Was it planned to be a super long track from the start? How did it kind of come together?

Well, you know, to be honest, I befriended some of the members of King Crimson before they made their first record.

in the Court of the Crimson King, which was a landmark album, I think, in the progressive arena, because you had a pan-genre approach, you had jazz, you had classical influences, pastoral, pop, a lot of things, and all done with a certain panache.

They were a rather extraordinary team.

And I noticed that towards the end of one of their sets, and they were playing clubs at that point.

I was seeing them at London's Marquee Club.

And they were twinning songs.

How did you two decide to make an album together?

[laughs]

Along the line, you know, he's, he's a wonderful, uh, uh, drummer stroke typist.

But then we had those drum parts replaced by real, by the real thing from, uh, another of his pals, Daniele Pono, who, um, I've worked on this project with, but also beyond that on some other stuff of mine forthcoming down the line.

So, uh, I'm very taken with him.

I've been spoiled for choice for, for, uh, musicians, drummers, uh, particularly rhythm sections in, in, uh, reth- recent years.

Um, and, um, it's g- been great to have done this and, and, uh, uh, to have finished it.

Uh, we worked in a rather different way to the way I, I normally write, because I think the, the Genesis approach that remained with me For many years was the idea of you have something that's through composed, although we wouldn't have used those words in those days.

Yeah.

All right, Steve, Steve H, Bleepwood Max, Jigsaw Puzzle Blues.

Yeah, how about that? Well, when I bought the single of, um, you know, what I probably talked about earlier, which was, uh, uh, um, Albatross, on the B side there was this very short little instrumental that was Danny Kirwan's idea, and reading an interview later, um, the late, great Danny Kirwan said that he was inspired by Django Reinhardt, but he's playing electric guitar, so if, if Django played electric it might come out like this, and the tone is brilliant, the fast vibratos.

Um, and the, the tone is absolutely to die for.

The very last note sounds almost like a clarinet.

It's, it's kind of ...

I can only describe it as French, you know, it's that kind of hot Club de Paris sort of sound about it.

Um, and the last note, it's hardly any distortion, but it's just on the edge and it's got that kind of clarinet tone that I noticed with, um, Monty Sunshine playing with, with Chris Barber when it was Petite Fleur, the, the, um, uh, which is, which is, which is a favorite of, of jazzers, and that same sound, that fast vibrato that I've sought so much with guitar.

Weather Report's Scarlet Woman.

And is there a sort of recurring theme meant to be a recurring theme throughout the album? Yes.

Yeah.

The sea is the recurring theme throughout the album.

So all the tracks relate to places either in the sea or stories from the sea or near the sea for instance k1 129 was the Russian submarine which sank with tremendous loss of life in the Pacific.

I believe it was a nuclear sub.

We'll never know the full story because of the level of secrecy, but the Black Sea, which is still very much a troubled region, what with the ding-dongs that are going on in that region, at the moment Pacific Coast Highway the final track is really a Californian coastline thing I think that's the closest to Americana that we come on the entire album with a bit of harmonica from me and and a jam that sounds like it might have it might have had something to do with the Allman Brothers perhaps there's yeah something that one I know that that Steve Rothery was very worried that that maybe progressive people might not go for that one the prog police he called them saying that you know that they'll be on at this because the track's not long enough and um and um you know it hasn't got any proggy elements really um whereas i think some of the other ones do have their progressive um but we weren't tied to that.

I think we were trying to do something that was more atmospheric, cinematic.

And where do you feel that your music has changed from when you did Voyage of the Acolyte?

And I just wondered when are you, when you were playing with fly on the windshield with Steve, rather we joined you with that, the catalyst to think we've got to get this done, Steve, we've got to get this album finished.

Well, that was the last time we were on stage together, which was at the Albert Hall, and we took a piece of Genesis music that was quite short and made it last about 10 minutes longer so that guitarists had a chance to express themselves on that very evocative piece of repetitive music that was very much...

I don't know if I would say it was ambient, but certainly soundtrack.

We were influenced at that time, but this is Genesis, by the music that Nicholas Rosa did for the 1957 Ben-Hur score.

The idea of, you know, drums were just doing one beat.

at a time and bass pedal and the idea of ramming speed all of that sort of boys own kind of stuff but and you've got sort of respi like changes on the top that tony banks was doing but i digress you know this album i think was very much a case of a musical conversation between two guitarists um Not that much was written outside the studio.

We worked in the Marillion studio and then Steve worked at home.

yeah

... everything, is, is it partly because for yourself you quite enjoy the, the feeling of insignificance compared with what the world actually generates?

Oh, well, I like being part of it.

It's almost like the feeling of, that, that you have when you're in Italy.

And when you're playing there, and I'm very often playing in a, in an open air situation, either an old amphitheater or, um, or a town square, a p- a piazza.

And, um, and very often, you know, you just feel surrounded by history, and it all looks like a pageant and, um, a perfect backdrop for Romeo and Juliet, et cetera.

And, um, and I'm very content.

You know, I, I find I'm playing and there's usually a very enthusiastic Italian crowd.

Yeah.

You must have been knocked out by that.

I was knocked out by that.

We'd just done an album called Selling England by the Pound, and I think it was a very smart move.

I think it had been part of the Labour Party manifesto, but I didn't know that at the time, and Pete suggested it as an album title, and I thought, well, you know, we'll be all things quintessentially English for the Americans, and...

Perhaps, you know, the Anglophiles over there will get it if they like England.

There's a good chance they'll like us.

And so we went straight to the West Coast.

Is it nice to be all together?

[laughs]

Well, um, the, the thing is we auditioned a number of people, and, um, but I think Phil got frustrated one night, and we were actually in Trident recording backing tracks for an album that had no lead singer.

And he said, "Uh, let me have a go," just when Tony Stratton-Smith, who was Charisma label boss, stuck his head around the corner and heard a few bars that he'd sung and said, "Sounds like you've found your lead singer, chaps, so I'll be off." And so the, the deal was done very, very quickly, and then we had to think in terms of ...

I, I met John Anderson for the first time, uh, of Yes, um, at Phil's first wedding, and, um, he said, um, he said, "Why don't you make Phil the lead singer and get in another lead instrumentalist and, and, and get another drummer?" And I said, "Uh, yeah, I, I would.

I'm not sure if, if the other guys will go for that." But then, um, luckily I think we all made the right choice collectively-

Right.

Um, and that'll be my band, and they're, they're very good.

Um, there's a couple of new guys in the band.

so when you joined genesis how did it feel as your first professional band

yes first fully professional band doing doing shows very difficult at first i imagined that i was much further on than i was and i realized that i really didn't know how to write songs even though i'd advertised myself as a songwriter and i was learning all the time they were very quick on the uptake they had their own language The three of them had been at school together, so there was a lot of back history.

Also, Phil Collins, who joined three months before I did, had been at stage school.

He'd learned to sing, dance, tap dance, all the things that had him in good stead when he was singing the part of the Artful Dodger in Oliver.

So he's performing in Oliver, Lionel Bart's Oliver, and...

And so he was already a veteran by the time he came to work with Genesis.

And really, he wanted to be the drummer.

So going back to those early years then, you and Mike sat down, didn't you, for the performances?

challenge of it, yeah, almost.

That was it.

There was, if Please Don't Touch was outsourcing to other people outside any particular band, yeah.

wide range of influences, people right across the board, you know, the idea of white and black performers, what they could bring to the table.

If anything was close to white soul, it was that.

And then Once again, a band trying to do it very much in-house, finding that the band was very, very capable, even though it was all analogue instruments.

You know, if it was the sound of what a World War II bomber, a Humber Hawk sounded like, it seemed that if you had bass pedals... which we had oscillators beating and just made it a low drone.

This is from the 80s, so it's not as tied to that.