Big Big Train's lead singer. Give their album The Underfall Yard a listen.
Cheers. Will do 
I Love Calling All Stations (And It Only Took Me Twenty Years)
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Were Mike and Tony being naive about believing they could carry on without Phil? Of course. They were replacing a singer, drummer, arranger and frontman who also just happened to be one of the most successful solo performers in the world at the time. But they wanted to carry on and I applaud them for not giving up.
I think they underestimated the situation or perhaps got too competitive and thought they did it before, twice and they could pull it off a third time which is OK in my view. Only, they should have given up any pretense of commercial success and scale down the tour, particularly in the US. I don't think their management helped them in that particular context.
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I think they underestimated the situation or perhaps got too competitive and thought they did it before, twice and they could pull it off a third time which is OK in my view. Only, they should have given up any pretense of commercial success and scale down the tour, particularly in the US. I don't think their management helped them in that particular context.
It's surprising that Tony Smith didn't foresee the problems. He knew as well as anyone else just what Phil meant to the band and its fanbase. I still think they could have had commercial success with Congo and Not About Us as they're both fine pop songs.
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I think CAS is Mike's best guitar work on a Genesis album ever, that said though, considering they sort of reverted to a musical darker place, wouldn't it have been a wonderful coup de theatre to have Steve on board again?
A very interesting hypothetical. I hadn't thought of that before but now you've said it, some of MR's guitar work on CAS is reminiscent of SH. On the title track, he could almost be playing parts of Camino Royale.
Who is this David Longdon everyone's speaking about? I'd heard that the choice came down to either Ray or some teacher from England (is that who David Longdon is?) and that they decided on Ray because they preferred someone who had experience of being on the road.
Were Mike and Tony being naive about believing they could carry on without Phil? Of course. They were replacing a singer, drummer, arranger and frontman who also just happened to be one of the most successful solo performers in the world at the time. But they wanted to carry on and I applaud them for not giving up.
DL's currently lead singer and flautist with Big Big Train, I'm not sure what he was doing at the time he auditioned with Genesis. I remember reading his interesting account of the audition process, I don't recall where though.
I agree about their carrying on. I don't like this nonsense of people saying about bands, "why carry on, why not just pack it in?" Because it's their lives, and they want to carry on, numbskull. Yes I think they should have given it another shot, but completely get that they felt that was it.
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It's surprising that Tony Smith didn't foresee the problems. He knew as well as anyone else just what Phil meant to the band and its fanbase. I still think they could have had commercial success with Congo and Not About Us as they're both fine pop songs.
Yes, it is very surprising. He should have pushed the band to release the album much sooner, capitalizing on the interest Phil's departure had generated, instead they slowly fell off the radar. Even with Phil I doubt they would have had the success they enjoyed before, in a changed landscape but without him? Not a chance. Congo, Shipwrecked and Not about us had some commercial potential, no matter what I think of them but there's really no knock-out song on it.
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I agree about their carrying on. I don't like this nonsense of people saying about bands, "why carry on, why not just pack it in?" Because it's their lives, and they want to carry on, numbskull. Yes I think they should have given it another shot, but completely get that they felt that was it.
Agreed! Besides, I will be the first to admit that Phil was missed but if Tony and Mike can't do as they please with Genesis, then who?
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I guess my favorite song on CAS, obviously not commercial at all, is The Dividing Line. Apart from being imo a fine song, I find it quintessentially Genesis.
I could personally hear it either with Peter or Phil singing it and it could have been on the Lamb, Abacab or WCD.
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I guess my favorite song on CAS, obviously not commercial at all, is The Dividing Line. Apart from being imo a fine song, I find it quintessentially Genesis.
Yes. It has all the Genesis elements: a strong lyric matched with a dynamic and musically literate arrangement. I'd put it alongside the likes of Home By The Sea, Mama and Domino as being a latter day Genesis classic. I did an edit that managed to cheekily sneak in a bar of drumming from Duke's Travels, just for jolly
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I did an edit that managed to cheekily sneak in a bar of drumming from Duke's Travels, just for jolly
I love Phil's drum on those Duke's instrumentals, they literally push the band forward. Very underrated instrumentals imo.
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I love Phil's drum on those Duke's instrumentals, they literally push the band forward. Very underrated instrumentals imo.
Yes, he double tracked the drums to give the impression of there being two drummers. The band had strongly considered bringing over Daryl and Chester to play on the album but eventually decided against it, more because of the practicalities than anything else - flying someone over from the States, giving them time to recover from jet lag, would take more time than it would for Mike or Phil to simply lay down another guitar or drum track.
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As for Steve? No thanks; that's an area where we'll have to disagree I'm afraid.
I don't think there was ever any chance of that happening. There doesn't seem to be any chemistry on a personal level there. I don't rate Steve extremely high as songwriter but I really love his playing. As a writer, although he is very atmospheric, he has imo a choruses problem. No punch. Unsurprisingly on two of his best Genesis contributions: Entangled and Blood on the Rooftops, Tony and Phil respectively wrote the chorus. That said, I would have loved seeing a collaboration between Tony and Steve, I think they have musically speaking much more in common than they realize and again, it is not like they were going to record an overly commercial album.
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I love this album too!
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I don't love it, but I do like it a lot. The title track, One Man's Fool, The Dividing Line, and Not About Us are real highlights for me. I think Ray did a good job and I bought a few of his solo albums as a result, and saw him live, in one of the few times he toured the UK some time ago, maybe 2005 or 2006? Very good he was too in an intimate venue.
I felt the drumming was the biggest difference maker from earlier albums. Top drummers though Phil's replacements are, for me it lacked the perfect balance of driving power, and lightness of his more jazzy influence. Not sure that's a great explanation, but while I think there are better drummers (not many I might add) there are none better in terms of versatility than Phil, given the range of styles he has played. His sound was always going to be missed.
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I've been listening to CAS several times recently, and for me it's a decent 6/10 album. It is a very challenging album for most folks, a big part of it has to be expectations as to what a "Genesis" album should be. One thing that struck me on my most recent go was in Small Talk. During the fade-out, Ray's "I'll be alright, I'll be alright" shockingly reminded me of Peter Gabriel. It made me realize how much I've underestimated Ray Wilson's vocal character, or it was just a surprise heart-string pull of Gabriel nostalgia, kind of like the ending to Los Endos. I also really like Nir Z's drumming style, very dry and sparse, but of course not as dynamic or technical as Collins.
One thing I'd like to point out are the songs leftover from those sessions that didn't make it to the album. I'm only familiar with the three featured on the 1983-1998 box set, and even with those I'm baffled as to why they were nicked off the album. Run Out of Time is a major highlight, smooth and passionate, and a ballad I couldn't imagine anyone other than Ray Wilson singing. It's so uniquely him, even though he had no involvement in writing it. Anything Now and Sign Your Life Away could also perfectly fit in CAS with their shared themes of ideological introspection/skepticism.
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If I'm being honest, even after more than 20 years I'm still waiting to get to the "like" phase with this album. As already mentioned, the "demo" quality to the album is what holds me back the most. Phil's voice obviously would have made the whole thing sound more familiar but I can't get over how unfinished most of the songs sound. I can't blame Ray because even though he never really rises above being "fine" I'm not sure there are any musical moments that really rise much higher either. Similarly, Nir Z and Nick D'Virgillio are completely competent but aren't given the opportunity to let loose outside of the solo in The Dividing Line.
It's clear that it was Phil's ear for arranging ideas that was sorely lacking. Had they chosen to jam out the songs as an actual band instead of making Ray and the drummers just overdub their parts they might have solved some of the arrangement problems, but for whatever reason that isn't what happened.
That isn't to say I don't like some of the songs. Not About Us really stands out to me, and might be my favorite song on the album. The Dividing Line, There Must Be Some Other Way, and One Man's Fool are also ones I'd rate pretty highly.
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I felt the drumming was the biggest difference maker from earlier albums. Top drummers though Phil's replacements are, for me it lacked the perfect balance of driving power, and lightness of his more jazzy influence. Not sure that's a great explanation, but while I think there are better drummers (not many I might add) there are none better in terms of versatility than Phil, given the range of styles he has played. His sound was always going to be missed.
The range of musicians with whom Phil has played over the years, since that conga-playing session for All Things Must Pass (hilariously recounted in Not Dead Yet), meant that he was adept in a variety of styles. That, and his efficacy combined with a natural and blessed musical ability and intuitiveness to make for a someone who, yes, was definitely going to be hard to replace.
It must go down in history as one of the classic wtf? moments for Mike and Tony to replace such an integral member of the band with a couple of session musicians. When you consider that Phil passed the audition for Genesis because the band were looking for someone who could arrange music as well as play it and then take into account how instrumental a part he then played in the band's success with a wider audience in the years to come as a front-man, singer and lyricist, it is either staggering arrogance or staggering stupidity on the part of Tony and Mike to think he could be so easily replaced.
When talk comes to whether the band should have carried on after the Calling All Stations tour, it is often said that for them to continue making albums, they would need to involve Ray from the very start. I agree with that. However, I would also extend that caveat to include the drummer. Indeed, in a perfect world, they would have finished the tour in 1998 and gone straight back into the studio - Mike, Tony, Nir and Ray - and worked on honing the "new sound" of Genesis. And in my perfect world, that lineup of the band would still be in existence today. And Phil, meanwhile, would still be in rude health and making albums as great as Face Value and No Jacket Required.
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I felt the drumming was the biggest difference maker from earlier albums. Top drummers though Phil's replacements are, for me it lacked the perfect balance of driving power, and lightness of his more jazzy influence. Not sure that's a great explanation, but while I think there are better drummers (not many I might add) there are none better in terms of versatility than Phil, given the range of styles he has played. His sound was always going to be missed.
The range of musicians with whom Phil has played over the years, since that conga-playing session for All Things Must Pass (hilariously recounted in Not Dead Yet), meant that he was adept in a variety of styles. That, and his efficacy combined with a natural and blessed musical ability and intuitiveness to make for a someone who, yes, was definitely going to be hard to replace.
It must go down in history as one of the classic wtf? moments for Mike and Tony to replace such an integral member of the band with a couple of session musicians. When you consider that Phil passed the audition for Genesis because the band were looking for someone who could arrange music as well as play it and then take into account how instrumental a part he then played in the band's success with a wider audience in the years to come as a front-man, singer and lyricist, it is either staggering arrogance or staggering stupidity on the part of Tony and Mike to think he could be so easily replaced.
When talk comes to whether the band should have carried on after the Calling All Stations tour, it is often said that for them to continue making albums, they would need to involve Ray from the very start. I agree with that. However, I would also extend that caveat to include the drummer. Indeed, in a perfect world, they would have finished the tour in 1998 and gone straight back into the studio - Mike, Tony, Nir and Ray - and worked on honing the "new sound" of Genesis. And in my perfect world, that lineup of the band would still be in existence today. And Phil, meanwhile, would still be in rude health and making albums as great as Face Value and No Jacket Required.
Phils Resume or CV speaks volumes as a drummer... In fact his history is vast. He's appeared in so many bands, it's astonishing...
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Phils Resume or CV speaks volumes as a drummer... In fact his history is vast. He's appeared in so many bands, it's astonishing...
And just when you think you know all the musicians with whom he's played, you'll find out he also played with Thin Lizzy or John Cale or Cafe Jacques!
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And just when you think you know all the musicians with whom he's played, you'll find out he also played with Thin Lizzy or John Cale or Cafe Jacques!
I keep finding albums that Phil has appeared on.
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I keep finding albums that Phil has appeared on.
Ark 2 by Flaming Youth (featuring both Phil and Ronnie Caryl) is worth checking out if you haven't already heard it. It's interesting to listen to it in relation to From Genesis To Revelation, actually, just to check out what both parties were doing around the same time...and how different it was!
