Trivia / Abacab

• Cut Song:
  • "Paperlate", "You Might Recall", and "Me and Virgil" were written during the album's sessions, but were ultimately left off; they would instead surface on the companion EP 3×3 and on the international release of the Live Album Three Sides Live.
  • "Naminanu" and "Submarine" were cut from the final tracklist, but later saw release as B-sides — "Naminanu" would surface on the European release of "No Reply at All" and on "Keep It Dark" worldwide, while "Submarine" appeared as the flipside to "Man on the Corner".
• Rarely Performed Song: The Title Track was considered for the band's setlist during their 2007 reunion tour, but was dropped thanks to Phil Collins finding the lyrics too incomprehensible to comfortably sing; it would also be omitted from the 2021 reunion tour's setlist.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Abacab was originally conceived as a double album, which would've been their first since The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. However, much of the material was too similar in style to their past albums, and the band, who wanted to avoid relying on conventions, consequently pared it down to a single LP.
  • "Dodo/Lurker" was meant to be part of a sixteen-minute suite on the 2-LP configuration, followed by (in order) "Submarine" and "Naminanu", before the band decided they didn't like the latter two numbers as much and relegated them to B-sides.
  • The nearly seven-minute Title Track was apparently even longer at first; some sources claim it to have been as many as twelve minutes long. Three Sides Live contains a performance that's nearly nine minutes long, which seems to conclude with the segment the band was playing over the studio version's fadeout.
  • The band considered releasing "Who Dunnit?" as a single, but decided not to.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: The album's material was worked together from jam sessions. The band credited the establishment of their own personal studio, the Farm, with helping facilitate this mode of songwriting, since it gave them way more time that they wouldn't be able to get from traditionally renting out preexisting studios.

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