Genesis: The Shape-Shifting Beasts of British Art Rock

Genesis is what happens when a group of posh schoolboys accidentally invent three different genres and then spend the next twenty years trying to outrun themselves. Formed in the late 1960s at Charterhouse School, they started as mild-mannered psychedelic folkies and ended as global pop deities with laser lights, gated drums, and Armani blazers. Along the way, they became a sort of evolutionary chart for British rock itself, one band mutating through every available phase of ambition, excess, and self-reinvention.

For some of us, Genesis wasn’t just a band, it was an initiation ritual. Back in my high school days, Raffaele Martorana and Marco Smedile were the local prophets of Gabriel and Collins, armed with cassettes, bootlegs, and endless debates about whether Foxtrot or The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was the true revelation. They were the kind of fans who could diagram “Supper’s Ready” like a theological text and recite the tour dates of 1973 by memory. Through them, Genesis became less a band and more a secret society of sound, equal parts mystic, melodic, and gloriously strange.

The Charterhouse Chronicles: From Psalm to Psychedelia

The earliest incarnation, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Anthony Phillips, and Chris Stewart, began as schoolmates writing delicate, vaguely spiritual pop songs that sounded like they should be sung to cherubs in a field of daffodils. Their debut, From Genesis to Revelation (1969), was produced by Jonathan King, who mistook their naivety for religiosity and released it like a lost Bible soundtrack. It flopped, gloriously. But the failure planted the seeds for something weirder.

Pastoral Madness: Trespass to Foxtrot

By 1970’s Trespass, Genesis had begun sculpting the lush, pastoral grandeur that would define early prog. Guitars intertwined like hedgerows, flutes fluttered through the mix, and Gabriel’s voice carried both myth and mischief. Nursery Cryme (1971) and Foxtrot (1972) expanded that vision, the latter culminating in “Supper’s Ready,” a 23-minute eschatological suite that remains both absurd and sublime. This was English folk theatre rewritten for Mellotron and stage makeup.

With Steve Hackett joining on guitar and Phil Collins on drums, the lineup solidified into the definitive five-headed creature. Their shows became multimedia fever dreams: Gabriel dressed as a flower, or a fox in a red dress, or a cosmic bureaucrat narrating apocalypse to polite audiences who weren’t sure whether to clap or pray.

The Concept Cathedral: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

By 1974, the band’s ambitions crystallized into their magnum opus: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It was a double-LP concept album about a Puerto Rican street kid named Rael who gets sucked into a surreal underworld of mythology, memory, and Freudian slime. The music darted between soul, electronics, and classic Genesis bombast, a labyrinth of shifting motifs. The tour that followed was visionary and exhausting; Gabriel’s theatrical domination began to clash with the group’s collective discipline. The seams split, and Gabriel departed for his own mythologies.

After Gabriel: The Gentleman’s Prog

When Phil Collins reluctantly took the mic, Genesis could have withered. Instead, they blossomed into something new. A Trick of the Tail (1976) and Wind & Wuthering (1977) proved the band could survive without Gabriel’s costumes. These were intricate, melodic records filled with wistful grandeur, songs like “Ripples” and “Los Endos” showing that Collins could sing with warmth and restraint. They were the sound of a band standing in the rain, realizing they might like pop after all.

Meanwhile, Steve Hackett, restless and brimming with guitar ideas, left to pursue his own atmospheric solo work. His Voyage of the Acolyte (1975) remains a lost Genesis album in spirit, a mist-shrouded journey through English prog mysticism. He’d later explore classical fusion, Brazilian rhythms, and ambitious instrumental suites that kept the Genesis flame alive long after the band turned to radio-friendly gloss.

And Then There Were Three: The Pop Mutation

With Hackett gone, the trio of Banks, Rutherford, and Collins streamlined the band’s DNA. And Then There Were Three… (1978) contained “Follow You Follow Me,” the first true hit single, a love song that was almost suspiciously normal. It was a harbinger. Duke (1980) and Abacab (1981) blended prog structure with pop punch: sharp drum machines, angular synths, and Collins’s increasingly soulful voice. The art-school philosophers were now soundtracking commutes and romantic crises.

Each member found side doors into other worlds. Collins’s solo career exploded with Face Value (1981), led by the haunted thunderclap of “In the Air Tonight.” Suddenly he was the everyman superstar, the drummer who cried, crooned, and conquered MTV. Tony Banks pursued symphonic solo work (A Curious Feeling, 1979) and film scores. Mike Rutherford formed Mike + The Mechanics, delivering soft-rock confessionals like “The Living Years” that made dads everywhere nod approvingly while driving Volvos.

The 1980s: Gated Drums and Global Domination

Genesis as a trio hit their commercial zenith with Genesis (1983) and Invisible Touch (1986). The production was immaculate, those iconic gated drums, the synth stabs, the mix of irony and earnestness. “Mama” remains one of their strangest singles, a dark Oedipal fever dream disguised as radio pop. “Invisible Touch” turned into a global anthem, and “Land of Confusion” became political satire with Muppet nightmares courtesy of Spitting Image. The band who once sang about cosmic gardens were now commentating on Reagan and Thatcher through rubber puppets.

Yet the art never fully died. Beneath the pop gloss, tracks like “Domino” and “Home by the Sea” revealed labyrinthine structures worthy of their prog roots, Collins counting in 13/8 while smiling for the cameras. They had learned how to hide their weirdness in plain sight.

The Long Fade and Gentle Return

The 1990s brought We Can’t Dance (1991), a surprisingly introspective late-period record mixing slick pop (“I Can’t Dance”) with melancholy (“Fading Lights”). Collins’s departure after the tour scattered the pieces again; Banks and Rutherford soldiered on with Calling All Stations (1997) featuring Ray Wilson, a decent record trapped in an era that no longer cared about prog-pop patriarchs. But nostalgia has a long half-life: the group would reunite for tours in the 2000s and 2020s, greeted not with irony but affection, a recognition of how deeply their mutations had seeped into the musical genome.

Solo Galaxies: The Many Faces of Genesis

Peter Gabriel emerged from the chrysalis as one of rock’s great visionaries. His self-titled solo albums from 1977 to 1982 mapped out worldbeat textures, political urgency, and the birth of art-pop production. So (1986) turned him into a household name, with “Sledgehammer” and “In Your Eyes” defining an era where experimentalism and pop merged elegantly.

Collins, for his part, became the reluctant megastar of the ’80s, drumming for Brand X, crooning for Disney, and performing at both Live Aid stages on the same day. Tony Banks continued as the band’s quiet architect, releasing underrated solo symphonies and collaborations with orchestras. Hackett remained a cult hero, blending flamenco, jazz, and English melancholy across dozens of albums, while Rutherford’s Mechanics brought Genesis’s harmonic polish into the soft-rock mainstream.

The Legacy: From Flutes to Fairlights, and the Memory of Youth

Genesis’s story isn’t just about musical evolution, it’s about the elasticity of identity. Few bands could pivot from 23-minute mythological suites to MTV bangers without losing their soul. Their genius was in adaptation: the willingness to mutate, to shed skin after skin, to remain both pompous and populist. They taught generations of musicians that ambition and accessibility aren’t enemies, they’re dance partners in odd time signatures.

And in my own corner of memory, I still see Raffaele and Marco arguing over “Watcher of the Skies” in a Sicilian classroom, turning desks into drum kits and quoting Gabriel like scripture. Genesis wasn’t just British art rock, it was a portal. It opened a generation of dreamers, nerds, and sound-seekers to the idea that music could be theatre, philosophy, and heartache all at once. For that, we remain their faithful congregation, still listening for the next time signature change that feels like home.