Peter Gabriel (for and on behalf of Genesis): Oh, they were very sparse .... places like Friars in Aylesbury, Farx at Southall, a club in Godalming, and a gig, I remember, at the GKN Social Club annual binge somewhere in Birmingham - that was for the apprentices, who preferred reggae so we didn't go down too well.

ZZ: Did you ever do any gigs which were so distant that you stayed out overnight?

PG: Yes - after that GKN one, we slept on the floor of the social club, and after we'd signed with Strat (Tony Stratton Smith of Charisma Records), we did increasingly more gigs and had to stay away quite a bit. We never had to sleep in the van, but we stayed in some pretty rough guest houses; if you're only getting £30 for a gig and the transport is costing £15, there isn't much left for hotels - particularly when you're using that money for the week's food bill. There was one place we used to stay which was so damp that the bedclothes were actually wet; the rooms were like dormitories, sleeping 8 people, and using all Army surplus stuff for the bedding.... it was a lorry drivers' place, I think. That was in either Derby or Blackpool,l've forgotten which, but both those places stick in my memory for their notorious guest houses.

ZZ: What was the food like at these places?

PG: That was usually alright; the people were kindhearted and used to give you a good breakfast at whatever time you wanted, which is more than can be said for some of the more expensive hotels we stay in now, where you miss breakfast altogether if you don't get up early enough....there's no flexibility about meals at all. What we've been doing lately is booking into country hotels, a few miles outside the cities we're playing in, which are not only more reasonable, but they gTve us a chance to take a morning stroll in the country rather than wake up to the noise of traffic. In fact, it's rather strange and unreal to stay at a quiet hotel like that (because they're almost deserted at this time of year) and then drive off to a gig where you walk onto the stage to be warmly applauded by a couple of thousand peopl e.

ZZ: What about transport - how has that changed?

PG: Well, we started off with an old bread van, which used to accommodate all of us and what equipment we had, and then we moved on to a Transit, but now the group travels in two hired cars and we have a lorry for the equipment and another lorry for the lights.

ZZ: So how big is the road crew now?

PG There are seven altogether,and that number will increase, because we're planning on taking more extensive paraphernalia around with us. The overheads are increasing all the time, but I really think it's worth it and I hope it'll help us to get a lot more through to the audience - particularly the lyrics, because with a conventional rock'n'roll band you hear a few words like "baby" and "all night" and you get the idea of all the rest, but if you're trying to build up a fantasy situation and they're only hearing one word in ten, it's not going to be very effective.

ZZ: But the pa you're using now is as clear as a bell.... I've seldom heard such clarity; what sort is it?

PG: It's a Kelsey Morris, which we are hiring. Yes, I agree it~s a great improvement over what we've been using in the past.

ZZ: Aren't you tending to overestimate your audience a little? I mean, the average rock concert audience is content to wallow in a solid barrage of sound, where participation is limited to waving your arms about.....there's only minimal demands on the Iistener' s m inc. Don't you think that, unless they're familiar with your records, the Iyrics just fly right over their heads, unheeded?

PG: Well, I don~t see any reasOn why that situation should persist; I think a lot of people are trying to break that down at the moment and I think it wil I be broken down to the extent where audience involvement and interest will change its focus. I'm certain that a percentage of our audiences listen to us and build images of the music in their minds, rather than a more conventional audience which is happy to leap around and join in I on the choruses - though I don't mind that sort of encquragement myself' especially in 'The Knife! I think the time is coming when the person of the artist will become less important in this sort of medium, and though the guys playing the music will be there, they'll be secondary to the music - they won't be the be-all and end-all Have you seen the Red Buddha Theatre?

ZZ: No, I must confess.

PG: Well, they're a very trendy thing at the moment, but I went along to see them, partly because I felt I ought to educate myself a little, and I thought I'd have to work at that to understand what was going on, but I didn't at all I just sat back and enjoyed it.... but what I'm getting to is that the role of the musicians, although obviously very important, was to present the music and not to project their egos all the time. It was a happy medium; you weren't looking at them all the time, but it wasn't as far removed as the orchestra hidden in the pit.... it was somewhere in between.

ZZ: Yes, but all the business and media surrounding Genesis is surely geared to the front-page-of the-Melody-Maker thing - the promotion of 'stars'. I can see the music being more important than the musicians in a 'Come Dancing' situation, but not in the pop world, where 'image' is what counts. Do members of the audience ever come up and comment on the group?

PG: All the time. I must say that ! prefer criticism to unreserved praise, because that, after you have heard it a few times, becomes a little shallow to say the least. I mean, if you got carried away during the concert, great, but to be told how "wonderful, amaz7ng, fabulous,sensational, beautiful,etc" you were,doesn't really help anybody very much. I suppose I like objective comment most, and people who's views are either very positive or else very negative; I don~t like hoverers but I know that a lot of people refrain from making critical remarks for fear of injuring our egos - it's usually people who know us well who come up and say things like "you played a real bummer tonight",and there again, it's easier for us to take criticism from those we know and respect. The last gig we did, some guy went up to Phil and said "my heartiest condolences", going on to explain how terrible he thought the gig was, and some other guys came backstage to tel I us how very wicked we were charging 70p when they'd once seen Eric Clapton for six bob and how he'd got a much better sound out of an old Vox AC30.

ZZ: I reckon if I were in a band, I'd be very glad of praise but very susceptible to depression if I was criticised.... do you ever get swayed by criticism?

PG SometTmes. For example, once I was got at by a reviewer who found something I did in a particular song rather odious; I can't remember now exactly what it was, but this guy pointed out how obnoxious he thought it was - and subsequently, each time I approached that part of the song, I was thinking to myself "here it comes again" and I'd get very self-conscious about it - which is the last thing you should do, to start looking at yourself like that.

ZZ: Did you find that in the old days, when you were struggling for recognition, the press called you things like "pretentious" and "sterile" and "contrived", because your music was reaching beyond the conventTonal I imitations of a set time-signature, an unadventurous melody and chord structure, and Iyrics involving "arms and charms" and "loving man and hold your hand"?

PG: Oh yes, we got plenty of that alright, but then we seemed to find one or two "allies" who were prepared to I isten to what we were doing and treat it seriously rather than just dismiss it out of hand - and we tend to take mOre notice of their comments than those of writers who's reviews tend to be superficial or to contain inaccuracies. As far as pretension goes, that's something you've got to sort out in your own mind, and once you've decided what you're going to do, and you think it's right, you've got to stick by it.... but the press man's ego-trap, one feels, is always there waiting to ensnare the unsuspecting band. They seem to enjoy the glory of discovering a band, and then the glory of destroying it.

ZZ: But the thing there is that although there have always been a few journalists who supported your efforts, none of them can claim to have "discovered" Genesis, because if ever there was a case of a band having been ''discovered" by its audience, you are it. All the papers have done is latched on to the fact that audiences dug you. What do you think of the music press, generalIy?

PG I don't think that the British musTc press is very good on the whole - not with respect to us particularly, but to the scene in general. You can't generalise, but it seems to me that the informed Journal i sts in other countr i es know their subjects better than those in this country. One thing I've noticed lately is how a Rolling Stone mould is washing through the British press at the moment - you know, you start off describing the buns you had for tea, then you go into the guy's dope adventures, and so on.... l do sense a certain amount of imitation.

ZZ: What do you think of Rolling Stone itself?

PG: I quite like it; I think it's very readable.

ZZ: I think you hit the nail on the head about ''the dope adventures" bit - it seems that they only ever do articles on blokes who have suffered tortuous withdrawal and rehabilitation after years of secret drug addiction.

PG: Our press doesn't seem to provide any solid support for musicians.... they're too fickle.

ZZ: But the weekly papers don't generally work along the lines of supporting a certain artist so much as supporting various friends and publicists. If I look through the papers, I can tell which publicists have been touting their clients, because chances are they'll have been on the phone to me too. I can tell them to get stuffed, but for the weeklies, it's their business ....the publicists provide them with waffle every week in the same way that a clothes factory supplies shops.

PG: Yes, I can appreciate that, but they don't seem to stick with an artist. Take Paul McCartney, for instance; I agree to a certain extent that some of his post Beatle material isn't as exciting as his work with the Beatles, but he came in for a really rough time - they almost totally dismissed him. I mean, here's a guy with more craftsmanship at his art than 90%of all the gods and demi-gods they're creating week by week and they just threw him in the dustbin. So much of this business is just images, packaged and sold.

ZZ: So you're waiting for the day when, having "discovered" you,they'll be getting ready to destroy you and chuck you in the dustbin too!

PG: Yes! But I think there are ways of avoiding the dustbin; it's an art which one may or may not pick up as t ime goes on.

ZZ: To change the subject swiftly, can you tell us about your shaven fore lock?

PG: Ah, I have set answers for that one now! Let me trot them out for you:
1. It's a cheap gimmick.
2. It's easier to identify myself for the purpose of entering gigs, where efficient jobs worths used to refuseme entry - not believing that I was in the group.
3. The lice cross from the left side to the right every evening at exactly 7pm and I can swat them more easily.
4. 1 1ike to stand on my head every once in a while and this affords more
teal ance.
5. It's an external indication of the spiritual desert which lies within.
6. I've got a subconscious desire to join the Hare Krishna movement.
7. It's the result of a very nasty shaving accident.

ZZ: I see delete where necessary Can I probe you about your interest in Zen, because that's a sphere about which I know nothing.

PG Well, I've read a few books,that's all, and talked to a few people - and the ideas of Zen really appeal to me. I haven't got any immediate plans for booking my ticket to the Z en monastry or anything, but I must say that I've found more excitement in Zen than in anything else I've come across for a very long time. I find that a lot of the things which appeal to me personally - like Spike Milligan, and some of Monty Python - seem to contain elements of Zen, but having saTd that, I find it rather difficult to explain what I mean. One answer to "what is Zen?" was "thatis it", but very briefly, it's a state where life flows freely,uninterrupted by the tamperings and conditioning of the mind.

ZZ: How did you stumble into it..... were you generally interested in spiritual realms?

PG: I am interested in those sort of things, yes. There's a huge amount of knowledge in those areas which will, at some stage or another, become of great use, I'm sure. Yoga, for example.... l can't imagine anyone studying that for, say, a year and not finding it very valuable. At present there is a group of neurologists at Gower St (in London University) who are studying the spine in conjunction with Yogic learning, and they're coming up with some very fascinating conclusions which bear out what the Yogis have been saying for years and years. The thing is, that once these unexplained things are noted and "approved" by scientists, they're taken far more seriously - like the razor blade in the pyramid thing; some scientists in Czechoslovakia proved without doubt that if a razor blade is suspended, in a certaTn position, inside a pyramid, it wil I remain sharp.... you can use it and replace it in the pyram id and it won't ever lose its edge. On the face of it, that sounds stupid, but it's beer, sc ient if ical I y proved.... but we are going off at a tangent here. I beI ieve that there are a lot of external forces, or whatever you I ike to call them, which we don't understand but which do provide guidelines and knowledge to certain people at certain times. Audiences, I think, would be surprised at the number of musicians who are involved in, and have used, so-called spiritual studies....people like Bowie, Fripp, Peter Hammill, Jimmy Page, all have a high level of awareness in these things.

ZZ: Supposing readers are interested in following up on Zen - is there a 'beginners' book you could recommend?

PG: Yes, there's a very good book called 'Zen in English Literature', edited by RH Blyth and available from The Buddhist Society Bookshop, whose address I've forgotten but it'll be in the London phone directory. T hat's a book you can open at any page and start reading. One of the principles of Zen is that whatever you're doing, you do it 100'o.... if you're cleaning your teeth, for instance, you can regard that as the most important moment of your life for that time. .. and similarly, conventionally important things can be regarded as unimportant.

ZZ: How does it relate to your singing?

PG: Well, at the moment I'm only on the fringes of Zen really - I don't have too much opportunity to practice it, but, because of my background, I'm a very inhibited sort of person and I see Zen as a means of release from a lot of these inhibitions - and I'm becoming less inhibited, though you probably do as a matter of course in this business.

ZZ: Let's talk about your visit to America last December (the subject of a vast tome cal led "To the New World with Genesis", which might even get published one dayl. Did you like what you saw of New York?

PG: I liked it more than I'd expected to I have this vivid memory of the streets I ooki ng I i ke a futurist painting, with steam hurling out of holes in the road, and tremendous energy and speed hurtling from all quarters, but the visit was over so quickly that we didn't have time to have a good look round I managed to go to the Museum of Modern Art, but that was about it.

ZZ: There was a great deal of backstage exasperation at the Philharmonic Hall gig - what was that all about?

Tony Banks: We had a lot of equipment problems; everything needed modification before it would function properly, and then, just before we were to go on stage, one of the amplifiers blew up completely and we had to rush out and hire another one, which did nothing but buzz and hum throughout the set. That wasn't so bad in the numbers which were loud enough to cover the buzz, but in 'Supper's Ready', for instance, when there's a quiet passage of three or four minutes at the beginning, it was just so embarassing - we were a l l cr inging.

PG: It was just a shambles; I felt worse after that gig than I had done for a long time

Tony: Afterwards, we came off stage, Mike threw his bass on the floor and we really thought we'd blown it......

In actual fact, they hadn't blown it, of course.... nobody in the audience even realised there was anything at al I wrong; they thought it was a magnificent performance (and heaped loads of "unreserved praise" on the group). (I'm waffling here....trying to get to the bottom of the page so I can pack uP and go to bed). What else can I say? Ah yes, this interview will be continued in Zigzag 30, when we'll be talking about their albums and how some of the songs were written. There, that should just about do it. Pete