Tony Banks in interview
with Christopher Thomas, March 2004
Seven: A Suite for
Orchestra
For
nearly thirty years Tony Banks was the
keyboard player, principal songwriter
and pivotal force in Genesis, the rock
band he co-founded whilst at Charterhouse
School with Peter Gabriel and Mike Rutherford.
From the mid seventies onwards the band,
now a three piece comprising Banks,
Rutherford and Phil Collins, who joined
in 1975 following Peter Gabriel’s departure,
enjoyed a hugely successful period of
commercial success as one of the world’s
biggest album selling rock bands.
The band gained a reputation
for "progressive" rock, pushing
the boundaries of their art to new levels
of complexity and sophistication. Always
the quiet man of the group, Banks would
often be hidden behind his keyboards
and synthesisers preferring to shun
the limelight in favour of his more
extrovert colleagues. Musically however
his influence was critical to the band.
As his interests diversified he released
a number of solo albums as well as providing
the music for several major films.
Seven: A Suite for
Orchestra represents not only Banks’
first major musical project since Genesis
went their separate ways in the late
1990’s but also his first complete work
for symphony orchestra. The interview
that follows was conducted shortly before
the launch of the disc, which is available
on the Naxos label.
CD reviews Chris
Thomas
CT How have you
been occupying yourself musically since
Genesis went their separate ways?
TB To be honest this
project has taken some time although
I have also tried to get some work in
films and television but couldn’t find
anyone who would let me loose. I have
done a fair few demos though. I have
also been working on some Genesis stuff
along with Nick Davis and we have done
a DVD of the Wembley concert. I’ve also
been looking at the archive albums,
re-mastering and putting them into 5.1
surround and although Mike Rutherford’s
involved as well I probably have the
slightly greater degree of involvement
in that.
CT Have you always
harboured an ambition to write an orchestral
piece?
TB I have certainly
felt over the last few years that I
would like to do something like this
before I hang my boots up. You never
quite know whether you have done your
last thing or not and it just felt like
a natural thing to do. Many years ago
I did a film score for The Wicked Lady
and I have always loved classical music
and the sound of an orchestra. In The
Wicked Lady I was very much one stage
removed because the arranger was so
important to it but it was very much
my music and I thought the main theme
sounded good so I always wanted to return
to it.
CT Was Seven written
specifically with live performance or
this recording in mind?
TB Given the medium
that I have been involved in I always
tend to think of records before live
performance. Talking to various people
in the classical world this is very
different to how they would see it.
Many people would try out a piece live
perhaps on a smaller scale before they
ever got to this kind of stage. Yet
I am lucky enough to be able to afford
to do it so it’s a kind of indulgence
really. Having started it though I wanted
to take it all the way through. The
piece that really got me going was Black
Down, the second piece. I had written
it on a string synthesiser and I decided
that the only way that it was going
to sound right and good was to use real
strings. Once I had started that idea
I decided to see how much I could do
but there was a lot of learning for
me.
CT Are there any
particular musical preoccupations that
remain with you from your days in rock
music and which have played a part in
the composition of Seven?
TB I was perhaps associated
with the more complicated pieces in
Genesis and there are certain kinds
of chords that I like to use. Sometimes
you have to reign yourself in a bit
with a chord pattern rather than something
that can go on forever. But the introduction
to something like Watcher of the Skies
in the old days was a stream of consciousness
chord sequence and in orchestral music
I feel I can do that much more. I love
room to breath and that’s one aspect
I really liked about doing this. I can
just let my mind go where it would and
paint a picture and story with the music
without having to worry about repetition
and hooks and such like.
CT Thinking of a
Genesis song such as Home by the Sea
where the music comes full circle to
end with the material with which it
began, to what degree would you say
that the thematic structure of the pieces
in Seven has come from the early days
of Genesis and the major pieces of that
period?
TB That’s most obvious
in the final piece, The Spirit of Gravity,
where I have the same theme in the beginning,
middle and end. I quite like the idea
of giving it a reference point because
each theme that occurs in between really
doesn’t get repeated. Several of the
other pieces don’t do that however such
as Black Down where there is one theme
that is sort of repeated twice. In fact
I had that theme and I felt I really
wanted to use it more than once. When
I wrote the piece originally it only
came at the end so I brought it in at
the front so that when you hear it a
second time it makes that much greater
an impression.
CT Would you cite
any particular influences as having
been important to you in writing Seven?
TB I suppose you are
always influenced by what you have been
listening to recently and in recent
years I have listened to Vaughan Williams,
in particular his Fifth Symphony and
I’ve listened to quite a lot of Sibelius
too. I really love his Fourth Symphony
and also the Seventh Symphony. They
are quite strong influences as well
as his tone poems. The tone poems do
more of what some of these pieces do
in that they take you through things
without any real structure to them.
CT I felt that in
some of the more expansive melodies
John Barry could have been an influence.
Would you agree?
TB I have been accused
of sounding a bit like John Barry in
that he was known for liking to repeat
the same motif lots of times because
it was easy to score. Also on my previous
solo album Strictly Inc. there was a
piece called An Island in the Darkness
which Jack Hughes, one of the guys I
was working with described as John Barry
meets Pink Floyd because of the repeated
rhythmic pattern running all the way
through it.
CT Was it always
your intention that Seven should comprise
a suite or could the individual pieces
stand-alone?
TB I certainly see
them standing alone which was one of
the reasons for calling the piece Seven.
In other words seven individual pieces.
If there is something that runs through
them it is more to do with time and
orchestrations but there is no thematic
connection between them at all. I would
be very happy to see someone take a
piece out of context and place it in
a concert somewhere else. In fact it
is what I would like to see most of
all because that’s the way you get to
hear something that you may not otherwise
become familiar with.
CT Although you
used an orchestrator did you conceive
the piece in terms of orchestral sound
and did you therefore give the arranger
precise instructions as to what you
wanted to hear?
TB It’s a difficult
thing to totally isolate this. I did
quite extensive demos but nevertheless
I told Simon who did the orchestrations
to feel free to do things. The only
thing we did do was to keep absolutely
strictly to every melodic line, the
structure of the pieces and all the
harmonics. But what I did say to him
was that I wanted him to make it convincingly
orchestral. I knew that if I had done
it just on my own, which I could have
done, that it would have sounded a bit
restrained. I did give him a fairly
clear idea of what I wanted but sometimes
he would make his own decisions about
things and we would then talk about
it. For example the piece Earthlight
begins with a bassoon melody which I
had originally written for cor anglais
but Simon said it went to low. There
were also things that Simon added that
would never have occurred to me in a
million years such as the semi quaver
viola parts in Earthlight. I would simply
not have thought of it. I guess it’s
the fact that although I have listened
to a lot of classical music I have never
really analysed it in the way that I
would if it was a rock song. I hear
a rock song and analyse it instantly
but there are certain combinations of
sounds in classical music where I am
still not one hundred percent sure what
they are.
CT How do you think
some of your Genesis material would
work for orchestra?
TB There was an LSO
version of some of our stuff done but
the problem is if you do it too straight
you end up with an orchestra playing
pop music with the wrong rhythms. You
would have to rewrite it I think and
take the piece apart and put it back
together again. But there are pieces
that could work and in the early days
there were parts of songs that I could
imagine an orchestra in. I would have
done them differently but they would
have worked. It’s an interesting thing
because there is a version of some of
my music done on two grand pianos. Some
of it sounds really good but they have
been too faithful to all of the little
pushes and things where the first beat
of the bar is advanced to the eighth
beat of the bar before. It’s something
you do in rock music all the time but
if an orchestra does it it sounds like
the Boston Pops and you think oh no,
please don’t do that. So it just doesn’t
work unless you unravel it. I would
be slightly keener to do it with some
of the solo pieces because they are
less well known and people would feel
differently about them.
CT Having written
several film scores how did you handle
the freedom of writing in Seven as opposed
to the strict discipline of film music?
TB The freedom was
there in that I just let the music go
slightly more where it wanted to. I
have done that with Genesis things in
the past and I enjoy not allowing things
to repeat so that you just use a bit
once. Occasionally there may be quite
a good bit and I would think actually
I could have made a song out of that.
I like songs that go from section to
section rather than repeating and with
this I was able to do that even more.
CT The pieces all
have descriptive titles. Was it the
music that came first or the titles?
TB No, the titles came
right at the end. I was really struggling
for titles. In fact I have never struggled
so much for titles in my life. I didn’t
want to saddle the pieces with anything
too profound and tried to avoid them
carrying too much baggage. The only
one that does carry some baggage is
The Spirit of Gravity, which is a quote
from Nietzsche, but the others are all
fairly naturalistic. When the titles
did finally come though I was pretty
happy with them.
CT What of future
projects? Any further music along similar
lines planned?
TB I would certainly
like to do something else but to a degree
it will depend on whether anything sidesteps
on from this and how well it goes.
CT Is a live concert
performance of the piece a possibility?
TB There are all sorts
of possibilities but the problem is
that it becomes very expensive and with
the rehearsal time needed you would
have to use a different kind of orchestra.
In many ways it would be lovely to do
the whole piece but you are then definitely
preaching to the converted whereas if
you can get one or two pieces done alongside
other music there is a chance that it
will reach people who would otherwise
never have dreamed of listening to it.
