On a chilly, moist evening in October 1982, the ‘traditional’ line-up of Genesis reunited for a one-off live performance at Milton Keynes Bowl. The present had been organised to lift cash for his or her former lead vocalist, Peter Gabriel, who was going through monetary smash after the failure of the primary WOMAD competition, of which he’d been the organiser.
Genesis’s set that evening consisted largely of songs from Gabriel’s time with the group. Nevertheless, the fashionable Genesis (now only a trio of vocalist/drummer Phil Collins, keyboard participant Tony Banks and bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford) had scored an enormous hit in the summertime of 1980 with Flip It On Once more. So though the Milton Keynes present was a celebration of Genesis in all their 70s prog-rock glory, it might have been churlish to not play it.
Gabriel agreed to swap locations with Collins whereas he sang the massive hit. Gabriel may play drums – and, in any case, how troublesome was it to play drums on one in all Genesis’s pop songs? Because it turned out, tougher than Gabriel had imagined.
“It was typical Peter: ‘Oh, I can play this,’” Tony Banks says. “However as soon as he began enjoying, he saved wanting round going: ‘Oh fuck!’ Flip It On Once more does humorous issues; it’s actually a Genesis track.”
What Gabriel hadn’t realised was that the track was in 13/8 time. “Which made it like a merry-go-round,” Rutherford recalled. “Peter would assume he’d acquired to the tip, and abruptly we might be off once more.”
Making it was a cheerful time for Mike and I. However Phil was within the throes of a really painful divorce.
Tony Banks
When Collins succeeded Gabriel as lead vocalist in 1975, the band’s music started to alter. Gabriel had sung about extraterrestrial invasions and man-eating crops; on Collins’s watch, the songs slowly began to handle extra human feelings. When guitarist Steve Hackett stop in 1977, Genesis had been all the way down to a trio, however scored their largest hit single but with a easy love track, Comply with You, Comply with Me
Collins’s affect on his bandmates was apparent. “Phil’s songs had a stunning sense of area and ease,” mentioned Rutherford. “Phil was at all times in a position to let a track breathe.”
This inspired Rutherford and Banks to assume in a different way as songwriters. One outcome was Flip It On Once more, the track that turned Genesis from a profitable cult rock band right into a worldwide hit singles act.
The track started life in the summertime of 1979 at Collins’s home in Surrey. The singer’s marriage to his spouse Andrea had simply damaged up and he or she’d taken their youngsters to stay in Vancouver. Collins turned two of the bedrooms into studio-cum-rehearsal areas and invited his bandmates to maneuver in whereas they wrote their subsequent album, Duke.
Flip It On Once more was constructed from two separate musical concepts. “Mike had the riff,” explains Banks, “and I had the bit within the track that goes: ‘I can present you, I can present you…’ Each had been rejects from our solo albums.” (Banks’s A Curious Feeling had simply been launched; Rutherford’s Smallcreep’s Day would comply with in February 1980.)
Collins listened to Rutherford’s riff and advised they velocity it up. “The unique riff was very fats and heavy and sluggish,” remembers Banks. “As quickly as Phil sped it up, it sounded a lot rockier.”
Initially, although, the riff was supposed as a bridge between a few of the new album’s longer songs. “We already had Behind The Strains, Duke’s Travels and Duke’s Finish, and thought it would slot in there, till we realised it was too good to make use of as a hyperlink. Our resolution was to play the riff twice, stick my bit on the tip after which write a track round it.”
“Making Flip It On Once more and Duke was a cheerful time for Mike and I,” Banks provides. “However Phil was within the throes of a really painful divorce.”
“I used to be residing alone… issues had gone off the rails a bit, consuming an excessive amount of,” Collins mentioned in 2007. “However I’ve very fond recollections of these rehearsal days.”
You possibly can’t dance or clap alongside to it. You possibly can see the viewers getting caught out.
Tony Banks
Together with his spouse and youngsters gone, Collins had thrown himself into his work with Genesis and anybody else who’d have him. Earlier that 12 months he’d recorded with jazz-fusion facet challenge Model X and singer-songwriter John Martyn, and put collectively some concepts for what would grow to be his first solo album, 1981’s Face Worth.
Rutherford wrote Flip It On Once more’s lyrics – a prescient story of a person who turns into so obsessive about watching TV that he begins to confuse it with actual life – however Collins imbued it together with his persona. “Duke was the primary album the place Phil began to sound like an actual singer,” mentioned Banks.
Rutherford had initially written the track’s riff on bass pedals, utilizing an echo for each different word because it was too tiring to play. However when it got here to recording the track, at Stockholm’s Polar Studios within the winter of ’79, he wished to do it correctly. Rutherford sat on the studio ground, thumping the pedal together with his fist: “And once I acquired drained, Phil took over.”
Their shared bass pedal thumping resulted in what Rolling Stone journal later known as “vibrant rock’n’roll”, and a radio-friendly pop track. But regardless of its memorable hook and refrain, Flip It On Once more was a Malicious program – pay attention nearer and you might hear the quirky Genesis of outdated in its offbeat rhythm.
The one was launched on March 8, 1980, spent six weeks within the UK chart and at last reached No.8. Duke, in the meantime, gave Genesis their first No.1 album. “It caught us all abruptly,” Banks admits. “But it surely’s such an ideal track. And Duke is one in all my favorite Genesis albums.”
From right here on, Genesis slowly moved out of the prog-rock shadows and into the world’s stadiums. Flip It On Once more would grow to be a fixture of each Genesis present thereafter. There’s only one downside, as Peter Gabriel discovered to his price.
“You possibly can’t dance or clap alongside to it,” cautions Banks, “due to that point signature. Once we play it stay, you possibly can at all times see the viewers getting caught out.”
You might have been warned.
Initially revealed in Traditional Rock subject 216 (October 2015)
