Quote:
Originally Posted by rubber soul
Actually, the Like didn't change their sound all that drastically. Their first album, which was actually five years earlier, didn't have the mod girl sound elements that Release Me has but Release Me didn't venture away from their basic sound which is basically sunny sixtyish pop. They are kind of like the Beatles or REM who would change their sound without losing the essence of who they were. They weren't like Genesis who basically are two totally different bands (Peter Gabriel vs. Phil Collins)
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I'd say there are, or were, almost three Genesises: the original seventies prog rock band with, as you say, Peter Gabriel running things - this would go from 1970 to about 1975, say up to his last album,
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. After that, Collins takes over but the basic direction remains more or less the same up to
Abacab, with some foreshadowing of that on
Duke, so say from 1980, maybe even 1978 with
And Then There Were Three. After that you have version three, where they more or less ditch all pretence at being a prog band and cash in on the pop thing, which more or less lasted up until their disbanding, though in fairness
Calling All Stations did attempt to bring the prog back into Genesis; by then it was of course too late.
To some extent, you can even trace the evolution/devolution of the band to one man, and it ain't Gabriel. If you look at the impact Steve Hackett had on the band, he was there for all the classic albums, from
Nursery Cryme right up to
Wind and Wuthering, and when he left, the pop influences slowly began creeping into the band. Not saying it was him who kept them proggy, as such, but his classical training and his love of the guitar seems to have turned him away from the direction Genesis were heading in, and onto a solo career path.
I'm not that familiar with Hackett's role inside the band. I know it was mostly Gabriel's baby and when he left things slid a little towards a more slightly accessible sound - still 1976 produced two of my favourite Genesis albums - and that Steve wasn't happy about the direction they were going in, but I don't know how much Rutherford or Banks had to say about that. I know the impetus for the change was almost all down to the bald one, so whether they just followed blindly or not I'm not sure. I know Banks' solo material is still very progressive rock, as well as classical, and of course Mike went on to get involved with a load of blokes in a garage, so I suppose we know where his intentions lay. Still, it's probably a fair point, as even now Hackett's solo albums are, generally, more like Genesis than Genesis after he left.
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