Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Genesis
Label: Virgin Records
Released: 1978
Rating: 4/5
And indeed, there were only three left…After the departure of the brilliant guitar virtuoso Steve Hackett, Genesis didn’t go looking for a new guitarist and instead decided that bassist Mike Rutherford would simply take over studio guitar duties. Rutherford did a surprisingly good job on this album, so Hackett’s exit isn’t as noticeable as many probably feared when it came out. Sure, a fair chunk of the romance is gone, because Hackett’s guitar, together with Tony Banks’ keyboards, meaning the interplay between those two instruments, was the band’s main trademark, the thing that defined most of their best records. Rutherford, an excellent bassist, was never a top-tier guitarist, but solid enough for what the band needed at the time, and the guitar work on this album is, in my opinion, Rutherford’s best. The split of “duties” among the musicians also became more clearly defined: Collins on vocals and drums, Rutherford on guitar and bass, and Banks on keyboards.
On this album Genesis started writing somewhat shorter songs, and those majestic epics and layered compositions, with their heaps of time changes and multi-part harmonies that marked the band in its golden days, are gone. The arrangements got less classical and more standard, in the verse/chorus/bridge/chorus mold. Even so, the band’s trademark sound, in all its melancholy and romanticism, is still present on most of the record, and a few avant-garde touches are still around too, even though Banks dropped the Mellotron and mostly moved over to synthesizers. The lyrics also started to shift gradually, with the romantic, fantasy, mysterious and surreal themes making room for love songs, largely thanks to Phil Collins, who was having plenty of personal trouble with a marriage at the time and couldn’t wait to “get it off their chest”. Many people today blame Collins for the band going commercial after Hackett left, but in many ways that’s unfair, since Collins only became dominant as a lyricist and songwriter in the early 80s, that is, once the solo career kicked off, while here Collins’ musical contribution was still smaller than that of the other two members. But like I said, this record was the last time their recognizable sound was still on display, thanks above all to Tony Banks’ keyboards, which somehow remained the band’s last “progressive” element after Hackett’s departure. In spirit, the record is a kindred sibling to its predecessor “Wind & Wuthering” (1977): it’s still mystical, evening-magical, there’s a certain nostalgia in the air, in short, the band’s original spirit is still here, and many of those who sneer at this album, claiming that this is no longer the “real” band, are seriously mistaken. “And Then There Were Three” is still mostly a progressive record, even though it contains plenty of ballads (“Undertow”, “Snowbound”, “Many Too Many”) and even one pop hit (“Follow You Follow Me”). It’s precisely because of that last one that this is a very important album for the band, since that ballad marked the key turning point in their musical philosophy and the gradual end of Genesis as a progressive rock band, and the birth of Genesis as a pop attraction with millions of records sold and hit singles.
There are quite a few excellent tracks on “And Then There Were Three”, like the dramatic opener “Down And Out”, with its deliberately uneven shifts on guitar and rhythm, which is nice proof that Rutherford was no guitar illiterate. At the same time, it’s something special again, something new. The gorgeous ballad “Undertow” is one of the band’s best romantic ballads with Collins on vocals, and without a speck of the sugariness that was all over their later ballads. “Ballad Of Big” is built on multi-part time harmonies and will please most fans of classic Genesis. The only epic in the true sense of the word on this album is “Burning Rope”, which at seven minutes is also the longest track on it and even sounds like it could have come from the previous two albums. It’s undoubtedly one of the best songs on the album, and the closing section is especially brilliant, where Rutherford, with a stellar solo worthy of Hackett, shows off some of their best guitar chops, and where Banks is once again fantastic on keyboards. “Deep In the Motherlode” is a progressive composition of the kind all fans of classic Genesis will love, with an unusual, enigmatic lyric, and it could just as well have been on the previous album. “Many Too Many” is another good ballad, where we can also hear Rutherford’s superb three-part guitar harmony, Banks’ classic keyboards and an excellent vocal performance from Collins. “Scenes From a Night’s Dream” is a half hard rock/AOR track inspired by the comic Little Nemo, with a great rhythm, and it’s another solid and innovative song that hints at where the band was increasingly being pulled. “Say It’s Alright Joe” is another excellent progressive ballad built on a jazz rhythm, where Rutherford shines on guitar and bass, along with Collins’ layered drum passages. “The Lady Lies” is a brilliant romantic piece that surprises with Rutherford’s metal riffs on guitar and a phenomenal jazz rhythm on bass and drums in the chorus, as well as with an interesting fantasy lyric about a hero full of virtue who overcomes every obstacle, refuses to be led into temptation, but in the end still succumbs to a mysterious woman in the forest. Undoubtedly one of the best songs on the album, if not the best. The final song on the record, the ballad “Follow You, Follow Me”, built on an ultra-melodic chorus, a simple Rutherford riff, multi-part vocal harmonies and Collins’ heartfelt vocal, was the band’s first big pop hit, which brought them their first hit in the US and finally brought them closer to a mainstream audience too. Girls started turning up at their shows in droves, ones who had previously steered clear of a band that, by their standards, was “too weird and intellectual”. As Collins said in an interview, with this song the band dared to say “I love you” for the first time. This hugely successful but also controversial ballad heralded the band’s gradual farewell to complex progressive compositions and a gradual turn toward AOR, or pop. Even though most prog fans can’t stand it, mainly because of what it symbolizes, to me personally it’s one of their better pop creations and one of their most beautiful ballads.
Most of the songs on the album show that the band, in its “weakened” lineup, kept its recognizable sound, musical quality and technical polish despite dropping some of the progressive elements and moving toward more compact compositions. That’s why I can say that the remaining three members, after Hackett’s sudden departure and in a year that was unkind to progressive rock, picked themselves up fairly successfully and made a very good album. It’s not one of the masterpieces of progressive rock, nor among the best work the band did with Hackett, but it’s still certainly the best album under the direction of the trio, which became the band’s longest-running and commercially most successful lineup, and also the most controversial, especially for most progressive rock fans. The hit “Follow You Follow Me” is undoubtedly the key song that changed the band’s musical image forever, winning them a huge number of new fans while eventually losing quite a few old ones. True, some of the keyboard textures aren’t quite up to Banks’ abilities, and Rutherford is of course no Hackett, but times were tough for progressive rock back then, punk was at the peak of its success, and I’d say that for its time Genesis did very well with this record. “And Then There Were Three” is therefore a very good album that should appeal to fans of both classic and “commercial” Genesis, since it’s a sort of bridge between the two eras, when the band had already started to “shed its skin”. They were still progressive, but already had one foot in pop.
Line-up
Phil Collins – vocals, drums, percussion
Mike Rutherford – guitar, bass guitar, backing vocals
Tony Banks – keyboards, backing vocals
Production
David Hentschel and Genesis
Tracklist
1. Down And Out (5:24)
2. Undertow (4:45)
3. Ballad Of Big (4:48)
4. Snowbound (4:28)
5. Burning Rope (7:09)
6. Deep In The Motherlode (5:12)
7. Many Too Many (3:30)
8. Scenes From A Nights Dream (3:29)
9. Say It’s Alright Joe (4:19)
10. The Lady Lies (6:04)
11. Follow You, Follow Me (3:59)
Album length: 53:07
