With the last concert on March 27, 2022 in London, the 53-year live history of Genesis ended. According to the band chronicle, the first gig took place at Brunel University in London, as a support act on a Saturday in early November ’69.
Marking this period of time is now relevant again because keyboardist Tony Banks opened up a new perspective on Genesis history in an interview. Core thesis: The common classification “with Peter Gabriel” and “after Peter Gabriel” is not correct. The departure of the master changed the chemistry of the band, but it was not a break in the epoch.
Rather, the keyboard man took the view that the band had gone through a continuous, rather gentle development that ended with the farewell tour in March. Gabriel was in the audience for the finale, while Phil Collins, who was ill, performed for the last time.
“We could be a singles band”
“There’s a core of fans who think of the days with Peter as the glory days. But I’ve never really seen a big break in Genesis. It was all slow and flowing. For example, that we got better at the short songs. After we did ‘Follow You Follow Me’ in 1978, suddenly we could even be a singles band, with quite complex tracks like ‘Turn It On Again’ or ‘Mama’,” he told British music magazine Classic Rock.
In Banks’ narrative, Genesis would have enjoyed a relatively stress-free career over five decades. An indication of this is that there was never any stress on the often very long tours around the world. “A lot of bands fight with each other, but that was never the case with us. Of course there were moments, but never anything important (…) I don’t know if I could have endured being in such a problem band for long.”
His final credo: “Genesis was never a fad band, never the band of the moment, and I think they are sometimes even overlooked (…) But it was a fantastic thrill to be out there in front of all these people. I just wanted to write music, so I ended up playing my own stuff. I would have liked to have been a Burt Bacharach kind of thing, so more in the background.”
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