YES - Before and After They Were Famous

The music business has always been as fickle as a Harlequin, where The Dividing Line between success and failure depends on a combination of good luck and hard work. Every new band is sailing through Uncertain Weather where they can easily be dragged down by the Undertow and Shipwrecked by having The Knife stuck into them by their record company or by the music press. That's All it takes to finish a band's career. There's Never a Time when it's been easy to make it in the tough music business, but Like It or Not, that's just the Way of the World. No astrological Watcher of the Skies can predict who's going to make it in today's cynical music industry, where the chances of success are about as hard as climbing a White Mountain of snow before the Fading Lights of Dusk close in.

After the Ordeal of seeing the commercial failure of their first album, GENESIS were In Limbo and left out In the Wilderness during a short period of Stagnation when the band members returned to their studies at Charterhouse. They weren't Down and Out or Taking It All Too Hard though, because making great music was far more than Just a Job to Do for the five talented band members. Contrary to being In Hiding, GENESIS were just Counting Out Time in The Waiting Room of The Cinema Show of life before returning to the recording studio. The band members were confident of The Musical Box of talent they had between them and their Horizons were positively bright with the general feeling that It's Gonna Get Better soon. GENESIS were working to a Time Table and they didn't plan on Living Forever on borrowed time, or waiting around each day until Supper's Ready. They were In Too Deep to consider Throwing It All Away at this late stage. The band were more than ready to Turn It On Again with an Invisible Touch of magic with the release of their next album, "Trespass". It would be several albums later though before GENESIS were basking in the warm Afterglow of a successful album release, followed by the Domino effect of success breeding further success in the proverbial Aisle of Plenty.

Although Genesis was the first band of the original five members (Tony Banks; Peter Gabriel; Anthony Phillips; Mike Rutherford; & drummer Chris Stewart) who all attended Charterhouse School together, the two later members of Genesis, Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, were both in previous bands before joining Genesis.

STEVE HACKETT         In 1970, shortly before Steve Hackett placed an ad in Melody Maker in search of a new band and expecting No Reply at All, Steve was in the prog band Quiet World with his brother John Hackett on flute, but it later turned out to be anything but a quiet world for Steve when Peter Gabriel  replied to his ad. 

 1970: Quiet World - The Road - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nlrQfqE_snhw9K6BxgtQYr4LjWkeZSVgQ

PHIL COLLINS       Do You Remember Flaming Youth? No, not many people do, but that was Phil Collins' first band in the flowering of his youth at the tender age of 18. At Face Value, Flaming Youth were a good band and they should have been a big success, but such are the vagaries of the music business that Against All Odds the band never managed to achieve a commercial breakthrough and they broke up in 1970. Flaming Youth are now just a footnote in Genesis' history, but they did remain together long enough to record one commendable album, and here it is.....

 1969: Flaming Youth - Ark 2 - http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjlAupDY0gxFV-1HOBnbQX66waToo3AYv