When Mike Rutherford steps in to his hotel lobby from the busy New York City streets, there's barely a stir. Though tall and remarkably unchanged from his days as the guitarist in Genesis and leader of Mike + the Mechanics during MTV's heyday, only a few people seem to notice that a rock star with 80 million-plus album sales under his belt is standing nearby, chatting amiably. By the time we make it to Rutherford's comfortable but modest hotel suite, he's loose and talkative, excited to discuss the new documentary (Genesis: Together and Apart) featuring all five members — Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Phil Collins, Tony Banks, and Rutherford — of Genesis, as well as the band's 3-disc anthology R-Kive and the Mike + the Mechanics reissues and tour set for 2015.
Music Reviews in Tape Op #105.>
I think that one of the things that struck me after hearing the new Genesis anthology R-Kive is that I noticed that you and Tony Banks are there from the very first track all the way through. You're there the whole time. Listening to it that sound was really the core of Genesis, wasn't it? Maybe you didn't realize it at the time, but at some point did you realize you were the rhythmic core?
You start with R-Kive, but actually R-Kive started with our documentary. Before that I sent the memoir I've written that's coming out next year out to the band. And I think it warmed everyone up a bit. I think that they remembered what a great time that we had. When they saw the book, they kind of warmed up to the project. So to answer your question, doing the book made us all realize that the sound has a relevance to what we've always been in a sense.
When you to approached the documentary was everybody on board right at the beginning?
Yeah, it wasn't really hard, but I do think my book first helped remind them what a great time it was. It wasn't hard. Everyone wanted to be aboard. Otherwise it wouldn't really have worked. And it's nice to see us talking about the old days and stuff.
So it's not just individual talking heads, so to speak. You are together?
Yeah.
Wow, that's fascinating, how was that?
The same old thing, Peter winding up and Phil's good humor. It was good actually.
I interviewed Ringo Starr a while ago, and he said that they could never agree about anything when the Beatles were making the Anthology. Their memories are so totally different about even the same events that all four of them were present at. Did you have those moments? Was there conflict in this?
Tony Banks is the keeper of the keys. His detail was pretty good. If we weren't sure we deferred to him. The other thing that's surprising is that you sort of forget. And Peter's time was quite short really. It was an important time, but the timeline was quite short.
Listening chronologically to the new R-Kive set, the thing that surprised me was how well it all hangs together. Some bands will have the hits up front and intersperse things.
We thought in a sense we felt that if we didn't go chronologically, we'd be in trouble. Where do you put songs and figure out the running order? It actually seemed like the right way to do it. I said that there was a better story. People don't put it together. You've got the Gabriel career, the Collins career... the variety of songwriting is actually quite different. People don't put it together, but when you do that, you kind of realize that it's a huge range of material. That's kind of what got the whole thing going.
Yet they aren't completely separate. I've always thought of them, like you said, as the Peter era and the Phil era, but it's not really that, is it?
Right. It does flow together nicely. And everything Pete's always done I've enjoyed, and it's the same way with Phil.
When you were starting out, you were really playing more bass and pedals and rhythm guitar. You really evolved, and yet that sound never disappeared. The things you developed early on in the studio and live are constants in Genesis, aren't they?
Yes. And hopefully that's okay. You want to change a bit, but you can't change too much. You can't try to change. You can't try too hard to change. You are what you are. You can't not be what you are.
Well, if you take a very early track and a very late track, they do sound completely different. But taken in chronological order, the evolution makes sense. Listeners can see you all developing your chops — for you the double guitars, the pedals going on — and everything happening. Tell me a little about that adaptability in the context of the band. You did fill a lot of roles.
I think what it was was that the long songs covered so much ground that if I needed to start changing guitars, it would end up horribly. Now suddenly I could have pedals and sound like two guitar players.
How did you approach that in the studio? When you cut, were you cutting live?
Early we'd play things live.
Steve on guitar, you on bass, and overdubs.
Yeah, but the pedals at the same time. You couldn't play without the pedals. It gave us another half player, which was why I did it, really.
You never stopped doing it.
When I write now, or record, whether at home or in the studio, when I pick up the guitar and play some pads on the guitar synth and use some pedals, I'll just be playing some weird notes that I'll never do afterwards.
Well, it has to be second nature to you. I interviewed Ray Manzarek years ago, and he said he hardly thought after a while about what his left hand was doing. It has to be very much second nature.
Well, I did a bit of writing years ago, through my pedals. I don't know how it happened. I really enjoyed it, though. Without that, I'm just a guitarist playing guitar chords or riffs. With the pedals, you add this dimension of weirdness, playing all of these odd notes.
You're very humble about your guitar playing, yet that sound has been at the forefront of several musical movements.
I'm probably humble about lead playing. There are so many players who are wonderful lead players. I'm a rhythm player who can do a bit of lead. That's what I'm talented at. That's about chords and riffs and that sort of thing.
Do you feel that over the course of the career of Genesis you struck on new ways of playing and new ways of approaching the guitar in the studio? It seems that adaptability was at the core of the Genesis sound.
Yeah, hopefully. As a band, we tend to play that development down. Peter, all of us. It's our nature, you know what I mean? It's very English, I suppose. I remember we were in the studio years ago at this place out in the country doing a take. Somebody played a part, and the engineer went, "Eh, not too shabby." In America, they'd be like, "Oh my god, that was incredible." It's just our nature. It's our kind of humor.
Over the five year period that Peter was in the band you obviously learned a lot about working in the studio and working together as a band. Those are two separate things, live and in the studio. Obviously there are very different approaches. What are your abiding memories of being in the studio with Steve and Peter at that time?
Yeah. It was quite hard work. In those days, it was... We were trying to push technology basically. Everything was really slow. On one of our long songs, the engineer felt he didn't dare drop in, because of the click, so we had to be there from the start. It was quite hard work. On the later albums there was a bit more playing, a bit more jamming. But on the early albums, in those days, it was quite hard work. Technology was not really on our side.
Did you find that you were constrained by budgets? You clearly had big ideas.
It wasn't so much budgets. We were quite green. We were so new to it.
At what point did it then become easier? Around Abacab?
After Peter left. [Laughter.] Not because he left!
Technology caught up to you, I suppose.
Yeah. Then we were four then three... Just having three people with a lot of ideas is easier than four or five. One album a year was always going to be a problem, in a sense. There were just too many ideas. Plus, we were young in those days. When you argued about something, you realize that you don't really care, but you stick to it. Later on, you admit what you don't know. That's the change, too. In the earlier days, you're very committed to making your point.
Did the role of the producers and engineers change as the technology developed?
We really came to life when Hugh Padgham [Tape Op #55] began producing us. The other guys were all great, but it wasn't until we got with Hugh that we sounded on our recordings the way we actually sounded in the live room. On every album that we did, Phil did stereo cassette DAT tapes of the band playing, and they always sounded great. Then you recorded it and everything would get small and teeny. With Hugh, we were finally sounding the way that we did in the room.
Hugh Padgham certainly has a very distinctive sound, but what was it about that change?
I think he just got it. We always sounded that way, but no one quite caught it. Everyone's scared a bit of what's in the room.
You always say that you are a songwriter who plays some guitar. What did the ability to capture your sound finally do to your approach as a player and more importantly as a songwriter?
Yeah, that's my primary role in a sense. Also, in the early days, we were trying to impress ourselves in a way, if you know what I mean. Later on we realized that if the right thing for a song is to play something simple, that's what you play. After that, recording became more fun and easier.
