<\/p>\n
At 75, keyboardist Tony Banks should probably be savoring the near-mythic afterglow of the work he created with the band Genesis during the \u201970s and \u201980s \u2014 rewriting and expanding the tenets of British progressive rock, and selling over 100 million records in the process.<\/p>\n
One would imagine that, like most surviving prog legends of his generation, Banks would be planning his next solo album, followed perhaps by a lengthy tour featuring guest appearances by some of his former bandmates.<\/p>\n
But the slightly somber man on the other side of our Zoom connection is certainly not as convinced of his own staying power. During a lengthy conversation held while promoting the reissue of the classic double LP \u201cThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,\u201d Banks sounds at times as nostalgic and melancholy as the pastoral piano lines that populate such exquisite Genesis anthems as \u201cRipples\u201d and \u201cCarpet Crawlers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got one or two things around that I think would work \u2014 maybe,\u201d he hesitates. \u201cBut that would involve getting the whole machinery going again, and if it\u2019s fine weather, I\u2019m out in the garden. I\u2019m not a young man anymore, even though I still have musical ideas. Just don\u2019t hold your breath for any combination involving [former Genesis bandmates] Mike [Rutherford] or Phil [Collins.]\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of mainstream visibility, the bona fide Genesis stars were its two charismatic lead vocalists: first Peter Gabriel, then drummer-turned-pop star Phil Collins. But you only need to be marginally familiar with the band\u2019s 15 studio albums \u2014 released between 1969 and 1997 \u2014 to realize that it was Banks and bassist-guitarist Rutherford who created most of the group\u2019s astonishing soundscapes.<\/p>\n
Emerging in the progressive scene at the same time as the other icons of post-Beatles rock \u2014 King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer \u2014 Genesis was probably the best of the bunch. Banks was only 21 when they released \u201cNursery Cryme,\u201d a haunting LP that combines the melodrama of post-romantic classical with esoteric folk-rock. The lyrics breathe like literary miniatures, gleefully exploring social satire, the fantastic and macabre. The album ends with an eight-minute retelling of a Greek myth \u2014 Salmacis and Hermaphroditus \u2014 drenched in Mellotron and erotic pathos.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were lucky that pop music hadn\u2019t gone very far at the time,\u201d Banks says. \u201cObviously groups like King Crimson had tried a few things, but there was still space to go places that hadn\u2019t been explored much. You could tell a story and allow yourself 10, 15, even 25 minutes to get it across. And in those days, we sort of got away with it. We managed to carry on enough of an audience to make it practical. I don\u2019t think people\u2019s attention span would go for that sort of thing today. And they say that your most creative period is probably up to the age of 28.\u201d<\/p>\n
The late-era Genesis canon appears to disprove that theory. In the \u201880s, after Gabriel and guitarist Steve Hackett had jumped ship, Banks, Collins and Rutherford decided to soldier on as a trio. They built their own studio, started jamming together and composing material from scratch, and focused \u2014 mostly \u2014 on shorter songs. In concert, they conjured up a beautiful racket by having Collins duet with American drummer Chester Thompson during the kind of lengthy instrumental passages that were prog\u2019s badge of honor.<\/p>\n
Banks\u2019 refined melodic sensibility and sophisticated chord progressions were the glue that held the magic together. Inspired by Rachmaninoff, his piano intro to the 1973 epic \u201cFirth of Fifth\u201d summed up the essence not only of Genesis, but of progressive rock itself as a harbinger of change: passionate, majestic, intoxicated by its own sense of longing (\u201ca lot of people play it very well on YouTube, but they go too fast,\u201d he points out. \u201cIf you play it fast it just sounds tricksy.\u201d)<\/p>\n
Even after the band \u201csold out,\u201d with huge radio hits like \u201cThrowing It All Away\u201d and \u201cThat\u2019s All,\u201d Banks didn\u2019t recede; instead, he went covert. 1986\u2019s \u201cInvisible Touch\u201d was an updated prog manifesto camouflaged as pop artifact. Its closing track, a harmonically suspended instrumental titled \u201cThe Brazilian,\u201d flirted with the avant-garde by repeating the same anti-melody, anchored on a jungle of percussive clangs and hyperkinetic Simmons drum rolls. It was as brilliant as anything the band had done in the \u201870s.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur best music was not our singles, it was the stuff that went a bit further,\u201d he explains. \u201cI avoided using regular chord sequences because I felt it was lazy. A lot of modern pop goes through variations of C, A minor, F and G, then wobble along on top of it. That doesn\u2019t interest me as a writer. I was always trying weird things.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTony was a big influence on me when I was a kid,\u201d says Jack Hues, the former leader of \u201880s group Wang Chung, who worked with Banks on the solo album \u201cStrictly Inc.\u201d \u201cI remember listening to \u2018Watcher of the Skies\u2019 every morning before I went to school. I used to put it on my little record player in my bedroom, and it seemed to be the kind of thing that I needed to get through the day. When I got the call to work with him, it was fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of all the Genesis entourage, I had the best relationship with Tony. I trusted him,\u201d adds Ray Wilson, the Scottish singer\/songwriter who became the band\u2019s last vocalist on the lackluster 1997 album \u201cCalling All Stations.\u201d \u201cHe seemed to be the backbone of the whole thing. Very strong minded, very opinionated, but a good person. Being onstage with him when we toured with Genesis had more than its share of magical moments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCalling All Stations\u201d signaled the last time that Genesis released any new music. Collins returned to the fold for a 2007 tour \u2014 including two spectacular evenings at the Hollywood Bowl \u2014 and, after his health deteriorated, a bittersweet farewell jaunt in 2021-22. The long periods of inactivity may have affected Banks\u2019 confidence, which apparently was not very strong to begin with.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe always had a small beer before a gig, just to calm his nerves,\u201d recalls Wilson with a smile. \u201cObviously this had nothing to do with his ability; the man is extremely talented. \u2018The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway\u2019 has a cross-fingered intro on the keyboards, and this little run before the first verse comes in. Tony would invariably f\u2014 that up. Every now and again, he\u2019d get it right, but I was always thinking: Is he going to f\u2014 it up tonight? That was funny, and it was also part of his charm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI cheat, really,\u201d says Banks. \u201cI\u2019m not a great technical player at all. Because I was always writing for myself, I could avoid the things I couldn\u2019t play. Someone like [former Yes keyboardist] Rick Wakeman has a far better technique than me, but technique has never been my priority. I wanted to explore what you could do with the piano. It\u2019s down to how you use it, what you play. And what I play is what I like.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the past, both Collins and Rutherford joked about Banks\u2019 stubborn streak. It may be the side of his personality that allowed him to cultivate a solo career of uncompromising integrity and, in commercial terms, one criminally underrated.<\/p>\n
It started with the concept album \u201cA Curious Feeling,\u201d its obsessive autumnal gloom and ornate melodies made even more memorable by the monochrome opacity of the production. Released in 1979, a couple of years before Collins hijacked the charts with \u201cIn the Air Tonight,\u201d it did moderately well. Four albums later \u2014 his last rock outing, \u201cStrictly Inc.,\u201d dropped 30 years ago \u2014 success still eluded him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see the point in putting something out there, really,\u201d he admits. \u201cEach one of my rock records sold about 10% less than the previous one. By the time we get to \u2018Strictly Inc.,\u2019 I\u2019ve got all the copies here at home. You may have one yourself, but the project didn\u2019t really work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTony doesn\u2019t suffer fools gladly, and he won\u2019t play along with the kind of thing where you hang out with the right industry people,\u201d says Hues. \u201cPhil and Mike produced music that had more affinity with the Genesis hits. Tony wrote many of those songs, of course, but his solo product is not very marketable.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked if he could imagine following the career path carved by other prog stars like his former bandmate Steve Hackett, who still releases new music independently and tours the nostalgia circuit constantly, Banks does not sound enthused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a much tougher world out there, and people just don\u2019t care. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Peter or Phil want to do something, it\u2019s easy for them because they have the stature, and they\u2019re very talented as well. I\u2019m primarily a writer. I didn\u2019t really want to be a player. I only played because no one else would play the stuff we wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, he has not altogether abandoned his creative pursuits. Between 2004 and 2018, Banks released three albums of orchestral pieces that enjoyed moderate acclaim in England. And he is still moved by the warm reception given to the last Genesis tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was amazed that people were still interested,\u201d he says. \u201dI thought it was going to be quite tough, but we were able to play big places.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pauses to reflect, then adds with a smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenesis lasted longer than I thought it would. But that\u2019s the nature of recorded music, it\u2019s always out there, isn\u2019t it? People can listen to it and say, well, that\u2019s actually pretty good. And I think that\u2019s really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 75, keyboardist Tony Banks should probably be savoring the near-mythic afterglow of the work he created with the band Genesis during the \u201970s and \u201980s \u2014 rewriting and expanding the tenets of British progressive rock, and selling over 100 million records in the process. One would imagine that, like most surviving prog legends of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2275584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Why-Tony-Banks-the-quiet-genius-behind-Genesis-is-hesitant.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275585,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions\/2275585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.latimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 75, keyboardist Tony Banks should probably be savoring the near-mythic afterglow of the work he created with the band Genesis during the \u201970s and \u201980s \u2014 rewriting and expanding the tenets of British progressive rock, and selling over 100 million records in the process. One would imagine that, like most surviving prog legends of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2275584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Why-Tony-Banks-the-quiet-genius-behind-Genesis-is-hesitant.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275585,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions\/2275585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
At 75, keyboardist Tony Banks should probably be savoring the near-mythic afterglow of the work he created with the band Genesis during the \u201970s and \u201980s \u2014 rewriting and expanding the tenets of British progressive rock, and selling over 100 million records in the process. One would imagine that, like most surviving prog legends of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2275584,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2275583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Why-Tony-Banks-the-quiet-genius-behind-Genesis-is-hesitant.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2275583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2275585,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2275583\/revisions\/2275585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2275584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2275583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2275583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2275583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}