THE MECHANICS OF GENESIS

THE MECHANICS OF GENESIS

Sylvie Simmons

The more things change the more things change. Take Genesis. Started out with only a mellotron and a young man who dressed like a dahlia, and what happens? God blesses them with extremely expensive equipment, extremely long-and-involved songs about extremely weird creatures, and all of a sudden people with loonpants and Lord Of The Rings paperbacks mouth their names with reverence and they’re Progressive.

And then what happens? The band gets smaller, the songs get shorter, the hits get bigger and Genesis takes over the entire world as we know it! Phil Collins in the charts five times in one year— by himself, with Band Aid, with Philip Bailey, Marilyn Martin and Genesis! And twice on Miami Vice\ And movies— movies for chrissakes—and the ones he’s not in Tony Banks writes the soundtrack music for! And the dahlia toddles off and has hits of his own which they play alongside Mike Rutherford’s Mechanics on the radio!

And they’re still, to quote the guitar player, younger than the Rolling Stones!

Mike Rutherford, 36 this year, is sitting in a designer-pastel London office and looking very uncomfortable indeed. You know he’d rather be pottering in the garden or mucking out the stables (he J once had a job cleaning toilets in a superJ market, so stable-mucking-out’s no proj blem) or generally cavorting around the Surrey countryside, where he was born and still lives, on one of his wife’s horses (he’s “quite a good horseman,” by his own admission. “Cross-country events; terrifies the life out of me, but I enjoy it.”) than doing the dog with some pop writer.

“I can’t even read the music papers • 1 anymore. I grew out of that a while ago,” he squirms. “I’m finding this—the talking and the chit-chat and that sort of stuff— harder as time goes on. What I do is make music, not really talk about it.” But there’s a new Genesis album to be discussed— Invisible Touch, already a smash—so let the chit-chat commence...

“I would describe it as a mixture of old and new Genesis, in that each side’s got some short songs but there’s a longer 10-minute piece on each side which j covers a sort of instrumental area some of the old Genesis fans like.” The progressive fans? “We never gave ourselves that title. We always fought it—it suggests that you had to be intellectual and especially clever to understand us, which is not true at all. We were always popular in industrial areas, the Northern towns of England. It was just a label we acquired.

“I’d say,” back to the new album, “it’s like old Genesis done in a contemporary way. It doesn’t sound like a sort of caricature of ourselves. It’s very,” he grasps for the right word, “fresh.

“The interesting thing is we used to go in and write albums and then go in and record them, but this time we went in with nothing. Now that we do so much stuff outside Genesis—we took a year, a yearand-a-half, off—we try and keep Genesis for what we do best, which is writing together.”

When the stuff they do outside Genesis—Phil’s and Mike’s solo careers especially—is doing so well, do they find themselves getting a bit possessive about their songs and ideas? Wanting to keep it for their own albums rather than sharing it with Genesis?

“It doesn’t happen that way, because Genesis just said, let’s start with a clean piece of paper and write it from now. We all wrote the album together, so that doesn’t happen.

“And if it did, it’s not a problem, because you write the music you’ve got and when you come to a project— whichever album it is—you use it and go onto the next one. You don’t horde things, really.”

Is one of the reasons for all the solo projects that they’ve been together so long now that it’s hard to surprise each other musically? Like “Oh, here comes Mike with that same old bass riff again...!”

I ask.

“I suppose it could be that to a degree. We, Genesis, are one of the oldest groups, and you feel after all this time—18 years we’ve been going now— that you need to do stuff apart from just Genesis.

“It’s like being married and never going out with the boys sort of thing.”

It must be a bit odd coming back into Genesis after working with a band where you’re clearly in charge.

“Yes, I probably am,” muses Mike, “but I don’t run it that way. If it comes down to an argument I probably would be, but the way the Mechanics works is everyone comes in and you give them a free hand.

(In The Non-Biblical Sense)

“Genesis—we’ve been together for so long now that no one says, 'This is the way you should do it.’ There’s no petty arguing. We’re all working towards the same goal.”

But what of Phil Collins? Ever since Live Aid, Phil’s been coming across as Mr. Personality, a superstar in his own right. Why would he want to go back to a band Morrissey of the Smiths described as “murderously dull”? Did they have to talk him into returning? And now he’s here, do they have to slap him around a bit to keep his ego in line?

“I think we’ve actually shown to the world that you cannot have any more success than Phil has had in the last yearand-a-half, and if someone has done as well as he has and doesn’t want to do something, you don’t do it; you know what I mean?”

But it might be a case of contracts. Or guilt?

“Oh no,” Mike shakes his head. “We’ve always been very strong on this one thing. If someone wants to leave, there’s no contracts. I’ve heard horror stories about bands who, when someone leaves, they have to pay the other people money and stuff. I feel very strongly that if someone wants to leave, not only can they go, they should go.” A very civilized band, Genesis. Always have been. I remember tales of their earliest days whan they toured in a clapped-out bakery van but always stopped to put a tablecloth on the grass verge by the side of the road and have a hard-boiled-eggs, buttered-scones and flask-of-tea picnic...

But where were we? Guilt.

“There’s no moral obligation either. We’ve done well enough within Genesis. There’s nothing worse than doing something for the wrong reasons.

“I think what people forget is that Genesis produce music that none of us can do on our own. It’s as simple as that. Listen to the new album and our solo stuff and you’ll see I’m right. We produce this other thing, which is Genesis.”

The old cliche about Genesis being bigger than all of you?

“Yes, it is. It’s a combination of talents and ideas that does it. The last thing I’d want is Phil doing it because he has to. And he’s not like that anyway, and you wouldn’t get an album out of that. We’re all very sensitive to people’s energy.” But pardon me while I get into another mind-space:

“People forget that Genesis produce music that none of us can do on our own. ”

Has success gone to Phil Collins’s head?

“I can’t believe actually how little he has changed. The added pressure I’ve had with Mike & The Mechanics has been a big strain on me, and so on him it must be incredible! I hadn’t thought of that— the extra time, the extra chit-chats. I don’t know how he does it!

‘‘He doesn’t have much family life— he’s got a new wife and his children are abroad with his old wife, so it’s probably easier in that sense. I have got a busy, active family life”—up at seven in the morning to breakfast with the kids and maybe drop them off at the Banks family acreage down the road. “I don’t know how he does it...”

All three Genesises are ‘‘virtually neighbors. We’re all within 15 minutes of each other and the studio”—a converted cowshed in the middle of a farm, called the Farm—‘‘is in the middle,” and spitting distance away is their old private boys’ school, Charterhouse. A glorious testament to the great British Education System! Mike was beaten regularly, ‘‘every two or three weeks, by the housemaster. We didn’t get on, simple as that.”

Was he bad? ‘‘I wasn’t that bad.” Never set fire to the school or anything?

‘‘I wish I could say I had! I was thrown out of school. I wish I could say I had one moment of glory when I blew up someone’s car or something, but I never did.”

What he did was write music. ‘‘We wanted to be songwriters, but we came across at a time when groups were doing their own material, so we decided to form a group to play our songs.

‘‘It was a wonderful time—the Yardbirds, the Beatles, the Stones, all those groups; a very creative musical time, more so than now because you were covering such new ground all the time. So I think that whetted my appetite.”

So how come they became so serious and intellectual, when so many groups then were frivolous and fun; or rebels.

“Oh, I was quite a rebel too! We were much more like serious young men, very intense about things. But you have to be. And very ambitious, very determined.”

And it was hard in the beginning, he says. “We definitely paid our dues. But I’m not complaining. We were dedicated in those days. Because in those days bands started off by touring—unless you happened to have a hit single—and carry on from there. Nowadays you can’t do that.”

If Genesis came out today, says Mike, they’d have been chucked off the record label. “We wouldn’t stand a chance. That’s what worries me now. Bands like us don’t stand a chance.”

What about Marillion then? Fish & Co. are making a killing with Peter Gabriel’s old make-up and Genesis’s old sound.

“Good for them!” says Mike. “I just think if we’d released that kind of song then—which we did to a degree—it wouldn’t have happened. Things have changed.

“I’m sure they’re nice guys. Good luck to them. It’s interesting, interesting.”

Other things he finds interesting in the bright new world of pop are Talk Talk— “the album I think is great, very old fashioned, a couple of tracks sound just like Crosby, Stills & Nash, they really do, natural sounds, which I feel will come back a bit more”—and Mr. Mister— “nice”—Nik Kershaw, Paul Young, the Beatles—“Revolver’s my favorite”—and old Motown. “There’s some great new stuff around,” says Mike, who listens to the radio “a lot. I don’t play many records.”

What’s his favorite Genesis stuff—the short commercial songs or the long involved epics?

“Across the board, really. I’m still a writer. I’ve written songs that would be great for Barry Manilow. I’ve always been a huge fan of Cliff Richard’s voice...”

A favorite Genesis period, then?

“I have fond memories of Foxtrot. And The Lamb. I love the album, but it was hard to make. It was long. It went on and on and on. Certain albums were easier to make than others. A Trick Of The Tail was the first really easy album to make— but, to be honest, not because Peter left (the singing chrysanthemum left the bunch in 1974, which is when Phil Collins got the job; incidentally did you know Rutherford had had this way, Phil wouldn’t have been in the band? When he auditioned at Gabriel’s place in 1970, Peter and Tony voted for, Mike against. Funny thing, fate; but where were we...?) but around the time he left. From then on it’a been a bit easier. We’re better at it now. We have a lot of fun making them.

“We were much more serious young individuals then, and as you grow older and grow up you realize that you can have fun and still do as much good work.”

So what’s his idea of the Best Fun now?

“Very simple. It’s that here I am making a very good living out of what I enjoy doing more than anything else. Wonderful, really.

“Quality of life matters to me. There’s lots of times when we could be out on tours, making money, doing this, doing that. But I want to be home with my family. We work hard anyway, and I make virtually no decisions based on financial considerations.”

So he’s happy. “Very much so. I worry sometimes that I’ve had so much luck in my life.”

Did you know one of Mike Rutherford’s ancestors was the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley...? a