Review: Genesis – Trespass (1970)

Genesis’ first album, From Genesis To Revelation (1969), was still teenage boys fumbling around with bland pop, but with Trespass the band took a giant leap forward.

After the flop of From Genesis To Revelation (the album originally sold around 600 copies), Genesis didn’t give up and started touring vigorously. The group worked hard to develop both their playing skills and their new style, which would have little to do with the light pop of their debut album. The band also recruited a new drummer, John Mayhew (1947-2009), and at this stage, without a record deal, the band eventually ended up on Tony Stratton Smith’s new Charisma label at the urging of producer John Anthony. In October 1970, under Anthony’s leadership, the band began recording Trespass at Trident Studios in London.

One thing from the debut album carried through to Trespass. Namely, Peter Gabriel’s soul influences which are even more strongly heard in his emotional vocal performances on this album. A good example of this is the opening track ”Looking For Someone” which starts off nicely with Gabriel’s very heavily soul-inflected vocals with just a minimalist organ drone playing softly in the background. The seven minute song is one of the strongest on the album. ”Looking For Someone” transitions nicely from quiet parts to very loud ones, slightly reminiscent of King Crimson.

However, the song also makes clear one of the main problems with the album. The band’s newest member John Mayhew is simply not a very good drummer. It seems that he aspired to play with a similar acrobatic quality to King Crimson virtuoso Michael Giles (who was the inspiration for every other prog drummer around these days), but he simply doesn’t have the skills. Mayhew’s fills often feel haphazard and his playing sounds like an unnecessarily heavy-handed thump otherwise. It doesn’t help that John Anthony has mixed the drums quite to the surface. For some reason, however, Mayhew does better on the other tracks of the album and his performances certainly don’t manage to spoil the whole album.

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The album’s second full-length, ”White Mountain”, is full of delicious melodies and nicely showcases the ringing pastoral side of the band’s 12-string guitars, enhanced by Gabriel’s simple but effective flute playing.The 12-string guitars were played by no less than three different members, Anthony Phillips, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks. In ”White Mountain”, however, the 24 strings are played together by Phillips and Rutherford, which was the most common combination. Tony Banks’ organ playing is also effective on the song and shows that he was the fastest developing instrumentalist in the band at this stage.

”The Knife”, the dramatically closing song of Trespass, which was mainly conceived by Banks and Gabriel and is more aggressive than the other material, became a popular concert song and contains impressive elements such as a march-like organ riff, a thunderous bass sound and staccato rhythmic interludes. This effect later even became a kind of prog cliché that many bands repeated ad nauseam. Gabriel also gives a fine vocal performance in the song, intensely interpreting lyrics about a revolution that eventually leads to the rise to power of a violent dictator.

”The Knife” is also one of the few moments on the album where guitarist Anthony Phillips really lets loose with his electric guitar. The man’s ripping with rather crude sounds sounds cool after all the mellowness we’ve heard on the album before.

The weakness of the 9 minute The Knife is that it falls into the trap of repeating itself a little too much. The song would have worked better if it had been lightly condensed. Incidentally, the working title of the song was ”The Nice” in tribute to Keith Emerson’s career-defining band The Nice, an important source of inspiration for both Banks and Gabriel.

With Trespass, Genesis found their own pastoral corner of the progressive rock genre and basically honed the same style to great effect until 1973’s Selling England By The Pound.

Trespass was not a success when it was released, but it sold about ten times as many copies as its debut, 6000 copies. The album received positive comments from the music press (and praise from Keith Emerson) and the band steadily increased its popularity with continued hard-working touring. Trespass was the true genesis of Genesis. The direction was right!

Best songs: ’Looking For Someone’, ’White Mountain’, ’Stagnation’, ’The Knife’

Rating: 4 out of 5.
Author: JANNE YLIRUUSI
Tracks
  1. ”Looking for Someone” 7:08
  2. ”White Mountain” 6:46
  3. ”Visions of Angels” 6:53
  4. ”Stagnation” 8:51
  5. ”Dusk” 4:15
  6. ”The Knife”
Genesis:

Peter Gabriel: vocals, flute, accordion, tambourine, bass drum Anthony Phillips: acoustic 12 string guitar, electric guitar, dulcimer, backing vocals Tony Banks: Hammond organ, piano, Mellotron, acoustic 12 string guitar, backing vocals Michael Rutherford: acoustic 12 string guitar, bass guitar, nylon string guitar, cello, backing vocals John Mayhew: drums, percussion, backing vocals

Producer: John Anthony
Label: Charisma

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