- Channel Hop: The band were originally signed onto Decca Records, a deal which lasted all of one album before the band were dropped due to it underperforming. They would then sign with Charisma Records in the UK and Impulse! Records in the US, the latter of which also lasted all of one album before having Charisma distribute them on both sides of the Pond. In the UK, they would stay on Charisma until its 1986 absorption by Virgin Records, onto whom the band would move. In the US, meanwhile, Genesis would sign onto Atco Records in 1974 before moving onto their parent label, Atlantic Records, after the departure of Steve Hackett. Atlantic would inherit the US rights to the 1971-1973 albums as a result.
- Creator Backlash: Given the size of their discography and the number of people who have been members throughout the years, it follows that band members have expressed dissatisfaction with a fairly large number of works:
- Despite the song as a whole being nearly universally considered Awesome Music, the lyrics to "Firth of Fifth" are considered by Tony Banks to be some of the worst he's ever written. On the reunion tour, they cut the lyrics out entirely and just played the epic middle section as an instrumental.
- The entire band has been similarly negative about ...And Then There Were Three..., recorded in the midst of Hackett's departure and Collins' divorce; the three recording members felt they were making an album simply to make an album.
- "Who Dunnit?" from Abacab. It was written more or less as a joke, then the joke was taken even further by incorporating it into the tour setlist. To drive the point home, in live performances of the song, Mike Rutherford plays the drums.
- The band doesn't look fondly at its entire first album, From Genesis to Revelation. The only reason they haven't deleted it is because they don't own the rights to it; even so, they still exclude it from their official discographies. They have mentioned, however, that part of their dissatisfaction is with the saccharine string arrangements forced on the songs by Executive Meddling; they presented demo versions of some of the songs on the first Archives box set that they said were closer to their actual artistic vision.
- Also, "Illegal Alien" pokes fun at a rather serious problem; the poverty of Latin American would-be immigrants attempting to enter the USA. Unfortunately, the video
took it up to eleven, with the band sporting stereotypically Mexican outfits and engaging in allegedly comic south of the border shenanigans to the point of racist caricature. - Phil Collins has mentioned in internet postings not to be a fan of 'Match of the Day', from the Spot the Pigeon EP, which is probably why that track was left off of 2000's Genesis Archives #2 boxset, where 'Pigeons' and 'Inside and Out' were included. As a consequence, the song was extremely hard to find for a while. However, all three songs are included in the Genesis 1976–1982 boxset and the EP was repressed on vinyl in 2012, making the song easily available again.
- Collins wasn't very proud of "Me and Virgil" from the 3 x 3 EP, either.
- He also hasn't spoken fondly of the music video for "A Trick of the Tail", mentioning in a 1994 VH1 interview that he considers it one of the most embarrassing videos of his career.
- The band as a whole regards their final studio album Calling All Stations as this, as well as Ray Wilson's time as lead vocalist (whom the album boasted). The group refused to play anything from the album on either of their two reunion tours, and only two songs from that album have ever made it onto any of their compilations (the title track and "Congo"; the former is on their Platinum Collection while the latter is on both editions of Turn It On Again: The Hits). Tellingly, their R-Kive box set from 2014 doesn't include any song from the album.
- As noted in his book "Not Dead Yet", Phil Collins regards his 80s pop era with some degree of this. Whilst he was happy to have hits, he typecast himself by writing about his divorce, doing increasingly inane Motown-influenced songs, and trying to cover social issues whilst being a millionaire. Before all these hits, he was chiefly known as one of the best drummers in the business, and was still in demand as a session musician for years.
- Creator Killer: While the writing had been on the wall since the late '80s, the double whammy of Phil Collins' 1996 departure and Calling All Stations the following year damaged the band's reputation to the point of no return. They were already facing heat for abandoning their prog rock roots in favor of mainstream pop rock since Peter Gabriel and especially Steve Hackett left, and the overlap between Genesis' newer music and Collins' solo works became apparent with the release of Invisible Touch. But with Collins deciding to focus on his solo work, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks were the only original members left, and the group had to hastily assemble Calling All Stations in order to stay afloat. The result was a complete mess from top to bottom, resulting in one of the most critically-panned albums of the '90s. The group broke up not long after their concert tour to promote the album flopped.
- Fake American: Rael, the protagonist in The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. A half-Puerto Rican street kid from New York City would be unlikely to refer to money as "notes and coins," with "cash" being more common. But in the song "The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging", he does anyway.
- Also in the song "Back in NYC", Rael says "your progressive hypocrites". An American would probably have called them "liberal hypocrites".note
- Collins' evangelist character in the video for "Jesus He Knows Me" has a Deep South accent, at least until his accent slips.
- Fake Nationality: The group dresses up in fake mustaches and Mexican garb for the video for "Illegal Alien".
- Hey, It's That Place!: The video for "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" from Invisible Touch was shot at the Bradbury Building.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: A one-off reunion with Peter Gabriel, a concert on October 2nd, 1982 at the National Bowl in Milton Keynes, to benefit Gabriel's WOMAD arts festival, was never officially recorded or filmed. The only record that exists are bootleg recordings.
- An extremely rare early pressing of Genesis Live was a double album including a version of "Supper's Ready" in addition to the five commonly available tracks. These test pressings are now extremely rare and the recording of "Supper's Ready" included on them has never been reissued on future versions of "Live" nor on any other Genesis release.
- Magnum Opus Dissonance: While Selling England by the Pound is the album you're most likely to hear cited as Genesis' best (for example, it's their best-rated album on Prog Archives), some of the band members themselves have reservations with it. They don't think it's a bad album, but they think it could have been better (it is, however, Hackett's favourite album). Some of the band members also feel that The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, another candidate you're likely to hear cited as their best recording, gets progressively weaker towards the end.
- Newbie Boom:
- Following the success of Duke and Abacab, then carried over to the other side of the pond with Genesis.
- To a lesser extent, Foxtrot helped make them one of the top prog bands in England and parts of Europe, and Selling England by the Pound gave Genesis their first small taste of touring success in the US (and their first chart success, 'I Know What I Like' reaching 21 in the UK chart).
- Multi-Disc Work:
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was released as a double-LP, and its length was great enough for the band to consider releasing it as two separate single-disc albums before settling on putting all of it out at once. Cassette releases initially came on two tapes as well, but technological improvements allowed reissues from 1977 onward to store the full 94 minutes on one tape, with each side storing a full disc (albeit with the tracklist slightly adjusted). US 8-track releases additionally managed to store the entire album on one tape from the outset.
- The vinyl releases of both We Can't Dance and ...Calling All Stations... were double-LPs out of necessity, as both of them were recorded with the Compact Disc format in mind. The latter album only occupies three sides, with the fourth featuring a stylized etching of the band.
- No Export for You: The Definitive Edition remaster of Trespass was never released in North America, thanks to the fact that the album was owned by MCA (who inherited it from ABC/Impulse) in that region, who operated under a different parent company than Virgin Records (who owned the international rights to the Genesis catalog post-From Genesis to Revelation) and Atlantic Records & Atco Records (who owned the North American rights to the Genesis catalog from Nursery Cryme onwards). Likewise, the 2007 remaster of Trespass never saw a CD release in North America for the same reason, only a digital and LP release (both of which are now unavailable).
- Nominal Coauthor: During Peter Gabriel's tenure as frontman, the band had a policy of crediting every song to the full group to reduce infighting. This was even the case for songs that were primarily written by one or two members, such as "More Fool Me" (written by Mike Rutherford & Phil Collins) and "Counting Out Time" (written by Gabriel). The band abandoned the policy in favor of individual credits following Gabriel's departure, which resulted in the infighting that they wanted to avoid, which factored into Steve Hackett's departure.
- The Other Marty: Between Anthony Phillips' departure and Steve Hackett's arrival, the band had another guitarist named Mick Barnard. Since he never performed on any official albums, and was only in the band for a few months, he is largely forgotten by most fans. An appearance on the BBC2 show Disco 2 in November 1970 includes Barnard in the band, but since this was during the height of the BBC's wiping policy, which didn't end until eight years later, the recording of the broadcast has since been lost.
- The Pete Best: Phil Collins didn't join the band until Genesis' third album, Nursery Cryme. Chris Stewart, John Silver, and John Mayhew (who appears in the 2014 Together And Apart documentary in footage recorded before his death in 2009) preceded him.
- Anthony Phillips left after the second album, Trespass. While his contributions seem marginalized now, Tony Banks remarks in Together And Apart that his departure was not taken lightly, and he was concerned for the future of the band. While not credited, the song "The Musical Box" that appears on Nursery Cryme was based on a piece Phillips had composed for the band.
- While Steve Hackett's leaving was amicable (both Collins and Rutherford contributed to his first solo album, Voyage of the Acolyte, released before he left the band) the 2014 documentary Together and Apart (broadcast as Sum of the Parts in the US), a film supposedly meant to touch on both the band's long life and the noteworthy solo careers of all the band members, gives Hackett's solo career, which spans over twenty records, the barest of mentions. Hackett went on social media and to Rolling Stone to voice his displeasure. Hackett was much more positive towards the R-Kive box set that accompanied the documentary, because it gave equal time to every member's side-projects.
- What makes the documentary even more tone-deaf is that Hackett at the time of the documentary's broadcast was currently in the middle of a nearly two-year tour behind his Genesis Revisited II record, that continued into early 2015, playing many classic Genesis songs which hadn't been performed live for decades (for the tour for his 2015 solo record, Wolflight, each show's second set was comprised of nearly all Genesis songs, going as far back as Nursery Cryme).
- Ray Wilson also to an extent, as his career with Genesis was killed by fan indifference before it could begin. However at the same time, he has seemed to parlay that brief time into a substantial career, still performing songs from Calling All Stations live and appearing as a guest singer at Steve Hackett's 2013 Genesis Revisited II show at the Royal Albert Hall.
- Pop-Culture Urban Legends: Common rumor stipulates that "Mama" is about a fetus narrating their own abortion (likely influenced by Seals & Crofts' Unborn Child, a Concept Album about exactly that); Phil Collins denied this, stating that the piece is actually about a man obsessed with an older prostitute who resembles his mother.
- Referenced by...:
- In Knights of Buena Vista, Adriana is singing one of the band's songs, and Ilene jokes that they are known as "Mega Drive" in the rest of the world.
- Attack of the Moon Zombies has characters named after all five members of the classic 1971-75 lineup. The film even features "The Genesis Project", which was originally led by Dr. Peter Gabriel, then taken over by Dr. Phillip Collins!
- In American Psycho, Villain Protagonist Patrick Bateman praises Genesis' shift from Progressive Rock to pop rock, singling out Duke as their first good album while dismissing everything they did with Peter Gabriel as "too artsy, too intellectual," which is meant to exemplify his Wicked Pretentious nature. Bateman also misidentifies which band member left before the release of ...And Then There Were Three..., believing that the title referred to Gabriel rather than Steve Hackett.
- Disturbed recorded a Cover Version of "Land of Confusion".
- Ghost put together a Cover Version of "Jesus He Knows Me".
- Serendipity Writes the Plot: Many of their trademark techniques and tones were developed over a brief period of time between Anthony Phillips' split from the group and the hiring of Steve Hackett to replace him, as they had not yet found a guitarist and were rehearsing as a four-piece, with Rutherford and/or Banks using different methods of making up for the lack of guitar (bass pedals, double-neck guitar, distorted electric piano).
- Their method of writing in the studio via jam sessions, improvisations and group-composing in The '80s was partly a way of keeping the dwindling band united on a project, particularly as pre-written songs were being used on solo albums. They also felt that the best tracks on ...And Then There Were Three... and Duke were group-written, and wanted to continue in that vein and justify their reasons for continuing as a band.
- Gabriel's penchant for telling weird stories between songs arose as a way to keep audiences engaged during concerts, as the band would often take a long time to re-tune their instruments. Also, his usage of masks and costumes came about as a requirement for telling his stories in addition to overcoming his own stage fright.
- Short-Lived, Big Impact: Being one of the most influential of Progressive Rock, the classic lineup of Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford surprisingly lasted only 4 years.
- Throw It In!:
- In 1979, Gabriel asked Collins to play drums on Melt. Producer Hugh Padgham, testing out his new recording console, accidentally recorded Phil's drumsnote and it picked out a thick, punchy reverb that disappeared in an instant. Gabriel would add piano and vocals to the recorded demo, creating "Intruder," the opening song of the album. That is how the "gated reverb", the sound of The '80s, was born.
- The 2007 reunion tour was the result of a collective shrug and the band asking each other "Why the hell not?" Almost the entirety of Genesis's lineup had gotten together for an event celebrating the release of a boxset of the band's work and members began leaving one by one until it was just Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, and Tony Banks sitting around and chatting. The three looked at each other and realized that they represented the longest-serving incarnation of the band and decided to hit the road together.
- In 1979, Gabriel asked Collins to play drums on Melt. Producer Hugh Padgham, testing out his new recording console, accidentally recorded Phil's drumsnote and it picked out a thick, punchy reverb that disappeared in an instant
- What Could Have Been:
- When the band were auditioning drummers in 1970 after John Mayhew's departure, there was one young drummer/singer that turned down the chance to join the band. That drummer was Roger Taylor.
- Attempts were made to make a movie out of The Lamb since the late 1970s, including talks with William Friedkin, but nothing came to fruition.
- When the band was forming ideas for what would become 1974's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, Mike Rutherford suggested composing a song cycle loosely based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella The Little Prince. Gabriel, however, had a singular vision for the record and ultimately wrote the lyrics for The Lamb on his own, with a edgier tone, and with an American protagonist.
- Eventually, Rutherford's ideas would figure prominently in the song cycle that book-ends (along with the song "Turn It On Again") 1980's Duke. The album's art seems also evocative of the book.
- The Little Prince-inspired tracks on Duke were meant to be a suite taking up one side, yet in the end the band didn't want the composition compared to similar songs such as "Supper's Ready" and felt leaving the tracks together would have given the record a noticeably weaker B-side, and make the songs harder to release as potential singles.
- However, they did perform the "suite" live, introduced by Collins as "The Story of Albert", during the subsequent tour for the album, documented on several bootlegs.
- Concidentally, Rutherford used another children's novel, Smallcreep's Day, as the basis for his first solo record, which was released in 1980, the same year as Duke, and recorded in the same studio.
- Casual considerations to replace Steve Hackett as guitarist in 1978 were rumored to include Jeff Beck, Robert Fripp, and Steely Dan veteran Elliott Randall. It was later agreed to keep it a three-piece in the studio.
- 1982's Abacab was originally planned as a double-album. Most of the tracks ultimately removed (most notably the instrumentals "Naminanu" & "Submarine") appeared as B-sides, and the song originally meant as the album's closer, "Paperlate", eventually appeared on 3x3 and Three Sides Live.
- "Dodo/Lurker" was also meant to be part of a sixteen-minute suite on the 2LP 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. Additionally, the Title Track was apparently even longer; 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.
- According to an interview in Guitar World, when David Lee Roth left Van Halen in 1986, Eddie Van Halen began writing many of the songs that would ultimately appear on 5150 with the idea of using different vocalists on each track. He had reached out to both Rutherford and Collins to work on the record, and wrote the song "Right Now" with the late Joe Cocker in mind.
- Celebrated indie songwriter/musician Kevin Gilbert, who had much respect and love for the "classic" Genesis (he performed the entire ''Lamb Lies Down'' album live on stage with his band Giraffe in 1994), was invited to audition to replace Phil Collins in 1996. Unfortunately, Gilbert died during an autoerotic asphyxiation session gone wrong before his management received the invitation. Considering Gilbert's prog-rock credibility and rising career as a songwriter at the time, there's no telling what his talent could've done to help reinvigorate the band.
- Among the people also being considered to replace Phil Collins as lead singer was Fish, who had previously done vocals for some of Tony Banks' solo material. "Generillion" might very well have been really awesome, especially since Fish's vocals have been compared to Gabriel's to begin with.
- Their 2007 Turn It On Again tour started as an attempt to reunite Banks, Collins, Rutherford, Gabriel and Hackett to perform The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway; when Gabriel decided against it, the post-Hackett five-piece touring band reunited instead.
- "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight", "The Cinema Show", and "Aisle of Plenty" were originally composed as a single twenty-minute suite, but as with the Saint-Exupéry-inspired Duke suite above, the band felt it would've been too similar to "Supper's Ready" and split it up to bookend the album. This is why the coda to "Dancing" just seems to build up tension without any real release: it's intended to lead into the intro of "The Cinema Show". In any case, if they'd left them together we'd be mentioning them in the same breath as "Supper's Ready" now, so it's a shame they were split up.
- Speaking of "Supper's Ready", the "Willow Farm" section was originally conceived as a separate song. The band later decided to include it in the suite, with Banks mentioning that it would prevent "Supper's Ready" from being too similar to their earlier song "Stagnation".
- The liner notes for the Definitive Edition remaster of Nursery Cryme list the lyrics for the songs in an alternate order from the album's running order. When listened to in sequence, this provides an interesting alternate running order for the album that some listeners may end up preferring to the official one. For one thing, it ends less abruptly.
- The Musical Box
- Harold the Barrel
- Seven Stones
- For Absent Friends
- The Fountain of Salmacis
- The Return of the Giant Hogweed
- Harlequin
- The non-Little Prince tracks on Duke were leftovers from the solo albums the members had just finished recording, as those albums had drained them all creatively. One of the songs Phil offered was "In the Air Tonight," about which Tony has said that he regrets turning it down.
- After Collins' departure and Wilson's appointing, touring drummer Chester Thompson was interested in becoming a full-time member with doing the drums for Calling All Stations but the band opted to go with Nir Zidkyahu and Nick D'Virgilio instead, so he eventually declined the offer to serve as touring drummer for the album's tour and Zidkyahu became touring drummer along with appearing in the music videos for "Congo" and "Shipwrecked". Had this happened, it would've been the first time that Genesis been a quartet since the Collins-Banks-Rutherford-Hackett line up from A Trick of the Tail and Wind & Wuthering.
- Ray Wilson was originally going to sing the final verse of "The Carpet Crawlers 1999", which would've been the only time in which all three past and present frontmen would work together, but Wilson had left the band by this time, so it ultimately ended up being a Gabriel/Collins duet with the final verse omitted. Wilson would ultimately provide vocals for Steve Hackett's solo rendition of "Carpet Crawlers" on 2013's Genesis Revisited II: Selection.
- The jam band Phish, who are known for doing "musical costume" complete album performances at their Halloween shows, reached out to Peter Gabriel in 2010 about possibly staging a performance of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway with him. The band's musical style is strongly influenced by prog rock, and their leader Trey Anastasio had inducted Genesis into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame that same year, so the idea was both more fitting and more likely than would first appear. Gabriel told Rolling Stone that Phish's proposal was the only time he had ever seriously considered performing Lamb in its entirety again, but ultimately the idea fell through, and Phish did a cover of Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus for their 2010 Halloween show instead.
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