Genesis - did they really sell out?

I agree. 40% pro and 60% con sounds about right. And 40% is nothing to sneeze at.

 

No it's not "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" with that out of the way let me continue. Genesis sold out for a BIG payday, just as BIG as the decade of the 80's. Not like earlier Genesis efforts but a solid big hits album with some experimental tunes thrown in. Invisible Touch reflects the mid 1980's brilliantly. IMHO

 

Stumbled upon this thread. Can't help but post being a huge Genesis fan.

The term sell out definitely has evolved over the years. AFAIK, the current meaning comes from the punk rock ethos. So basically, if you become 'huge' and 'commercial', you're a sell out. To me, that's a very narrow minded view. So many bands are celebrated that were commercial and huge. And you never get big unless you are accessible. Genesis deliberately wanted to break new ground for themselves by 1980. So many posts on here already explaining this notion. They wanted to reinvent themselves, while maintaining certain signature aspects of their sound. They wanted to write more direct songs and appeal to a bigger audience. It's easy to dismiss that as selling out, but I don't see it that way at all. There was an extremely gradual evolution taking place over many albums. You can make a direct parallel to Rush. They did the same thing. Wrote shorter songs with more mass appeal. Ultimately both bands maintained hallmarks of their sound where the music was still uniquely Genesis or Rush. That's not selling out to me. They evolved and changed their way and on their terms.

 

I remember years ago a radio interview with Genesis I think it was promoting the Genesis lp of 1983. He said "do you listen to the same music? Then why the hell should I play the same music?" He also said that he would love to do a whole lp of Jackson 5 songs.

 

They must have been interviewing Phil.

 

Yes it was definitely Phil!!

 

I find it funny when people use the term selling out unironically.

And hell - Genesis formed with the sole intention of selling their songs to other artists in the hopes of making pop hits commercially. They failed miserably and had to change course, but making hit records was always something they desired. Even though I personally dislike Invisible Touch, I have never viewed it as a "sell out." Its simply an album I dislike.

To me, this 'seling out' argument is people basically vaulting a subjective opinion into something more than it really is. Turning it around and blaming an artist for having the gall for creating something they don't like, in an effort to prove their opinion is factually correct. Its a high school mentality and a lazy argument.

 

Hmm, I wouldn't think Roger Waters was primarily, if at all, adapting to a new environment if by that you mean punk. He was concentrating his aggression organically. Two of the three big Animals pieces ~ Dogs and Sheep ~ premiered live in 1974. In Spring of that year he was already snarling, "raving and drooling, I fell on his neck with a scream...!" and by Fall he was pointing at the corporate brainwashee who was "fitted with bridal and bit" (original lyric), "ground down in the end" and "dragged down by the stone"....

The two albums after were a natural progression of him exorcising personal demons, on an emotional roll. One could easily argue, too, that "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" (from the late '60s) was as musically violent in live performance as just about anything in any time.

Sorry, back to Genesis!

 

To me it's about artistic integrity. Genesis was always self-contained in terms of the songwriting and playing since 1970. Sure they lost Gabriel and Hackett, but they never brought anyone else into the mix. Since 1977, it was just the Big 3 writing all the material, playing all the instruments except for 'No Reply at All' where they brought in the Phenix Horns.

 

There’s a general misconception amongst these ‘loyal fans’ of the early days that they completely abandoned long-form pieces and this is, of course, completely false. They also never turned their backs completely on progressive music. They were progressive in the truest sense of the word. The truth is Collins, Banks, and Rutherford all enjoyed making music together immensely and each of them wanted to move forward musically. The only way to truly move forward, and have any kind of success, is to find new avenues of musical expression. They always had their fingers on the tip of the future of music or, at least, within a rock context. They somehow intuitively knew that punk rock was nothing more than a fad and while they didn’t take on the style, they did, indeed, start to trim down the durations of their pieces, but they always wrote shorter pieces anyway, but the ‘Genesis elitists’ would rather b**** and moan that they didn’t continue writing music that they wanted to hear. Genesis always did what they wanted to do and, to the boon of these elitists, they became hugely successful commercially. What these early fans who bemoan them ‘selling out’ haven’t done is use their own ears and put away their preconceived notions of what Genesis is. I think Invisible Touch is an incredible album and it’s a work of brilliance from the trio. I also enjoy Abacab and their self-titled album (although I still detest Illegal Alien). Anyway, Genesis are my favorite band and for years I didn’t think much of their forays into pop music (intelligent pop music mind you), but over the past few years, I began to see the error of my ways and I listened to their post-Hackett albums with a clean slate and a non-judgmental attitude. I listened to these albums for what they were and not what I thought they should be and I have to say that I came out on the other side with a greater appreciation for what they achieved that I never had previously.

 

Dead > Selling out

 

Sold out? No. They evolved as the times demanded.

 

Amen. Love your avatar, btw. Duke is an incredible album.

 

They avoided "selling out" when they made Calling All Stations. How'd that work out for them?

 

Bolding mine. I'm reviewing this thread for stuff added since I last posted and came across this. I'm still trying to get the taste of vomit out of my mouth.....

 

Just for the record, I still think they sold out.

 

I guess it's all how you look at it.

I think if a band or artists changes something about their music some are gonna cry that they sold out because it's not a style they like.


The only pre 1980's song I ever heard on the radio was "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" which I never liked but another " I Know What I Like" is good and probably better since I've only heard it on an internet station and sometimes the commonly heard songs can get dull.

 

Yeah, I've poured over the back and forth arguments at lunchtime, and something has always gnawed at me about the argument that Genesis "evolved". I would have bought that argument had the band kept changing. But they didn't. IT and WCD are stylistically interchangeable to me. The band wrongly (I think) settled into the pattern of get together, jam, rinse, lather, repeat. Individually, I'd argue they evolved, but as a group I think not. I think they'd have been slightly less successful but more "authentic" if they kept on with the older band algorithm of bringing established tracks to the sessions and let the others "season" them. I know they claimed that they wrote by committee in the old days but I think that's b*llsh*t; PG and TB dominated those early days and as the others got more confident, their "seasonings" became stronger.

 

i would take that album over anything after Abacab easily, and consider it to be actually a quite pleasant album.

No selling out and still made a good album....We Can't Dance?....total rubbish, as is Invisible Touch....

 

Oh, I actually appreciate that album myself. But counting you and me, that totals around 37 of us altogether.

 

They never sold out - the Banks/Rutherford/Collins grew up, got into relationships, had kids, stopped being into fantasy, lost the more experimental members of the band and enjoyed their way of working/writing/recording together.

 

Indeed. This happens to a lot of artists who go a direction that we didn't like or expected. I admit being guilty of this myself in the pass.

 

It's a very interesting question. Obviously, they wanted to make money to some extent, from the start. And more so after racking up debts in the mid-70s...

But other factors came into play. Phil wanted to write more simple, straightforward songs. And then they started having success doing that. Tony probably went along a bit reluctantly, but obviously Tony had a fondness for simpler songs, too, even if he had a hard time writing simply sometimes. Rutherford? Who knows? I feel like he checked out, songwriting-wise, sometime around the beginning of the '80s and from then on was just focused on writing commercial songs.

I think the band and Phil hit a sweet spot circa '80-'82, where they were able to write songs that were both commercial and really good; but not so much after that.

 

Just for the record, I still don’t.

 

I think it worked out incredibly well for all three of them and the fact that it really irritates people that they had reached a considerable amount of success speaks volumes and only illustrates how my theory about how if a listener was really a fan of Genesis, then they would actually listen to Invisible Touch and admit there were some good pieces on the album instead of trashing it just because it doesn’t suit their idealized view of the band.