Invisible Touch it's total rubbish. It's not only Genesis's lowest point, it's also one of the worst records ever released in the history of music. Garbage, obscenity, something that shouldn't exist.
I could go on for a long time reporting the comments heard over the last four decades regarding the English band's thirteenth album. Comments that I too have often shared. It's no coincidence that I placed it in last place in the Genesis album charts. A position he richly deserves. However, when you find yourself thinking about a work that everyone judges to be terrible, it is inevitable to ask yourself some questions. Questions that clash with objective planetary evidence. Invisible Touch it is in fact one of the English band's best-selling albums. The numbers speak for themselves: 15 million copies worldwide and five singles in the top five places of the American charts, with the title track reaching the top. How is this possible? To paraphrase Elvis: Can 15 million people be wrong? You can't judge an album by its success, fame and quality are unrelated things, but no one gets me out of my head that there must be something in Invisible Touch which goes beyond appearance and which often slightly prejudiced fans (myself included) have not grasped. So let's hold our noses, put the record on the turntable and try to understand.
The path is clear: first the abandonment of Peter Gabriel, then that of Steve Hackett. This is followed by the downsizing of progressive structures which gradually become less and less adventurous and settle on a pop velvet. Oh, after all Genesis had to survive. Try being a prog band in 1977-78. When post punk and disco music reigned supreme and you, a poor musician, used to selling meatloaves for 20 minutes without the record companies saying anything (since that stuff sold, that was enough) you were forced, if you want to continue working at a certain level, to adapt to the musical panorama and make a virtue of necessity. But Genesis started playing progressive music didn't exist and their greatest aspiration was to send singles to the charts, as songwriters-performers or even simply as authors. Then came prog and the ambitions changed.
When the musical panorama changed drastically in the second half of the '70s, Genesis had no choice but to dust off their ancient ambitions and (re)place themselves at the service of pop songs. Pop songs that they enjoy, at least up to a certain point, enriching with melodic and harmonic stimuli taken from their progressive experience. Some examples: Many Too Many, Undertow, Vocal Guides, Heathaze, Me and Sarah Jane, Silver Rainbow. Here it is above all Tony Banks who imposes himself and ensures that ok, verses and choruses in their place but let's also add some slightly strange, unexpected chords, we make the song richer and more interesting. Then there is always room to include prog songs suited to current tastes that can push long-time fans to purchase. Go then Down and Out, Burning Rope, Duke's Travels/Duke's End, Dodo, Home by the Sea. In all this the other two try to push on the pedal of simplicity. This was demonstrated Follow You Follow Me by Rutherford that you can go beyond the status of a cult band, place a single in the American charts and maybe start seeing in the audience, in addition to the usual nerds, even some women. With all due respect to Banks, here are the various ones Misunderstanding, That's All, Illegal Alien and so on, with the ancient fans horrified and the wallets of the three swelling. Also thanks to Phil Collins' solo success which at a certain point was such that everything he touched turned to gold. And since his voice characterizes Genesis, they too benefit from it. The kind that nobody cares who owns a certain record, as long as Phil is there and it's done.
It should also be remembered that in 1985 Collins returned from the sensational boom of No Jacket Required. And the fact that it comes out a year later Invisible Touch It's perfectly timed. A record launched into orbit by the title track, the craziest thing Genesis had done up to that point. With a refrain that would make you want to whip them. But it's clear that with a refrain like this, combined with the appeal of Collins' successes, you'll find a sympathetic audience. Then comes the summer of 1986 which is crisp and jaunty, full of beautiful music, fun, things going swimmingly despite the specter of the Cold War and a delusional Reagan administration. But who cares, Invisible Touch catches it and you can forget about everything, even the fact that these gentlemen are the same ones who composed it Supper's Ready (which, coincidentally, opened with a verse and chorus piece, Lover's Leap).
Told of why so many fall in love with Invisible Touchit remains to be seen whether he really is as evil as he seems. It is first of all true that the refrain of the title track is absolutely banal, but the verses are not, the typically Banksian chord sequence is just the right amount of stimulation for an ear accustomed to prog rants. Anything but obvious. And then what happens? Other amenities? No, a song lasting almost 10 minutes (!) with a dark atmosphere and lyrics about drugs. Although it is also a single that reached the top of the charts, Tonight, Tonight, Tonight It's a nice update to Genesis' progressive attitude. What's wrong then? The sounds. Rutherford went from the double neck Rickenbacker to the skimpy sounds of Steinberger guitars and basses (small even in appearance); Collins put his set aside and gave himself to the chilling Simmons, which only if your name is Bill Bruford and you play in King Crimson you know how to make interesting; Banks has long since discarded Hammond, Mellotron and ARP synthesizer in favor of Yamaha DX7, Prophet-10 of which the keyboardist chooses the ugliest tones.
It follows that Invisible Touch sounds of plastic, 80s and kitsch (memorable the piss-taking by Bret Easton Ellis, who in American Psycho makes it the favorite album of the delirious protagonist, as if to say that only a madman could like something like that). Unfortunately, at almost 40 years of age, ours are driven stupid by the desire to look young and appear fashionable at all costs. When the real young groups (Talk Talk, Tears for Fears), knew how to operate with undoubtedly more refined taste. If we got away from Invisible Touch all quintals of fakethat would be something else. I'm not saying that bad songs would become beautiful but part of their ugliness is undoubtedly given by the sounds. Also because there are melodies of rare beauty in here. In Too Deep for example it is one Many Too Many revived, with Banks' piano recalling an undiluted class. And one might think that no one imposed it Invisible Touch to Genesis, and I don't think they did it to get (more) rich. They met in The Farm studios, started improvising and those things came out spontaneously. So we can't accuse our team of being cunning, they felt that way at the time and that's what they brought out. However, perhaps a kick in the ass to Hugh Padgham who recommended them certain sounds would perhaps have been appropriate. But given the commercial results, what do you want to tell him in the end?
In Invisible Touch there is also room for one of Genesis' rare moments of social commitment: Rutherford places one Land of Confusion who clowns on the specter of atomic war. The song is launched by a spectacular video with the Spitting Image animated puppets, which host caricatures of Khomeini, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Reagan, Nixon, Gaddafi, Mussolini, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Sting and Genesis themselves. The irony that has always characterized the group comes to the surface and ultimately it is not a sin to compare, on a philosophical level, Land of Confusion to things like Harold the Barrel, Get 'Em Out by Friday, Counting Out Time and others. That is the trend and it has never been abandoned. But if there's a really vomiting moment in Invisible Touchthat is Anything She Doesundoubtedly the worst thing Genesis ever recorded. Collinsian piece done and finished, but from a Collins gone bad. It's a shame because it's the only time Phil plays real drums, and you can hear it. When you think you've sunk into total shit, here's yet another disorientation: the 10 minutes of Dominomini-suite in two sections, one atmospheric and the other pressing. Nothing that has to do with the masterpieces of the past but another excellent piece that carries prog into 1986 and, despite all the usual bad sounds, is capable of saying something, of exciting, especially in the suspended central part and in the restless ride characterized by lyrics such as “The liquid surrounds me / I fight to rise from this river of hell”, which seem to come directly from The Lamb.
Of this piece Collins said that in his solo songs he would never sing phrases like “Nylon sheets and blankets help to minimize the cold”. Here we notice the distance between the poetics of the drummer and that of the keyboard player. It's clear that certain things aren't part of the former's baggage (and who knows how many question marks in his head listening to Gabriel's lyrics), but in some cases is it better to talk about double glazing or launch into yet another sentimental complaint? It's already time Throwing It All Awaywhich will become an indigestible hit live, but which in the studio version has its own dignity, a melodic verve of great grip but not banal and the right dose of autumnal melancholy that had characterized Genesis And Then There Were Three And Duke. The album ends on a high note with an industrial-symphonic instrumental piece like The Brazilianwhich sounds like the perfect missed soundtrack for the Brazil by Terry Gilliam. And you know, Genesis have always been big fans of Monty Python.
Nothing is what it seems, said Battiato. And this applies to Invisible Touch. Apparently it's obscene. And it's partly true. But it is also true that those who criticize it perhaps listened to it only once and then threw it in the garbage. Instead we need to stop, explore it, grasp its nuances calmly, without letting ourselves be influenced by preconceived ideas. Coming to understand the way and time in which Genesis conceived it, adapting the ear to sounds that today appear irreparably dated and penetrating the textures of the songs, which are often imbued with the typically Genesis spirit, even if buried under tons of plastic.
