Genesis In The Studio For Abacab and Invisible Touch Anniversaries

(ITS) The latest episode of the syndicated radio show In The Studio: The Stories Behind History's Greatest Rock Bands celebrates the 30th and 35th anniversaries, respectively, of two classic '80s Genesis albums, Abacab and Invisible Touch (16 million sales worldwide), from international superstars with Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks.

Between 1980 and 1986, the British trio Genesis released a series of four consecutive hit albums, each more successful than its predecessor by as many as five times! Because drummer, singer, songwriter Phil Collins had a parallel solo career take off during that time, revisiting the critical reviews from many respected music writers in this period assumed that Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford and keyboardist Tony Banks unwittingly (if not unwillingly) were somehow led by Collins in a more mainstream pop direction. But as you will hear in this radio program, that was not necessarily the case.

InTheStudio producer and host Redbeard gets the final word from all three members about this remarkable period in Genesis band history that produced hits "Abacab", "No Reply at All", "Man on the Corner", "Throwing It All Away", "Land Of Confusion", "Invisible Touch", "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" and "In Too Deep".

"What we used to do was actually a wonderful cop out...because you do these long songs, and it means you take a small piece of music, one or two minutes. If you're doing a long piece, you just play it for one or two minutes and then segue to something else. You haven't got to develop it into a song, which is actually much harder." - Mike Rutherford

"You're always going to lose fans, because they like the surreal sci-fi approach we used to have. But as we change and the audience changes, you hope you take people with you. Maybe we were never a progressive rock group." - Phil Collins

"I've always found it difficult to express a genuine feeling through a song. And I tended to always hide through the third person." - Tony Banks

Stream the episode here.

ITS submitted this story.
It may be edited - Excerpted here with permission.

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