DUKE

This album was originally planned to have a long song cycle on one side and some shorter songs on the other side. The song cycle would be made up of "Behind the lines", "Duchess", "Guide vocal", "Turn it on again", "Duke's travels" and "Duke's end". It wasn't to be, but during the tour that followed the band did play the song cycle as they had originally intended it. It was the absolute highlight of the Duke live shows and the album would have been a lot better had it included the songs this way.

The album opens like the song cycle opens with the excellent "Behind the lines" with its two minute intro leading into the drum machines of the great ballad "Duchess" with its coda "Guide vocal". Then we get three solo compositions with Mike Rutherford's "Man of our times", Phil Collins' "Misunderstanding" (the first song he wrote for Genesis, also the band's first US hit single) and Tony Banks' "Heathaze". Then comes the great "Turn it on again", as far as I know the only single ever with a 13/4 time signature. Then it goes again with "Alone tonight", "Cul de sac" and ". The album ends in a great way again with "Duke's travels" and "Duke's end". Had they left the medley as it originally was (and how it was again on tour), the medley have made it a great Genesis album. But this conversion of pop and prog made some fans lose interest l. This is one of the albums that made die hard Genesis fan to lose interest but I love it. 4.0

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