The Archive Series: Tony Banks - October 1992

 

Tony Banks: More Tales From The Book Of Genesis

Genesis has joined the ranks of those groups that can count more than one generation among their fans. With a career spanning nearly a quarter of a century, Genesis has undergone remarkable transformations and upheavals, both personally and musically, emerging as one of the biggest acts in the music business. Of course, the astonishing success of vocalist/drummer Phil Collins’ solo career has eclipsed that of the group several times during the past decade, causing several pinhead radio deejays to refer to “Phil Collins and Genesis” when playing a Genesis track … no big deal in itself, but highlighting how perceptions can change when one member of a band achieves great individual success.

Though Phil Collins’ solo efforts may be the most financially rewarding, his bandmates have also forged separate musical identities. Bassist/guitarist Mike Rutherford has released several albums, both as a solo artist and with the Mechanics, and has made his own mark upon contemporary music. The solo career of keyboardist Tony Banks, while never quite catching fire (yet) has included four unusual, highly musical efforts: A Curious Feeling (1979), The Fugitive (1983), Bankstatement (1989) and Still (1992). Any fan of Genesis , whether they’re more into the early or later periods, will find a treasure trove of singularly creative moments in these works, which could only have come from the mind of Tony Banks, one of rock’s most underrated songwriters.

I spoke with Banks during the early part of the current Genesis tour …

Roy Abrams: Is it difficult to go about selecting the songs you include in your set, given the catalog of material Genesis has accumulated?

Tony Banks: It’s not as difficult as you might think, really. Obviously, we as a group are more interested in playing more recent stuff, though we like to reach back a bit as well. We look at the new album and we do as much of that as we can. Then we go back and do the songs from the previous set that we still feel pretty close to … and then we look back into our early days. On this tour, we decided to do a different “old” medley, if you like. We did a twenty-minute medley last time, we’re doing a different one this time, (consisting of material) from the ‘70s.

RA: What made you decide to go the open-air route for this tour?

TB: Well, the main reason was to try and keep the length of the tour down a bit, with quite a few different things going on for everybody. Also, having children at the age where you don’t want to leave them for too long. We felt that the best way of covering the ground and not be touring for two years would be to do the open-air shows. Having done a bit of it on the last tour and quite enjoying it, we thought we’d try it this one time.

RA: Are you as comfortable performing live as you are in the studio?

TB: I’m in this business as a writer, really. Making records I see as an extension of the writing process. Playing live … I enjoy it, but I’m not a natural. I wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t my music; I really wouldn’t do it for any other reason.

RA: Since the Genesis LP (1983), the band has taken two extended leaves of absence, the second larger than the first. What’s it like getting together after those types of layovers?

TB: We’ve been doing that since ’79, really, although the periods off were shorter in those days. Once you set the patterns, it’s easier once you expect it to happen. When you come back, it’s very easy to get back together again. We slip back into it after about a week or so. It’s like you’d never done it any other way, almost. It hasn’t been a problem.

RA: Your solo LP, Still, was released rather quickly after We Can’t Dance. Chronologically speaking, which project were you involved with first, and how long did the recording of both albums take?

TB: I did my solo album before the Genesis record. The recording process of my album took about three months. (On the Genesis record) we took a couple of months to write it and another two or three months to record it. I was in the studio pretty much continuously from one project to the next, which is not really how I like to do it, but it just worked out that way!

RA: Three of the tracks on Still are collaborations. What was the extent of the collaboration as compared with how you work with Genesis?

TB: The collaborations (on Still) were somewhat different because it’s a fairly straight division between music and lyrics. I’d written the songs pretty much completely, melody and everything. The lyrics are from the people I worked with──both Nik Kershaw and Fish are people whose lyrics I like a lot. Also, I think there’s no doubt that singers have a tendency to sing their own lyrics a bit better, ‘cause they know what they can get their teeth around.

RA: How did you go about choosing the four other singers for the album? I know that Jayney Kilmek appeared on your last LP.

TB: Well, she was an easy decision because I’d worked with her, and I like working with a girl singer as well, because it’s so different from what I do with Genesis. Fish is someone I’d worked with in the past, quite a long time ago. We got on really well, and we always talked about doing some more stuff. When I decided that I was going to use a number of singers (on this record), I thought Fish was an obvious choice.

RA: Has anyone mentioned that “Another Murder Of A Day” (a Fish/Banks composition on Still) has a distinct early Genesis feel?

TB: Well, to be honest, it was a slightly conscious thing. I mean, I can write those kinds of things all the time, you know, but it’s more difficult now within Genesis; we don’t do quite as many things of that nature. Fish has his roots in a band called Marillion, which at one point was considered to be a sort of Genesis copy. He’s about as long-winded as I am, so that two of us did one long track where we let ourselves go a bit. I wasn’t going to do an “old” song or a “new” song; I just let myself do what came naturally.

RA: On the new record and the Bankstatement LP, you sing one track each, but on The Fugitive, you did all the vocals on the entire record. I’m curious as to why you moved away from that.

TB: Well, there’s somewhat of a divided opinion on the state of my vocals! I thought that on The Fugitive, I did a reasonable job, but the point is, there’s more to it than that. If you’re going to be the singer of an album, you’ve got to be able to front it in some kind of way. It means if you ever do a video or a TV show, you’ve got to be the singer. I really don’t feel comfortable doing that at all, and my voice──although I can get away with it in the studio──really isn’t good enough for a live situation, certainly not without quite a lot more experience. I don’t have any particular desire to promote myself as a singer, but on the other hand I’ve done one song on each of the last two albums to keep my hand in. I think it’s quite fun to do that, to remind yourself of what you’re putting these other people through all the time!

RA: Is there anybody that you have not worked with that you might eventually like to put something together with?

TB: Not specifically. There’s a lot of people I like, but it’s really a matter of when the time comes up, I start thinking about it. It’s not necessarily “I want to work with the people I admire the most,” because I don’t think they need me, for a start I chose Nik Kershaw this time, who’s someone I’ve admired for years, because he seemed to have a fairly blank period recently, and I thought he might be interested in doing something.

RA: Do you foresee a time when you and Peter Gabriel might work together again?

TB: I certainly don’t think it’s impossible. Peter and I are good friends, and we like each other musically as well, you know. [Laughing] It’s a difficult question, because it gets around to the fact that Peter doesn’t really need me; do you know what I mean? We’d only get back together, I think, because it would be a fun thing to do. We both have careers of our own, but we definitely worked together well back in the early ‘70s. Some of the songs that became classic Genesis songs were the results of the two of us working together. So, it’s certainly not something that I would rule out. We never really talked about it because we’ve been going our own musical way.

RA: I understand you’ve got a great deal of unreleased material. Will it ever come out?

TB: The trouble is, I’m one of those people who, if I haven’t done anything with a song for a while, it tends to get forgotten and discarded. I’ve got some instrumental things that I’ve accumulated over the years. I’ve always been hoping to do a film soundtrack, to get some of those pieces in. At some point I may decide to do an instrumental album to get it all out of my system! You see, when it comes to my songs, I tend not to write a lyric until I know that the song is going to come out. I tend to work with music first. So, there’s a lot of material; I have no lack of stuff. But when you’re doing a new record, you like it have more recently written songs, I think.

RA: Have you ever considered doing any kind of solo tour to stretch out on your own? Assuming, of course, that you could find the right people to work with.

TB: It’s something I’ve thought about, but decided against, for a few reasons. The problem is this: in the early days with Genesis, we were onstage, playing songs nobody had ever heard, and tried to convince the audience from the stage. I don’t think I could do the same thing with my music because I haven’t got the necessary projection myself unless I was with some other “right” people. But I can’t start right at the beginning again like that. I’ve always said that if I had some success as a solo artist, I would be more inclined to tour. When Mike (Rutherford) went on the road with the Mechanics, he had three or four songs he could go to in a set, like “Silent Running,” that people at least had some sort of idea about, and the rest of the stuff could build to these moments. I don’t really have that yet. I know a lot of people like the solo albums. Obviously, I like ‘em all. It’s difficult to know──you never know; the reason they didn’t do better than they did is that they didn’t have any singles on them, or anything that wound up capturing enough people’s imagination. Unfortunately, rock music is totally controlled by singles, and I would say that singles have always been my weakest area.

RA: What are some of your keyboard and overall songwriting influences?

TB: Back in the early days, I was most influenced by the writers from the ‘60s: The Beatles, the Kinks, the Tamla Motown stuff. Those songs excited me the most at that time. As for players from that period, there’s Alan Price, who was one of the first keyboard players I ever noticed as a keyboard player. From the late ‘60s, there was Keith Emerson when he was with the Nice … and the keyboardist in Procol Harum.

RA: How would you rate yourself as a keyboard player?

TB: It always sounds like false modesty, but I know that I’m pretty limited. There are a lot of people with a hell of a lot better technique than me. The only way I can judge myself is as a writer. I think that as a writer, and as a player of my own songs, that I have an originality. That’s the strength, if you like. Certainly not in the technique, because it’s no better than in dozens of keyboard players you could find anywhere. I consider that, in my career, I’ve been very lucky with a lot of the people I’ve been with, you know, which has got me into the position where I can actually be a professional player.

RA: What keyboards are you currently using?

TB: My current favorites, well, I’ve got the Roland JD800, which is sort of like the D50 but you’ve got all the faders, so you can alter tones as you go through. Also, the basic sounds are better than the D50. The Korg Wavestation is my other favorite instrument I’m using. On this tour, I’m not using anything that I used on the last tour, in fact! Some of the old sounds that I like I’ve got sampled and stored on the E3.

RA: Your lyrics, over time, have gone from a storytelling approach (e.g., “One For the Vine”) to more personal songs like “Still It Takes Me By Surprise.” Which approach do you find more challenging?

TB: The reason why it’s taken me longer to get to more personal things is that I find it more difficult. Sometimes I’m writing about real things in a fantasy, but “One For The Vine” was really sort of an allegory. I still read a lot of fantasy, but I’m slightly more aware that, at the moment, fantasy in rock music is something that makes it appear very dated. With songs like “Undertow” on And Then There Were Three I first started writing with a more “real” kind of sense, although there’s been the odd fantasy lyric thrown in, like “Cul-de-Sac.”

RA: Have the technological advancements altered your basic approach to songwriting?

TB: Definitely, I think. The technology can lead you in a direction that you wouldn’t have otherwise thought about. Particularly, I like the sampling machines. If you sample little riffs of music or just random sounds that occur in the studio when you’re playing, you can get something that sets you off on an idea that you wouldn’t have thought of.

RA: Can you pick out a few songs that are really special to you?

TB: “Supper’s Ready,” from the early period, was a combination of bits and pieces, and stood out, if for no other reason because of its length, but I always liked the way it went from mood to mood. From the slightly later period, one of my favorites has always been “Duchess.” It’s a very simple song, and the first time we ever used a drum machine on anything to do with Genesis. It set us off in a slightly different direction. In terms of my solo stuff, A Curious Feeling has always been very close to me──the whole album, particularly the instrumentals. “The Waters of Lethe” is one of my favorite instrumental things that I’ve ever written. The Fugitive LP was fun for me because it involved singing and taught me a lot. I think the atmosphere on that album works as a whole. On Bankstatement, my favorite track is “I’ll Be Waiting” and on the new record my favorite is “Water Out Of Wine.” It’s a personal thing, it captured the mood, and I love Jayney’s voice on it.

RA: How about anything from We Can’t Dance?

TB: Well, I love ‘em all really. “Dreaming While You Sleep” is probably my favorite track──it’s got drama and an atmosphere about it which I think is one of the keys to Genesis. “No Son Of Mine” and “I Can’t Dance” also really work. “I Can’t Dance” has no excess baggage; it’s a very straightforward thing, but it’s got a real atmosphere.

RA: Phil Collins has referred to you as the most important songwriter in Genesis, in terms of being the nucleus of what makes the band unique. Do you have any comment on that?

TB: Phil always tries to redress the balance a little bit when given the chance, because there’s always the tendency for the media to view Genesis as Phil’s vehicle. He likes to stress what everybody else does. Over the years, I suppose I’ve been responsible for more Genesis music than anybody else, and I certainly don’t mind that being emphasized. From any other point of view, as a performer, I don’t care that much, really. I don’t particularly care what people think of me as a keyboard player; it’s as a writer that I want to be judged.

RA: You’ve been a part of one of the most evolving, creative bands for more than twenty years. Does it feel like that long of a time?

TB: I never think of it in time scale; it’s a funny thing. It was ’68 when we released our first single … [pause] It’s just part of my life, it’s what I am it’s my identity. [Laughs] I’ve never looked ahead or looked back. I would never have anticipated in the 1970s that the band would still be going in the 1990s. I would have been somewhat horrified in a way, I think! What we’ve managed to do is adapt the band to our own needs. It doesn’t take up all of our time, we do things outside of the music business, and yet still keep Genesis going, still producing music we find satisfying. It’s an incredible luxury, really, but I’m not questioning the luck.

© Roy Abrams 2021

Originally published in The Island-Ear, October 5, 1992