...And Then There Were Three... is the ninth studio album by English Progressive Rock group Genesis. It was released through Charisma Records in the United Kingdom and through Atlantic Records in North America on 31 March 1978.
When Phil Collins, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks, and Mike Rutherford completed the tour to promote their eighth album, Wind & Wuthering, they went into the studio to mix their second live album, Seconds Out. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but Hackett was growing troubled, finding it more difficult to work in a group. In the interim between The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway and A Trick of the Tail, he put out his debut solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, and was spending much of the production of A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering arguing with his bandmates over the decision to credit songs to the individual members rather than to Genesis as a whole. Hackett also felt that the band's performance at Madison Square Garden earlier in the year was their artistic apex, and that there was no way they could even hope to reach artistic heights of that caliber again. Thus, concurrently with the release of Seconds Out in October 1977, Hackett announced his departure from Genesis. Having already kept their head afloat in the wake of Peter Gabriel's departure three years prior, Collins, Banks, and Rutherford decided to trudge on without replacing him.
To replace Hackett, Rutherford decided to take up lead guitar duties in addition to being the band's bassist. This proved more troubling than anticipated, as Rutherford struggled to carve a sound on lead guitar that was distinct from Hackett's. To that end, when the band went on tour in 1978 to promote the album, he refused to play lead guitar on previous output. The band would hire Daryl Stuermer to play lead guitar on songs prior to this album, and bass guitar on works from the album. Rutherford would do the inverse, playing bass on the classic works, and lead guitar on the new songs. However, having now lost the other of the two members who were arguably the biggest creative forces in their music, the members of Genesis found themselves more uncertain about how well they would be able to carry on, reflected by a distinct sense of anxiety in the songs on this album.
In addition to being a major change for the band's lineup, ...And Then There Were Three... also marks a huge turning point for the band's sound, with the group shifting to a more commercially accessible sound developed as a response to the rising New Wave Music and Punk Rock movements. While Banks was hesitant to the idea, he was outvoted by Collins and Rutherford, and ultimately came around to appreciate the new sound; however, he would still conspicuously incorporate elements of Genesis' prog roots in their new material, setting a trend for their following albums. Although Collins insisted the material was "fundamentally the same" as before, he recognized that the album gave the impression of the band moving away from progressive rock, a shift that would only become more prominent on Genesis' subsequent records and in Collins' own solo material.
The album peaked at No. 3 in the United Kingdom, matching their highest reach with two previous albums, and No. 14 on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. It also garnered the band's first platinum album from the RIAA, additionally being certified gold in the UK, Germany, and France. Three singles were released: "Follow You Follow Me", "The Lady Lies", and "Deep in the Motherlode" (which was released on its single with the alternate name "Go West Young Man" and the subtitle "In the Motherlode"). "Follow You Follow Me" would become the pattern for the future success of Genesis, as it became their first American Top 40 hit (No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 22 on Cashbox), and their first Top 10 hit in the UK (reaching No. 7 on the UK Singles chart).
Tracklist:
Side One
- "Down and Out" (5:28)
- "Undertow" (4:47)
- "Ballad of Big" (4:51)
- "Snowbound" (4:31)
- "Burning Rope" (7:10)
Side Two
- "Deep in the Motherlode" (5:16)
- "Many Too Many" (3:32)
- "Scenes from a Night's Dream" (3:30)
- "Say It's Alright Joe" (4:21)
- "The Lady Lies" (6:08)
- "Follow You Follow Me" (4:01)
Principal Members:
- Tony Banks – keyboards
- Phil Collins – drums, vocals, percussion
- Mike Rutherford – guitars, bass guitars
Just one single trope for each passing year:
- Acid Reflux Nightmare: Mentioned in "Scenes from a Night's Dream":Eating all kinds of food so close to bedtime
They always made him have these nightmares, it seemed. - Ballad of X: "Ballad of Big", naturally.
- Based on a Dream: "Scenes from a Night's Dream" is based in a vivid dream Collins had as a child, which itself was reminiscent of the old comic strip Little Nemo.
- Chiaroscuro: The driving visual element of the album art, featuring the band illuminated by the blur of a moving pen light at twilight.
- Design Student's Orgasm: The album art is an elaborate chiaroscuro-driven photograph of flare lights and light blurs during twilight designed by Hipgnosis, who had been working with Genesis since The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway four years prior.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Snowbound" refers to being snowed in on a winter day, and to... what that song is really about.
- End of an Era: For many Genesis fans, this album marked the point where the band's time as a purely Progressive Rock act came to an end, with the introduction of poppier song structures here that would only grow in prominence and make its way into the band's instrumentation on following records. However, anyone that thinks this is a simple pop-rock album need only listen to its first track, "Down and Out", to be disabused of that notion — the band's transition to performing pop music was rather gradual, and they kept at least two or three progressive rock songs on every studio album they recorded.
- Epic Rocking: Largely averted. The album lacked a song that exceeded 8 minutes for the first time since their debut album, From Genesis to Revelation; only two tracks exceeded six minutes, those being the 7:10 "Burning Rope" and the 6:08 "The Lady Lies".
- Gold Fever: "Deep in the Motherlode" is the fictional story of a young man who is involved in the 1861 Eldorado Canyon gold rush in present-day Nevada.
- Lyrical Dissonance: "Snowbound", a lushly-orchestrated, pleasant-sounding track about... hiding a dismembered dead body in a snowman.
- Music Is Politics: "Down and Out" is sung from a record executive's point of view, and it's not a flattering view of the industry. Tellingly, it includes the line "Smoke a cigar", which is probably a Shout-Out to Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" (a song with a very similar lyrical stance).
- New Sound Album: This album marks the point where Genesis began to shift away from Progressive Rock, incorporating more radio-friendly song structures into their sound as a result of prog's decline in relevance in the wake of Punk Rock and New Wave Music's recent rise to prominence. Later albums would only shift further in the direction of pop rock, coming to a head with the highly divisive Invisible Touch and We Can't Dance.
- Non-Appearing Title: "Down and Out", "Undertow", "Ballad of Big", "Deep in the Motherlode", "Snowbound", "The Lady Lies". "Deep in the Motherlode" would mostly avert this on its single release, which retitled it "Go West Young Man (In the Motherlode)".
- Non-Indicative Name: "Ballad of Big" is anything but a ballad, being more in-line with Genesis's more aggressive material.
- Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Occurs in-universe and is discussed in "Scenes from a Night's Dream", in which one of Little Nemo's dreams recreates the famously apocryphal story of a young George Washington chopping down his father's prized cherry tree, then immediately confessing to the act because he "cannot tell a lie." Right after describing this, Phil Collins quips that "now we all know that's not history!"
- Pride: The fatal flaw of Big Jim Cooley in "Ballad of Big". His sense of ego is so overpowering that the moment someone accuses him of being afraid of taking on a dangerous bet to drive a herd of cattle through Native American territory, he immediately lashes out and takes up the bet without thinking of the risks involved, ultimately leading to his death.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: The album title references the fact that, thanks to the departure of Steve Hackett the previous year, the band has now been reduced to just three members.
- The Savage Indian: "Ballad of Big" ends with the title character and his men being ambushed and killed by a tribe of Native Americans, who are depicted as this.
- Shout-Out:
- The album title is derived from the 1868 Black Comedy minstrel song "Ten Little Injuns", best known for being the namesake of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.
- The blur of a moving pen light throughout the album art references Pablo Picasso's famous "light drawing" photographs.
- "Scenes from a Night's Dream" is Genesis' own adaptation of the Little Nemo comic series, outright namedropping the title character.
- Silly Love Songs: "Follow You Follow Me" was written by Rutherford in honor of his wife, whom he was still in the first year of marriage with during recording of the album, and had just given birth to their first child.
- Surprisingly Happy Ending: After hearing nearly an hour's worth of bitter, anxious music influenced by the band's uncertainty without Hackett, it can be surprising to hear the album close out with the tranquil silly love song "Follow You Follow Me".
- Uncommon Time: "Down and Out" opens in 5/4, and then it goes off into... well, it's played at such a blistering speed that it's hard to be sure. It sounds like 19/16 honestly, but it might be 5/4 or 9/8. The chorus is in Common Time and is quite a bit slower.
- Unfinished Business: At the end of "Ballad of Big", the narrator describes an urban legend claiming that the title character's ghost still haunts the plains where he was killed, vowing to finish his end of the bet he made that led to his death in the first place.
- The Vamp: "The Lady Lies" is about a man who saves a woman seemingly from a monster, only to turn out she's actually a siren who leads him to an uncertain fate.
- The Wild West: "Ballad of Big" and "Deep in the Motherlode" are set here.
- The X of Y: "Ballad of Big"
