GENESIS OUT TO PROVE SOMETHING, AND TOUR MISNOMER?

Genesis announced their U.S. tour Wednesday (March 7) in New York City at a press conference featuring Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins. The post-Lamb Lies Down On Broadway line-up will be hitting the road for the first time since 1992.

The tour starts September 7th and runs through October 12 in Los Angeles. Even in the months leading up to the tour, Phil Collins insisted that their upcoming performances were not a tour. Has his opinion changed now?

“Well, you don’t want to believe everything I say. Of course it’s called a tour because series of shows is too ornate. I just sort of feel that I have stopped touring for various reasons, although I did say it everytime I played a concert that was one of the last times that I visited a specific city that I did reserve the right to do special things, and I didn’t really want a lid put on my coffin quite yet. Frankly, this is something very special.”

Perceptions are that the great Classic Rock bands in the touring industry are the Rolling Stones, The Who, and U2, and now the Police, and Genesis doesn’t usually roll off people’s tongues in the same breath. We asked if Genesis, who had success in the ’70s as a prog-rock band and success in the ’80s with a style more akin to pop, if they had anything to prove.

“I don’t think so. I think in some respects you’re right. Genesis sit in a funny place in the history books, it’s sort of outside the mainstream things. We’re not Yes, and we’re not, sort of, a pop band. But I think in terms of things to prove, in a sense in America, especially, I just feel that live we always had a great rapport with the audiences. For years we were a bigger live band than we were a record band. I think the feeling on this tour is to be able to reconnect with those towns. We go back a long long ways in those cities in the States, and Canada, in North America, but I think… I think the whole concept of what we’re doing has to be for us something that id really fun to do, and I think it’s going to be like that.”

Genesis: 1976-1981, the first of three Box Sets featuring each studio album expanded with Bonus audio and video will be released April 24, and it features the albums Trick Of The Tail, Wind & Wuthering, And Then There Were Three, Duke, and ABACAB, and a disc of extra tracks.