It's a theatrical element. He's not just singing the songs, he's interpreting them, narrating them, acting them out. Add the stage moves and masks and you have the full package that made Genesis unique.
If anyone is interested : on eBay there is an 8-Track tape of Trespass going for a mere $9000. - ---- Free shipping, though!
Yeah, but Mayhew has been MIA for decades, I think. EDIT : I just Wiki'd him and he died in 2009. JM - RIP Post-Genesis[edit] Little was known of Mayhew's whereabouts following his departure from Genesis. There was speculation that he was deceased or missing. In 1982, he moved to Australia, where he found work as a carpenter. In 1989, he briefly returned to England to visit his ailing mother.[5] In 2006, he attended a Genesis convention in London (along with Anthony Phillips and Steve Hackett), and played drums for tribute band ReGenesis's performance of "The Knife". Death[edit] On 26 March 2009, Mayhew died of a heart condition in Glasgow, Scotland on the eve of his 62nd birthday. He had been working as a carpenter for a furniture company at the time of his death. He was survived by his brother.[6]
"Trespass" is one of my least favorite Genesis records -- to the point that I do not own a copy of it. I hear the sound of a band still trying to find its voice. There is, however, a clear musical connection between "Tresspass" and the records that followed which, IMO of course, is not the case for FGTR.
$9000 and $2700 for 8 track tapes of Trespass? I saw one at a thrift shop a couple of months ago for $1. If I only knew.
Yes! This was such an important part of their appeal when I got into Genesis as a youngling. Trespass was the second album of theirs I investigated, and "White Mountain" sounded just like the album cover promised it would, really evocative and grand, and sung as if by a man in full regalia. Rutherford wrote the lyrics (possibly with Banks) and I actually don't think Gabriel was nuts about them, terrific though his performance is. It's quite telling that they pulled that one out for the Trick tour, having ignored it for six years. They played lots of other acoustic material in the early days so it can't have been a matter of amplification, and Phil's drumming would obviously have suited the song wonderfully. Maybe there was some other reason, but I always suspected Gabriel found the lyrics a little juvenile. As for that great bit you singled out there, I always thought of that as a precursor to the line "..that I've walked throoooooogh" on "Chamber of 32 Doors" - sounds like they're going for the same kind of effect, with the voice "becoming" a keyboard sound (the latter may possibly involve some "enotronics"). I think they do the same kind of thing somewhere on Nursery Cryme too, come to think of it, on one of the major tracks. If I can keep up with the thread, I'll post back with specifics at an appropriate future point.
Visions Of Angels I don't know why but the start of this song makes me think of early Elton John, not in a bad way, I love seventies Elton. I like the way the piano builds it all up and then we get that really nice punch at 0:17. We have Gabriel coming in to tell his story and the song has the form of a ballad of sorts until the chorus kicks in. Genesis always really had a love of dynamics and generally used them very well. Gabriel is waxing poetic and on the surface it appears to be somewhat a love song, but looking deeper it is almost as though he is singing from the perspective of a dead or dying person that can't touch the things in life anymore. "See a rippling stream that smiles and then goes by run to feel its comfort but the water's dry." There are several statements regarding after life and conceptions and misconceptions about it, and it seems there is a feeling of what once was and now is not. I may be way off the mark but that seems to be part of the reason he is seeing Visions of Angels Dancing in the sky. The interplay between the acoustic and the piano leading up the the big drums and power chords before Peter's "ahhhh's" (from about the 2:30 point) is really nice and the build up through there works really well. Then we return to a variation of the opening theme and into the final verse/chorus section. The outro that follows works well and leads us to big seventies style finish. It's hard to listen closely to any of these songs and not actually like them. They are good and very adventurous for a band that had its hearts handed back to them on plates after the first record. Certainly (for me) this album isn't better than the albums that follow, but the tracks are deceptively strong and certainly let everyone know what it is the band is shooting for.
A little background All the harmony vocals on Trespass feature Tony and probably Ant and Mike - it isn't just Peter overdubbing however they never did this going forward and it was always Peter/Phil or just Phil. The song is actually a FGTR leftover, believe it or not - sounds like one, if edited down a little plus due to it's piano and harmony heavy nature, I imagine that's why it was dropped from their set since Tony didn't have a decent one on stage until the ATTWT tour
I hear the GenToRev in Visions, but they did a good job making it gel with the rest of Trespass. For me, it fits. That said, I think both VoA and Dusk are the weaker tracks on the record. I like them, but they aren't quite to the level of the other songs. In fact, I think side one's closer would have benefited from another track in the vein of The Knife - a bit more uptempo. As a consequence, Trespass suffers slightly from a consistent, but slow introspection that tips the scales a bit to one extreme. But it is what it is.
