Hello, I Must Be Going! is the second solo studio album by Genesis drummer Phil Collins. The album was released in late 1982 on Virgin in the UK and Ireland, Atlantic in North America, and WEA in the rest of the world. The album was promoted with a tour of the same name. The album brought Collins his first nomination for British Male Artist at the Brit Awards in 1983.
Nine of the album's ten tracks made some sort of chart worldwide, with a cover version of The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love" the album's most significant hit. Other tracks include the modern-jazz instrumental "The West Side", and "Thru These Walls", a dark voyeuristic song about a man listening through the wall to his neighbours partaking in unseemly nighttime activities. The dark "I Don't Care Anymore" reached No. 39 in the U.S., giving Collins his first Grammy Award nomination for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male in 1984.
The album is named after the Marx Brothers' song of the same name, featured in their 1930 movie Animal Crackers.
Face Value is the debut solo studio album by English singer-songwriter Phil Collins. It was released in February 1981 on the Virgin label internationally and Atlantic Records in North America. The album topped the UK Album Chart on its initial release and was well-received by critics. It opens with his successful debut single "In the Air Tonight", which had a dark mood inspired by the separation from his wife Andrea and rose to number two on the UK Singles Chart in January 1981. The album was reissued, with bonus tracks included, on 29 January 2016. The reissued version's cover art is taken in the same fashion as the original's, except it features a present-day Collins instead.
By 1978, Phil Collins had been part of the English progressive rock band Genesis for almost eight years. After spending the first five of those years as a drummer, Collins reluctantly accepted the role of frontman of the group following original vocalist Peter Gabriel's departure at the end of the tour for their concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Collins took over vocals for 1976's Trick of the Tail. While still featuring the complex progressive rock the group had been recording since its 1970 album Trespass, it also featured a more mainstream sound which attracted a larger audience. Their 1978 album, ...And Then There Were Three..., featured their first crossover hit single, "Follow You Follow Me".
Collins had been planning to record a solo album for some time. He told Modern Drummer in 1979:
One ambition is to do my own album which will have a lot of variety. I write songy [sic] stuff, as well as some from the Brand X area. I'm also hip to what Eno does - those kind of soundtracks which I've always been interested in - two or three minutes of just mood. The album, when it does come out, will have a lot of different styles on it.
Following ...And Then There Were Three... and a world tour across the United States, Western Europe, and Japan, Collins took a leave of absence from the group to deal with his troubled family life. Collins' first wife filed for divorce in 1979 and left Collins in the home they shared in England by himself. Collins reportedly stayed in his house for weeks working on songs that reflected his personal life. Initially, Collins did not want to record them for an album until Atlantic Records, Genesis' record label in America, and Virgin Records, his label overseas, offered him a solo contract. Collins would base the majority of Face Value on the divorce he had endured. During the conception of the album, Collins had forged a close friendship with John Martyn and contributed towards his 1980 album Grace and Danger, which contained a similar narrative relating to divorce and relationship breakdown. Some of Collins' material that he wrote for Face Value made its way onto Genesis' subsequent follow-up, Duke. Collins' radio-friendly vocals and increased songwriting contributions helped to make Duke a major commercial success and Genesis's first UK number one album in April 1980.
Recording sessions for Face Value took place at the Town House in London between late winter of 1979 and early January 1981. According to Classic Albums, in what was then considered a controversial move at the time, Collins, who grew up listening to American R&B as a child in Chiswick, decided to incorporate an R&B horn section, hiring the Phenix Horns, who played backup for Earth, Wind & Fire. Collins refused to listen to friends who had advised him not to use the horns and they would play a major role for most of his solo career. Assistant recording engineer Nick Launay was hired after Collins was impressed with his work with Public Image Limited.
Collins also used another then-controversial method in using drum programming rather than just live drum instrumentation despite his reputation as a drummer. Collins said he wanted to experiment with different sounds and was inspired by the work of his former band mate Peter Gabriel, who had used drum programming on his last album. Collins was often part of these sessions. Many of the songs' arrangements were done by Collins and session arranger Tom Tom 84. He also incorporated Indian-styled violins, played by L. Shankar, for additional textures. The last recording session for Face Value was in January 1981 prior to the release of the first single, "In the Air Tonight". Atlantic CEO Ahmet Ertegun advised Collins to perform drums during the verses and opening of the song, whereas the album version did not feature live drumming until the bridge. Several songs on the album featured an autobiographical view into Collins' life at the time, mainly to the anger he felt at his impending divorce. Rumours about "In the Air Tonight" being similarly autobiographical were widely circulated in America; in fact, the lyrics were ad-libbed and have no actual meaning. Other songs such as "You Know What I Mean" (a song that was used on Frida's Something's Going On album) and "If Leaving Me Is Easy" were solemn ballads that talked of heartbreak. "I Missed Again" also had a solemn tone but was revised as a peppier song while still focusing its theme of heartbreak. The jazzy ballad "This Must Be Love" focused on Collins' then new romance at the time with Jill Tavelman, who would be his second wife (and second divorce).
The album features songs of different genres. While technically a rock and pop offering, the basis of many of the tracks lies in R&B with light funk influences especially in "I'm Not Moving", for which Collins sang his backgrounds with the vocoder. The two instrumentals, "Droned" and "Hand in Hand", were progressive rock instrumentals with the first featuring an exotic African sound, while the Weather Report-inspired "Hand in Hand" featured jazz elements and a children's choir humming the music and improvisational instrumentation by Collins and the Phenix Horns. "The Roof Is Leaking" had Delta blues and country elements. "Behind the Lines" was originally released by Genesis on their Duke album as a progressive rock number, yet Collins worked up a new, horn-driven R&B/funk-inspired arrangement after speeding up the tape on the Genesis version and thinking that the sped-up version sounded like a Michael Jackson song. The album featured a cover of The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", which included instruments and vocals playing in reverse while Collins provided multi-layered background vocals and sparse drumming. After the song ends, Collins can be heard quietly singing "Over the Rainbow" in reference to the recent murder of John Lennon; this final song is unlisted on most releases of the album (the original US cassette version being an exception), and would be the only time Collins used a "hidden" track on one of his own releases. Three of the most notable songs that Collins wrote during the Face Value sessions, but were ultimately omitted were "Misunderstanding" - later reworked as a Genesis song on their 1980 album Duke, "How Can You Just Sit There", which evolved into "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)", and what would become "Don't Lose My Number", which wouldn't appear until Collins' third album No Jacket Required in 1985.
Collins regarded Face Value as a highly personal project, which gave rise to the iconic cover art of the album with Collins' face in extreme close-up - originally intended to symbolise the listener "getting into his head"; the reverse side of the sleeve showed the rear of his head, although the CD version of the album placed this image on the insert card instead. To emphasise the personalness of the album, Collins' also hand wrote all of the liner and sleeve notes, even down to the legal statements on the outer circumference of the centre label of the disc itself. Both of the main visual elements of Face Value - the facial close-up, and the handwritten notes would became a motif of Collins' subsequent albums until 1996's Dance Into The Light.
Released on 13 February 1981, Face Value became an immediate success, reaching No. 1 in the UK, Canada, and other European countries, while peaking in the top ten in the U.S. "In the Air Tonight" became the album's biggest hit, reaching No. 2 in the UK, No. 1 in three other countries, and becoming a top twenty hit in the U.S. Other songs such as "I Missed Again" found modest success reaching No. 14 in the UK and No. 19 in the U.S., while the third single, "If Leaving Me Is Easy", reached No. 17 in the UK but was not released in America. Sales of the album reached five million in the U.S. and went five-times platinum in the UK and ten-times platinum in Canada. No solo tour was produced from this album.
Seconds Out is the second live album from the English rock band Genesis, released as a double album in October 1977 on Charisma Records. It is formed of recordings from their four dates at the Palais des Sports in Paris in June 1977 on their Wind & Wuthering Tour. "The Cinema Show" was recorded in 1976 at the Pavillon de Paris during their A Trick of the Tail Tour.
Seconds Out received average to positive reviews upon its release, and reached No. 4 in the UK and No. 47 in the US. Its release coincided with the departure of guitarist Steve Hackett who left the group during the album's mixing stages, thus reducing Genesis to the core trio of keyboardist Tony Banks, guitarist Mike Rutherford, and drummer and singer Phil Collins who recorded ...And Then There Were Three... by this time. Seconds Out has been reissued for CD in 1994 and 2009, the latter as part of the Genesis Live 1973–2007 box set.
Seconds Out is the band's second live album following 1973's Genesis Live. While the earlier live set had been released to mark time while they recorded Selling England by the Pound, Seconds Out was planned as a major release, an authoritative document of Genesis' sound with Phil Collins as frontman and lead vocalist. The recording includes former Weather Report/Frank Zappa drummer Chester Thompson at the start of his long tenure as concert drummer for the band. Former Yes and King Crimson drummer Bill Bruford, the first drummer to take over for Collins on the stage, played drums on the band's 1976 tour, from which the recording of "The Cinema Show" was taken. Thompson replaced Bruford on the band's 1977 tour, which was the source of all other songs on the album. Guitarist Steve Hackett left the band during mid-1977 as Seconds Out was being mixed. Phil Collins recalls that one day he was driving to Trident Studios in London and saw Hackett walking, so he stopped and offered him a lift, which Hackett declined. When he got to the studio, Banks and Rutherford told him he just phoned to tell them he was leaving the band. Hackett later recalled that he thought if he got in the car, Collins would have been the one person to talk him out of leaving.
On the Genesis – A History video (1990), Tony Banks jokes that, after Hackett announced his departure from the band, "we just mixed him out of the rest of the album and that was it, really". Although Hackett's guitar is clearly audible, it certainly lacks the volume of previous albums or, even, rough soundboard mix bootlegs from the 1977 tour. During a radio interview after the album release, Collins stated that most of the 1977 sections were taken from the third of the four-night run at the Palais des Sports in Paris from 13 June 1977, which was also recorded and broadcast in part by French radio RTL.
The album's credits include details of which drummer(s) are playing on each song. Mixed in with these credits are the notes "Robbery Assault & Battery – keyboard solo Phil" and "Cinema Show – Bill Bruford, Phil keyboard solo". This should be read to mean that Collins played the drum kit (along with Thompson or Bruford) during that solo, not that Collins played keyboards.
A critical and commercial success, the album hit No. 4 in the UK and No. 47 in the U.S., where their popularity was still gaining steam.
Until Genesis Archive 1967–75 (1998), Seconds Out contained the only official live recording of Genesis concert staple "Supper's Ready".
Wind & Wuthering is the eighth studio album by English progressive rock band Genesis. It was released on 17 December 1976 on Charisma Records and is their last studio album to feature guitarist Steve Hackett. Following the success of their 1976 tour to support their previous album A Trick of the Tail, the group relocated to Hilvarenbeek in the Netherlands to record a follow-up album, their first recorded outside the UK. Writing and recording caused internal friction as Hackett felt some of his contributions were dropped in favour of material by keyboardist Tony Banks.
The album received a positive response from critics and contributed to the band's growing popularity in the US. It reached No. 7 in the UK and No. 26 in the US and sold steadily, eventually reaching Gold certification by the British Phonographic Institute and the Recording Industry Association of America. The single "Your Own Special Way" was the band's first charting single in the US, reaching number 62. The band's 1977 tour, their last with Hackett, was their first with Chester Thompson hired as their live drummer. Three tracks left off the album were released during this time as an extended play, Spot the Pigeon. The album was reissued with a new stereo and 5.1 surround sound mix in 2007.
By mid-1976, Genesis had survived the departure of original frontman Peter Gabriel, with drummer Phil Collins taking over lead vocals, and produced the critically and commercially successful album A Trick of the Tail and supporting tour. Recording began in September 1976 with producer David Hentschel at Relight Studios in Hilvarenbeek, Netherlands, the first time Genesis recorded an album outside of the UK. The band recorded quickly and finished the basic tracks for the album in twelve days. Further work on the album was completed in October at Trident Studios in London; the album was mixed there in three weeks. The album's title derives from two pieces. "Wind" comes from "The House of the Four Winds", the title of one piece guitarist Steve Hackett wrote that became the bridge on "Eleventh Earl of Mar". "Wuthering" alludes to the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, the final sentence of which provides the titles of "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..." and "...In That Quiet Earth". The album's sleeve was designed and illustrated by Hipgnosis.
Keyboardist Tony Banks recalled a considerable amount of music had been written before the album was recorded. Bassist and rhythm guitarist Mike Rutherford said it took an estimated six weeks to write the album. He pointed out the band wished to distance themselves from writing songs that were inspired by fantasy, something that their past albums "were full of". They wanted to write songs that they enjoyed, rather than having to please all the fans.
Hackett found himself arguing with the band as he felt his ideas were rejected in favour of material that Banks, in particular, had put forward. Having already released his first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, Hackett requested the band use more of his musical ideas on Wind & Wuthering. Banks ended up with six writing credits on the album's nine tracks, more than any other member. Collins spoke of Hackett's request: "We just wanted to use what we agreed was the strongest material, irrespective of who wrote it". He later said he did like Hackett's songs, but just thought Banks won the popular vote with the band. Hackett was not interested in writing shorter and simpler songs, and felt "the wackiness was being toned down".
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the sixth studio album by the English rock band Genesis, released as a double album on 18 November 1974 by Charisma Records in the United Kingdom and by Atlantic Records in the United States. It is their last album recorded with Peter Gabriel as their lead singer before his departure from the group in 1975. A concept album, it centres around a journey of self-discovery of Rael, a Puerto Rican youth living in New York City and the bizarre incidents and characters he meets along the way. During the writing and recording sessions, Gabriel temporarily left the band to work with William Friedkin which, along with his insistence to write all the lyrics, put strains on the rest of the band.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was released to initial mixed critical reception, though it has since received critical acclaim. It peaked at No. 10 on the UK Album Chart and No. 41 on the US Billboard 200. Two singles were released in the UK, "Counting Out Time" and "The Carpet Crawlers" while the title track was released as a single in the US. Genesis supported the album with their 1974–1975 tour across North America and Europe, playing the album in its entirety across 102 dates. The album continued to sell, and reached Gold certification by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1990 for shipment of 500,000 copies.
In May 1974, the Genesis line-up of frontman and singer Peter Gabriel, keyboardist Tony Banks, bassist Mike Rutherford, drummer Phil Collins, and guitarist Steve Hackett finished their 1973–1974 tour of Europe and North America to support their fifth studio album, Selling England by the Pound (1973). The album was a critical and commercial success for the group, which earned them their highest charting release in the United Kingdom and the United States. In the following month, they booked three months at Headley Grange, a large former poorhouse in Headley, East Hampshire to write and rehearse new material for their next studio album. Upon their arrival, the building was in a state left by the previous band with excrement on the floor and rat infestations. By this time, the personal lives of some members started to affect the mood in the band which started to cause complications. Hackett explained: "Everybody had their own agenda. Some of us were married, some of us had children, some of us were getting divorced. And we were still trying to get it together in the country". Banks later deemed this period of time as his least favourite of all his time in Genesis.
After their allocated time at Headley Grange came to an end, Genesis relocated to Glaspant Manor in Carmarthenshire, Wales to record using mobile recording equipment from London's Island Studios. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is their band's last recorded with John Burns as their co-producer, who had assumed the role since Foxtrot (1972). The band is credited as co-producers, and engineering duties were carried out by David Hutchins. The recording equipment used included two 3M 24-track recorders, a Helios Electronics 30-input mixing console, Altec monitors, and two A62 Studers for mastering. Burns and Gabriel experimented with different vocal effects, including recording inside a bathroom and a cowshed located two miles away from their location. Rutherford thought the album's sound was an improvement compared to past Genesis albums as it was not recorded in a professional studio, which benefited the sound of Collins' drums. Collins compared the sound of the album to that of Neil Young's recordings made in his barn, "not studio, not soundproof, but a woody quality".
The backing tracks for the entire album were put down in roughly two weeks, though Gabriel was still working on the lyrics a month later, and, in one instance, asked the band to produce additional music to fit his words that had no designated section for them. This was the case for "The Carpet Crawlers" and "The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging". Thinking the extra material was to be instrumental, the band found that Gabriel had sung over their new parts, something that he also had done on tracks on Foxtrot (1972) and Selling England by the Pound (1973). Gabriel recorded his vocals at Island Studios, where the album was mixed over a series of shifts as the band struggled to complete the album in time of its November 1974 release date. Collins recalled: "I'd be mixing and dubbing all night and then Tony and Mike would come in and remix what I'd done because I'd lost all sense of normality by that point".
The album tells the story of Rael, a half Puerto Rican youth living in New York City who experiences several bizarre situations and characters. Gabriel chose to develop a character that is the least likely person to "fall into all this pansy claptrap", and aimed for a story that contrasted between fantasy and character. He explained that as the story progresses, Rael finds that he is not as "butch" as he hoped and his experiences eventually brings out a more romantic side to his personality. The ending to the story is not directly clear as Gabriel deliberately left the ending of the story ambiguous. When asked about it, Gabriel does not declare that Rael dies, though he compared the ending to the buildup of suspense and drama in a film as "you never see what's so terrifying because they leave it up in the air without ... labelling it". Several of the story's occurrences and settings derived from Gabriel's dreams. Collins remarked the entire concept was about split personality. The individual songs also make satirical allusions to mythology, the sexual revolution, advertising, and consumerism.
Hipgnosis designed the album's artwork. In a departure from their previous albums that featured more colourful designs, the front cover of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway makes use of black and white and no colour. The band's logo, originally designed by Paul Whitehead and used on Nursery Cryme (1971) and Foxtrot (1972), was replaced by a new one in an Art Deco style by George Hardie. The left picture on the front depicts Rael in the area where "In the Rapids" and "Riding the Scree" are set.
