Genesis: The Gabriel Era

by Bob Carruthers

In 1967, vocalist Peter Gabriel founded the group Genesis along with keyboardist Tony Banks, and quickly became the noted, eccentric front man to an internationally-acclaimed progressive rock band. This is story of the group’s early, halcyon days prior to Gabriel’s departure in 1975, during which albums such as Nursery Crimes , The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, and Foxtrot took the music scene by storm. A full track-by track analysis of the Gabriel-era albums that highlights the inspiration behind key tracks is provided, as are the thoughts of contemporary rock journalists and musicians on the music that changed the face of rock. Interviews with band members provide a glimpse of the creative process, the pressures of success, and the stories behind the songs.

Genres: Music

150 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2007

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a huge fan of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis. So I eat up pretty much anything out there that's written about it. This book is basically a repackaging of reviews of Genesis written in the mid-1970s. It's interesting to read what they said about the band back then, and to hear the voices of the band in its original incarnation.

However, there are some issues. The most frustrating of these is typographical. The book has a legion of typos throughout it, which makes it difficult to read and makes the book seem of really poor quality. Also, even though the book is comprised of all of these old reviews, the editor never really distinguishes between them and his own words. There's no real distinction between them, which results in a sort of reading confusion throughout. Reading it, I got this mental image of someone who had to retype all of these old reviews who had to do so in a very short amount of time. And that person is craning his/her neck and maybe fatigued from all of the typing. So the quality of typing, punctuation, and so forth really suffers. But the question is "why"? Was this book really that hurried in its production? Why couldn't they have had proofreaders? It's not like the material included here is that timely--it was forty years ago, people.

I know that some who read this review might think this is a just small issue and that I am way too nitpicky. You are right about the second part. But the issue is so pervasive throughout the book that it detracts from the content, and, in turn, it makes reading of the book a very irritating experience.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, you have to be a diehard fan to care enough to read this all the way through. It might help to be stoned, too, because of the repetitiveness of the liner-notes narrative. Not much new information -- I mean, for those familiar with the early Genesis (the only Genesis in my humble) and their basic history -- and very little interpretation or elucidation. Carruthers writes well enough but seems incapable of organizing his material, which includes great swaths of quotation bridged by too little context, citation, or clarification of who's speaking and why. Quoting several commentators (I'm not sure I want to use the word "critics") for long stretches means that the same stories and views get repeated several times. Carruthers often caps this redundancy off with yet another summary of the same story, which was not all that insightful to begin with. Each of the Gabriel-era albums gets a special mini-essay from some guy named Hugh Fielder, a supposed critic, though in my view he's not much of a writer, let only "critic." Here's what he says of the opening, title, track on The Lamb Lies Down Broadway: "The song closes with a reference to the Drifters 'On Broadway' -- credits being apparently unnecessary in the days before people found it impossible to write a song without using somebody else's ideas." Fielder wrote this in 2005, when obviously there were nothing but original ideas in pop music! No one would now dream of sampling an earlier song, let alone quoting it so brazenly! Oh well, fans will read it through anyway; i did.

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking for the equivalent of 150 pages of liner notes on the first 6 Genesis albums this is it. All others will be bored to tears.