Music / Wind & Wuthering

"Like the dust that settles all around me, I must find a new home."

"Masters of the wonders... weavers of fables... spinners of myths and mysteries... the storytellers of music. Genesis."
"Hear Genesis: Genesis Here."

—Taglines from the album's advertising campaign.

Wind & Wuthering is the eighth studio album by Genesis, released in 17 December 1976 by Charisma Records in the United Kingdom and Atco Records in the United States. It was the final album to feature guitarist Steve Hackett, whose departure led to the next album being called ...And Then There Were Three.... It was also the first time that the band recorded out of their native UK, since the success of the A Trick of the Tail tour had them relocate to the Netherlands.

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Eleventh Earl of Mar" (7:45)
2. "One for the Vine" (10:00)
3. "Your Own Special Way" (6:19)
4. "Wot Gorilla?" (3:21)

Side Two

1. "All in a Mouse's Night" (6:39)
2. "Blood on the Rooftops" (5:28)
3. "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..." (2:20)
4. "...In That Quiet Earth" (4:54)
5. "Afterglow" (4:11)

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Principal Members:

• Tony Banks – keyboards
• Phil Collins – vocals, drums percussion
• Steve Hackett – guitars, kalimba, autoharp
• Mike Rutherford – guitars, bass guitars

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Eleventh Earl of Mar couldn't trope them very far:

• The Ending Changes Everything: The final line of "One for the Vine" reframes the entire song in a different light, since before then, it wasn't clear that it was describing a Stable Time Loop, or that it had any science-fiction elements.
• Epic Rocking: "One for the Vine" and the "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..."/"...In That Quiet Earth"/"Afterglow" suite are both at least ten minutes long, while "Eleventh Earl of Mar", "Your Own Special Way", and "All in a Mouse's Night" are above six minutes.
• Full-Circle Revolution: "One for the Vine" combines this with a Stable Time Loop: the central character eventually becomes the "chosen one" whose army he ran away from at the start of the song.
• General Failure: The Eleventh Earl of Mar, who led the Jacobite rising of 1715 and lingered near Perth long enough for pro-government forces to respond.
  Out on the road in the direction of Perth,
  Backwards and forwards in a circle they went
  Found a city half open and ready to greet
  The conquering heroes, with blisters on their feet.
• God Guise: In "One for the Vine", the primitive people that the protagonist encounters mistake him for "God's Chosen One who's come to save us from all our oppressors/We shall be kings on this world", with predictable results.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: "One for the Vine".
• Heel Realization: At the end of "One for the Vine", the time-travelling Villain Protagonist appears to have one when he recognises his past self walk off and vanish into the past, though by this point it's much too late to do anything, thanks to the Stable Time Loop nature of the plot.
• Instrumental: "Wot Gorilla?", "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers...", and "...In That Quiet Earth"
• Literary Allusion Title: "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..." and "...In That Quiet Earth" are named after the last sentence in Wuthering Heights. The "Wuthering" part of the album title was also inspired by the book.
• Longest Song Goes Last: If played in a continuous suite, "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..."/"...In That Quiet Earth"/"Afterglow" (11:24).
• Meet the New Boss: In a way, also present in "One for the Vine", though thanks to a Stable Time Loop, the same person actually serves as both the new boss and the old boss.
• My God, What Have I Done? The protagonist of "One for the Vine" had one when finding out he was both the chosen one and the oppressor.
• Non-Indicative Name: Those unfamiliar with the songs in question are unlikely to guess that "One for the Vine" is about warfare or that "Blood on the Rooftops" is about watching TV.
• Recurring Riff: One of the riffs from "Eleventh Earl of Mar" is reprised in the second half of "...In That Quiet Earth".
• Re-Cut:
  • While UK 8-track releases preserve the LP running order, a rarity for the format, "One for the Vine", "Wot Gorilla?", and "Blood on the Rooftops" are all split into two parts due to them overlapping with the changeovers between programs.
  • North American 8-track releases reorder the tracklist to conform to the four-program format. On these releases, the new running order is "Eleventh Earl of Mar", "One for the Vine", "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers...", "...In That Quiet Earth", "Afterglow", "Blood on the Rooftops", "Wot Gorilla?", "Your Own Special Way", and "All in a Mouse's Night". Additionally, "One for the Vine" is split into two parts due to it overlapping with the changeovers between programs 1 and 2.
• Shout-Out:
  • "All in a Mouse's Night" was inspired by Tom and Jerry. The end of the song, in which the cat is defeated by a ten-foot-tall mouse, similarly stems from the Tom and Jerry shorts "Jerry and Jumbo" and "Is There a Doctor in the Mouse?"
  • The song "Blood on the Rooftops" has the line "The grime on the Tyne is mine all mine all mine", referencing Lindisfarne's famous "Fog on the Tyne".
• Siamese Twin Songs: "Unquiet Slumbers for the Sleepers..." "...In That Quiet Earth", which in turn transitions directly to "Afterglow". North American releases of the album prior to the 1994 Definitive Edition remaster even sequence the former two songs as one track.
• Stable Time Loop: The plot of "One for the Vine", particularly where the protagonist becomes the "Chosen One" that his army was running away from.

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