Dallas 1977: Genesis Bootlegs

Wind and Wuthering, released in December 1976, was the proverbial difficult second album – second, that is, after A Trick of the Tail, which was Genesis’s first album after Peter Gabriel left the band. So says Mike Rutherford, who describes the writing and recording process as all a bit more of a struggle now that the nervous energy and excitement that had energised them during the A Trick of the Tail sessions had dissipated somewhat.

“There were some highlights,” writes Mike in his autobiography, rather damning the album with faint praise. He also comments that it “felt a bit like treading water”.

Tony Banks, on the other hand, regards Wind and Wuthering as one of his favourite Genesis albums, which is perhaps not too much of a surprise, given that – from the opening notes of Eleventh Earl of Mar – his keyboards dominate song after song, with various synths now performing much of the heavy lifting previously done by the grand piano, Hammond organ and mellotron.

Wind and Wuthering offers, according to Tony, some of Genesis’s most complex music – “about as far from three-chord rock as you can get”. It is a richly rewarding listening experience and, together with Selling England by the Pound, this fan’s favourite Genesis album.

Tony has described the music as “yearning” and “romantic” and there is certainly atmosphere and melodrama aplenty, as we embark on a musical adventure that takes us from the rebellious Scottish highlands of the eighteenth century to the windswept moors of northern England.

Highlights include two of Tony’s compositions – One for the Vine and Afterglow, both of which became live favourites. The first took a year to write, he says; the other took as long to write as it does to play. Blood on the Rooftops, which was never played live, is another standout moment and possibly Steve Hackett’s finest writing contribution to the band. Mike has called it their “forgotten song”.

The album’s title – Wind and Wuthering – is wonderfully evocative (as is the artwork – my favourite Genesis album cover) but a bit odd grammatically. It is a nod to the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights, of course. The instrumental pieces Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers… and …In That Quiet Earth – initially one piece but split into two to give an additional songwriting credit to Steve, who was increasingly frustrated that too few of his musical ideas were being used by the band – take their names from the final sentence of the book. The word ‘wuthering’ is an adjective (used to describe a wind that is blowing very strongly), so grammatically speaking it should probably be ‘Windy and Wuthering’.

Clocking in at roughly fifty minutes in length, it is a long album. Three additional songs recorded during the sessions – Match of the Day, Pigeons and Inside and Out – were released as an EP called Spot the Pigeon in May 1977, presumably to help promote the European tour. The first two tracks are rather lightweight (despite reaching number 14 in the charts, Match of the Day was not included on the Genesis Archive 1967–75 box set and does not feature on any of the various compilations), but Inside and Out is an excellent showcase for Steve’s guitar and another somewhat overlooked gem. It’s no surprise he was feeling a bit miffed.

The Wind and Wuthering tour ran from January to July 1977. A British leg in January was followed by a two-month North American leg (including, for the first time, shows at Madison Square Garden and the LA Forum) and then eight dates in Brazil, some of which involved two shows a day. The tour ended with a European leg, which included three nights at Earls Court, London.

The band’s shows at the Palais des Sports de Paris, 11 June to 14 June, were recorded, and a double live album, Seconds Out, released in October 1977. It is a wonderful album (click here to read my appreciation) but seriously misleading as a document of the tour.

There are at least eight excellent bootlegs widely available from the Wind and Wuthering tour: the London Rainbow and Southampton (January), Boston (February), Dallas and San Francisco (March), Sao Paolo (May), Earls Court (June) and Zurich (July). Listening to them offers us a far more complete picture of Genesis live in 1977 than the one presented by Seconds Out.

After some experimentation during the initial British dates (including, it seems, the short-lived inclusion of Lilywhite Lilith and Wot Gorilla), the set list settled down to this, which was what was played at the Moody Coliseum, Dallas on 19 March:

Squonk / One for the Vine / Robbery, Assault and Battery / Your Own Special Way / Firth of Fifth / Carpet Crawlers / …In That Quiet Earth / Afterglow / I Know What I Like / Eleventh Earl of Mar / Supper’s Ready / Dance on a Volcano / Los Endos / The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway / The Musical Box (excerpt)

Overall, it’s a well-judged set list, a reasonable balance between older and newer (ie post-Gabriel) material. Gone from this tour are The Cinema Show, White Mountain, Entangled and Fly on the Windshield. The encore still consists of a segue between two older songs, but now it is The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and the closing section of The Musical Box rather than it. from the Lamb album and a truncated Watcher of the Skies.

Also absent from this tour is Bill Bruford on drums. Mike writes in his autobiography that Bill “came from that jazz world where every time you play it, it should be different. That’s fine to a degree, but there are certain key moments in certain songs that need to be played a certain way.” His replacement was Chester Thompson, who had played with Frank Zappa and a jazz-fusion band called Weather Report. (One of Phil’s moonlighting drumming jobs was with another jazz-fusion band, Brand X.) Thompson played on every subsequent tour up to 1992 (and also in 2007) as well as being involved with various Genesis solo projects.

A shortened version of The Knife was included as an additional encore towards the very end of the tour (and is on the Earls Court bootleg). All in a Mouse’s Night was played on the British leg and then dropped. Your Own Special Way was probably included as the then-current single. On stage, it perhaps falls a bit flat despite some gorgeous additional piano from Tony. When the Spot the Pigeon EP came out, the livelier Inside and Out took its place.

Someone counts us in – is it Phil? – and Squonk gets the show underway (not, as it happens, one of my favourite Genesis set openers). What follows for the next two hours is a joy. I seem to recall Armando Gallo writing in his book I Know What I Like that this was his favourite tour; the band, he wrote, played flawlessly night after night. I agree. For me, this is Genesis at their absolute musical peak.

One for the Vine is the first of the new songs. It translates well to the stage – as does Afterglow a bit later. Set lyrically in the immediate aftermath of some cataclysm or other, Afterglow builds from a hypnotic guitar riff to a spine-tingling climax, complete with angelic choir, a keyboard effect that Tony uses elsewhere during the set (such as during Los Endos) with equally dramatic results. It is one of several goosebumps moment in the show.

Robbery, Assault and Battery bounces with cockney swagger, allowing Phil to dust off his boyhood Artful Dodger character. Carpet Crawlers – a rather unlikely staple of the live show over the years – builds gently but insistently from its delicate opening. And though it is primarily a Tony Banks song, Firth of Fifth is Steve’s moment in the limelight. Often a somewhat peripheral presence in Genesis’s music, here is a chance for guitar to take centre stage.

As the front man, Phil is naturally the centre of attention. I Know What I Like, their first hit single, is a space for his on-stage antics with a tambourine. It is a few minutes of musical light relief before the epic Supper’s Ready.

Seconds Out omits all the between-song chatter – and there’s a lot of it – and with it much of the humour that was integral to a Genesis show. Harry the crook puts in another appearance; this time he is robbing “the very first, the very original McDonalds hamburger restaurant” in Victorian London. Also back are Romeo and Juliet, seemingly hornier than ever. Carpet Crawlers, meanwhile, is “a happy-go-lucky country and western song wot we wrote on the way here”.

Mike joins in the fun, introducing two songs that he was heavily involved in writing. Your Own Special Way – about “Myrtle the Mermaid” – is apparently “racing up the Venezuelan charts”. The story of Eleventh Earl of Mar, meanwhile, is set in Scotland, “a small country just north of England”. This levity is all perhaps a bit too much for Steve who, after shushing the audience, politely informs them that Firth of Fifth is “a song about a river”.

And then we come to Supper’s Ready, which sounds utterly magnificent. It is an outstanding ensemble performance but Phil, in particular, shines. He is quirky and playful, soaring and majestic – offering his own interpretation of the song and more than doing justice to Peter’s original vocal. Cue another outbreak of goosebumps when we reach the As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs climax.

The 747 landing lights and dry ice bathe the stage in ghostly white and Dance on a Volcano / Los Endos closes the main set in thrilling fashion. Mike writes in his autobiography that the light show was increasingly taking over the role of Peter’s stories: “…we were still painting pictures, setting a scene, creating an atmosphere, only with lights not words.”

“Thank you! Come back and see us next time!” says Phil as they return to the stage for the encore.

Well, yes and no.

When Phil offers Steve a lift to the studio to mix the live album, he doesn’t get in. He has left the band. Please Don’t Touch was one of his musical ideas that the band had rejected during the Wind and Wuthering sessions. He records it himself and it becomes the title track of his second solo album, released in 1978.

With that, the most exhilarating chapter in the Genesis story has come to an end.

Some of the above comes from an appreciation of the Seconds Out album that I wrote and uploaded in 2019. It was the inspiration for my Genesis Bootlegs blog series.