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 Firth of Fifth I think it's the most successful all round song on 'Selling England By The Pound' It's a very romantic song. It builds I to a climax with the guitar solo-which recalls an earlier flute theme-with masses of Mellotron.-Tony Banks It's a tune that never really did so well onstage as it did on the last tour. It really got a great audience reaction whereas before...'Cause the ending is quiet and people would sit around waiting for somebody else to clap. Maybe it was because everybody knew it by the time of the last tour... and with two drummers it just seemed to happen. Phil Collins It was pieced together by the whole group around so it was one of those things where the group arrangement is quite important. There were three separate sections and it was Mike's idea to put them all together. I was thinking of keeping them separate, but they worked very nicely together. I'd offered some of it at the time of 'Foxtrot'(1972) and Phil found it very difficult to play on-this one part of it so we dropped the idea. I'm glad we did 'cause I developed it a lot better. I think it was great to be told no at that point and produce something a lot better as a result of it. Mike and I wrote the Iyrics together. We were a bit stuck for an idea for a lyric. We started off writing very simply about a river, then the river became a bit more...a river of life.. You know, it's quite allegorical and I don't think it's our most successful lyric. I've always been a bit disappointed with the lyric on that. It's a great piece of music but it's a I pity we didn't get a better lyric. I don't think it says very much. We tried a bit too hard. It just didn't come whereas the other one we wrote on the album, 'Cinema Show,'-we were much more pleased with. There we had a specific idea to aim fort-Tony Banks It's always a bad sign when you struggle. I think 'Epping Forest' was a struggle and it suffered. -Mike Rutherford Watcher of the Skies At the time both this and 'Musical Box' were trademarks, particularly the intro. to 'Watchers'. It was intentionally melodramatic to conjure up an impression of incredible size. It was an extraordinary sound. On the old Mellotron Mark 2 there were these two chords that sounded really good on that instrument. There are some chords you can't play on that instrument because they'd be so out of tune. 3 These chords created an incredible atmosphere. That's why it's just an incredible intro. number. It never sounded so i good on the later Mellotron. It did in fact develop out of another song which ended up on the new album (Wind And Wuthering').We wanted to find a fast riff which was in the same time signature. These two segments were originally joined.- Tony Banks Entangled Steve (Hackett) started writing verses which were very airy-fairy...a floating above ground feeling...and then he came down with a bang.-Mike Rutherford The chorus takes the piss out of what he wrote in the verses.-Tony Banks Squonk I've always had a soft spot for the very simple, very heavy. Philis a great John Bonham fan. It worked very well and it happened very easily. We didn't have to do much to it., Tony wrote the middle bit, the softer bit. We went into the rehearsal room and we just played it. We goin there with our little list. It just shows how the group helps me as a writer. I had the riff but I didn't really think much of it. I, hadn't seen it how they had. I really didn't think it would come out like that. Everybody said, 'Let's try it'. And we did one run through and it had that sound it's got on the album, straight away. The lyrics are just about this little fantasy character.-Mike Rutherford There are usually those bits of songs or tunes which someone brings in and straight away everybody, knows what should be done with it. And you sit down and you do it. 'Squonk' should have been a better stage number. I don't think Bill (Bruford) really got behind it. Bill can't, A Trick of the Tail I got the idea for the lyric after reading William Holding's 'The Inheritors'. It's about a race who were on earth before man and it's the story of the last survivor of this race. The very last chapter deals with our reaction to him whereas the rest of the story is his reaction to us. It's about an alien with horns and a tail who appears in a modern city and how people react to him. The melody comes from an idea I had at the time of 'Foxtrot' I often like to get earlier things used 'cause they're a bit simpler than how I write now. -Tony Banks
It was the first time I thought Genesis played the type of music they'd never played before- American music vaguely in the mould of Weather Report. It stemmed from this rhythmic idea I had. We also worked in some reprises because it was the end of the album including the reprise of 'Squonk' at the end. It was the first time we hit on... I say jazz, but I think we were playing a different kind of music on that track. It was still tight. It wasn't a blowing tune, but it was the first time we'd tried anything in that vein. To me, it was great to do that kind of thing with Genesis rather than playing it with Brand X.-Phil Collins The three chords it's based around were part of a soft thing which didn't make the album. Steve and Tony wrote fast things in between which took us up to the reprise of 'Volcano' then into 'Squonk'.-Mike Rutherford It's an incredibly effective stage number. Phil Collins I think compared to some albums, 'Trick Of The Tail' is very consistent. And because of its very high standard it's difficult picking out any one track.-Mike Rutherford I prefer 'Gorilla' (a track from their most recent album 'Wind And Wuthering) which is the same kind of thing, but 'Los Endos' was the first time we did it. I see it as our little excursion into the world of...I don't call it jazz rock. The title was misc.-Phil Collins A Trick of the Tail Album When we recorded the album the songs felt very distant from one another, because some were virtually unwritten when we first went into the studio. On this album we've stuck to our time signatures-once we've got them-more than ever before, it's in 3/4 from beginning to end. It never varies and it's very nice to do that. The only part of the album I don't like is the fast bit in 'Dance On A Volcano'. That really isn't very well played.-Tony Banks It's good 'cause this album was quite suddenly a big challenge as far as lyric writing went. In the past Pete (Gabriel) did about half the lyrics. The album turned out to be strongly vocal. Possibly there was less friction between vocals and instrumentals. On some albums we've had great instrumentals with great vocals over them but the two together were just too much. Peter's going has made us more of a band. Phil was really easy to work with. In a way he wasn't sure whether he could do it. It's the first time he's sung loud powerful tracks.-Mike Rutherford Actually I'd rather go back and play the drums than go off stage and have a drink. I'm still a drummer. I don't consider myself the lead singer. I feel I have more lee-way to do what I want being a drummer first, because people don't expect a super-cool, super-slick guy. They expect someone who's just a guy and that makes it a lot easier. Some people might think I was sitting there plotting behind the drum kit to get rid of the lead singer so I can take over but that's ridiculous. (Phil Collins on his dual role within Genesis) Genesis may not be the stuff rock 'n' roll is made of but hopefully rock music can encompass a very, very broad spectrum. I think it's a pity to compel anyone to do any one thing 'cause obviously there may be a few false turnings but in the end you get somewhere worthwhile. There are a lot of people who can play their instruments better than we can. Phil is a very good drummer, I would not deny that, but there are better guitarists than Steve when it comes to speed and technique.- Tony Banks I think the strength of a band is when it's a band and that often means some very simple playing. I think we'd like to try and stretch ourselves as far either way as we can go in terms of technique and simplicity.-Mike Rutherford You can use technique...there's no harm if you use good technique. It's a tool. It's useful if you want to illustrate a certain kind of thing, like on 'Robbery Assault And Battery' the solo on that is a chase sequence. It's supposed to be slightly insane. It's done in an insane rhythm, like23/8 which is intentionally all a bit stupid. I think the melody thing in Genesis is underplayed. All the songs are structured around the basic melodies. We spend an awful long time on them. I think we're extremely different from ELP who're a group I don't like very much. I always admired Keith Emerson when he was with the Nice, but now it's very soul-less music. I find their music incredibly hard to follow. I've never been very impressed by fast playing. Tony Banks I won't go away and cry if I read a review that's bad, bu tI listen to it. I'll listen to the criticism because I'm pretty highly critical of the band anyway.-Steve Hackett I want to change the band. I think the band should keep changing just for it's own good. If it really did appear like concrete then... Ido tend to feel the band has changed and progressed and done certain things it wouldn't have conceived doing a few years ago. I would like to see the band working with other musicians as individuals and corporately because I do feel that's really where it starts to happen or else it becomes insular to the point of being incestuous. That's what I worry about.-Steve Hackett Our public school background is probably why the blues influence in Genesis has never really been that strong. It's never been my kind of music at all. Even during the blues boom there was very little of it I liked.- Tony Banks I would like to think we are probably now as big as any other band in Britain. In America we can't compete with the heavies but we're getting there. It's always been a long, slow methodical progress.-Steve Hackett No sooner are we out of debt than there's a tax problem. There's no in between, so in effect we'll only be as well off as we were three years ago, earning ninety quid or something.-Phil Collins 
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