First charted : 9 April 1977
Chart peak : 13
Number of hits : 18
Another one where we've covered most of the back story already. After "I Know What I Like In Your Wardrobe" Peter recorded one more album with Genesis , the concept album "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway " which gained a grudging respect from people who normally hated the band and thereby provided a good jumping off point. Making the album had been difficult with Peter contributing little to the music due to his wife's difficult pregnancy and then insisting on writing nearly all the lyrics. The rest of the band were also beginning to resent the press emphasis on his stage theatrics rather than the music. Peter told the others he was leaving early into the tour for the LP but it wasn't made public until the tour finished in the summer of 1975. His first solo work had a lengthy gestation period.
In that time I moved up to secondary school and fell back under the sway of Robert Schofield, a friend from my first primary school. Although they didn't live in a bigger house than ours, the Schofields were always well turned out, Mrs Schofield was a leading light of the Townswomen's Guild and Mum never forgot that she didn't reciprocate when Robert came to tea once circa 1973. Robert's musical tastes were completely formed by his older brother , a big prog fan so he told me disco, punk and pop were crap and I should be listening to Mike Oldfield and Pink Floyd instead. He also told me to listen out for the new single by the ex-lead singer of Genesis ( who I was vaguely aware of ) which was going to hit the charts.
He was right on both counts. "Solsbury Hill " was a hit and it's a corker. It describes a walk Peter took on the aforementioned hill in Somerset overlooking his home in Bath during the period when he was mulling over quitting Genesis. The song implies that he made the big decision there and then though he's never directly claimed that and I don't think we're supposed to take the eagle that instructs him literally. But Peter would have been well aware of the religious connotations and deliberately frames the song as an epiphany.
There have been many songs about intrs-band conflict, some of them dreadful -So Long Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind - but this succeeds because it's so suffused with the joy of liberation and the expectation of better things to come. Peter's voice has never sounded better from the throaty declaration of the first line to the ecstatic gibberish of the last few bars. Typically the music is complex with a rarely used 7/4 time signature but the acoustic guitar arpeggios and stately four note synth motif make it accessible. I'm not sure he's ever topped this.
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