Genesis: The Knife live 1980 question

  • Hi everybody

    I was listening to one of the Duke-tour cds the other day and was wondering who played lead guitar on "The Knife" during the tour in 1980? Stuermer or Rutherford?

    Anyone got an idea?

  • Pretty sure that was Daryl, Mike would play the bass as he always did on that song. I wonder why they shortened the song so much on that tour, there's basically no guitar solo left.

    It was surprising enough they resurrected a Trespass track as it is, there was little chance they'd do the whole track. Plus I think it got added to the end of the set during the tour, they didn't drop any other tracks so wouldn't have wanted to extend the running time very much.

    Abandon all reason

  • I agree that it is Daryl, based both on the playing and guitar tone. I also agree with Schrottrocker above that it would make more sense for Mike to play the part he always played rather than have to learn the guitar part. I can't think of any older Genesis song where Mike switched to playing Steve's part live instead of Daryl.


    This plus Back in NYC were the two surprise additions to a few of the Duke shows. I wonder why they decided to briefly bring them back into the set?

  • Weren't they left over from the reunion concert with Peter? On that one show they played the entire Supper's Ready, Back in NYC, the entire Musical Box, that short-cut Knife and a whole bunch of other fine stuff - a lot of Daryl never had had to play otherwise, so now as they were able to perform these numbers why drop them altogether.

  • Weren't they left over from the reunion concert with Peter? On that one show they played the entire Supper's Ready, Back in NYC, the entire Musical Box, that short-cut Knife and a whole bunch of other fine stuff - a lot of Daryl never had had to play otherwise, so now as they were able to perform these numbers why drop them altogether.

    The reunion show was 82.


    I saw them during the 80 tour in Toronto.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the show (it was my first time seeing them) though years later, I was little envious when I learned they performed The Knife the following evening, same city, save venue.

    For the North American tour, they also dropped Carpet Crawlers from the setlist and replaced it with Misunderstanding, which is understandable as it was a bit of a hit here, though I would have preferred they had not made that switch.

  • At the start of the Duke tour they were opening the shows with NYC. The 'heartbeat' lead-in for that remained when they made Motherlode the opener. NYC moved further down the setlist then got dropped but briefly reappeared near the end of the tour.


    After this it became rare for them to resurrect unexpected older songs, which was a shame. It would've been a nice setlist policy to include one entire old song per tour. It would make a faithful section of the audience happy while not compromising the band's approach of focusing mainly on the last 2 or 3 albums. The Abacab tour resurrected FoF in its full length rendition for the final time (I think). In 82 they did all of SR and the Watcher edit. The Mama tour saw the one-off medley of bits & pieces and the Quiet Earth fragment, then in 86/87 we got the whole of it and on some dates the end of SR.


    By the WCD tour they'd really minimised the old stuff, even the stalwart of Los Endos was gone, leaving just the medley of bits. I can't think of another band that was so unsentimental with their older material! I was conflicted on this as I would have loved to hear older stuff but also respected their approach.


    Re the Six Of The Best gig it's the other way around in that it drew on recently performed tracks eg NYC, Moonlit Knight/Carpet Crawlers, SR.

    Abandon all reason

    • Official Post

    actually the band came back to older stuff with the Calling All Stations tour (the Lamb, Carpet Crawlers etc) and then the Turn It On Again Tour obviously had some of them as well, especially Ripples was a nice surprise.

  • I was at the Lyceum on the 8th May, The Knife was played after the group returned to the stage a final time (the house lights didn't come on fully so we just waited and hollered and there they were.) Phil said "this is the only other one we know" and they went straight into it. I was pretty amazed, I'd seen them at Hammersmith on Tony's birthday and there was no hint of an extra encore. Daryl played lead. I was really close to the stage and managed to get this shot of Mike with my ancient Canon. The jostling made it impossible to take decent pics for almost the whole gig

  • External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.

    “Without music, life would be a mistake”

  • I was at the Lyceum on the 8th May, The Knife was played after the group returned to the stage a final time (the house lights didn't come on fully so we just waited and hollered and there they were.) Phil said "this is the only other one we know" and they went straight into it. I was pretty amazed, I'd seen them at Hammersmith on Tony's birthday and there was no hint of an extra encore. Daryl played lead. I was really close to the stage and managed to get this shot of Mike with my ancient Canon. The jostling made it impossible to take decent pics for almost the whole gig

    The 1980 Lyceum gigs were 6 & 7 May, so if you mean 7 May (the one famously filmed by the BBC for Whistle Test) then you and I were at the same two gigs, as I also went to the Hammersmith Thu 27 March one. That was the first of 3 shows at Hammersmith, they did The Knife on the 3rd of those. But otherwise yes the only encore was IKWIL.

    Abandon all reason

  • The 1980 Lyceum gigs were 6 & 7 May, so if you mean 7 May (the one famously filmed by the BBC for Whistle Test) then you and I were at the same two gigs, as I also went to the Hammersmith Thu 27 March one. That was the first of 3 shows at Hammersmith, they did The Knife on the 3rd of those. But otherwise yes the only encore was IKWIL.

    you are, of course right, I was at the second Lyceum gig, which was on the 7th. At Hammersmith we got BINYC, which was then replaced by Squonk, iirr.

  • I can't think of another band that was so unsentimental with their older material

    They always said they preferred playing the stuff they'd just recorded. It was ever thus with Genesis. Of course, it helped that their fanbase seemed to get bigger with each new release so the band didn't have to rely on the old standards to keep the audience happy - not so with Yes, for example, who never seemed to find an audience for their new material after 90125 (a damn shame as albums such as The Ladder and Magnification are outstanding in my opinion).

    • Official Post

    Thanks to all who have contributed to answer this question!

  • I saw them twice on the 1980 tour in Southampton, the first was the cancelled Bournemouth gig where the venue was slightly smaller and my mate managed to get two tickets for the back of the stalls. Both times they opened with Deep in the Motherlode.


    The difference in atmosphere between the two gigs was extraordinary. The "Bournemouth" gig was subdued and most remained seated for the majority of the performance. The official Southampton gig was electric with a good old fashioned rush to the front when the lights dimmed. This probably went a long way to explaining why that show got the second encore (The Knife) which the first didn't.


    They were my first and second genesis gigs respectively, but far from my last!

  • Spurred on by the original post on this thread I have just listened to every live version of The Knife I posses including the 1980 live versions.

    Very interesting.


    It was the one song I saw Steve Hackett play live in Nottingham I felt (for me) that Steve did not absolutely nail in the guitar solo section.

    I realised on reflection that I was comparing Steve's rendition to Ant's on Trespass, which is of course different.


    Daryl does a slightly different take again in his versions.


    Would love to hear a live version of The Knife with Ant playing - does that exist anywhere???

    "She looks at me and gently smiles, as if she knew I'd ask her all the time..."