"Follow You Follow Me"

I get confused by Genesis. On the one hand, there was this large, unwieldy eighteen-wheeler of a band that created songs that started off when you were leaving for work in the morning and were just about winding up when you got home from the pub at around midnight: songs like "Supper's Ready" with a cast of thousands, usually all played by Peter Gabriel. Though he might well have left the band by then. See? You needed one of Pete Frame's Rock Family trees to keep up with the personnel. Then there was the second Genesis, the spare, stripped down commercial outfit that was basically Phil Collins and two anonymous bandmates that produced "Abacab", "I Can't Dance" and other chart hits. Between these two versions of the band, there was a bright, brief moment when they managed to combine the eccentricity of the former with the commercial nous of the latter: the "And Then There Were Three" album, from which this song comes. Now, everyone has probably heard this, and more than a few have failed to connect it to Genesis, I'll bet. This is just great: the intro is probably one of the most recognisable moments in rock, the synth washes over the chorus like a cleansing shower, and the whole song is so underwritten that it passes beneath your radar until you're caught up in the emotion and you realise it's probably Genesis' first proper love song: "Stay with me/My love I hope you’ll always be/Right here by my side if ever I need you/Oh my love." And the chorus, which is one of the best written for a long time: "I will follow you will you follow me/All the days and nights that we know will be/I will stay with you will you stay with me/Just one single tear in each passing year."