Calling All Stations

Retro Record Review: Calling All Stations by Genesis (1997)

 

Think of Genesis as a band and, depending which camp you fall into, you will either think of the vocals of Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins, so an album featuring neither of them seems unthinkable. Such a thing does however exist: the band's final studio album Calling All Stations was released in 1997 by the triumvirate of Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks and Ray Wilson, and it is the 2007 remastered version of this album I have recently purchased and review here as an antidote to all those Christmas songs currently being played to death on the radio.

"Who's Ray Wilson?" I can hear you asking. He is the forgotten man of Genesis, who had the unenviable task of replacing Phil Collins after his departure in 1996 to concentrate on his solo career, and was only a member for little over a year so his brief contribution seems to be largely ignored. I feel this is a shame really as Calling All Stations is a fine album in its own right but was not a massive commercial success and is so overshadowed by the fame of Gabriel and Collins as to be virtually invisible.

There must be some other way...

Wilson had been the lead singer of a Scottish one-hit wonder band called Stiltskin, who achieved a UK number one in 1994 with the song 'Inside', recorded for use in a Levi's jeans commercial, but then faded into obscurity and split during 1996. Following Phil Collins's departure from Genesis, Rutherford and Banks were apparently given a copy of Stiltskin's first and only album by record company executives, and were impressed enough by Wilson's vocals to invite him to audition for the role of Genesis lead vocalist, a prestigious but difficult job given the massive fame Collins had achieved. He was officially announced as the band's new singer in June 1997 and the album was released just three months later.

Ray Wilson, the forgotten man of Genesis

Sadly for Wilson, although the album reached the top ten worldwide with the exception of the USA, only one of the three singles barely scraped into the top 40 and the American leg of the follow-up tour was cancelled due to low ticket sales, and Genesis entered a period of dormancy as a result. Contrary to popular belief, he was not fired from the band he had been with for only a short period, but bowed out as the band had temporarily ceased to exist. Collins would later return to Genesis for their subsequent live shows, leaving Wilson as little more than a brief and relatively unsuccessful interlude during Collins's long tenure with the band.

Calling all stations, can anybody tell me...

So with the huge and near-impossible burden of replacing the legendary Phil Collins on his shoulders and the hindsight of knowing it was only a modest success, how does Ray Wilson's Calling All Stations compare? Wilson is not like Collins, nor is he trying to be, and instead he brought his own unique style to the band. This I feel is a good thing as often when a newcomer joins such a famous group they try to mimic their iconic predecessor too much, rather than putting their own stamp on the music, so this album could have easily ended up as a poor attempt at imitating Phil Collins. Instead Wilson, Rutherford and Banks created something that is quite different from any previous Genesis work, but I think is very likeable in its own right when one avoids direct comparison with its predecessors and ignores the weight of expectation and preconception created by Collins and Gabriel's considerable legacies. Other reviews seem to be almost universally negative though, so I must be in a minority for actually liking this album.

The majority of tracks were written by Banks and Rutherford and had been completed in the period between Collins leaving and Wilson joining the band, but Wilson did make a significant contribution to the writing of 'Small Talk', 'Not About Us' and 'There Must Be Some Other Way'. The absence of Collins's famed drum work that had been there almost since the beginning is something else that gives this album a very different feel, the drumming being done by the relatively unknown Nir Zidkyahu and Nick D'Virgilio, alongside Rutherford's guitars and Banks's keyboards. It does however make extensive use of the drum machine sounds and lack of cymbals that had been pioneered by Collins, and certainly the intro of 'Congo' is in some way reminiscent of 'In The Air Tonight'.

Don't talk back to me...

Contemporary reviews were very scathing of Calling All Stations, with general opinion being that Wilson was a fine singer and a fitting replacement for Collins but the album lacked good material that really showed his talent, and one reviewer harshly described it as a "formless blob of synth sounds", while another simply considered it "inexplicable". That seems rather unfair: although it certainly isn't as instantly catchy and likeable as the best Genesis material and isn't the easiest of albums to casually listen to, I feel it really benefits from repeated and careful listening to appreciate the subtleties hidden away.

Its darkness and intensity are more similar to the Gabriel-era work than to Collins's later lighter pop, but without falling into the common prog-rock trap of being too extravagant and over-the-top and boring the listener with excessively long solos. My main criticism of the production is that the sheer scale and richness of the music is occasionally overdone and tends to overpower Wilson's voice, which is nonetheless extremely strong and powerful but isn't always allowed to shine through as it should.  

One man's hot is another man's cool... 

The album opens with the title track, which is probably my favourite with its poignant lyrics describing the regrets of the past and the realisation that it's now too late to do anything about them. I strongly identify with this song's message as there are many things I have done and regretted in the past that I wish I could go back and change, and I too wonder "why is it now, when it's too late, that I've finally realised what's important to me?". 'The Dividing Line' is another strong track, with a very powerful bassline and lyrics that are quite heavy and thought-provoking, and to me this song conjures up eerie images of a dark, silent and deserted city. Its position immediately after the romantic 'If That's What You Need' jars a little though, so the album would possibly benefit from a revised running order. maybe with this as the final track instead of the long and wandering 'One Man's Fool'.

The mood of the album varies quite dramatically from one song to the next, from tales of love and loss and the breakdown of relationships ('There Must Be Some Other Way' and 'Not About Us') to subjects such as war ('Uncertain Weather') and the regret of leaving a homeland in search of a better life ('Alien Afternoon'). In the former category, 'Shipwrecked' is a favourite with its wistful and haunting music and emotional lyrics mourning a lost love. Most tracks are quite short (by Genesis standards anyway) at four to six minutes, although Banks's trademark extended keyboard solos are occasionally allowed to extend a few to seven or eight minutes, and there are no half-hour epics as found in the worst excesses of the Gabriel era. In musical feel, the album is best described as a combination of synth-pop and prog-rock, some reviewers unfairly claiming it represents the worst elements of both genres.

There has always been a dividing line...

Ray Wilson's work with Genesis often seems to be overlooked by fans and record companies alike, and is poorly represented by just the album's title track on the three-disc Platinum Collection of the band's greatest hits that otherwise showcases the vocals of Gabriel and Collins. This is purely my personal opinion and no doubt I'll be dismissed as a heretic by Peter Gabriel fans, but I would put Wilson a close second to Collins in order of vocalist preference. I have never been a big fan of Gabriel as I find his voice rather raucous and shouty, and his lyrics and performances often wilfully obtuse, overly long and self-indulgent, whereas Wilson is rather more restrained and maybe shows what Gabriel could have been like if he reined in his excesses.

It's not about us anymore...

Had Genesis persevered with this line-up instead of calling it a day after the failure of the first album, they may have gone on to a third distinct era of greatness, but we'll never know for sure and it is a shame that Wilson never really got the chance to fully prove himself. As it stands, Calling All Stations is a curiosity among the Genesis catalogue, and one that is far from perfect but I feel is unjustly criticised and overlooked. Ray Wilson took on an extremely difficult task and in my view made a very fine job of it, so he deserves better than a mere footnote in the long and distinguished book of Genesis.


Track listing:

1. Calling All Stations
2. Congo
3. Shipwrecked
4. Alien Afternoon
5. Not About Us
6. If That's What You Need
7. The Dividing Line
8. Uncertain Weather
9. Small Talk
10. There Must Be Some Other Way
11. One Man's Fool