Genesis: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins and Beyond

Sam Coghlan was Deputy Director and Senior Consultant of the Thames Ontario Library Service Board, Southwestern Ontario.

The photographs that fill more than half of this book are colourful and lively and capture very much of the appeal of the rock group, Genesis. The pictures predominate visually, but the text easily asserts its own value and proves itself to be of merit. This book is more than simply a padded version of a fan’s souvenir.

The text reads like a series of interviews artfully edited rather than like a rock journalist’s exegesis. The need for the writer to analyze the group’s lyrics or to interpret songs and albums in light of the history of Genesis is lessened because the members of the group do this well themselves in the various interviews. Their music has been labelled “cerebral” and their appreciation of it certainly shows a clear intelligence on the part of all interviewed.

The book does not provide a straight narrative historical account of Genesis’s development. The history of their career is covered though, as interviews are presented both with the stalwarts (Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks) and with the two Genesis leadmen who have developed significant reputations individually (Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins). Their discussions of the development of Genesis and of their own developments within the group, of course, carry more weight than would a journalist’s musing from the outside. It is not a reference book. No index is included. But this book should be important to students of popular rock music as well as to Genesis fans because it reveals much of the intellectual substance of a major force in rock.