Country: United Kingdom
Spotify link (Entire remastered album)
YouTube link (Entire album)
And now, the gloves come off. I am now going to write something extremely controversial. When I did this same thing before, I was called an idiot. But yes, nevertheless, in my opinion which is not even particularly humble, the 1978 release And Then There Were Three... is the best album Genesis ever made. So there. This, combined with the opinion that Going for the One (1977) is the best Yes album ever, resulted in said insult.
This may not be a very popular opinion among prog fans, and some of them can be, shall we say, slightly fanatic about the correct order of things. But hey, come on, what is the alternative? To call the excruciatingly boring Selling England by the Pound (1973) the pinnacle of the group's output? Like they used to do here, although it has now gone down to third place over there?
Let's discuss And Then There Were Three... and do it properly. At the time, everyone remembered well enough the immensely disappointing departure of Peter Gabriel. He decided not to continue with Genesis in 1975, in the middle of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour. And leave he did, upon its completion. As a result of that shock, Genesis spent some time looking for a new lead singer, until they finally decided that Phil Collins was the right choice.
The band continued their recording career. First came the extremely enjoyable A Trick of the Tail, then the slightly weaker but still fully satisfactory Wind and Wuthering (both 1976). It seemed like everything was going to be all right after all. And this is when the bomb dropped. The lead guitarist Steve Hackett decided to leave Genesis as well. And then there were three...
I don't really have a concrete idea what the mood among the remaining three members of Genesis was in the aftermath of Hackett's decision. But it must have been hard. First, the key member and unquestionable leader of the group decides to leave. Then, another member does the same. It must have looked like there was no future for the group.
It is this desperation that must have given Genesis exactly the right frame of mind to write this unbelievable set of songs that they have never surpassed. At this point, it seems that the keyboardist Tony Banks had to assume the leader role within the group, which certainly affected the end result: And Then There Were Three... is a keyboard driven symphonic prog album in much the same way as Danger Money by U.K. was driven by Eddie Jobson's keyboards one year later.
This setup is particularly emphasized by one of the greatest opening tracks ever, Down and Out, where it is Banks's keyboards that drive the track forward and make it memorable along with its extremely peculiar time signature which is more than enough to remind the listener that this is a genuine progressive rock album.
Masterpiece after masterpiece keeps coming. Snowbound is easily the greatest song Mike Rutherford ever composed. Burning Rope is one of the best symphonic prog songs of the decade, along with Down and Out. Possibly The Lady Lies is the only song that outdoes them both, even though at its climax it ashamedly rips off Tony Kaye's piano sequence in A Venture (1971) by Yes. Even the mandatory single hit, very commercial Follow You Follow Me is a genuinely beautiful song that you can't help liking even though it has nothing to do with prog.
The only two tracks that can be considered less than masterful are Ballad of Big, a western story that, while it is a perfectly fine song, fails to really impress; and more importantly, Scenes from a Night's Dream. The only humorous track on the album is its only true failure. Like so many times before, whenever Genesis tries to be funny, they suck. See also Robbery, Assault and Battery; The Return of Giant Hogweed; Lurker etc.
I bought And Then There Were Three... in September 1979, and after repeated listenings, came to the conclusion that it was the best album I had ever heard. This is something I no longer agree with. In hindsight, I think Going for the One by Yes is even better. These two albums from the late 1970's represent everything that I value in music. Both have strong keyboardists and are very melody driven yet not in a straightforward way.
These are the top two albums I can think of. It is therefore all the more surprising that the third album in my personal all time top three was made in the 2000's. I guess I should write about that one next.
For Genesis, this masterful period turned out to be short-lived. Tony Banks handed over the group leading duties to Phil Collins, and we all know how that turned out. Genesis quickly transformed into a meaningless pop group in the vein of Collins' highly successful solo album Face Value (1981). As a result, they wrote one or two pretty good tracks even in the early 1980's but the masterful phase that both began and ended with And Then There Were Three... was forever lost.
By the time Invisible Touch (1986) came out, a genuine music fan no longer knew whether to laugh or cry. Whatever remains of musical genius was left, Collins drove to the ground with his weepy and whiny pop songs that would have better suited someone like Celine Dion to interpret. It is therefore all the more satisfying to think that, before all this happened, the group had a moment of uncertainty and produced at least one masterpiece, before succcumbing to blatant commercialism.
