The Living Years (29 page)

When I met my father that day for his birthday it never occurred to me, even for even a minute, that anything would happen. I thought I’d see him again in a couple of months in the little window I had between the end of the Mechanics tour and the start of the next Genesis one. My father knew what my schedule was like and I always felt he understood: for all the gulf between us, our lives had ended up being similar in so many ways.

But that day was the last time I saw him.

It seemed to me realistic to assume that if you’d got into Genesis in the early days you probably wouldn’t be so keen on
Invisible Touch
. Fans are always going to prefer the era when they first discover you and assume that any change is for the worst. It’s a problem common to all long-lived bands. But on stage when we were playing live it never felt any different at all to me: it was all a continuum.

Invisible Touch
isn’t the definitive Genesis album but it was probably our hottest moment in terms of commercial success. It was the biggest we would ever get as a band. And, like
Genesis
, it seemed almost effortless to make. My memory of writing it is of going into The Farm and it just flowing. Phil had a little drum machine – a blue, mono Akai – and we’d start with a nothing-very-much loop and jam over it. Phil would sing whatever came into his head and Tony and I would pile in fearlessly with any old chords and noise and racket. And out the songs came.

When we went into the studio to make
Invisible Touch
towards the end of 1985, the three of us hadn’t worked together for three years. During that time I’d released
Acting Very Strange
and
Mike and the Mechanics
, Tony had released a soundtrack to a Michael Winner film called
The Wicked Lady
and two solo albums,
The Fugitive
and
Soundtracks
, and Phil had released
Hello, I Must be Going
and
No Jacket Required.

Had it not been for the fact that we all shared one manager, Tony Smith, then
Invisible Touch
might never have happened. There’d have been so many conflicts of interest – clashing tours and competing publicity schedules. With different managers pulling in different directions, it’s easy to imagine that the band would have been pulled apart. As well as having one manager, we were simply three people held together by a thread from way back and, while not ever being demonstrative, we were friends in a genuine way. Plus, for all our solo work, there was still something the three of us could only do when we were together in a room.

The
Invisible Touch
tour ran from September 1986 to July 1987. It started in America, then went to Australia and New Zealand (our first time in both countries), then went back to America, then over to Japan, then up to Europe, then back to America, then back again to Europe and ended finally in four nights at Wembley. We’d been doing pretty well for quite a few years but Phil’s solo success and Mike and the Mechanics had pushed us into a different kind of global visibility. Yet one of the main reasons Genesis were still achieving so much was because we were a very hard-working live act. Live shows had always been our foundation.

It was while we were discussing our touring plans that Tony Smith noticed that I was going to be out of the country for almost a whole year. Prior to the start of the
Invisible Touch
tour in September the band would be rehearsing for a month in Dallas, and for the two months prior to that I’d be on tour in America with the Mechanics. ‘If you wanted, you could take a tax year out,’ he said. If I didn’t return to the UK, I would save a fortune.

At the time it seemed almost crazy not to do it. Angie and the kids would be flying out regularly so there wouldn’t be any difference from that point of view, and I’d be in the country so little anyway that staying away for a few more weeks seemed hardly here nor there. At the time, it all seemed so simple.

* * *

While we started rehearsing in Dallas for the tour, I asked Angie to come and join me for the weekend, as I hadn’t seen her for a while. I told her that one of the road crew would pick her up at Dallas airport and take her to the hotel. I’d meet her there after rehearsals and we’d spend some time together. What could go wrong?

Firstly, Angie must have picked the only carry-on bag from the cupboard that had a huge ‘joint’ stashed in a side pocket. (I’d managed to forget about it while I was in Jamaica.) She boarded the plane not realizing what lay ahead. She was sitting in first class with only one other passenger. They exchanged niceties and that was that. When they landed Angie thought she’d sail through customs as she only had a carry-on bag. She also noticed the Nancy Reagan ‘Just Say No’ [to drugs] campaign posters everywhere. As she went through customs, she was stopped and searched. The Jamaica Inn matchbox and one large joint were discovered. Thinking this was some kind of joke to begin with, she soon realized this was a very serious situation. She was questioned about who was meeting her – she didn’t know – though being the wife of a rock musician certainly didn’t help. Her fellow passenger had also been arrested and, while being interrogated, had managed to swallow a bag of heroin. He was promptly whisked away in an ambulance.

Seeing as they had travelled together, the customs officers thought Angie was involved with the man. After being strip-searched and questioned again, she was told she could ‘go down’ for twenty years. Meanwhile the roadie who had gone to pick her up assumed she wasn’t on that flight. He had come back to the rehearsal hall so I thought she was at the hotel, and just carried on playing. (There were no mobile phones then so communication was terrible.)

Angie was allowed one phone call and telephoned a very good family friend, Nick Cook (who is also known as ‘The Commander’). He lived up to his name and managed to get hold of Tony Smith. Angie was released three hours later. The look on her face said it all. It also didn’t help, as her name would now be logged, which made travelling to America and Australia very difficult. Whenever she came on tour after that – it was frankly was a miracle she’d want to come anywhere near me – she’d have to wait on the plane until the authorities came to take her off. She would always explain to the children that it was because they wouldn’t have to queue.

* * *

Certain bands have certain years and 1986 must have been our year. When
Invisible Touch
was released in June 1986 it went to number 1 in the UK and number 3 in the US; we released four singles from it and each got into the US Top 5 including ‘Invisible Touch’, which was our first US number 1.

The tour began in mid-September in Detroit, Michigan. It was like we had entered the stratosphere: private planes, police escorts, packed stadiums every night. And everywhere we went there’d be a Genesis song or a Genesis video playing. For the next eleven months it was like being royalty.

People would often say, don’t you get tired on tour? Perhaps what they don’t understand is the connection you have with a crowd on stage: the energy you get from 50,000 people in a sold-out stadium is incredible. You’re standing there and the noise is just a roar: it’s like a battle cry but everybody’s on your side.

And then the telephone rings at 3 a.m. when you’re on your own in a hotel room in Chicago.

* * *

When I got that call in Chicago I sat listening as Angie told me that my mum had just called her with the news: ‘Angie darling, Dad’s dead. I’ve poked him with my stick and he’s not moving: he’s definitely gone.’

Mum was very immobile herself at this point and she and my father slept in separate beds, so poking him with a stick would have made sense. It was just the sort of thing she would say so I could almost hear her voice: it was the same voice she’d used when she’d nearly set the house on fire in Farnham while Tony had been staying but she didn’t want to cause a scene. ‘Um, fire, Mikey? Fire?’

At the time I couldn’t think properly. I didn’t discuss arrangements with Angie, I was too much in shock. About a year before my father died he was due to have a minor operation. Before he went into hospital he took Angie to one side and told her that if anything happened to him, she should look in the box he kept under his bed and inside she’d find a key for his bureau: the telephone numbers of the doctor, the undertaker and the order of his funeral service. Death for my father, like everything in life, was about correct procedure – he’d even been organized and thoughtful enough to leave some money for my mum in the box. Like the papers, he’d put it neatly in a plastic folder.

Dad may have confided in Angie rather than me, but I think he knew the chances were that I’d be away when his box was needed. Maybe he also knew how hard I’d take it. It saddens me now to think he’d gone through that thought process – but, of course, he was right.

* * *

On the next day I sat with Tony Smith and planned out how I’d fly home for the day of my father’s funeral and then back to LA for that evening’s show. Meanwhile, the tour carried on as normal, as though nothing had happened.

It was surreal. I found I could go on stage and get lost in the music for two and a half hours and even enjoy it. I could switch off. The thinking process stopped. But then the show would end and the realization of what had happened would hit me all over again. There was a sense of security, of safety, playing with Tony and Phil but we never discussed what was happening. Our friendship just wasn’t like that – Tony and I just weren’t brought up to talk about our feelings. If you’ve been to boarding school at seven, you’ve got to hide your emotions to survive so it becomes inbuilt. That’s one of the many reasons why marrying Angie and becoming a Dad had been so good for me.

Two weeks later, on 13 October 1986, I flew back to England for my father’s funeral and then, having been in the country for less than twenty-four hours, turned round and flew back to America to play in Los Angeles. When I stood there playing ‘Mama’, hoping that I was showing my father how my life had been shaped by what he’d taught me – duty, honour, commitment – I was aware that I had not always demonstrated those values towards him when he was alive. As a teenager I’d been so intent on rebelling, so intent on making sure that I was everything that he was not. Now, I hoped that, before he died, he had seen something he was proud of in me, something of the right spirit. I had many of the regrets that so many of us suffer: all the things I hadn’t told him, all the things I hadn’t done. I think my father knew I loved him even though I’d never said it, but I’d never even managed to tell him how wonderful he’d been in supporting me all my life – in fact, just what a wonderful person he’d been.

After the show that night I went to bed and Angie eventually fell asleep as I lay beside her, glad she was there. The next morning she’d have to get straight on a plane again to fly home to look after Kate and Tom. I couldn’t sleep, the past twenty-four hours had been too bizarre. I’d buried my father in the morning and then flown backwards in time on Concorde in order to play that night’s show. I felt somehow that my father had gone on a journey too and at that moment in time I wasn’t quite sure where either of us were.

* * *

The morning after the LA Forum show, a dilapidated pink stretch limo had arrived at the hotel to take Angie to the airport. It was such an LA moment – there were flashing fairy lights all round the back window. Watching her drive away isn’t an image I will easily forget. While I’d then gone back to the hotel, disaster had struck for Angie when, almost within sight of LAX airport, the pink limo started billowing smoke. Having left England on the spur of the moment, Angie had nothing with her beside her passport and ticket – no money and no way of calling me for help. While she was standing on the inside lane of the freeway wondering what on earth to do, she heard a little tinkly bell – a Denny’s hot-dog van. It was going slowly enough for her to be able to flag down the driver, who turned out to be friendly. So that was how Angie had arrived at Los Angeles airport: in a hot-dog van, still in the black wool funeral dress she’d been wearing when she left England the day before.

After my father’s funeral she started travelling back and forth to Norfolk to see her own father, who was dying of cancer. By this time we were coming to the end of our American tour, before heading to Japan and Australia. Angie wanted to bring the children to Australia for Christmas because we hadn’t been together as a family since my father had died, though she was concerned about leaving her father. The hospital reassured her that her father had a couple of months at least, so it was better to go earlier rather than later. Angie flew out to Perth with the children. She’d only been there a day before her father sadly died. Angie wanted to fly back immediately, but the problem was the children were on her passport. This meant she’d either have to take them with her: they couldn’t remain in Australia with no documentation. (Travelling that far with two young children is hard enough let alone taking them straight back again.) We managed to get a free pass for Angie to go as long as she came straight back again. Australia and back in three days was tough, but that’s what she did.

* * *

If 1986 had been Genesis’s year then it hadn’t been a bad year for Pete either. His album
So
had been released in May and reached number 1 in the UK and number 2 in the US album charts. ‘Sledgehammer’ was a US number 1 single in July, the week after ‘Invisible Touch’ had been number 1.

That Pete was reaching his peak at the same time as us wasn’t a surprise. We had both been working hard at our careers and each of our albums had sold more than the last, so at some stage it was very likely that we’d end up at the same point on our separate trajectories. I don’t think either of us had thought those points would be as high as they were.

I never thought of it as a competition between us – after all, it wasn’t as though Pete’s sales were taking anything away from ours. I sometimes thought it worked to everyone’s advantage. In 1986 Steve Hackett was also in the US Top 20 with a single from his band GTR, and Phil’s
No Jacket Required
and the first Mechanics album were still in the US album charts too. It seemed so extraordinary that one band had resulted in so many successful acts that I think it increased the interest in all of us.