THE SILENT SUN / THAT'S ME

Contrary to many people here on PA, I do love Genesis first album. Even more so when I found out they had never played live as a group before (and very little otherwise too). They were special from the very beginning. The Silent Sun was their first single. Legend has it that they wrote this song to please their producer Jonathan King, who was a fan of the Bee Gees, hence the similarities of this track with the Gibb brothers stuff (King denies such story). Whatever the truth, Silent Sun does remind a lot of Bee Gees early stuff, and it is a nice ballad, a good start for such new and inexperienced guys: fine piano intro, good melody line, typical string arrangement of the time. Nothing spectacular, but good for starters.

The thing that surprised me the most on this one was its flip side, That´s Me. Gabriel sings surprisingly confident and makes a dramatic deliver hat gives us a glimpse of his enormous talent. The track itself is also an example of what was very common at the late 60´s, but again they showed competence and guts. I specially liked the short electric guitar solo (Anthony Phillips or a studio guitar player? It does not sound like him). A nice find.

All in all not a bad single for those youngsters. It´s very good to hear their humble beginnings. Who could tell then they would go so far? But it´s easy to perceive they were talented and only had to mature both their musical and songwriting skills. Thank God they did!