Artist

Genesis

Surrey, United Kingdom

Genesis is a music group from Surrey, United Kingdom. Their discography on Gatefold includes 24 records.

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Albums tracked

1,162

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Since

Biography

Before they were selling out stadiums with drum machine presets and slick suits, Genesis was literally trapped in a cottage in Wittersham with no heating, eating macrobiotic food and rehearsing twelve hours a day until they went stir-crazy. Tony Stratton-Smith of Charisma Records was bankrolling them, but they had to share a single room to write Trespass. That claustrophobia created a bizarre, pastoral pressure cooker where Tony Banks's Hammond organ and Anthony Phillips's 12-string acoustic battled for space. They weren't trying to write pop tunes; they were trying to build entire worlds out of classical chord progressions and folk fingerpicking. Then Phillips quit because of stage fright, Phil Collins walked in through a classified ad in Melody Maker, and Peter Gabriel started wearing a fox head and a red dress on stage. That transition from fragile folk-rock to theatrical art-rock was fueled by sheer desperation to get noticed in a crowded British scene. They survived the departure of Gabriel by simply letting Collins step up to the mic, proving the skeptics wrong by streamlining the arrangements without losing the complexity. By the time they hit the eighties, they embraced the SSL mixing desk and the gated reverb drum sound that Collins and co-producer Hugh Padgham stumbled upon during Peter Gabriel's third solo record. It was a massive, lucrative pivot that alienated the prog-rock purists but kept the band alive and charting for another decade.

Bio from The Clerk

The Arc of Genesis

The pivots — what forced Genesis to reinvent.

The Pastoral Gothic Era
After the disastrous pop-leaning debut on Decca, the band retreated to the English countryside to forge their actual sound on Trespass and Nursery Cryme. The departure of guitarist Anthony Phillips and the arrival of Steve Hackett and Phil Collins solidified a lineup that could handle complex, shifting time signatures. They traded short pop songs for sprawling, multi-part epics based on Victorian horror and mythology. You hear this era in the delicate balance of twin 12-string acoustic guitars suddenly giving way to Tony Banks's crushing Mellotron swells.
The Theatrical Peak
By 1973, Peter Gabriel was wearing masks, makeup, and bizarre costumes to illustrate his surreal lyrics, culminating in the double-album concept piece The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The band recorded the album at Headley Grange using the Ronnie Lane Mobile Studio, but the atmosphere was toxic as Gabriel worked on lyrics in isolation while the others wrote the music. Brian Eno even showed up to run Gabriel's vocals through an EMS VCS3 synthesizer, adding a gritty, proto-punk edge to the band's final statement with their original frontman. The resulting record was dense, challenging, and fractured the band permanently.
The Trio and the Padgham Gate
When Steve Hackett walked out during the mixing of the 1977 live album Seconds Out, Mike Rutherford took over lead guitar duties, reducing the band to a core three-piece. They pivoted toward shorter song structures on And Then There Were Three... before fully embracing the eighties at their newly built Fisher Lane Farm studio. Working with engineer Hugh Padgham, they ran Phil Collins's drums through the famous Solid State Logic listen mic compressor to create a massive, dry drum sound. This technical shift defined Abacab and their self-titled 1983 record, transforming them from art-house darlings into a sleek, pop-rock powerhouse.

Influences

The Beatles — Tony Banks and Peter Gabriel openly admitted that seeing the Beatles perform in the mid-sixties was the catalyst for starting the band. You hear it in the early, baroque-pop vocal harmonies on From Genesis to Revelation and their lifelong obsession with tight, melodic songwriting beneath the progressive arrangements.
The Moody Blues — The Moody Blues pioneered the use of the Mellotron in rock music on Days of Future Passed, which Genesis directly adopted as a core element of their symphonic sound. Tony Banks bought his first Mellotron directly from King Crimson, but he used it to mimic the lush, orchestral textures popularized by the Moodies.
King Crimson — The sheer power of In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969 forced Genesis to toughen up their sound and embrace darker themes. The heavy, syncopated rhythm section of Giles, Giles and Fripp directly shaped the syncopation Collins and Rutherford brought to tracks like 'The Knife.'
The Who — Peter Gabriel cited Pete Townshend's rock-opera ambitions with Tommy as the primary blueprint for the band's narrative song structures. You can hear this influence in the explosive, dramatic dynamic shifts on Foxtrot and the conceptual scope of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Family — Before forming Genesis, the band members frequently watched the British progressive rock band Family perform at the Marquee Club in London. Singer Roger Chapman's intense, vibrato-heavy vocal delivery directly inspired Peter Gabriel's early, raspier singing style on Trespass.