Holy Mother of God! Though many thought Peter Gabriel’s departure in 1975 signaled the end of Genesis, the remaining members—with drummer Phil Collins taking on lead vocals—proved them wrong with 1976’s “A Trick of the Tail,” their biggest selling album up to that point. The Tabletop discusses this pivotal album, which has aged a lot better than the protagonist in “Ripples…”!
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An amazing episode for an amazing album.
This album showed that, not only was Genesis not Peter Gabriel, he clearly needed to leave the band to move on to other things. With Tony and Steve there, and without Gabriel’s intensely cerebral approach, the band clearly had more lush, classically-organized but romantically-sounding material in them. The real move away from prog required Steve to leave, because he still carried the torch for it.
The poll made sense. Without question, like Tom, I feel “Ripples” is my favorite. It has deep personal meeting for me and along with the two other remarkable slow tracks, got me through many a night in my student days. Hackett’s guitar work is jaw-dropping here. But in the background is Tony’s organizing energy. The instrumental version of “Ripples” that Genesis Piano Project does really brings this out. It’s the middle section (B of A-B-A) that lifts this song from the ordinary to the plane of masterpiece. Listen to the version of Genesis Piano Project.
“Ripples” is based on a poem by John Crowe Ransom, “Blue Girls.” Tony had a frame of mind for this, as heard again in “Burning Rope” on ATTWT, practically a paraphrase of the wise words of Ecclesiastes (see 9:10).
In terms of sheer energy, “Dance on a Volcano” and “Squonk” are the prize-takers. No arguing with that.
This was a fantastic Episode on Trick! The two hours flew by. Thanks for all the good work!
Loved this episode about an album that is arguably my favourite of them all. Allow me to pose a question, however: Do you think ATOTT was “peak Genesis”? In other words, did any studio album that came afterwards reach the same heights of inventiveness and musical brilliance?
Regarding your interpretation of “Volcano” being about an actual volcano, I always took it more as an analogy. I imagined the narrator being a record label executive, preaching to the band.
As in “you better try harder if you want to survive as a band, now that you lost your star member. Other bands in your situation have tried and failed (Crosses are green). “
In my book it is the same message as the song “Down and Out”, which coincidentally, or not, also came after Genesis lost a member.
Really enjoying your podcasts. Nice to hear some other people who share a love of Genesis and their music which has been a constant in my life. This is the first album I remember hearing (I was 17) and as one of you say there are no bad tracks. My favourites are Ripples and Mad Mad Moon but the whole thing is wonderful. I love the lyrics of these two songs especially. Anyway back to listen to some other episodes….
Thanks, Kevin! Glad to have you on board!
https://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/issue/view/437
Check this out!
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Stacy, you’re on the money! Ripples is definitely not as good as Robbery, Assault, and Battery
Phil and Tony are swinging on this one. Entangled is the great quieter song on this album, vs. Ripples.