...AND THEN THERE WERE THREE...

I had just got into Genesis' music between '74 and '75 and was totally blown away by the release of 'Wind and Wuthering' - my favourite Genesis album at that time. The music I had always wanted to hear was being made by this truly amazing band. The departure of Steve Hackett was a shame, but with a keyboard player the likes of Tony Banks, how could they ever fail? I was awaiting the new album in 1978 with so much anticipation it made my toes curl. And then it came...

...like a slap in the face. History now tells us that it marked the end of a truly great, innovative, progressive band. And, sadly, it proved to be all downhill from here. Sure, there are good moments on this album (and, unknown to me at the time, much, MUCH worse was to come), but just count the number of tracks... That speaks volumes. I suspect Phil Colins was beginning to get that stranglehold on the band's output by now and he was aiming for chart material - that meant shorter songs, fewer instrumental passages and all that wonderful mysticism was thrown out with the bathwater. Rutherford's guitar work is painfully clunky (imagine what Hackett would have done with 'Burning Rope'!) and Banks seems happy to just fill in the those chords. That Phil allowed him to play his treasured Pro-Soloist through 'Follow You...' was a blessed relief from the tedium.

I'll admit to enjoying a few moments on this disk, but it is what it stood for that depresses me enough to have shelved it long ago. I was hoping it was all a temporary blip back in 1978. But things just got worse. By the time the band were producing tracks such as 'Illegal Alien' they had lost me completely. I attended a gig in the 1980's: A guy by the side of me clapped his hands all the way through 'Illegal Alien', then pushed past me to go to the toilet during 'Supper's Ready. That said it all really... Eventually the band relegated anything pre-1976 to a 5-minute medley, played almost as an apology. I felt insulted.

Watching the band on 'Top of the Pops' miming along to 'Follow You, Follow Me' was one of the lowest points in my life. This album reminds me of that moment. Depressing.