When was Genesis officially not prog?

Upbeat Tango Monday wrote: Commercial this, commercial that. Every band wants to sell records. As a matter of fact, Genesis "sold out" when they started doing prog, since it was the next big thing...and that's ok. That said, if we leave From Genesis to Revelation and Calling All Stations behind (maybe), every record has proggy moments, Dodo/Lurker, The Brazilian and Fading Lights, for instance.

I haven't heard "From Genesis to Revelation", but on "Calling all Stations" I would think at least "The Dividing Line" is a bit proggy.

They never totally left prog alone. If anything, they should be praised more for fusing together prog (unusual chords and time signatures) and pop (catchy tunes). Don't tell me Tonight, Tonight, Tonight isn't at least a bit prog, for just one example.

Edited by RoeDent - May 06 2017 at 00:11

As far as I understand, the more prominent composer remained being Tony Banks, and for the most part the leader of the band, so I still believe he was more responsible for any change of direction than Collins. On the other hand, I think they have agreed that it was mostly a collective decision.

^DSOTM was quite popular. There was plenty of popular Prog in its day. Beyond that Prog was and still is an unsuccessful genre because it was and remains a largely unknown genre (if it is a genre at all).

The OP is not asking when Genesis became Pop. It attempted to be popular with Harold the Barrel, Seven Stones, Harlequin. It got its first taste of popularity with I Know What I Like. It started introducing commercial schlock with Robbery, Assault and Battery and with All in a Mouse's Night. The OP asks when they were no longer Prog. I say they were no longer Prog with And Then There Were Three... because they were no longer experimenting. Having grandiose keyboard sounds warmed over from the previous album does not make it Prog. Being keyboard heavy (along with occasional obligatory and very pedestrian guitar leads) does not make it Progressive. The only experiment, if there was one was to shorten pieces. They found their Pop calling by combining shortened pieces with schlock to produce Follow You Follow Me.

Duke has not a bit of Prog on it except for Duke's Travels. Duke's Travels and Second Home By the Sea are both Neo-Prog. The title track on Abacab is a guilty pleasure for me. Mama I enjoy without guilt. The rest since ATTWT is Pop in the commercial schlock sense.





Edited by HackettFan - May 06 2017 at 23:08

It depends.

Edited by Dean - May 07 2017 at 03:13

Of my two fav bands---especially in the 80's ---early 90's---Genesis always kept the quality high and put out some really great proggy material----was it Supper's ready prog?---no that is some deep art---but they did some very tasteful long tunes and never got cheesy---not even on Invisible Touch.

Clearly when Hackett left, so did any resemblance to a symphonic Prog band. I agree with Dean here, ATTWT just didn't feel like a Genesis album. I really do think that in 1973 - Floyd released a superbly engineered and produced album in DSOTM, but to me that again was  not prog - the tracks are all far too short and instrumentally is has nothing of the complexity of it's contemporary releases (TFTO being the obvious to compare it with). Lots of none-proggers love DSOTM, but all would LOATHE TFTO. Case closed. And lots of none-proggers started to like Genesis in 1978 - and thus that the acid-test.

Dean wrote: It depends. It depends on who you are, where you live, how old you are now and when you first got into Genesis (other than hearing them on the radio or listening to them on Spottythigh...) More over it depends on how old you were when: Peter Gabriel left Genesis Steve Hackett left Genesis Phil Collins released Face Value Because if your answer to any of those three statements is less than, say, 10 then your view of when Genesis stopped being a troo-bloo Prog band is likely to radically different to mine. Similarly if you don't live in Middle-England, or at least didn't live in the Home Counties during the 1970s then your answer is also going to be somewhat different to mine. And from my perspective as a Genesis fan from 1972 through to their appearance at the Knebworth Festival in 1978 I'm going to have to say that the Spot the Pigeon EP was the moment that I when I started to have my doubts and the hearing '...And Then There Were Three' on its release in 1978 was a heart-sinking moment for me because whatever that album was, it wasn't a "Genesis" album as far as I was concerned.

Great post.  And even though I'm a different age, different location, I come to about the same conclusion -- if I hear you right.  Are you saying that Wind and Wuthering was the last "Ale by the Fire/Chills on the back of your neck" moment for you?  It was for me, although I still enjoy some of the post-Wuthering too, if in a different context. 

Dean wrote: It depends. It depends on who you are, where you live, how old you are now and when you first got into Genesis (other than hearing them on the radio or listening to them on Spottythigh...) More over it depends on how old you were when: Peter Gabriel left Genesis Steve Hackett left Genesis Phil Collins released Face Value Because if your answer to any of those three statements is less than, say, 10 then your view of when Genesis stopped being a troo-bloo Prog band is likely to radically different to mine. Similarly if you don't live in Middle-England, or at least didn't live in the Home Counties during the 1970s then your answer is also going to be somewhat different to mine. And from my perspective as a Genesis fan from 1972 through to their appearance at the Knebworth Festival in 1978 I'm going to have to say that the Spot the Pigeon EP was the moment that I when I started to have my doubts and the hearing '...And Then There Were Three' on its release in 1978 was a heart-sinking moment for me because whatever that album was, it wasn't a "Genesis" album as far as I was concerned.

Oh do come along!

Since Dude. Despite its poppish approach Dude mops some earlier "progressive" classic albums, such as Relayer. By simple melodies. Because they never lost they sense for melody (and harmony), that´s why GENESIS is the greatest Prog Band of all time. Well, in all honesty, they did utmost crap as well (when they couldn´t dance). And practically all bands did crap.