Supper's Ready.

  • 23 minutes of SR plus near 2 minutes of Horizons is pushing vinyl to the limit IF you want to keep the bass at proper levels

    True, but Side 2 of FOXTROT is far from being the longest side on a Genesis LP. Side 2 of SELLING beats it by a full 4 minutes, for example.

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

  • Is this where I bore everyone again with my recollections of the reunion in 82?


    There is a recent thread on the reunion, but suffice it to say, it is a very special memory.


    After a whole evening of classics, to see Peter perform Supper's Ready was something I'll never forget. The roar when he announced "Supper's Ready" after a typically mysterious story, was HUGE!


    I feel very luck to have been there.

  • Willow Farm is great. You have the beginning section of the song which takes a downturn in HDIBSB when WF lifts it with a jolly tune to get us ready for the drama to come. SR may have separate sections but it makes a tremendous whole with the sum of the parts being even greater . I read Tony Iommi's autobiography and he deliberately puts in the lighter stuff to make the heavier stuff heavier and WF fits on with this philosophy. All Great stories have light and shade and Willow Farm provides that balance . I've read that Suppers Ready is a hard listen but to me it's an easy listen. Like all their stuff there is nothing that goes on too long , no time to get boring.

    Much of SR lyrics create an imagery , oftem without specifics . This gives the listener room to put their own interpretations on it which is great. I've read that WF is just some silliness. I've read it's about a retreat or fat farm .I've read it has nothing to do with the rest of the song . Maybe it's right . But I see it in this way. There's a battle and people die. WF is the after life. They're dead. Like it or not, like what you got your under the soil, literally buried maybe awaiting rebirth bodies melting, .... all change...Theegg was bird... oh no I'm gonna change into a human being, ..... you name them all we've had them here ... And then life goes on to fit our places... mum washing and dad officing.The fox on the rocks is the devil.( PG said the fox is the devil. Spelt focks?) Everything is there. The sheer surface silliness of WF creates a slightly chilling atmosphere and gets us ready for the final battle between good and evil. Well that's how I see it and I like it that way. It fits perfectly.

    I can certainly appreciate how it gets the song from point a to point b, like a middle reprieve from the rest, and I enjoy your enthusiasm for this section! I think my problem with it is perhaps how far out of the rest of the song it is. Maybe it's just too much of a contrast.


    That said, I like Harrold the Barrel and Who Dunnit (to some degree) so perhaps it's just the contrast between what is otherwise going on within Suppers Ready, and this silly section which does also have all of the other positive qualities you have mentioned.

  • I could be remembering wrong, but I recall reading somewhere that the band basically started with "Willow Farm" and wanted to write something big for it to pop up unexpectedly in the middle of.

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

  • I could be remembering wrong, but I recall reading somewhere that the band basically started with "Willow Farm" and wanted to write something big for it to pop up unexpectedly in the middle of.

    Oh. The version I've always read, usually quoting Banks, is that they got started with his university pieces (Lovers and Sanctuary) which carried on developing and led to parts 3 and 4, at which point they were in danger of losing direction and sounding like they were re-treading old ground - Banks was quoted as saying "We thought, this is going to turn into Stagnation if we're not careful". So they decided to avoid that by stopping it dead after the tranquil bit they'd reached and go straight into this slightly daft bit Gabriel already had pre-written. Banks said the rest of the song quickly fell into place after that.


    Your recollection of the starting-with-Willow version is a new one on me. Can you remember where you saw that? I wonder if it's another Hackett revisionist/contrarian thing!

    Abandon all reason

  • I think the "starting-with-Willow version" is just my misunderstanding, misremembering or incomplete knowledge of the more detailed story that you cite. I was right, at least, in that "Willow" was pre-written and that the band decided to have it pop up unexpectedly in the middle of something bigger.

    Little known fact: Before the crowbar was invented...


    ...crows simply drank at home.

  • I didn't know about WF being pre written. I assume the lyrics are all by PG so if the whole of WF was pre written then it would make sense that WF was the first lyrics written in the song.

  • I didn't know about WF being pre written. I assume the lyrics are all by PG so if the whole of WF was pre written then it would make sense that WF was the first lyrics written in the song.

    Not necessarily, they had written parts 1 to 4 before deciding to drop WF in so it'd depend on how much of those parts' lyrics were already written, and whether PG already had the finished lyrics for WF or had some but re-wrote them in context of it now being part of a longer song.

    Abandon all reason