Genesis

All three of Genesis's founding songwriters point back to the Beatles as their way in: Gabriel spent money meant for singing lessons on the 'Please Please Me' LP, Rutherford has named the Beatles his favourite band growing up, and Banks recalled that discovering Keith Emerson happened "after the Beatles and all that stuff" first got him thinking about being in a band. Their earliest recordings for producer Jonathan King, made as teenagers before Genesis found its progressive-rock identity, leaned hard on that brisk, harmony-driven mid-'60s pop songcraft.

listen: upstream & heresource: Peter Gabriel on childhood soul influences — Nina Simone and The Beatles (200 Percent) ↗share

1963

Please Please MeThe Beatles

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1969

Where the Sour Turns to SweetGenesis

listen forSet the tight, driving harmonies of "Please Please Me" against Genesis's first-ever song, "Where the Sour Turns to Sweet" — the same brisk, hook-first pop instincts are audible years before Mellotrons and twenty-minute suites entered the picture.

Gabriel has called seeing Otis Redding live at London's Ram Jam Club in 1967 "a bit of a moment" for him — hearing "the voice and the emotion of Otis Redding was just beyond words," he said, and it's the soul-singer approach to feel over technique that he says shaped how he sings. Genesis's early biography notes that soul influence surfacing directly in Gabriel's vocal performances on Trespass, the 1970 album that contains "The Knife."

listen: upstream & heresource: Peter Gabriel on seeing Otis Redding at the Ram Jam Club, 1967 (Louder) ↗share

1966

Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding

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1970

The KnifeGenesis

listen forThere's no horn section on "The Knife," but line up Redding's testifying, almost-breathless holler on "Try a Little Tenderness" against Gabriel's ragged, out-of-control vocal on "The Knife" — the same physically committed, feel-first delivery, aimed at a completely different kind of song.

Gabriel has spoken about listening to Nina Simone as a child and teenager, drawn to what she could do with her voice and to how she turned songs into storytelling and protest. Tony Banks has separately recalled the two of them working out songs together at the piano as schoolboys, including Simone's "I Put a Spell on You" — the piano-and-voice partnership that became the engine of early Genesis songwriting.

listen: upstream & heresource: Peter Gabriel on childhood soul influences — Nina Simone and The Beatles (200 Percent) ↗share

1965

I Put a Spell on YouNina Simone

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1969

In the WildernessGenesis

listen forSimone's control on "I Put a Spell on You" — a whisper that erupts into anguish and back again — is a direct ancestor of the hushed-to-desperate vocal swings Gabriel works through on "In the Wilderness," an early Genesis ballad built, like Simone's records, around voice and piano first.