by Dominic Milano

From Keyboard Magazine, 1983, used without permission Transcription by Debra L. Wentorf

Is there life after rock for keyboardists with time on their hands?

Many of them seem to be finding it on the silver screen, not as actors, but as film composers. Witness Keith Emerson  ("Nighthawks" and "Inferno"), Vangelis ("Chariots of Fire" and "Blade Runner"), Tangerine Dream ("Risky Business", "The Keep", "Thief" and others), Georgio Moroder ("Midnight Express"), and even Stevie Wonder ("The Lady in Red").While Tony Banks is still very much a part of Genesis, he had been doing some creative moonlighting by penning a few scores of his own.

"The Shout", an Australian release about a man who learns to kill using an aboriginal primal scream, featured music by Banks and Genesis guitarist/bassist Mike Rutherford. Tony's contribution was "From theUndertow," a track from his first solo album, "A Curious Feeling".  "The Wicked Lady", which saw virtually no theatrical release in the States but is now available on video cassette, starred Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates and John Gielgud, and had an orchestral score written entirely by Tony Banks. The movie tells the story of an English landowner's unscrupulous wife (Faye Dunaway) who turns to masquerading as a highwayman to alleviate her boredom with sixteenth-century country life. The score is suitably pastoral and reminiscent of many of Genesis' beautiful quieter moments.

Most recently, Tony was asked by director Peter Hyams ("Outland", "Capricorn One") to score "2010", the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey". At the time of the interview below, Tony had not started work on the picture. However, he did tell us that he was looking forward to doing a heavily synthesized score utilizing digital sampling supplied by the E-mu Emulator to generate many new unheard and unrecognizable sounds. Shortly before we started work on this issue, however, "Variety" reported that Banks had been fired from the picture. Tony explains, "Peter Hyams really didn't like what I gave him from the word 'go.' I thought it strange since he was the one who contacted me, based on having heard what I had done on "The Shout". The first tape I sent him included something that I thought was great, but he came back and said he thought it was really bad. So I thought, 'This is crazy. Here I consider these to be the most appropriate things and he doesn't like them.' I don't know why he got a hold of me. Anyway, I thought, 'We'll fight on.' So I did a couple of other tapes, and we managed to end up with something he seemed fairly enthusiastic about."

"When it came to thinking about final ideas, he said he didn't like it. I think he wanted something a lot more conventional than he orginally thought he did. The closer I got to writing a Hollywood kind of score, the happier he looked. That was disappointing to me. It was a blow to the confidence."

Banks had worked on the music for a long time, generating a lot of material. However, he still owns it, and may decide to do something with it at some future date. "I'm trying to get into some more ambitious instrumental pieces. Film is an obvious place to do that," he says. "I'm frightened at the idea of putting out an album of instrumentals without it being tied to a film. I'd have trouble finding someone to release it."

Why should Tony Banks, one third of the enormously successful Genesis, be concerned about extracurricular activities? The answer should be fairly obvious. Genesis vocalist/drummer Phil Collins has turned into a pop phenomenon via two best-selling solo albums and a string of hitsingles, including the title song to "Against All Odds". Collins has gotten so big that there are some people who think that Genesis is just an alias he uses for tax purposes. And while there would appear to be no immediate danger of Genesis disbanding, it only makes sense that Banks would want to cover himself by developing possible alternate careers during periods when the band is inactive.

One of those possible alternate careers might have been as a solorecording act, but neither of Tony's solo efforts, "A Curious Feeling" and "The Fugitive", did especially well commercially. Still, as long as Genesis remains active, Banks won't have to worry about where his next meal is coming from. Ever since Collins took over the lead vocalist spot from Peter Gabriel, the band has been on a constant upswing, despite the fact that many die-hard fans had difficulty adjusting to the band without Gabriel, who has gone on to become aluminary in his own right.

"Keyboard" spoke to Banks for the first time during the tour that supported the release of "Trick of the Tail", their first album without Gabriel. That interview appeared in our October '76 issue.When we next spoke to Tony ["Keyboard", July '78], "And Then There Were Three" had just been released. It was the first Genesis album to go gold in the United States, and included their first-ever hit single, "Follow You, Follow Me." However, guitarist Steve Hackett had just left the band (thus the name of the album), and it was the first conscious attempt they had made to record shorter tunes. All of which gave fans of the early-and-mid-70's progressive movement (which Genesis was a major part of) an excuse to entertain the notion that Genesis was selling out to commerciality.

However, Genesis continued covering even their most ambitious materiallive by hiring sidemen Bill Bruford and later Chester Thompson (on drums) and Daryl Stuermer (on guitar and bass) to play the parts that they overdubbed in the studio as a trio. This left Collins free to devore most of his time on stage to singing and fronting the band.

The keyboard parts generated by Banks have continued to be tastefully interwoven and subtly applied to the music, the antithesis of the gonzo-keyboardist styles of Rick Wakeman, et al. This fact, along with the emergence of Collins as a charismatic pop star, is probably one of the reasons why Genesis has been able to flourish and grow while somany of the progressive dinosaurs bit the dust as we entered the '80s.

On its two most recent albums, "Abacab" and the latest, titled simply "Genesis", the band has been exploring different ways of collaboratingon writing. Where before they had collectively developed ideas presented to them by one another in demo tape form, they were now jamming together in the studio, developing ideas together from scratch.

We spoke to Tony about this improvisatory approach to composing, his unique approach to chord voicings, changes, and modulations, as well as the evolution of his keyboard gear and the role it plays in the Genesis sound, during the tour supporting the "Genesis" album, in late spring 1984, and again briefly by phone after the news came in August that he had left the "2010" project.

KM = Keyboard Magazine TB = Tony Banks

DM: You've scored a number of movies lately. what got you into filmscoring?

TB: Lots of things, really. One is that I just think that many of thethings I've written over the years have been very suitable for films.I think that can apply to the band's music from the early days, butperhaps that particular direction came more from me. So film scoringjust seemed a logical thing to go into. Another thing was that_Curious Feeling_, my first solo album, didn't sell too well. Apartfrom selling to people who knew and like what I did, it was no successat all. I don't think there's any actual point in my doing soloalbums in that same vein. I can't base a future career on solo albumsat this particular point. Film is just another area of music toexplore. It's also something that I think I can do well and perhapscarry on doing if the group splits up or whatever. It forms a logicalcareer move. I'm not like Phil, in the sense that he can be a star.He can write very commerically, but more to the point, he's aperformer. He's got a great voice and everything, and he's just rightfor that kind of thing. I can never be a star in that sense. It justisn't right.

KB: You've done some singing yourself, though.

TB: I did some singing on my last solo album, _The Fugitive_, becauseit was something that I wanted to do. There's always the chance thatsomeone will pick up on your song and say this is great. There'salways the chance that you'll make it that way despite the fact thatyou're not quite the type for it. But I'm not sure. I have noparticular desire to do another solo album in that way. Filmsoundtracks are a way to get back to thinking more about instrumentalstuff. That's an area that I'd like to experiment with. Film reallygives you that chance.

KB: How did you get the job of doing "The Wicked Lady" score?

TB: I was just looking for projects. The director had never heardanything by me and knew nothing about me at all. I was recommended tohim by this man at Atlantic Records in England. Part of his reasonfor using someone unconventional for the score was financial. Hedidn't have to pay me anything to do that film. It was all financedthrough the record deal, through Atlantic. Any film composer willsupply a certain character to a score. The benefit you get from usingsomeone new is that you're going to immediately give that film a newkind of character. One that people haven't necessarily encountered infilm before. I think that's why I got "The Wicked Lady". It wasn't aclassic film, but it was quite fun to do. I knew it would get acertain amount of exposure, so I did it. It was something totallydifferent for me. I mean, science fiction is a more obvious thing forme to do, whereas an ordinary film that's about running around in thesixteenth century was a very unlikely thing for me to do. It was alsototally orchestral.

KB: How do you feel about it now?

TB: I tried to put far too many themes in it. Although I did manageto whittle it down before the final version, I still had too manythemes. The film only needed one major theme and a couple ofsubsidiary ones, but I put in five or six. And there's only abouttwo-and-a-half minutes of extended minutes in the film and the rest isjust small bits. There's a lot of music in it, but it's all in littlebits.

KB: You used an arranger on it, Christopher Palmer.

TB: Yeah. Obviously, I owe a lot to him. I used him because he had alot of experience as a film arranger. He did thing like "The French Lieutenant's Woman". He was able to put into orchestral form what Iwas basically writing on piano. He was able to do a couple of thingshimself in terms of moving it in the right direction if he felt itreally needed it, but by the end I was pretty much just writing something on the piano and he was arranging it.

KB: Did you do any playing with the orchestra?

TB: No. I wouldn't have minded, but it gets so complicated when youstart doing that. Financially it's just ridiculous. I would havepreferred to do things as overdubs--either I'd overdub my part, orthey'd overdub theirs, and that can get complicated. In the end wejust decided to keep it totally orchestral.

KB: Has your interest in exploring instrumental music in films been influencing Genesis?

TB: Yeah, well, it's a weird thing really. The emphasis on the last two albums has been more towards the vocal thing. We never plan these things, they just happen. So our albums don't necessarily prove that we're changing direction, they just show what we're doing on each particular record. We just like to make sure the live show includes a balance of things from throughout our career. It's also true thatcertain songs work much better live, and some albums don't give us that much live music really. Like "And Then There Were Three". Ithink the only song we're doing off that is "Follow You, Follow Me,"and we only do that because it was sort of a hit, I suppose. "The Lamb" and "Trick of the Tail" produced so many live songs, like "In the Cage" and "Los Endos". Even "Mama" and "Home by the Sea" from the new album are probably two of our best live tracks. It appears that there's something about the slightly longer, more extended tracks that suits the live format better. There's no doubt. I don't get any pleasure out of going to see a group, even if they're very good, who just play a string of three-minute hits one after the other. You get bored. Extending songs makes them feel more like you're seeing a live performance. Of course, the light show helps.

KB: It also seems that the music has been heading back towards the dramatic on the last two albums.

TB: I think there's a little bit of everything on the last album.It's just that the emphasis is slightly different from what it used to be because we've had hits with the shorter songs, whereas in the old days we didn't make hits at all. If you go back to albums like "Nursery Cryme" you'll find short and simple songs, but they weren't hits. They didn't even get much emphasis. Everyone's attention was focused on "Musical Box". Then there's "Home by the Sea" and "Mama" from the new album. "Mama" was a big hit in Europe, but it only got to number 70 over here. The nature of the new album is such that you get your main act on side one and you get the character pieces on side two. I've always felt that side one was the stronger of the two, and that's the side with "Mama" and "Home by the Sea."

KB: Is there any particular reason why it turned out that way?

TB: It's because of the way the album was done. It was all done from improvisations. You start with a doodle and then you work on it. So you tended to get quite a strong identity with each track. They'd stay in one mood, like "Illegal Alien," which has a very strong Mexican feel to it. And "It's Going to Get Better", which has a funkier kind of feel. It's fun for us to explore different areas theway we did it with "No Reply" [from "Abacab"]. Whereas "Home by the Sea" and "Mama" are more rooted in a traditional Genesis kind of thing.

KB: You've stopped listing individual credits for each tune, crediting the group instead.

TB: That was a conscious thing, really. We felt that on "Abacab" and "Duke"  the most exciting things were things written by the group.Things that were developed in the studio. So we decided to try to do a whole album that way. This time, we didn't play each other anything we'd had before. And the songs just kind of evolved. We started putting things down on tape as soon as they took any kind of shape. It was an exciting way to work. You can get more spontaneity that way. Sometimes, when you get a song beforehand and go into rehearsals with it, develop parts for it, and end up changing it, you overwork it. This time we really didn't develop things in quite the same way.We tended to try and get them down in the freshest form possible.That's why some of "Mama" is so simple. We started from a drumbox and everything else was just added to enhance that. We just organized the first few jams we had on the thing and made a song out of them.

KB: What about vocals? Did you have a melody line and add the lyrics later?

TB: Phil was sort of singing along as we went. That phrase "can't you see me, mama" was there quite early. So it all evolved together.That's one advantage to using rhythm machines when you haven't got an actual drummer in the group. Phil can sing and you can still get a feel for where everyone's heading right from the word go.

KB: What happens to the bass parts in situations like that when Mike is playing guitar?

TB: In that particular tune, I put a drone E all the way through,because Mike was making sound effects on the guitar. Then I got this chord sequence that couldn't have the E all the way through it, and Mike couldn't play it on the bass pedals, so I just put the E on the Prophet all the way through until the middle section. It all depends on the song. We don't worry too much about it because we know the bass will be there one way or another. There are quite a few songs over the last couple of albums where I've been playing the bass,because Mike's playing a sort of synthesizer guitar sound and it's natural for me to head stright to the bass part. "Keep It Dark" [from "Abacab"] is one example. I don't play any chords on it for the entire last half of the song. And that's quite nice. The advantage of having three people is that you don't fill up everything. It doesn't matter if a certain person isn't playing, because they're always doing something else. In the old five-piece days, there were songs where Steve [Hackett] felt he had to play something, but it really wasn't necessary. There are two or three examples of that on "The Lamb". "Colony of Slippermen" and "Lamb Lies Down on Braodway" itself didn't really need the parts he was playing.

KB: Your keyboards have been changing over the years, but the roles they've been playing haven't changed all that much.

TB: There is a tendency to do that. Live performance tends to mean that you've got to cover the old sounds even if you have new keyboards. And once you've got the old sounds, you find yourself using them in new songs as well. I suppose it has to do with the approach. I like certain things, and they tend to come back. I probably go for certain similarities. But hopefully, you get something new and that becomes part of the sound. For instance, the first time I used an ARP Pro-Soloist. That was something I hadn't done before, but now it's obviously part of my sound. I still have instruments that do the same job. I think the biggest differences now is that I'm using keyboards, the Emulator in particular, for sound effects. Since you can record anything you like and then play with it, you can get some things that are quite bizarre. "Illegal Alien" has a lot of that sort of thing - car horns and phones. It was quite fun recording all of it. It's a lot easier to lay that into a track than it is to get tapes going all the time. I've got some great disks full of sounds for that sort of thing. And then you've got the more musical approach to that same thing, where you go around and record sounds to be played as notes, so the sound isn't anything like what it started out as. There are all sorts of things that everybody does with the Emulator for that - like blowing across the tops of bottles and glasses. There's quite a bit of that sort of thing in "Home by the Sea." It's nice to be able to use sounds like that in a musical way, rather than limit yourself to reproducing them in a strictly representational way.

KB: Are you using your Synclavier for sampling at all?

TB: Not for sampling. I really think the instrument is way over-priced. I had a lot of trouble with it for the first year and a half that I had it. It didn't work at all. Considering it was very expensive, I was very upset. But then the English company changed the handling on it. We've got a much more efficient company now, and they got it back to New England Digital, who fixed it. I love the sounds on it as a synthesizer. But when it comes to sampling, I got the E-mu because it was much cheaper. The Synclavier system is amazing, but I think it'll be a complete white elephant in a year or two because of things like the Yamaha stuff coming out. There's no need to mortgage your house to buy them. I mean, you're paying 50 or 60 thousand dollars for one instrument with the Synclavier. That's fine if you're an institution and you can afford to do that. But you can pick up 20 different instruments for that kind of money, and between them they could produce far more than what the Synclavier can. Also, with MIDI you'll be able to combine synthesizers.

KB: Why are you using a Synclavier instead of a Fairlight?

TB: Perversity, in a way. The company in England that originally handled them both was something to do with Peter Gabriel. Obviously, Peter was using the Fairlight. When I bought the Synclavier, they were promising the sampling thing very soon. It wasn't supposed to be as expensive as it is, so that made me feel...I thought the actual synthesizer aspect of the Synclavier was better than the Fairlight, so I thought it would be great with the sampling. In fact, now I regret that I didn't get a Fairlight at the time, but I didn't know it would take so long for all this stuff to come out, that it would be so expensive, and the mine wouldn't work for a year and a half. But there are sounds on the Synclavier that you don't hear anywhere.

KB: Are you talking about presets or things you've programmed yourself?

TB: I'm talking about presets. The Synclavier is such a sweat to program. There are marvelous sounds in it that you never hear in rock music. I was amazed by the string sound. There's a lot to be said for synthesized sound versus sampled sounds. Synthesized sounds can sometimes fit into tracks better. It's all very well to sample a violin and then play it, but then it somehow doesn't sound as much like a violin as a really crappy synthesizer sound would. It's a curious thing about sound. You don't necessarily want the real thing.Something about violins - there are hundreds of ways you can play them.The Synclavier obviously offers quite a few of those things - it has a marvelous attack sound on it. It has a lot of pure sound on it. It's a nice instrument, but it's a lousy keyboard. There's nothing you can do with the keyboard itself. That's the worst thing about it. That's why the Yamaha CS-80 became so popular. You could express yourself with it. I've never understood why anybody would want to build keyboards and not put touch-sensitivity on them. The keyboard seems lifeless if you can't express yourself on it.

KB: You don't use pitch-bend wheels or other left-hand controllers for expression, do you?

TB: Oh, I use them, but not as much as some people do. It's more for bending chords up and things. I used the Polymoog's pedal to bend chords up on "Afterglow" from "Wind & Wuthering". But I feel like my hands are always tied doing something else in live performance, so it's got to be feet or pressure. Those are the easy things to deal with. Obviously, if you're only playing a lead line you can deal with left-hand controls, but in the three-piece Genesis of the studio, I've got my hands full playing two roles. A lot of the time I've got to play both chords and some kind of lead line. I like that because it means I can control my own harmonies. I've done that right from the word 'go'. One example would be "Supper's Ready" [from "Foxtrot"].

KB: You've been playing the same solo in "In The Cage" for quite a while now. Do you ever get the urge to break out of it and do something new?

TB: I don't look at things that way. For me, the solo is as much a part of the song as the melody line. You could vary from it, but it's kind of difficult, because either you've got to change it completely because of the way the bass and drums work with it, or you've got to play it alone. Playing the same thing has never really worried me. I see it as part of the composition. I don't get particularly bored. The things I get bored with, I cut out. Like lots of parts of "Cinema Show" ["Selling England by the Pound"] I couldn't stand playing anymore. So we only do the three best parts of it. I think "Cage" is a good song, so it's nice to do it. I think it's time to start giving a lot of thought to giving these songs a rest. We've been doing "Cage" since 1978, probably. It only started to sound good in '78, and it's become one of our classic songs, but we've rested classic songs before. When we first dropped "The Knife" ["Trespass"], we thought we'd never be able to drop it. But we dropped it and no one seemed to notice. I think audiences' favorite tracks are probably always an album or so ago. The most recent stuff is always too recent for them.

KB: What kind of processing are you using on your Prophet-10 to get your Hammond sounds?

TB: I'm just using an MXR Phase 100 for those organ sounds. And chorus. But I use chorus on the Prophet all the time. I use chorus on lots of things all the time. I use chorus on the Prophet to get the size. I use quite a lot on the piano. I put a good strong mono signal up the middle on the piano [along with the chorused stereo image]. I really like that. I only put a very little bit of it on the Synclavier. If I was doing more chord work on it, I would put more chorusing on it. I don't tend to put any on the Quadra. It does have a phase shifter on it that I use for some things. But to produce the Hammond sounds on the Prophet-10...You've got four oscillators and you tune them in octaves. Sometimes you put a fifth in there,depending on the sound you want. Another thing that helps is the Prophet-10's EQ controls. An organ sound is all middle, so you take off a lot of bass and you get that sort of sound that's distinctly organ-ish. Putting it through a phase and the chorus gives it that Leslie kind of sound. I started putting the Hammond itself through the phaser instead of a Leslie at the end. The only trouble with the phasers is that sometimes they tend to make the chorus too noticeable.Some nights they go wild and seem to make the instrument sound out of tune. That's what the chorus is doing anyway, but sometimes it's more active than I'd like. I can get away with it most nights though.

KB: Are you using the Synclavier for the organ sound in "That's All?"

TB: Yeah, that's my great B-3 sound. It's better than what I got out of the real B-3.

KB: The video shows you playing a B-3, but you played it on the Synclavier on record?

TB: Right. Obviously, videos are just for fun. The real B-3 looks alot better in the surroundings we had. The Synclavier does a very good imitation of the instrument. It's absolutely spot on. It's another one of those preset sounds. You're really reliant on those sounds in an instrument like the Synclavier because it's so difficult to program. On a Prophet, you know what you've got and what you're going to get. But the Synclavier...it's like the DX7, except that it's even worse to program. You just don't know what you're doing or what the effect is going to be. So more than anything you end upgoing for editing. You start with a preset sound because you can see what they chose for a piano sound, and think in terms of what's wrong and how I can fix it.

KB: You use the CP-70 on records a lot. Why it instead of an acoustic piano?

TB: Yeah, I hardly use a real grand. I did use one on "Abacab", for "No Reply." But I started to forget about grand pianos. I don't know why, but I got so used to playing the CP-70 that when I play a real grand it sort of feels funny. It doesn't sound chorused. [laughs] No, I still play around with them, but it's much easier to fit a CP-70 on a record. In a group situation, when you're playing with the other guys in the room, you can actually get the levels right with the CP-70 much more easily. So I end up using it on records. I suppose I will get back to the acoustic sometime.

KB: Do you find yourself gravitating back to any one instrument during group improvisations?

TB: I use anything in the group. It really depends on the sort of thing we're doing. I can do more playing on the piano, but sometimes the actual sound of a synthesizer can set you off in the right direction. I wrote most of the things on "The Fugitive" on the synthesizers. It was the first time I've done that. I did a lot of things where I triggered the synthesizer from the Linn on two or three tracks. It's a nice way to lock in a riff. You've got that ability with the synthesizers and you don't with the piano, but there are still a lot of songs that I write on the piano.

KB: How do you go about working out a tune like "Home by the Sea?"

TB: That's one we did by working off an improvisation. Again, we were trying to keep some of this spontaneous feel. Phil started playing this drum riff that Mike and I found attractive and we jammed on it for about two hours one day and an hour or two the next. Then Mike and I listened to what we had done, and we organized the bits that we liked. And then we learned exactly what we played down to the last detail. Of course, we worked on a few bits, extended some, changed others, just trying to get it into some cohesive form. Some of those things happen on really weird beats. We found ourselves sitting there counting things out trying to get used to playing them. It all sounds very natural on tape, so we knew it was a natural thing to go for. But it took us quite a while. Phil obviously adapted some of the things he was playing to suit what changes we'd made. It's amazing to hear the original stuff that it came from. There's a lot of good stuff there, but we had to keep it down to about six minutes. It could have easily gone for a lot longer.

KB: Did "Abacab" happen the same way?

TB: We didn't actually organize the improvisation the same way. We had lots of bits - phrases and things - that we used in the original version, which was 15 minutes long. We edited out two 10-second phrases and then faded it out. We were quite keen to put the whole15-minute version out because it all sounded good, but you never know. Like "Mama," which we had to shorten down to six and a half minutes. There is an eight-and-a-half minute version on the 12" single, and on the B-side there's a long version of "It's Going to Get Better," which we edited down for the album. You've got to do that for the dreaded "album can't be too long" question.

KB: Does it ever feel like pulling teeth to edit a song down?

TB: We don't like doing it, but I know that the shorter you can get a thing and still have it work, the stronger it's going to be. Most things can be edited down. You know instictively if you've gone too far in one direction or another. I can often listen to other people's music and say if it's too long and could have been edited down. I think what really matters is that you still get the tune across. When you hear singles on the radio, you'll hear Culture Club one minute and the next you'll get something new. You've got to make things happen quickly. You don't have a minute and a half to get into a song, whereas on stage you can take as long as you like.

KB: What kind of chord progression really grabs your ear?

TB: I have no idea. I never quite know what makes one chord progression feel better than another. I think a lot of it is done by how it feels on the keyboard. Some things just feel lovely to play.One example is the main chord sequence in "Mad Man Moon" [from "Trickof the Tail"]. It fit on the hands so well. I like there to be something unusual in a chord progression. It doesn't have to be bizarre, just unusual. You can't go on playing C-Fm-G forever. That jam we do at the end of our set, the medley of all the old rock and roll and R&B tunes, a number of those songs just go B-E-B-E. It's amazing how many songs stick with those kind of changes, which is good. Sometimes we slip into that sort of change in the second section of a song. Like "Afterglow" for example. The basic song is in G and the chorus is in Eb. The relationship between those two keys gives the whole tune a more wistful feeling. Then when you come back to the big chorus at the end, we change from Eb to C, which is a very dramatic kind of change. There's a lot you can do with key changes to make a song more interesting.

KB: Do you actually make a point of changing keys within a tune?

TB: Not particularly. In a lot of earlier songs you'd have one section that would be in E and another would be in B minor and another would be in Eb. And it was down to me to find a way to link them up. I became an expert at working out modulations. The easiest way is to go to a diminished chord. They can get you anywhere. "Afterglow" and "Firth of Fifth" [from "Selling England by the Pound"] are two examples of that. There were so many times when you could create a dramatic effect by using that kind of key change, and that was often the reason why it was done. We didn't fight it. Then there were times when we found that changing they keys of two bits so they'd fit together didn't work. One wouldn't sound right. There were times when Steve would have written something in D - D has a very special sound to me - and we'd try to put it in Bb. But that didn't work. So we'd try to come up with a modulation that worked. Some people thought that it sounded awkward while others thought it interesting. That's where you lose some of the crowd. The Beatles were always very good at key changes. They were never outrageous, they just did enough to be interesting. [Songwriters] Holland and Dozier were masters at it. "Reach Out, I'll Be There" is great. I'm not sure of the key, but the change is something like going from a C chord down to Bbminor, which is an unlikely key change, but it makes the thing that occurs after it - playing a Bbm and Eb - sound so much more exciting.You realize how simple it is, and that had it been in the same key it wouldn't have been half as exciting.

KB: It seems a lot of your chord voicings involve playing unusual bassnotes under fairly straightforward chords.

TB: Those things have been developing over the years. When we first started doing it, there were certain things people were doing where you'd have one root note suspended through a bunch of chords."Downtown" is an example of that, where you have a C in the bass being held through the F and G chords as well as the C chord. That was done quite a bit. But the idea of going straight to that G with the C in the bass wasn't done at all in the early days. And that adds an amazing character to the chord. It's really no longer a G chord anymore. The idea is that you come up with interesting changes when you change chords simply by changing the bass notes. It's difficult to explain, but when I'm at the piano it's almost like I'm creating music by making mistakes. When you come up with something nice, you stick to it, and you come up with some really unlikely things that sound good. Like in the introductory bit to "The Eleventh Earl of Mar" [from "Wind & Wuthering"]. One of the chords in that is basically a Gm chord with an Ab in the bass. That sounds likely, but it sounds great in context. A lot of this comes from improvising - doing things that you originally didn't intend to do and finding that it sounds nice.

KB: Do you still find yourself gravitating to those kinds of chords?

TB: Well, I try to use them a lot less now. You can overdo it, because there is a certain character that comes from chords like that. And each time you use it, you find yourself relating to it. It reminds you of the previous song you used it in. So I try to think less in terms of chords now. Which is probably why the music sounds a little simpler now. Tunes like "Mama" have chords in them but they aren't an important aspect of the song. It's more the mood.

KB: Do you feel you had fallen into a rut with chord voicings?

TB: I think it's always possible to. I don't feel we've actually done it yet. There are still times when you run across totally new ways of doing things. "From the Undertow," from "A Curious Feeling", has awhole new way, for me, of bridging chords. I used a lot of combination chords on that album. You find a lot of those kinds of chords in Ravel and people like that. But probably because of the lack of enthusiasm shown for that album, I've stopped experimenting in that direction. Had it been a monster hit, I'm sure I would have gone a lot further in that direction. Maybe the film thing will allow me to get back into it. I still have a long way to go in exploring that situation.

KB: Your score to "The Wicked Lady" sounded like an extension to "A Curious Feeling".

TB: Yes. To some extent it was. Although melodically, it was a bit simpler. I found myself getting more and more into that same area, because when you get a chance to ramble - and you do get to ramble in films, you get moments where you don't have to be doing anything in particular - you can drift into all those things that you enjoy doing. Film gives you lots of excuses to write those kind of changes in key and mood. If you've got a sunrise, great. Any excuse to put in a change. I put them in endless Genesis songs, but somehow when you combine them with a change in a film it gives you license to use them again. One of my favorite chord changes of all time comes at the end of "Mad Man Moon", coming out of the middle section and into the last verse. It goes from Ebm7 to Gm7 with a D in the bass. It's an uplifting sort of change. And there are lots of those changes lying around that we only use once.

KB: Because they're so distinctive that you don't want to use them again?

TB: Right. But there are songs that I've done that most people have never heard, so I could get away with using the changes from them again. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to repeat things that you've done in the past. When I originally did the demo to "The Fugitive", one of the things I recorded ended up being "Barbara's Theme" - the main theme for "The Wicked Lady". I played it for various people to get their opinions, and I got a very negative response because it was like "Curious Feeling". I thought it was a shame to have it go to waste. But then the film came along and I started playing the piece for people again as a potential film piece. And those same people liked it. In the film context it was alright for them. That's another example of one of my songs that has a middle section that's in a different key. Those kinds of things are probably the reason why I'll never write a hit single. I tend to always throw these things in. I can't stop myself.

KB: The basic tracks to your solo side of "The Wicked Lady" soundtrack album were recorded at your 8-track studio.

TB: 'Eight track studio' makes it sound much grander than it is, really. I've just got an 8-track machine with a 16-track desk [mixing console]. Each of us bought one of these systems about four or five years ago for about 1,500 pounds. All the basic ideas were put down on the 8-track at home and then transferred in the studio. I mixed it on the big mixing desk onto the digital 2-track, which was kind of crazy because of the way the tracks started out. But I recorded just about the whole of that side in a day and a half. It was very rough. I just played one part, listened to it, and then overdubbed the next part. I redid most of the basic parts later, but in fact I ended up using the original piano part of the main theme. It was all done in a rough sort of way, which appealed to me. "The Fugitive", in contrast, took me a couple of months to actually record properly after having done a certain amount of work at home. I put a lot of basic stuff down on the 8-track, but I didn't end up using all the original tracks. I'd use a live drummer to replace the drum machine and that sort of thing. The orchestral side was a nice change, because it was a totally new experience for me. We got a hall together, went in, and put it all down on digital 2-track. It was the antithesis of working with a group where everything is done artificially, where you work for hours and hours on little bits and pieces. On an orchestral recording, all the work is done beforehand. The instrumentation, the scoring, everything. Then when you actually get to recording, it all happens pretty much on the first take. These guys are paid to get it right, and they pretty much do, on the first take. The only thing you'll do is maybe record two or three versions of a piece and then edit between them on the digitial machine, which is easy to do. Editing on digital is wonderful because you can try so many things.

KB: How much Genesis material is original basic tracks?

TB: It's difficult to say. We put down so much of the last album using the drum machine. I played along with it most of the time, and we did keep a lot of my original tracks. "That's All" has my originalpiano part on it. But in a lot of other things, we didn't keep any of the original tracks. We just put them down to get the lengths right,and then everybody would replace their parts.

KB: What's the first thing you would replace?

TB: It depends on what you want to build the basic riff around, the keyboards or the guitar. You tend to get that basic riff down first and then replace the drum machine. Often when you do that you have to redo the other parts to fit with the new drums. This was typical of what happened on "The Fugitive". Some drummers are better than others at playing in time with a drum machine. Steve Gadd tend to plays lightly behind the beat, giving it a lazy sort of feel. And I tend to play slightly ahead of the beat, so the tunes that I used Steve on, we'd play my original solo part - which was done on the drum machine - with his new drum part, and it would sound like they were parts from two different songs. So I had to redo some of my parts to his playing. But some of the Genesis things like "Home by the Sea" were done with live drums, so we played together on the original tracks. And we kept a lot of the original synthesizer tracks. The guitar was probably redone to get it to sound larger.

KB: Do you find that working with drum machines makes you work in 4/4 much more than you normally would?

TB: I think that's definitely true. I think their only drawback is that they tend to simplify music a little too much sometimes. It happens with us. There is also the tendency to never vary the rhythm because it's so easy to start with the one. It's hypnotic. And it traps you a little. Some of the things we did with them involved Phil playing a straight rhythm against the drum machine, which was playing a weird rhythm. We did that on "Silver Rainbow" [from "Genesis"].But in the end we took out the original drum machine part, which was doing all these funny things in the background. On the original version, the machine was playing in six and Phil was playing in four, and things would happen in strange moments just by chance. There is a tendency to avoid rhythms like seven, because at this point in time they sound a little bit dated. Like the seven we used in "Cinema Show." You can go into the studio, tap out a rhythm in seven and almost say it's "Cinema Show" because it's so indentifiable.Sometimes you get weird rhythms that don't even sound weird, like the main riff in "Turn It On Again" [from "Duke"], which is actually in 13 because that's the way it sounded the most pleasing.

KB: What did you use to get that mellotronish string sound on "It'sGoing To Get Better"?

TB: That was done on the Emulator. I recorded a four-note string phrase. When you play chords with it, you get all these harmonies happening at different speeds. It's something I just stumbled across with the Emulator. I was attempting to record a string note and I got the first four notes instead of just the one. I happened to put the looping on after the first four notes instead of after the first. And it was an amazing sound. It sounds like a Mellotron because it's a record sound.

KB: What sound did you sample for the percussive effect in "Mama"?

TB: That was a koto. It happened to be in the studio so we recorded it into the Emulator. I couldn't get anything else to fit in the song so I ended up using it. Because the koto is an instrument that you tend to hear from a distance, it sounds very good because there's distance in the sample of it. It fits well with the Linn drum box, which we put through an AMS digital reverb and ran into a little Fender amp and distorted to hell. We also mixed a little bit of straight sound with it to give it some character. The distortion on that is quite an important part of the sound. Something about the Linn - it's got such a pure, clean, and in many ways horrible sound. It's great because the sound is so good, but it needs character.That's why we liked distorting it. That's the trouble with synthesizers. You've got to be careful not to make everything sound too clean.

KB: It's interesting that you like the Synclavier so much, because it's known for that squeaky clean sound. I'm surprised you don't process it more.

TB: You're probably right, but that's what I chose so I'm stuck with it. I do put it through echoes and things. I don't know, it doesn't sound that good through a fuzz box. I obviously put the Quadra through one all the time, and I put the Prophet through one too. The Quadra through the fuzz box is like the old electric piano through a fuzz box. The thing that's important about it is that the fuzz box becomes part of the sound. Often, you'll put something through a fuzz and you get one sound down there and the fuzz sound somewhere up there. They don't knit together too well. Fuzz boxes are better for those heart attack kinds of sounds. I put the Yamaha CS-80 through a fuzz too. That's what I used for the bass on "Dodo" [from "Abacab"] .I do it live with the Prophet-10. I really like the CS-80, but it's just too heavy to take on the road. You can't put anything underneath it or on top of it, and it's supposed to be unreliable. I don't know. I'll probably end up putting the Synclavier through a fuzz box someday.