Not Dead Yet

by Phil Collins

  The French Canadians love us. We start the tour with two shows in one night in Quebec; I think of them as the beatnik crowd, enthralled by our artiness. The Tower Theater in Philadelphia is also a great gig for us. We play a lot of shows in and around upstate New York, and around the Northeast, many arranged by a young promoter named Harvey Weinstein, the same Harvey that now runs The Weinstein Company and is one of the most successful film producers of all time.

  Over the following months we end up being quite popular on the East Coast. Almost deliriously popular. That said, we can take nothing for granted. We have an awful show with The Spencer Davis Group at the horribly carpeted and acoustically dead Felt Forum underneath Madison Square Garden. We’d hoped for something like the real Garden but instead got its ugly cousin. Boston still seems to hate us, though they’ll come round eventually.

  Generally speaking, over the U.S. as a whole, in the likes of Ypsilanti, Evanston, Fort Wayne and Toledo, we play to quizzical faces. We are, in short, swimming against the musical tide. They’ve never really heard something like us before. We’re not as noodly as Yes. We’re not as virtuoso-driven as Emerson, Lake & Palmer. We’re far quirkier than anybody else out there, and we pay the price.

  By the time we get to Los Angeles, we’re ready to let our hair down. We stay at The Tropicana, a real motel (excitement for us English boys). We go from room to room, spliffing up—this is LA!—and eat downstairs at Duke’s coffee shop, a famous eatery to which all the visiting bands gravitate. LA is all we expect it to be. All the landmarks are clearly visible: the Whisky a Go Go, the Hollywood sign, the Capitol Records Tower. Palm trees and warm weather and the odd tequila sunrise and we’re all very happy.

  We do six shows at The Roxy over three days. This club is situated on Sunset Boulevard, and boasts a very chic, members-only club above it called On The Rox. Here, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Joni Mitchell and a host of other eminent hipsters gather nightly. The Roxy itself sounds grander than it is. It’s only a 500-seater venue, and it’s probably the same 500 people at all six shows. But at least the label, Atlantic Records, entertain us: they lay on a boys-only party, and screen the hottest film of the previous year. I don’t mean The Godfather or Cabaret. I mean Deep Throat, even then one of the most notorious porn films of all time. That said, none of us are au fait with cinematic porn, and all I can remember is: a lot of hair. It’s pretty gruesome. There’s some embarrassed shuffling in the English area of the room, but it’s all strangely un-erotic and not far from being a biology lesson.

  When all is said and done, I can’t say that this is a grueling tour-bus schlep through the highways and byways of America, because it isn’t. We’re not on a tour bus. We have two stretch limousines.

  Tony Banks hates flying—he’ll get used to it in later years—and the rest of us aren’t so keen either. The idea of living the rock’n’roll dream by gigging across the States by bus leaves us unimpressed. We’re not rock’n’roll, for one thing. Boozing and shagging on the team bus doesn’t really interest us. “Clean sheets and cocoa,” Mike Rutherford used to say if the hotel was to his liking. On a bus I don’t think any of us can sleep easy wondering if someone’s still awake at the wheel of this coffin-shaped box full of bunks.

  So two stretch limousines it is, each driven by a guy called Joe (that’s a coincidence rather than a prerequisite).

  Now I come to think of it: perhaps it’s no wonder Genesis are £150,000 in debt.

  Generally, a stretch limousine is a fine mode of transport by which to travel the length and breadth of North America (unless you’re at the bottom of the pecking order and end up sitting in the middle at the back, above the axle. Gee, wonder who that might be). The only hitch is that two limos full of unwashed, hirsute Brit musos can attract attention, particularly at border crossings.

  Canadian Customs are among the toughest. They’re used to musicians crossing over from America with a little stash of dope. Bands tend to forget that Canada is another country, which is perhaps one reason for Keith Richards’ infamous Toronto bust. Inevitably, as we enter Canada, en route to Toronto, Customs pull us over at the Peace Bridge, at the Niagara Falls border crossing. Our lighting guy, Les Adey, a highly diligent and enthusiastic toker, is white as a sheet. Soon our equally white-as-a-sheet English bodies are on display as we submit to a strip search. Our tour manager, Regis Boff, supposed to be a pillar of strength, is shaking like a leaf. Things don’t look good.

  Then they look worse. As they start going through my stuff I suddenly remember the little spliff-end I’m saving for a rainy day in my dad’s wallet, a memento mori I’m now carrying.

  Customs promptly find this brown dog-end. As I stand there with my Y-fronts round my knees in the interrogation room, I have one thought: “I’m not making it home for Christmas.” Mercifully, the chief customs officer brushes my mini-spliff off the desk. Even for pen-pushing Canadian Customs, this paltry drugs haul is too tame a reason to bust us. We get let off, albeit with the fear of God in us.

  The Two Joes Tour, as Genesis still laughingly describe it, is nevertheless a success. Some of the audiences are coming round to our way of doing things, and we are developing into a band with a decent cult following. Speaking logistically, it also underlines our conviction that we don’t need to follow the herd and tour by bus. Later on, we’ll even drive ourselves. I think Tony Banks is still paying off his American speeding tickets from the seventies.

  We plow on. Genesis play Bill Graham’s Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco—a legendary gig, but not for us. This is Jefferson Starship and Janis Joplin country. They don’t go for limo-riding English beardies. There is a wild lack of interest from the audience. But we have to go to these places, because we’re not getting much radio play. There are pockets of DJ support—New York, Chicago and Cleveland spring to mind—but little more. This lack of reaction is, understandably, mirrored at a lot of our shows. In cities where we’re played on air, there is an enthusiastic crowd. Where we’re struggling for airplay, we struggle to get an audience.

  There is antipathy in the South, a continental hinterland that’s lethal for Genesis. They just don’t understand what we’re about. We’re the height, or the depths, of English foppery. What are they singing about? What are they playing? And is that make-up the singer’s wearing? All that’s missing in some places is the chicken wire in front of the stage.

  In New York we play three nights at the Academy of Music. But after our first show, our guitars are nicked overnight. This feels like a major violation. Our precious gear, gone. We have to have a lie-down. We even cancel the second show, just to aid our recovery, and give Mike time to buy new gear. Borrow some? Are you mad? It’d be like playing with someone else’s wife. We eventually recover, play the third show and go on our way.

  Back in the U.K., and the work rolls on. We play five nights at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and Peter decides to really go for it. After all, this is a theater, where they’re used to flying Peter Pan around on cables. He pulls together a silver outfit, and a white painted face. When he throws off his cape and his fluorescent box head at the climax of “Supper’s Ready,” he soars into the air.

  What Peter’s not counted on is the fact that while he’s dangling there, he’s going to slowly rotate. So he’s frantically kicking his legs to try to face the audience—“…and it’s hey babe…”—and he completes the song in that manner, jiggling and wiggling. Although the effect is spoiled somewhat, we make the front page of Melody Maker again, so we still view it as a great success. The visuals aren’t getting in the way. Not yet.

  Within four or so weeks of the end of that eight-month tour we start work, in June 1974, on the album that will break us, in every sense. We’re in Headley Grange in Hampshire, built in 1795 as a poorhouse, but more recently the place where Led Zeppelin and Bad Company have recorded. Whichever band was in last has left it in a horrific, stinking state. Taking advantage of this are the rats. They’re everywhere, leaping up and down the
creaky staircases, rustling up the creepers covering the trees, scurrying up the vines covering the house. Dozens, hundreds of them. And that’s just the ones you can see. It’s still a poor house.

  The only redeeming factor about this place for me is the fact that John Bonham recorded his incredible groove to “When the Levee Breaks” in the stairwell. I can almost smell it. Instead I smell rats. Thousands of ’em. I arrive last, the best bedrooms already chosen, of course. So I have a shitty room, with hot and cold running rats. At night I can hear the scampering of tiny feet above and below me.

  Because “Supper’s Ready” went down so well on the Selling England tour, we decide to stretch the idea of a story song or suite of songs to a double album. It’s the era of Tommy, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Dark Side of the Moon, when concept albums roamed the earth. It’s not daunting, or ridiculous, not to us anyway. For me, Tommy soars above the rest. I’m a die-hard Who fan, and they had more magic than they knew what to do with.

  Out of left field, Mike has the idea of doing something based on the classic children’s novella The Little Prince, but that goes nowhere. So more narrative ideas are kicked around. Peter and Tony must have come to blows at some point, because Tony in particular does not want Peter writing all the words. But Peter’s argument is: if it is going to be a story album, it should be one person writing the story, and therefore the album.

  Peter wins, and sets to writing what will become the surreal-cum-allegorical story of Rael, a Puerto Rican kid living in New York. He will title it The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

  We set up the gear in the main living area, while Peter installs himself at a ropy old piano that’s gathering dust in another room. The four of us jam, he jots down his lyrical ideas, and I record everything on my trusty Nakamichi cassette recorder.

  We write some great music—“In the Cage,” “Riding the Scree,” tons of good stuff—and a lot of it comes while Peter is in another room, hammering on the piano, writing the lyrics. It’s a weird process, but it seems to be working.

  Unfortunately Peter is getting snowed under, and not just with the workload.

  Things are bad at home—his wife Jill is having a difficult pregnancy, which is not something I’m aware of at the time. The result is that he’s occasionally absent, which means we crack on without him. This doesn’t facilitate us thinking as one for such an ambitious project.

  Simultaneously, while we’re still in the writing stage, an offer comes in from an unexpected direction: William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, and an Oscar winner for The French Connection, wants to make a sci-fi film and is looking for (as Peter will later describe it) “a writer who’d never been involved with Hollywood before.” He’s read the sleeve notes on the back of Genesis Live—a typically fantastical short story by Peter—and been caught up in his surreal, dry humor. He thinks maybe Peter can collaborate. We all went to see The Exorcist on the Selling England tour and loved it, so we know Friedkin is someone to be reckoned with.

  For Pete it’s a dream come true: the chance to collaborate with a visionary artist at the top of his field in another medium, to work from home, and also be there for his wife. He asks, “Can we put the album on hold? Give me time to do this, then I’ll be back.” He doesn’t say he’s leaving.

  We all say, “Sorry, Peter, ’fraid not. You’re in or you’re out.”

  From my point of view, if it comes to it, Peter leaving needn’t be the end of the world. My stoutly practical solution is that we reconfigure Genesis into an instrumental four-piece. At least that way the music can finally be fully heard.

  To this suggestion, the other three’s reaction can be summed up thus: “Don’t be so fucking stupid. Us, without singing, without lyrics? Get back in your box, Phil.” And of course they’re right.

  Before anything concrete can happen, word reaches Friedkin that his offer might result in the demise of Genesis. He doesn’t want that, especially as his sci-fi project is only a nebulous idea. A couple of weeks after the offer is made, the plug is pulled.

  So Peter is back. But he’s back because a better offer didn’t work out. Not the best circumstances under which to reconvene. We carry on working, forgive and forget, or at least pretend to.

  We then go in to record this stash of music at a Welsh farm, Glaspant Manor, with Island Mobile Studios, again with John Burns. We’ve realized that the recording studio environment was stifling us, and we were struggling to be as exciting on record as we were in concert. In using John and a mobile studio, we make a move that brings a freedom of sorts. He’s almost beginning to feel like part of the band.

  Peter is still writing lyrics while us four are recording, but it’s a relaxed interlude, especially as it’s a great opportunity for Peter, Mike and Tony to indulge their love of country walks. Often on tour we’d pull over, buy some onions, carrots, cheese and bread, and go to a field somewhere and have a picnic. It sounds a bit hippie, but there’s nothing wrong with a good slab of Cheddar and an onion.

  Back in London we mix The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in Island Studios, Basing Street. After two months recording this epic in Wales, we’re glad to be on home turf. While laying down the tracks, word gets to us that Brian Eno is recording in the studio upstairs, working on his second solo album, Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). I’m not much of a Roxy Music fan, but the rest of the guys love them. Peter goes up to say hello and asks if we can put some vocals through his computer. In return Eno asks if I can go up and play on a track of his called “Mother Whale Eyeless.” I don’t mind being pimped out.

  Eno and I hit it off. He’s a very interesting character, not in the normal mold of a “pop” person, which is perhaps one of the reasons he left Roxy Music, and I’m drawn to his way of working. I end up playing on his albums Another Green World, Before and After Science and Music for Films.

  During the mixing sessions at Basing Street a schism develops, between daytime Genesis and night-time Genesis. Peter and I sometimes mix till two in the morning, then Tony comes in the next day, hates it and scrubs it. Sometimes we’re still recording when we’re supposed to be mixing. Time is short, the mood is tense and everyone is tired. There’s too much music, there are too many lyrics, we’re rushing to get finished, the narrative nuances of this double-vinyl concept album are a mystery to all of us (including, we suspect, Peter)—and any minute now we’re due to go on tour. A tour on which we’ve decided to play this entire album. A tour with a big production attached.

  Inevitably, unavoidably, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway show promises the grand unveiling of a 23-track double album that no one has ever heard, played by a band who are themselves running to catch up, punting a concept on which the paint is still wet, tricked out with an ambitious production that’s entirely untested, on a world tour booked to run for 104 dates.

  Cut to Dallas…Genesis are rehearsing at the headquarters of Showco, who are renting their sound and light equipment to us. We’re trying to get the lighting right, and trying to make sense of the slides that will supposedly illustrate the entire Lamb narrative. Even before we’ve started it’s a disaster. Getting the three screens to work in sync, long before the advent of reliable technology, is proving impossible. And if it’s not working in rehearsals, it’s not going to work on the road. Plus, as has been previously established, a lot of the theatrical stuff is kept from the rest of us. Peter has been plotting his costumes, and some of them are simply wildly impractical, to comical effect. When he’s wearing the “Slipperman” costume—a rather nasty outfit comprising a body piece with inflatable balls (as in testicles. It has an almost Elephant Man look)—he can’t get the mic near his mouth. When the “Lamia” prop, a revolving colored gauze encasement, descends from above, the microphone cable is forever caught while it’s going round and round, meaning many a gig is spent frantically trying to tug it free. Everything is rushed, and we never have time to troubleshoot.

  Cut to Chicago…On the opening night of the Lamb Lies Down on Broadwa
y tour, midway through the set, I notice something large filling with air just next to me. It’s a huge inflatable penis. But of course it is. Next thing I see is Peter, dressed in his Slipperman costume, crawling through it.

  Cut to Cleveland…Five days into the tour, we’re staying in Swingos, a trendy though tacky hotel in Cleveland. Each room is decorated in a bizarre fashion—stripes, polka dots, whatever. In one of these bizarre settings, Peter tells Tony Smith he’s leaving the band. Tony persuades him to see out the tour.

  Cut to Scandinavia…The pyros get out of hand. Too much bang, too little smoke, and bits of wood from blown-up speakers everywhere. We’re suddenly one crew member down. (Just to clarify, he wasn’t incinerated, he was fired.)

  Cut to Manchester…In the sedate Midland Hotel, Peter finally tells me he’s leaving. I can’t hide my sadness. He and I have a pretty solid relationship in and out of the band. Also, we’re fellow drummers. Us drummers stick together.

  Despite the impending departure of Peter, most of the snapshot memories I have of the Lamb tour are great. A lot of the time, truth be told, I’m in heaven. I’m wearing headphones so I can hear myself sing, and I have a wonderful sound mix. Some of the pieces of music are really great to play: “The Waiting Room” is fresh and different every night, and Tony’s keyboard piece “Riding the Scree” and the mellow “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats” are ambient pieces that are also a joy.

  Yet the overall feeling is one of a band chasing their tails. The album had come out in the U.K. on November 18, 1974, and the tour started in Chicago two days later, so even the most ardent fans don’t have much time to digest four sides of ambient-prog conceptualism. It’s an enormous amount to chew in one piece at a gig. Behind closed doors, everything is getting a little fractious at this far-from-auspicious way to start any tour, far less a tour of this ambition, magnitude and expense.