Trivia / Duke

• Referenced by...: In American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, a Wicked Pretentious yuppie who praises anything commercial while dismissing everything artsy, namechecks Duke as the first good Genesis album to tie in with his lack of taste. At the time the book and film came out, '80s Genesis were still the subject of a major Hype Backlash due to Phil Collins' overexposure; they didn't get positively reappraised until the late 2000s and the 2010s.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Like Selling England by the Pound before it, Duke was initially conceived as featuring a side-length suite, only for it to be split apart to avoid comparisons to "Supper's Ready" from Foxtrot. Specifically, the Duke suite, titled "The Story of Albert" and loosely based on The Little Prince (pulling from a rejected idea for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), comprised "Behind the Lines", "Duchess", "Guide Vocal", "Turn It On Again", "Duke's Travels", and "Duke's End". The first three songs became the albums first three tracks, the last two songs became the album's last two tracks, and "Turn It On Again" was expanded and slotted at the start of side two. The band still performed the suite in full during live shows on the album's supporting tour, however.
  • The band considered making Duke a Distinct Single Album, in which one side would feature songs composed by the individual members and another side would feature songs composed collaboratively by the whole group. Mike Rutherford complimented the final tracklist, which intertwines the two categories of material, as "a very balanced album."

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