'Keyboard Review' (UK), October 1995

(...)
Tony, of the three [Genesis members] is experiencing the least success from his solo efforts. Why does he think that is, I wonder?

"Part of that is because people don't realise that I do anything between Genesis albums! I've talked to people who've asked, 'What have you been doing while Phil and Mike have been top of the charts?'. I get so frustrated. I do as much as I can... I try to make myself available, but I'm naturally introverted, so maybe I'm not as good at promoting myself as the others are."

"Having said that, it's difficult to compare myself with Phil because he's a singer, and it's no coincidence that Peter and Phil have been the most successful solo off-shoots of Genesis. Mikes's success is more interesting because it's much less predictable. Maybe his material is simply more radio-friendly - it's certainly more commercial. I always put in one chord too many, one note or one abraisive lyric that I can't resist. I've never been able to compromise, so my songs are less easy for radio to program".

But is radio that important?

"When I put out my first solo album, in 1979, I got enough into the shops for people to buy them, and it became a top 20 album. Nowadays shops won't stock anything unless it's been played on the radio. Computers control a lot of radio stations, and they don't play albums. It's very difficult to know where I fit... If Strictly Inc. was a Genesis album there'd be no problem getting it played".

.....

Tony does seem to pick and choose different musicians for different albums, while Mike - after his first two albums - had a recognisable band. Why's that?

"If the first M&M album hadn't been a success, I'm sure that he would have chosen another lot too, but if a band is successful you stick with it. So for example, my last album 'Still' was a sort of reaction to 'Bankstatement' where I had restricted myself to just two singers - one male and one female. Unfortunately, Alistair, who sounded great on two or three tracks, sounded uncomfortable on some of the others. So I thought, 'Wouldn't it be nice to have him on the tracks on which he sounded great, and get someone else for the others?' And that's what I did - pick horses for courses. From my point of view, 'Still' is a very satisfying album, whereas 'Bankstatement' is perhaps my least favourite - just because there were a few moments that could have been so much better."

Tony has chosen to work with just a single singer on his new album 'Strictly Inc.': Jack Hues.

"He and I have given ourselves the name SI as a duo, this is not a TB solo album. We were considering calling ourselves 'Strictly Incognito', but there is another band called 'Ingognito' which left us a bit too close for comfort. Jack has an intriging voice with the edge that's needed for vocals I write. When we started work, the obviously suitable songs sounded fantastic, but then then we went on to the ones that I thought might work less well, and they sounded really good too."

"The drummer is John Robinson, best known for Steve Winwood's album 'Back In The Highlife' ... He is so quick to learn. 'An Island In The Darkness' is 18 mins long and, having heard it just once, John played it straight through! The only track he had any trouble with was the one in 7/4.

"Most of the guitar on the album is played by Jack [Hues], although Daryl Stuermer plays a solo on 'Island' and guitar on one other track. But a lot of what you might think is guitar is, in fact, keyboard. That's because I ended up getting attached to the guitar parts that I'd played when I was writing, so a lot of those bits made it all the way through to the album. The other player is Nathan East. He came down with Daryl because he wanted a day out, and ended up playing bass on 4 or 5 tracks!"

Nonetheless, the music is definately keyboard led...

"The Yamaha CP70 [electric piano] is still prominent, and that's the basis for many of the tracks. The Korg Wavestation and Roland JD800 both provide me with guitar sounds, and I also used the usual Kurzweils and the Kork 01/W - often just for the presets, one or two guitarts and some spacey sounds that I use. Then there were the E-mu Emulators II and III."

.....

"...Quantising always seems to produce a machine like qualitiy and this has stopped me doing it. The was a track on the last album 'Still Takes Me By Suprise' that sounded stiff because of the quantised piano. But now everthing has a much more musical feel, and maybe harks back to the 70's Genesis more than anything I've done for a long time. I was very happy with that."

But he has used a number of quantised drum loops...

"Yes, I have. It's such an aid to writing - you get a drum loop going, play along, and see what it does for you. It's not like a drummer who wants to keep putting in fills and doing exiting things, so you can just keep on experimenting. It's relentless, but I like relentless things with a hypnotic quality, and the drum loops are one of the easiest ways of getting it. We've done it lots of times with Genesis - tracks like 'Fading Lights', and 'Dreaming' - where the drum loop has a great atmosphere. In particular, 'Mama' just churns on and on - I've always liked that.

"Many of the drum sounds were those produced by the [Ensoniq] SD1 [keyboard] - half the time it's set up as a drum machine, poor thing. But it's got good sounds and often those made it onto the album. They're very noticable on some tracks, particularly 'Something To Live For' and 'Walls Of Sound' where the drum loops are very important."

Tony's also occasionally gone for a heavy opressive sound, using bass pedals and divorcing the normal relationship between bass and drums.

"I've always liked bass pedals. Because they're not moving around they fill the bass without saying 'Here I am'. And they don't draw attention to themselves in the way that a bass guitar does. ...'The Serpent Said', with its heavy beat, has that oppressive feel. It's not original but I like it a lot. A lot of bass on the album is keyboard bass, and there's more tendency for a keyboard player to use sustained sounds than there is for a bass player."

Within Genesis his tracks tended to be longer and more thoughtful, while his solo work is snappier and more commercial. Was that a concious decision?

"Having re-mastered the Genesis albums recently, I felt that Duke was our best - a transition between longer pieces that still sounded good, and the introduction of our more concise stuff. My favourite track on that album is 'Duchess' - it's short, it's simple, but it has all the atmosphere of our earlier, longer songs. That influenced me, and I felt that I would like to do that on my solo albums to see where it went. I also tried to keep the tracks shorter on 'The Fugitive' because I was singing them and I felt that the short stuff was possibly a little easier to find an audience for. With 'Bankstatement' I had pressure from the record company to try and do songs in a way that would give us a hit single. Having said that, I can't really compromise - it's just that I'm a lot less long-winded than I once was!"

But isn't 'Island' the longest track he's ever done, with the exception of 'Supper's Ready'?

"Nowadays everything is too concise... everyone is working at four minute pop songs" he complains. "I listen to groups that I like - Crowded House or the Crash Test Dummies - and I yearn for them to take it just a little bit further. Pop music has become too rigid - you have to fit the format all the time, and I don't think that it needs to be that way. In fact, ask people who don't listen to the radio what they want to hear, and you'll find that they want something more ambitious, that's got atmosphere. But no major record company will put out a new group that's producing long anthems. Genesis can get away with it only because we've got a reputation for doing it from the old days.

"I can't really say why 'Island' should come out now. I just had those ideas, and I wanted to let them go to see what would happen. It wasn't my intention to make it any particular length, and when I finished it I didn't realise that it was 18 mins long. but for some people it will be the track. There's something about it... a sort of excitement. The guitar solo's my favourite bit, the emotional high point on the album. It's a cliche, I suppose, but it seems to work. I remember Elvis Costello once put out an album with a sticker saying 'Warning: contains country music'; maybe SI should have a similar sticker : 'Warning: contains an 18 minute track!"

Does Tony have greater hopes for this album than for hte previous ones?

"Everytime I put an album out I say to myself 'I'll take whatever comes' because I love writing. Then I play it to a few people, and start to feel good about it and build my hopes up. If you don't think that you should never put a record out. You should always think 'How can you not like this?'".

And if you don't?

"Well. they just haven't tried hard enough - it has to be their fault not mine!" he laughs. " Mind you, if a jazz album sells 6,000 copies it's a hit, so if I sell 10,000 or 12,000 that should be enough. But it only takes one hit single to change everything...

The all important question: will there be a Strictly Inc. tour to promote the album?

"I think it's a question of what comes first. A successful album gives you something to build on. I went to see Mike the other day, and he's got two or three hits that really lift the audience. You need that lift because it gets you through the other bits. It's very difficult to on live without having something to base the show on, unless you start right from the bottom, and I don't think that I'm capable of doing that again. But if things go well, I might consider a tour. It would be fun."

I suggest that throwing in a couple of Genesis tracks would attract a big enough audience to make it worthwhile...

"I wouldn't have any objections to that! Mike played 'I Can't Dance' in his recent show. But that's not the problem. You have to have songs that people associate with you. Phil had hits right from the start, so it wasn't a problem for him, nor was it for Peter. But Mike didn't play live until the Mechanics had their big hits. Then he knew he'd get a bit of an audience, maybe 2,000 or 3,000 who'd go to see him. I don't think that I would attract that many. It's one of those things."

And his final words...

"I just want people to give SI a chance. Some people think that it's just the voice they like about Genesis, but much of it is down to the chord progressions and those sorts of things. I suppose that's me - I've always been one of the major writers of the group, and if you like our songs it's worth giving SI a listen."

Tony reveals all about each song...

"'Don't Turn Your Back On Me' is, perhaps, the most straightforward song on the album, and uses a heavy reggae rhythm that I've always liked. It's also a chance for Jack [Hues] to be at his most eccentric - he does things with his voice that I find very interesting. It wasn't originally the opening track. but I think it's got single potential. But who am I to say? Look at some of the choices in the early days of Genesis!"

"Crowded house are a group that I like, and they had a song on their last album that had a fast rhythm running through what was essentially a ballad. I tried to get a little of that feel with 'Walls Of Sound'. Musically, it links chord sequences in a way that ends up with you being out of key. Like those old-fashioned songs that used to go up a tone each verse... this sort of does it without actually doing it. It's just a love song, but in some ways it's my favourite track on the album."

"'Only Seventeen' emerged out of stuff we were doing for the last Genesis album, but we couldn't find a home for it. It was originally called 'Dot Echo' - a rhythm idea on the SDI [keyboard] with the echo comming on the dot position in the bar and giving it a lot of edge. I did a 20 min. improvisation and then took elements out of it and made a good song. Then we brought it here and added the drums. I think it's really good."

"I've always liked slow tracks such as 'Lion Of Symmetry' and 'The Grand Parade', which was one of my favourites off 'The Lamb', but was under-developed as a song. 'The Serpent Said' is typical Tony Banks. It looks back a bit, but hopefully it's a bit different. It's got elements of Led Zeppelin in it in the same way that 'Squonk' had. I've never gone off that style."

"'Never Let Me Know' is just a 'love gone wrong' song, but it's extravagant instrumental gives me the chance to use some slightly weirder chords. We kept the drums incredibly simple all the way through, and except for one moment in the instrumental they're hardly doing more than putting a few crashes in. I think it's my second-favourite track on the album - I tend to prefer soft moody tracks and that is what it is."

"Everybody has something that they wouldn't like plastered across the top of the 'Daily Mirror' [newspaper], but it has happened to some people. This track originally called 'Skeleton' - skeletons in the cupboard - but the idea of 'Charity Balls' added another element because there are people involved in that area who are perhaps more guilty of sleaze than others. Tony Banks the cynic! It's not supposed to be too serious though - it's the closest I get to a joke."

"Old drum machines found it difficult to do anything apart from 4/4. With computers it's no problem at all, so we set up a drum loop in 7/4, got three distinct riffs going, linked them together and wrote 'Something To Live For'. The lyric is about sticking to your guns; at some point you've got to believe in what's important, stick with it and not care what anybody says. If your famous you'll suffer from this, so this is just a little tale to make you feel better."

"'A Piece Of You' studies the idea that when you take a picture of someone you steal a part of them. It's a primitive idea but when Jack wrote the words I wanted him to write them for half a dozen more of the songs. There's something about a singer singing his own lyrics. The track was originally composed on the piano, and just cruising along until we introduced the guitar. Then Jack gave it a bluesy character that I really liked."

"Jack showed me an American newspaper clipping about a guy who picked up a 25-year-old waitress who turned out to have multiple personalities. When he was having sex with her she was in the guise of a 14-year-old, so he was sent to jail for having sex with an under age girl. It's fantastic! If you study the lyrics of 'Strictly Incognito' it all makes sense, but you need to listen to it a couple of times to get it."

"'An Island In The Darkness' is about political situations; striving for something, getting there, and fighting to hold on to it. You know... Russia was so optimistic, and now it's going through a much more difficult stage. The same thing will happen in South Africa - the euphoria will disappear and then, having reached the goal that seemed so mavellous, things won't quite hold together. Many people will feel that it's worth carring on, but they'll really have to fight."