Recommendations of the Editorial team
One of the most successful articles on Rollingstone.de divides Genesis fans into two camps. It shows the long shadow that Peter Gabriel throws for decades after leaving Genesis. In July 1986, Genesis achieved her first and only number one hit in the billboard charts with “Invisible Touch”. The song stayed there for a week-then he was replaced by Peter Gabriel’s “Sledhmermmer”, also his first and only number one in the most important of all singles rankings.
Genesis without Gabriel “worth nothing”?
Rolling Stone regularly asks on social media: “Which song is better?” But even though Genesis and your ex-singer came to mind in the charts that summer 39 years ago, the answer among our readers clearly fails. About 75 percent votes for Gabriel and “Sledhammer”. Most of his apologists write: “Without him, Genesis was worth nothing!”.
Peter Gabriel against Phil Collins: A call duel
Is that correct? No. But Peter Gabriel’s reputation is better than that of Phil Collins, the drummer who also led Genesis as a singer from 1975. Gabriel was considered serious, Collins as fluttering. Gabriel was eccentricity, anti -capitalism, world politics and world music. Collins stood for Concorde flights, shirt in the pants and company celebration fun. And not for work.
What a mistake. As early as 1981, in a year of extraordinary rhythms (“nighclubbing”, “computer world”, “controversy”), Collins developed sweaty percussion patterns for his solo debut “Face Value” on the Linn-LM1 drum computer and mixed them with a drums to a sound frame that is second to none. The second half of “In The Air Tonight” (with drums) would not work without the first half (with the drum computer) – and vice versa. The result is a stroke of genius.
Remain doubts about Collins’ seriousness
Some people still had doubts about the seriousness of Phil Collins. As early as 1983, when Genesis published her video for “That’s All”. It shows Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford as lively Clochards who warm up on a fire, i.e. in the strange role -playing game. No millionaire dares to stage yourself as a homeless person today. Let’s put it this way: Peter Gabriel would not have done that in the 1980s. Genesis, even if the artistic expression was sometimes awkward, were a political band under Collins’ aegis. And in contrast to Gabriel, they recognized the signs at the latest in 1986. The recordings of “Invisible Touch” were completed two months before Chernobyl and a month and a half were published on June 6th. The album was like an unimagined parallel artistic accompaniment of the accident.
The title song, a variation of Sheila Es “The Glamorous Life” (Collins said that) is an over -the -top ode to an unreachable dream woman. But the other songs? Disaged the zeitgeist like 1986 nothing else. “Domino” told about barricading before the Fallout, “Land of Confusion” of a society that is indifferent to the nuclear upgrade: “I Won’t Be Coming Home Tonight / My Generation Will PUT IT Right / We not Just Making Celebrities / that we know We’ll Never Keep”.
Genesis are committed to anti-nuclear project
In addition, Genesis worked on the soundtrack of “When the wind blows” in the same year, the film adaptation of the Raymond Briggs comic on the effects of a nuclear strike. The best-selling scores were nevertheless “Top Gun” and “Rocky IV”-films about American hurray patriotism. And there are no those “supermen”, on which genesis in “Land of Confusion”. Because the video with the spitting image dolls transported a message using humor (like the video for “That’s All”), the urgency was overlooked.
Spitting image video for “Land of Confusion”
With “that’s all”, Genesis had long since become pop stars. And because Phil Collins alone had more number one-one hits than Michael Jackson between 1983 and 1989, a feeling of oversaturation spread. He and Genesis had sung in the nineties.
The end of the Collins era
In 1991 the last Genesis album with Collins appeared, “We can’t dance”. The year brought the VW special edition of the Genesis golf, a car that is like Genesis itself: not everyone likes, but is not hated, and the machine runs solidly. “We Can’t Dance” was the folk music to the Volkswagen, the single “I Can’t Dance” by just 40-year-old Collin The forced attempt at an ironic surrender before dance floors.
Between Gabriel and Collins – a choice with style
Back to 1986 again. If you don’t want to make a decision between “Sledhammer” and “Invisible Touch”, you should be happy. It could have been worse. “Invisible Touch” was hunted in the US charts by Kenny Loggins’ “Top Gun” anthem “Danger Zone”-fortunately, which, fortunately, only made it on the two. But Peter Gabriel’s triumph with “Sledhammer” also took a short time. After a week, his signature song of a lard ballad had to give way. Peter Ceteras “Glory of Love” from “Karate Kid 2”. The question “Genesis or Gabriel?” at least fun. But “Loggins or Cetera?” Sew.