Music / Trespass (Genesis Album)

Visions of angels all around dance in the sky
Leaving me here forever goodbye.

"Stand up and fight, for you know we are right.
We must strike at the lies
That have spread like disease through our minds.
Soon we'll have power, every soldier will rest,
And we'll spread out our kindness
To all who our love now deserve.
Some of you are going to die -
Martyrs of course to the freedom that I shall provide."

—"The Knife"

Trespass is the second album by Genesis, released on 23 October 1970.

In the aftermath of From Genesis to Revelation, the band split from producer Jonathan King and sought to find a new sound for themselves. After drummer John Silver departed the band to pursue an education in Cornell, Genesis started touring as a professional band with new drummer John Mayhew. It was while in residency in Soho that they had come across producer John Anthony, who signed them into the Charisma Records label and brought them to Trident Studios in London to record. In America, the album was originally licensed to Impulse! Records, the jazz imprint of ABC, who reissued it themselves years later; the US rights to the album would later be inherited by MCA, who own said Stateside rights to this day.

The original run sold around six thousand copies, not highly successful but better than From Genesis to Revelation, and enough to build up a live following. Much to their surprise it charted at #1 in Belgium, leading to a first overseas concert there. Anthony Philips quit the band shortly after recording, almost splitting the band before they decided to name Mick Barnard as a replacement before settling on Steve Hackett. John Mayhew was also replaced with Phil Collins in the intervening months before the release of Nursery Cryme.

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Tracklist:

Side One

1. "Looking for Someone" (7:08)
2. "White Mountain" (6:46)
3. "Visions of Angels" (8:09)

Side Two

1. "Stagnation" (8:51)
2. "Dusk" (4:15)
3. "The Knife" (9:00)

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Principal Members:

• Tony Banks – keyboards, guitars, backing vocals
• Peter Gabriel – lead vocals, flute, percussion
• John Mayhew - drums, percussion, backing vocals
• Anthony Phillips - guitars, dulcimer, backing vocals
• Mike Rutherford – guitars, bass guitars, cello, backing vocals

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Then let us drink, then let us smile, then let us trope:

• Album Title Drop: In the starting verse for "White Mountain":
  Outcast, he trespassed where no wolf may tread.
• After the End: The protagonist of "Stagnation" was the only remaining surviving member of the human race.
• Bowdlerize: On the live version of "The Knife", this part of the lyrics:
  I'll give you the names of those you must kill
  All must die with their children
  Carry their heads to the palace of old
  Hang 'em all high, let blood flow NOW!

Has been changed into this...

I'll give you the names of those you must kill
Hang 'em and burn 'em quickly
Cover them up in Trafalgar Square
Hurry to see, you'll see them DEAD!

Yet, funnily enough, the "Hang 'em/let blood flow" line was moved to the end of the verse the changed lines were on.

• Call-Back: One of the wolves in "White Mountain" being called One-Eye is probably a reference to "One-Eyed Hound", the B-Side to their "A Winter's Tale" single.
• Darker and Edgier: "The Knife", a Hard Rock song on an album full of pastoral Folk Rock (though all six tracks also qualify as Progressive Rock).
• Epic Rocking: In a sign of things to come, only "Dusk" runs less than six minutes.
• Full-Circle Revolution: "The Knife" is about how violent revolutions just lead to the entrenchment of a new dictator.
• Gratuitous Panning: The lines "some of you are going to die; martyrs, of course, for the freedom that I shall provide" in the choruses jump from the left channel to the right one. The last instance of the line at the end of the song reverses the direction.
• Knight Templar: The protagonist of "The Knife", who winds up no better than the tyrants he overthrows. As the song progresses, he goes from rallying people against evil to giving detailed instructions for massacres and mutilation; at the end of the song, he proclaims victory, but implies that he'll only continue pushing armed violence.
• Last Note Nightmare: "The Knife" qualifies as one for the entire album.
• Longest Song Goes Last: "The Knife", although that track beats "Stagnation" by a mere nine seconds. Its nine-minute length on the album was nothing, though; it was known to reach up to nineteen in concert. ("Stagnation", meanwhile, was thirteen minutes at one point before being edited down.)
• Lyrical Cold Open: "Looking for Someone" opens with only Gabriel's vocals and a faintly audible organ (made somewhat more audible on the 2007 remix).
• Meet the New Boss: How "The Knife" ends, with a victorious shout of "we have won" and a reprise of the lines "some of you are going to die; martyrs, of course, for the freedom that I shall provide," indicating that the song's narrator has become just as despotic of a tyrant as the evil that he overthrew.
• Motor Mouth: The verses of "The Knife" are sung at breakneck speed.
• Musical Pastiche: "The Knife" was a pastiche of the Nice, to the extent that its Working Title was in fact "Nice". The organ part was inspired by its then-up-and-coming organ player, one Keith Emerson.
• New Sound Album: The transformation from folk-inspired psychedelia to Progressive Rock has taken root here, something that will be cemented through Nursery Cryme. While the sound here is still predominantly driven by Folk Rock, the song structures are decidedly longer and more complex, exemplified by the multi-part structure of tracks like "White Mountain", "Stagnation", and "The Knife".
• Protest Song: Gabriel wrote the lyrics to "The Knife" as a parody of one.
• Re-Cut:
  • While 8-track releases of the album preserve the original running order, a rarity for the format, "White Moutain", "Stagnation", and "Dusk" are all split into two parts due to them overlapping with the changeovers between programs.
  • UK cassette releases swap "Looking for Someone" and "Stagnation", which incidentally results in side two being considerably shorter than side one.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: "The Knife", as quoted above. The revolutionaries plan to kill their enemies and put their corpses (or just their heads) on display.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The interlude in "The Knife", where a group of soldiers mow down a crowd of protesters, was inspired by the Kent State University shootings in the United States, which occurred one month before the album began recording.
• Sole Survivor: "Stagnation". The backstory, as written in the liner notes:
  To Thomas S. Eiselber, a very rich man, who was wise enough to spend all his riches in burying himself many miles beneath the ground. As the only surviving member of the human race, he inherited the whole world.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Cassette releases in the UK, France, Germany, and Chile bill "Dusk" as "The Dusk".
• Subdued Section: "The Knife" has a calm midsection with a flute solo from Gabriel.

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