can be sloppy, you can lose control of your audience, lose their interest, at various points and if you can get them to clap their hands at the end, you're okay. But it doesn't work over here.

HP: It's real business here ...

Peter: Yeah, right. I think it's because of the money and the competition that therefore surrounds it and thus leads to a much higher standard of professionalism. The American audience has seen much more.

HP: They're mediaized. They've seen a lot and their level of blasé is much higher. Do you think that the energies that go on in this country would be beneficial to you staving here and creating ...

Peter: I like New York very much, I must say, and I doubt very much whether I'd be able to do it but I'd be quite happy, for myself, to live six months here and six months in the English countryside which is where I feel the happiest. But you do pick up off the sort of energy around here.

HP: About your shaved head, was there any particular reason for doing it, or was it just whimsy?

Peter: It was almost as simple as it seems. I have several reasons. First and most obvious was that it was a cheap gimmick to make me money. Second is that it's an outward sign of the spiritual desert that lies within. I have a clairvoyant woman that I go and see and she told me that in my last lifetime I was a Mohican Indian and I had my brain removed ...

HP: Do you have to maintain it?

Peter: Yes. Shave it every day. It's no less logical to shave the top of one's head than it is to shave the bottom of one's head. It's just less conventional.

HP: It must really wreak havoc with the poor people who are finally accustomed to seeing a long haired rock and roll band shuffle in and out of airports. Do you have little old ladies come up to you and ask you what the reason for it is?

Peter: Most people pretend not to notice it. One or two ... I tend to get stopped more often in customs. My dream of course is that our entire audience should be composed of people with their stupidly shaved heads. I've seen one or two guys in England with shaved heads.

HP: Does it give you a feeling of immense satisfaction, creating something out of nothing...

Peter: You realize how easy and unimportant it is. I'm very attracted to a lot of the ideas in Zen and attempts to ignore extremes and find a route of its own which is ever aware of the lack of validity of all adjectives for the reason that they are attached to the top of the bottom of the extremes in any situation. In other words. in heaven, the word good or the word bad is somewhat different to the word good or bad in hell.

HP: Are you affected at all by the medieval tradition of Merlin and Arthur and that whole thing?

Peter: I don't know. I mean, I like that sort of fantasy. I like a lot of occult fantasy. There's a lot of things in that area that interest me—people in New York doing research with plant responses, and a community in Scotland supposed to be producing amazing cabbages by talking to them...

HP: You're supposed to talk to your plants ...

Peter: Dolphins. All these things. A lot of really interesting things that—well not so much dolphins, but those subjects which have been branded occult or wishy washy, people are now beginning to investigate a little more seriously.

HP: Technology seems to be going hand in hand with mysticism. I don't think the people who invented the transistor in 1947 would have presumed that it would lead to a mystical relationship between yourself and the transistor, which, at least, it has for me. Do you think mysticism is going to continue. Whether you call it occult or mysticism, that sense of the intellect growing fantasy levels. Do you think the normal person on the street is going to be affected?

Peter: The group itself is bourgeois escapism, but as far as this sort of thing, I think a lot of them will become less mystical. Kids will become school kids, will accept them—for a sort of diet of scientific fact—willinclude things that are now called mystical. Yeah. I think there's a growing interest in that sort of thing. A lot of rejection of present values. There has to be a reawakening of interest in spiritual matters.

HP: What media inputs do you have in terms of your home lifestyle... what do you feed on ... radio, tv?

Peter: Reading. You can go at your own pace. My father is involved in television. He invented a part of the cable television thing. I went to look at one of the first places where it's being fitted-in which is a medical college in Cleveland. And I was really impressed with the facilities, they have built into their labs there. In about five years time there will effectively be a library of tapes all of which you'll have access to from external points. As far as learning, it is like a book in that you can go back on some things, stop films and look at stills. With live broadcasts probably they'll be recorded simultaneously so that you get a copy, can have it in your library.

HP: Getting back to Genesis ... your lead guitarist plays sitting down.

Peter: He has no legs. (laughs).

HP: The first time you see Genesis it's very unorthodox, especially on a sexual level Bands in America have lead guitarists who come out and present themselves you know, 'here I am with my guitar, I'm sexy'.

Peter: lt wasn't intentional. It began really because a.) through the fact that, mostly to extend the instrumental range — each instrumentalist has a wide number of things to do. Both hands and feet are usually occupied with pedals and things and to maintain a high degree of accuracy they have to play sitting down. I would like them to be more of a sort of band feeling, it does sometimes look as though each individual person is going in their own direction. And I think it's something we're conscious of. Also I think I just very much dominate the stage.

HP: Did you ever think you'd have to worry about all these things when you started the band? Like seeing Your mask maker and all?

Peter: No, we believed in playing behind a black curtain and that the music would get through, but over a period of years we decided that it wasn't just that it was going over their heads, it was going under their feet as well. And so, at the beginning when we were sort of in a cottage writing things, we thought then that it was sufficient just to have the music. Which it clearly isn't, because people have to look at you. And it's logical that you should try to get something to be looked at.

HP: Does it worry you that the lyrics must get across, must be distinct? The first time I saw you, over a year ago at Philharmonic Hall in New York, was very strange because obviously a lot of people were not familiar with anything, had no idea what you were going to be like. The second time I saw the band I thought that more of the Iyrics got across physically, not just in terms of me hearing them but, for whatever reason, the band seemed to be getting them across. Do you think they should be 100%—should reach that point?

Peter: Well, I'm never sure that it will be IOO% with the stuff that we do?

HP: How much do you worry about the band's albums?

Peter: Well, I worry more than anyone else. But there's a lot of argument that goes on. If you're going to spend a bit of time on writing words, then you might as well get across at least as many of the words as you can. But there are a lot of Iyrics I never say that I understood, but I just got a feeling for them and that's probably sufficient, particularly if we are able to get the visual thing to a much further degree. Then, once you leave the theater after seeing us, you'll relate to certain visual images. You do that already with music, with rock. For instance, I think the Stones, when you listen to them, you're conscious of them and Jagger and the early days and the rebel bit—they are all visual links when you hear that music.

HP: Elvis was like that too.

Peter: I sort of missed Elvis ...

(Interview conducted by Richard Robinson).