Genesis – Interview with Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford, 25 August 1997 in Berlin

Berlin, 25 August 1997. As part of the album presentation for Calling All Stations, we were able to conduct an interview with Genesis (Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford) at the Hotel Adlon.

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it: Hello, Tony! Hello, Mike! It’s great to see you again.
Tony + Mike: Hello!

it: Unfortunately, we have to keep it short this time, so let’s get started right away. We have listed all the album and non-album tracks from Calling All Stations that we know of on this piece of paper. Could you add the working titles to this list and write down who wrote the lyrics for each song?
Mike: (passes the piece of paper to Tony) Can you do that, Tony?
Tony: OK, you can start answering questions.

it: Who else besides Ray auditioned for the position of new singer?
Mike: David Longdon. He was in the running alongside Ray for a long time and sounded pretty good. He sounded a bit like Phil. Then there was the guy from Cutting Crew. I can’t remember his name. That’s pretty much everyone you need to know about.

it: Surely lots of people sent you tapes?
Mike: Yes, of course, but no one who was very well known.

it: Do you see Ray as an equal member of Genesis?
Mike: Yes, he’s part of Genesis. He’s involved in the writing and all sorts of other things.

it: Did you ask Chester Thompson if he wanted to play on the new album?
Mike: No, because… first of all, Chester has never played on an album, right? I think everything was in flux somehow, and it was time to move on. We found two very good drummers, with Nir Z being the main drummer. He sounds very ‘heavy’, but not American, even though he lives in America.

it: Why aren’t the two drummers permanent band members?
Mike: We said, ‘Let’s try it with two drummers.’ But three or four could have played on the album. We wanted to use the opportunity of this new album to find out who the right Genesis drummer is. If we had noticed that the two couldn’t play everything, we would have brought in another one.

it: So you had already considered hiring more than one drummer when you started working on the new album?
Tony: We had at least kept that option open. No decision had been made at that point. I think we would have been quite happy if Nir had played on the entire album. But we had already had Nick audition, and he sounded very good on some of the tracks, especially Uncertain Weather. That’s why he ended up playing on the album.

it: Why did some of the tracks on Calling All Stations fade out so abruptly at the end?
Mike: Well, I don’t know if it’s abrupt. They fade out where we thought was the right place. But it’s true that most of them fade out. Sometimes that just happens…

Tony: … I think fading out has something to do with laziness in a way. Some songs just have to be faded out, but we should have added an ending to some of them. But that’s just how it turned out. When we write and record songs, we want to be as flexible as possible. That often meant rearranging parts to suit Ray’s voice. The ending then had to be left quite open.

it: Who is Anthony Drennan, and why did you choose him to replace Daryl Stuermer during the tour?
Tony: We probably would have taken Daryl back, but as you know, he’s on tour with Phil. A total of four guitarists auditioned for us. Anthony was recommended to us by John Giddings, who is our promoter in Europe. I think he had seen him play live with Paul Brady. He said he was great, so he auditioned and sounded fantastic. We had him play things like the Firth Of Fifth solo – not so much the melodic part as the improvised part – and he did it wonderfully. He also plays bass. Invisible Touch, for example, is a very simple song, but the bass part is absolutely crucial. He sounded very convincing there. He’s just a great musician.

it: Does Daryl have a chance to return to Genesis?
Tony: I don’t see any reason for that. But if it didn’t work out with Anthony for some reason and Daryl really wanted to do it, then yes. When we talk about Anthony at this point, even though we’ve already done quite a bit with him, it has to be said that he’s intended for this tour. I have no idea if it will happen again. Things could change again. I think Nir is probably a bit more firmly established there. We’re very happy with how he played on the album, and assuming it works out with him at the concerts, he’ll probably be back.

it: Well, Genesis fans are a bit nostalgic…
Tony: …they always want to turn back time a little, I know…

it: …and now that Chester and Daryl are missing as well as Phil…
Tony: … I can understand that feeling. But you have to realise that it’s just nostalgia. I understand that people want the singers back. But when it comes to the other musicians, I think we can still be quite successful.
Mike: This is only about the tour, not the album. I think the most important thing is really the album.

it: When and where will you rehearse for the tour?
Mike: We’ll start in mid-September at the farm. That will take a month. After that, Tony and I will rehearse the new production for a week, with all the new elements, screens, films, etc. This will be followed by another two weeks of rehearsals near London.

it: Which old songs will you play live?
Tony: We have a preliminary list of four and a half hours of material. That will probably end up being about two and a half hours of show. We’re trying pretty much everything we had on the last tour, except for things like Jesus He Knows Me. Then we want to try a few older things, especially ones that Peter sang, because Ray’s voice is a bit more similar to his. We haven’t made a final selection yet, but it will be the usual mix of old and new. We also want to play as much of the new album as possible, because that’s easiest for Ray to sing.

it: Will there be another medley?
Tony: We’ll definitely do a medley, because it has the advantage of allowing us to fit in a lot more songs. Sometimes you don’t have to play them in their entirety, and not everything from a track is still okay from our point of view today. Often, when you hear a piece in a medley, you think, ‘That’s great.’ But then you’ve heard enough of it, and something else comes along. You can also take out instrumental parts, like the ones from Firth Of Fifth or Cinema Show.
Mike: It’s a time issue. You can play parts of some songs, but not the whole thing.

it: We’ve heard that at the end of rehearsals for the tour, there’s going to be a warm-up gig in front of just a few hundred people.
Mike: That’s news to us.
Tony: Yes, that’s news to us, but various competition winners will apparently be attending the rehearsals from time to time.

it: What can you tell us about your performance tomorrow evening at the press conference?
Mike: We’ve never played unplugged live before. We were asked if we could just play a little bit to give people an idea of Ray’s voice. So we’ll play Not About Us, a short version of Turn It On Again and a verse and chorus of No Son Of Mine.
Tony: It’s not really a performance, so it’s a bit strange. But we’ll see how it all works out.

it: What does the future hold for Genesis? Will it last another six years before you release a new album?
Tony: I don’t think it will take six years, but we haven’t made a decision about that yet. We have all kinds of possibilities. We could make a new album right away, or after the usual break, or never again.

it: That brings us to the end of our time. We’d like to take another look at the list Tony added at the beginning of the interview. Are there any other songs besides the two non-album tracks listed here?
Tony: Well, there are a few others. You want to know the titles…

Mike: Hold on, keep it to yourself. There’s still time. … …
Tony: Mike thinks we’d better not reveal it.

Mike: We’ll tell you later. We can’t give everything away (laughs). But we should tell you that these two tracks (points to Papa He Said and Banjo Man) are not weak, but they are definitely B-sides. They’re not bad. I kind of like Papa He Said. We have four more tracks that aren’t on the album, but they’re pretty much up to the same standard. They could have been on the album, at least one of them.

it: Will these be released as B-sides at some point?
Mike: We don’t know.
Tony: They will release them in some form. It depends on how things go. If everything goes well, we might release them as an EP or something similar. Otherwise, we release them as B-sides. Maybe we’ll keep them back.
Mike: It’s not easy to plan something like that now. The album is not out yet. Once it’s on the market, we’ll see if the fans like it.

it: Well, we have to wrap up now. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.
Mike: No problem, it was our pleasure.

Interview: Helmut Janisch, Peter Schütz, Bernd Zindler
Transcript: Bernd Zindler
First published in it magazine #23 (September 1997)

More interviews conducted in Berlin 1997: Ray Wilson | Nir Z.