3 Genesis songs from Gabriel’s era Phil Collins called fantastic

For most fans, Genesis is divided into two eras: the one with Peter Gabriel on vocals and the one with Phil Collins as the frontman. Usually, fans do not love both phases equally and tend to prefer one over the other. Phil Collins does not feel that way and truly appreciates all the work he did with the band, whether only as the drummer or also as the singer.

Over the decades, he spoke about many albums from the band’s early days, including the classic The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, mentioning three tracks from it that he described as “fantastic.”

3 Genesis songs from Gabriel’s era Phil Collins called fantastic

“The Waiting Room” and “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats”

The first ones are “The Waiting Room” and “Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats”, “There are some things on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway that I really love… the atmospheric numbers… There’s The Waiting Room, Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats. They’re some fantastic tracks that I haven’t heard in a long time. But… it’s a historical thing, a historical piece. We have to keep that in mind. But it hasn’t made me want to go back and write in that way again,” he told Peter Walt in 2005.

Phil was never really happy that older fans said the band had sold out when they became a trio and entered their most commercially successful phase. He once recalled how the two songs he mentioned were written and why people should remember that the same band that wrote those tracks was also responsible for their later success.

“I just think that they display a side of Genesis that everyone forgets. Part of the ardent fans forget or they’ve never heard. I think it’s actually the way we start writing now by doing things like that. That’s how ‘I Can’t Dance’ started, that’s how all these songs… That’s how we used to write, we would start playing. ‘The Waiting Room’ for example, was the mood we want, is darkness to light. I think it’s out there as a bootleg, I don’t know how, because I had the only cassette. I used to cassette everything, I was the keeper of the tapes. I’m still the writer of the minutes meetings, you know. But we started off and started making noises. Steve with his darkness and lots of rain sticks and eerie noises.”

Phil Collins continued:

“Suddenly, Tony would start playing his chords and literally it was pouring rain outside. The way Tony put some chords in, suddenly started changing rhythm from and there was a rainbow, because it stopped raining and the sun came out. I mean, a cosmic thing, I just only report the news, I don’t make it. I was there and it happened. It was the most amazing thing. It was like a little golden eight or night minute moment.”

“Those are the bits that I remember, it would be good if people remembered that side of it, that that’s the same band. ‘Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats’ it’s like, you know, sailing ship, clouds and fog. Same band that plays ‘Hold On My Heart’. The same band that plays the songs that they say we’ve sold out to. It’s the same band, you know. It’s the same mentality,” Phil Collins said in an interview in 2007 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Released in 1974, “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” was the last Genesis album to feature Peter Gabriel. It performed well on the charts in many countries, especially in Europe. It reached number 1 in France and number 10 in the United Kingdom.

“Ravine”

The third track mentioned by Collins was “Ravine,” which is also not among the band’s best-known songs for those who are not big fans of that era. All three songs were performed live by Genesis only during their 1974 and 1975 tours. The tracks were played the same number of times, as they were featured at every show: 24 performances in 1974 and 76 in 1975.

According to Setlist.fm, the only Genesis member to perform one of those tracks live afterward was guitarist Steve Hackett, who played “The Waiting Room” five times at his solo shows: twice in 2001 and three times in 2024. Peter Gabriel decided to leave Genesis after that tour, in 1975. The band continued, with Phil Collins also becoming the vocalist. When Steve Hackett left in 1977, the shift in their sound began, making it more commercial.