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Authors: Mike Rutherford
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performing, something that wasn’t unusual back then.
Songwriting was (and is still) the area in which I measure success: I’ve seen many guitarists who can play fantastically well but who can’t write an original song. We wanted to be original from the word go but, unfortunately for us, Jonathan King didn’t like our kind of originality. We recorded another couple of demos for him but he was losing interest fast, so then we forgot about trying to be original and did something we knew he’d like.
‘The Silent Sun’, our first single, was written by Pete and Tony and was basically a Bee Gees pastiche. Ant wasn’t convinced by it but I thought it was a great song and Jonathan liked it as well – so much that he tried to sign us up for the rest of our lives.
I’m not sure that the contract he got us to sign with Decca was more binding than most contracts were back then, but as we were minors we shouldn’t have been signing it in the first place. That alone was enough to raise our parents’ suspicions. Between them they called in Goodman, Derek and Co. – top lawyers who had represented the Beatles – to redraft the contract.
This certainly cost our parents’ quite a bit of money but perhaps they were happy to help us out because they felt that this was their world – contracts and lawyers as opposed to gigs and guitars. A contract was something my father knew how to handle and could form an opinion on, whereas I’m not sure that would have been true for ‘The Silent Sun’. In any case, I didn’t feel worried about him going off to London in his bowler hat to meet Jonathan King. It was the school holidays and, when Dad came home and hung his coat up in the hall afterwards, I knew it’d gone well. Of course, I still had to wait for the official debriefing, for which he called me into the dining room the next day. Not that I really cared at the time: contracts, man, whatever.
Now that we were a band, we needed a name. Jonathan came up with Genesis and although I wasn’t mad about the name, it stuck. We had wasted so many hours on lists of names (Pete had come up with Band of Angels and Ant had something flowery like Champagne Meadow) that Genesis was a bit of a relief.
We also needed a look. Pete, who, like my father, believed in the right outfit for the occasion, suggested that we should all go to Carnaby Street to buy clothes for
Top of the Pops
. Pete was more aware of image than the rest of us, who hadn’t even realized that we needed an image. The fact that
Top of the Pops
hadn’t asked us on yet didn’t really come into it: it was obviously only a matter of time.
Swinging London was then at its height and Carnaby Street was the centre of the fashion world. There was something about turning the corner off Regent’s Street, going left and seeing that sign that was exciting.
Pete’s plan was that we should all have black-and-white outfits and the look is preserved for posterity in Genesis’s first publicity shot. I look dopey, if you ask me. Chris Stewart, our drummer, is the moody one, but all of us look like we seriously think it’s about to take off.
And, of course, we’d spend the next few years selling fuck all.
‘The Silent Sun’, our first single, was released on Decca in February 1968. Soon after Kenny Everett played it on the BBC, which was wonderfully legitimizing – the BBC was official, the real thing, the voice of authority. God, it sounded fantastic. I’m sure Jonathan must have had a word with Kenny – ‘Play this for me, mate.’ But when I first heard us on the radio, standing in Ant’s kitchen, I was convinced it was all about to happen. Here we go boys, I thought. Stand back.
By this time I’d left Charterhouse, although Ant had stayed on to do A levels. We were also without a drummer. One of my last jobs at Charterhouse was to fire Chris. (Which was probably a good career move, seeing as he would later write the bestselling
Driving over Lemons
.) The plan had
Songwriting was (and is still) the area in which I measure success: I’ve seen many guitarists who can play fantastically well but who can’t write an original song. We wanted to be original from the word go but, unfortunately for us, Jonathan King didn’t like our kind of originality. We recorded another couple of demos for him but he was losing interest fast, so then we forgot about trying to be original and did something we knew he’d like.
‘The Silent Sun’, our first single, was written by Pete and Tony and was basically a Bee Gees pastiche. Ant wasn’t convinced by it but I thought it was a great song and Jonathan liked it as well – so much that he tried to sign us up for the rest of our lives.
I’m not sure that the contract he got us to sign with Decca was more binding than most contracts were back then, but as we were minors we shouldn’t have been signing it in the first place. That alone was enough to raise our parents’ suspicions. Between them they called in Goodman, Derek and Co. – top lawyers who had represented the Beatles – to redraft the contract.
This certainly cost our parents’ quite a bit of money but perhaps they were happy to help us out because they felt that this was their world – contracts and lawyers as opposed to gigs and guitars. A contract was something my father knew how to handle and could form an opinion on, whereas I’m not sure that would have been true for ‘The Silent Sun’. In any case, I didn’t feel worried about him going off to London in his bowler hat to meet Jonathan King. It was the school holidays and, when Dad came home and hung his coat up in the hall afterwards, I knew it’d gone well. Of course, I still had to wait for the official debriefing, for which he called me into the dining room the next day. Not that I really cared at the time: contracts, man, whatever.
Now that we were a band, we needed a name. Jonathan came up with Genesis and although I wasn’t mad about the name, it stuck. We had wasted so many hours on lists of names (Pete had come up with Band of Angels and Ant had something flowery like Champagne Meadow) that Genesis was a bit of a relief.
We also needed a look. Pete, who, like my father, believed in the right outfit for the occasion, suggested that we should all go to Carnaby Street to buy clothes for
Top of the Pops
. Pete was more aware of image than the rest of us, who hadn’t even realized that we needed an image. The fact that
Top of the Pops
hadn’t asked us on yet didn’t really come into it: it was obviously only a matter of time.
Swinging London was then at its height and Carnaby Street was the centre of the fashion world. There was something about turning the corner off Regent’s Street, going left and seeing that sign that was exciting.
Pete’s plan was that we should all have black-and-white outfits and the look is preserved for posterity in Genesis’s first publicity shot. I look dopey, if you ask me. Chris Stewart, our drummer, is the moody one, but all of us look like we seriously think it’s about to take off.
And, of course, we’d spend the next few years selling fuck all.
‘The Silent Sun’, our first single, was released on Decca in February 1968. Soon after Kenny Everett played it on the BBC, which was wonderfully legitimizing – the BBC was official, the real thing, the voice of authority. God, it sounded fantastic. I’m sure Jonathan must have had a word with Kenny – ‘Play this for me, mate.’ But when I first heard us on the radio, standing in Ant’s kitchen, I was convinced it was all about to happen. Here we go boys, I thought. Stand back.
By this time I’d left Charterhouse, although Ant had stayed on to do A levels. We were also without a drummer. One of my last jobs at Charterhouse was to fire Chris. (Which was probably a good career move, seeing as he would later write the bestselling
Driving over Lemons
.) The plan had
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