[ivan_2068]

Rick & Roll wrote:

I realize Ivan you are very anti-Phil Collins, but the others share the responsibilty, evidenced by the abysmal "Calling All Stations". Phil played with Brand X you know...seems proggy to me.

I think you misunderstand me Rick, I have the most of respect for Phil Collins as a drummer, backing vocalist and even some respect as a lead vocalist, but not as a composer, he turned Genesis in his favorite session musicians and they let him.

Of course each of the 3 guys had his share of responsability in the Genesis debacle, Phil & Mike because they took the band directly to POP and Tony for doing nothing to stop them.

But the case is that if you compare the Genesis albums after Duke with No Jackett Required, there's almost no difference, so Phil was the one who forced his style, even when the other two accepted for the $$$$.

Rick & Roll wrote:

Hackett left because he couldn't get enough of his ideas in place. Which is a shame because he fell into the "I must write and sing everything" trap. Both the former band and the artist suffer in this case.

I don't think so Rick, Hackett left because the band was taking a path he didn't agree with.

WOG: Do you recall a particular moment when you were in Genesis when you felt that it just wasn't worth staying in the band anymore?

SH: (...)I was really edging away from the group at that point. I was getting tired of bringing ideas into the group which I felt they weren't going to do. If the ideas were more radical, they weren't necessarily going to do them. I felt that the band was heading towards an area that was becoming very safe.
From: http://home.hetnet.nl/~nickgielkens/...t%208-2001.htm

There was a lot of pressure against him, just take a look at the videos from the W&W tour, Phil and Mike are together all the time and vastly filmed, Tony is worried only about his keyboards but also gathers a lot of tape, but Steve is like placed aside.

Some of his guitar solos were terribly mutilated (as Tony said on Genesis a History and then tried to make it sound as a joke), he left the band because it wasn't a healthy environment for him:

On the 'Genesis – A History' video which was released in 1990, Tony Banks jokes that once Steve announced that he was to leave the band: "We just mixed him out of the rest of the album and carried on!".

David Dunnington writes:

Steve did say at the time that he wasn't happy with the sound on the album; he felt he would have been able to give it more power but didn't want to fight to get his hands on the desk during the mixing sessions. Reading between the lines I would say Steve felt that the guitar was "mixed down" and keyboards given more prominence.

Also the band put a lot of Pressure trying to force him to leave his solo career, but nobody said a word when Mike formed The Mechanics and Phil started a profitable solo career.

If you don't agree with something, the more healthy thing to is to leave, and that's what Steve did in a good moment for him.

Iván