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Jeremy Clarkson on Selling England by the Pound

Most people imagine life at a public school is a nonstop round of jolly japes, idiotic customs and trying not to be raped, interspersed with lessons on the importance of afternoon tea, and how to wear a top hat properly. This is all wrong. In fact, I spent my entire five years in the public-school system listening to records and trying, until the wee small hours, to figure out what all the lyrics meant. There was much complication and confusion back then. The boy never simply met the girl and fell in love. He always had to be a unicorn first. And so there were hours of fun to be had unravelling it all. And the most fun, without any question or shadow of doubt, came along in 1973. It was called Selling England by the Pound.

“When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, I can always hear them talk. Me? I’m just a lawn mower. You can tell me by the way I walk.”

What does this mean? Is it a savage indictment of the dehumanisation endemic in a capitalist state? Are we all machines? Lawn mowers? Or is it perhaps an ode to the freedom of the human spirit, a beacon of hope in a depressing world that, on a sunny day, you can let your mind go wherever it pleases; that you can be anyone, anything — a lawn mower, even. Or is it just a big bucket of rubbish?

I listened to Selling England by the Pound so much that, pretty soon, I was word-perfect. Still am, actually. So much so that whenever I hear an advertisement for Tesco, I silently mouth “Tess co-operates”. Even though I still have no clue what that meant, either.

Happily, this weird obsession with the lyrics of early Genesis albums, and Selling England in particular, stood me in good stead three years later, when I took my O-level English literature exam. Because hey, if it’s possible to get a handle on “The Barking Slugs, supersmugs”, then it should also be possible to understand what Portia is on about with her twice-blessed rain dropping gently from heaven. Turned out it was and I got an A.

I never stopped listening to Selling England. Whenever I buy a new car, this is always the album I put into the CD changer and play first. On a recent Top Gear trip to the North Pole, James May and I listened to Genesis every time the cameras were off. And it was like being back at school. As the miles of absolute nothingness crunched by, we’d fill the time by seeing who knew the most lyrics off by heart (me) and what they might have meant (him). Selling England has been the soundtrack of my life. Self-indulgent. Mad. Brilliant. Unfathomable. Prog-rock at its most bonkers. It’s all of those things, but most of all, it’s absolutely bloody brilliant.

David Baddiel on Nursery Cryme

On the day before my 13th birthday, the Sex Pistols released God Save the Queen. I stayed up late that night to hear John Peel become the first Radio 1 DJ to play it. I painted the word “Anarchy” onto a T-shirt in Tipp-Ex, and then cut slits in it with scissors. I spiked my hair, though not very successfully, as nobody told me about back-combing, so really it was just scrunched up a bit using too much of my mum’s Silvi-krin hairspray.

I really, really wanted to be a punk rocker. And then, at the start of 1977, my friend Dave played me Blood on the Rooftops, a song from the album Wind & Wuthering, by Genesis. Genesis! This was a time when, for a young teenager who was attempting to live his life by the rules laid down in NME and Sniffin’ Glue, Genesis, along with Pink Floyd and Yes, represented everything that was dull, pretentious, overblown, middle-class and unacceptable about music before the year zero of punk.

Trouble was, I really liked the song. Resistant though my ear was supposed to be to this particular quality, I thought it was beautiful. But I held on, fastened to the safety pin of self-denial, buying White Riot and New Rose and Peaches, until one day, possibly under cover of darkness, probably in disguise, I went to Our Price in Willesden Green and bought Nursery Cryme.

And I was lost. Peter Gabriel had me at “I heard the old man tell his tale ”. I didn’t — and still don’t — know why the changes of no consequence should pick up the reins from nowhere, but it suddenly became clear to me why I loved this band. They wrote fantastic songs.

They went under the banner of the hated term “progressive rock”, but unlike Yes, ELP, Gentle Giant, Tangerine Dream, King Crimson and Van Der Graaf Generator, you could strip away all the electronics, all the instrumentation, all the virtuoso soloing, and the tune would still move you.

I still really love Nursery Cryme. It’s the first album on which Genesis became Genesis. Gabriel’s voice, no longer mired in reverb, comes into its own, hallmarking that ability he has to sound strained and yet controlled at the same time. I cried the first time I heard him sing “Brush back your hair and let me get to know your flesh”, and I cried the last time, too, when it was sung by a bloke doing his best to look and sound like Gabriel, the lead singer of the French-Canadian tribute band the Musical Box. I’ve seen them twice. That’s how much of a Genesis fan I am.

Tony Robinson on The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

The end of 1974 and the beginning of 1975 were accompanied by a soundtrack of IRA explosions. Telephone exchanges, nightclubs and railway stations went up in smoke. Shoppers ran terrified from Selfridges and Harrods. There were a few compensations: a fantastically exciting new TV series called The Sweeney, and you could amuse yourself playing Pong on your TV screen thanks to some cutting-edge technology. And then there was the overwhelming pleasure of putting on a brand-new long-playing record for the very first time. You eased the virgin disc from its cover and, in an act of astonishing dexterity, tipped it out of its pristine white dust-sleeve, nestled the rim in the palms of your hands and jiggled it onto the spigot of the turntable, all without allowing sticky fingers to touch it or fingernails accidentally to gouge their way across its grooves.

I first heard The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway on my new hi-fi, wearing headphones the size of soup plates, while sitting on my big velvet patchwork cushions. First, Tony Banks’s dextrous hands danced around the keyboard like a daddy-longlegs in a choirboy’s costume; then, a few inspiring but reassuringly tuneful guitar chords from Steve Hackett; and finally, sung in unison, as confidently informative as a public announcement on the Underground: “And the Lamb lies down on Broadway.”

Track after track sailed by: Counting Out Time surely destined to be one of the band’s great pop songs; the aching guitar-work on The Chamber of 32 Doors; the melodic perkiness of Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist. What an album! It was only on fourth or fifth hearing that a modicum of doubt set in. “Who is this bloke Rael? What’s the lamb supposed to be — a symbol of peace, a metaphor for Jesus or just a suicidal sheep about to be run over by a yellow cab? Do the lyrics describe a mythic journey through a contemporary urban landscape, illuminating a saga as vivid as that of Odysseus or Beowulf, or are they just bollocks?”

What do Genesis fans say about the obfuscated lyrics of Lamb? That it’s a mistake to think of the narrative as having only one meaning because every listener must create their own personal story. Anyway, Peter Gabriel was going through a bit of a crisis when he wrote them, and didn’t have time to finish them properly. And maybe they are flawed, but so what? It’s a brilliant album, with a whole bunch of fantastic tunes that have stood the test of time.

Genesis, often parodied as the most unhip of bands, have demonstrated that for consistency, longevity and musicianship, nobody is cooler.

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