Genesis

Charterhouse

Genesis came together in 1967 at Charterhouse, a public school in Surrey, from two school bands: Anon, with the guitarists Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford, and Garden Wall, with the singer Peter Gabriel and the keyboard player Tony Banks. The producer Jonathan King, a former pupil, named them and got them a deal with Decca, but their 1969 debut, From Genesis to Revelation, sold so poorly that Banks recalled a figure of 649 copies a year later.

They signed to Charisma in 1970 and made Trespass. Phillips left that July; Phil Collins answered an ad and joined on drums, and in 1971 the guitarist Steve Hackett completed the classic line-up.

The Gabriel years

Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972), with the twenty-three-minute Supper's Ready, and Selling England by the Pound (1973) made them one of the most theatrical bands in British rock, with Gabriel in masks and costumes on stage. Selling England, with Firth of Fifth, went to number three in Britain and won a following in Italy and America.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974) was a double concept album written almost entirely by Gabriel, the story of a rebellious young New Yorker called Rael pulled into a nightmarish underworld beneath New York. On the long tour that followed, Gabriel told the band he was leaving; his departure was announced in August 1975. Banks later said the Lamb sold less than Selling England and left them in debt.

Collins and the trio

An anonymous advertisement for a new singer drew about four hundred replies. Collins taught the songs to the auditionees, sang Squonk himself, and kept the job. A Trick of the Tail (1976) reached three in Britain, with Bill Bruford joining on drums for the tour; Banks said it was satisfying to show they could carry on. Hackett left in 1977, and as a trio they made ...And Then There Were Three... (1978), whose closing Follow You Follow Me was their first top-ten hit, released at the height of punk. Chester Thompson on drums and Daryl Stuermer on guitar joined them on stage.

Pop stars

Duke (1980) was their first British number one. They bought a farm in Chiddingfold, Surrey, and turned a cowshed into The Farm studio, where they made Abacab (1981), Genesis (1983), with Mama and Home by the Sea, and Invisible Touch (1986), their best-selling album, with five American top-five singles and a world tour ending with four nights at Wembley. Collins's solo career ran alongside, making him one of three musicians, with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson, to sell a hundred million albums both solo and in a band. We Can't Dance (1991) went to number one again.

Collins left in 1996. Banks and Rutherford made Calling All Stations (1997) with the Scottish singer Ray Wilson, cancelled the American tour, and stopped in 2000. The classic Collins trio returned in 2007 for a tour that included a free concert for around half a million people at the Circus Maximus in Rome, and they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2010. The Last Domino? tour, with Collins too ill to drum and his son Nic in his place, ended at the O2 in London on 26 March 2022, their final concert.

On stage

Their 1970s shows were among the most elaborate of the era, from Gabriel's costumes to the staging of the Lamb tour. The 1973 Bataclan and Shepperton concerts were filmed; Seconds Out (1977) and Three Sides Live (1982) document the later bands. setlist.fm logs Firth of Fifth in more than five hundred shows. In 1982 Gabriel and Hackett rejoined for one night, Six of the Best at Milton Keynes, to raise money for Gabriel's WOMAD festival.

Standing

They have sold an estimated one hundred to one hundred and fifty million albums. Tony Banks has said they were always slightly below the radar, but that people who like them really like them. Gabriel, Collins, Hackett and Mike + the Mechanics all had major careers of their own, and Hackett's Genesis Revisited project keeps the 1970s music on stage. In 2022 the band sold part of its music rights to Concord.