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Selling England by the Pound

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Selling England by the Pound is the fifth studio album by the progressive rock band Genesis and was recorded and released in 1973. It followed Foxtrot and was the band's commercial peak with Peter Gabriel, hitting # 3 in the UK.[1] The album went gold in the US in 1990.

The album cover is a painting by Betty Swanwick called The Dream. The original painting did not feature a lawn mower; the band had Swanwick add it later as an allusion to the song "I Know What I Like."

A digitally remastered version was released on CD in 1994 on Virgin in Europe and on Atlantic Records in the US and Canada. The remastered booklet features the lyrics and credits which were missing on the original CD.

A SACD / DVD double disc set (including new 5.1 and Stereo mixes) is planned for release in September 2008.

Track listing

All songs credited to Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford.

Side one

  1. "Dancing With the Moonlit Knight" (lyrics: Gabriel)[citation needed] – 8:04
  2. "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" (music: Hackett, lyrics: Gabriel)[citation needed] – 4:07
  3. "Firth of Fifth" (lyrics: Banks) – 9:35
  4. "More Fool Me" (Collins, Rutherford) – 3:10

Side two

  1. "The Battle of Epping Forest" (lyrics: Gabriel)[citation needed] – 11:49
  2. "After the Ordeal" (Hackett, Rutherford) - 4:13
  3. "The Cinema Show" (lyrics: mostly Banks, Rutherford)[citation needed] – 11:06
  4. "Aisle of Plenty" (lyrics: Gabriel)[citation needed] – 1:32

Theme

Retaining the pastoral yearning for ancient or medieval England as its primary thematic material, the album focuses on traces of this past in the present. Songs about England's mythological past ("Dancing With the Moonlit Knight") co-exist with sketches of contemporary lawnmowers ("I Know What I Like"), and the centrepiece of the second side, the epic "Cinema Show", has two lovers serve as reincarnations of ancient Greek figures in a way which is almost directly out of the "Fire Sermon" scene in T. S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land.

Sound & Live performance

The musical performances are much more polished and tight than on the preceding LPs. Musical diversions are more often unified into the general song structure. In particular, Steve Hackett's guitar solos in "Firth of Fifth" show his unique voice on guitar at its best, while the song opens with a highly structured classically inspired piano-instrumental by Banks. As with previous efforts, unusual time signatures and shifts in key and pace continue as key structural devices, and while these formal aspects are no less present on this album, they often serve to support the general melodies of the songs, rather than dominate them. In fact, this album in general shows a focus on melody as the structural unifying force of the songs, as opposed to having the music centre around Gabriel's vocal and lyrical forays.

The album contains many pieces that would become central to Genesis' live act for years to come, particularly "Firth of Fifth" and "Cinema Show," both of which use short lyrical sketches to frame extended instrumental compositions. Along with "The Battle of Epping Forest," a song based upon a gangland brawl yet full of references to the squabbles for the English countryside of the far removed past, songs such as "Firth" and "The Cinema Show" make prominent use of synthesizers, introduced to the band's sound on this album. "Firth of Fifth" has continued to be included in Genesis live sets, but Tony Banks' piano introduction has not been included in a performance since 1974, in a Drury Lane Theatre concert, when Banks messed up the intro and Phil Collins had to cover for him by simply starting the song from after the intro. Compositionally, "The Cinema Show" provides the climax for the album's second side, starting off with Rutherford and Banks's trademark intertwining acoustic guitars, providing the backdrop for mythological lyrics, and leading to a long-form synthesizer solo by Banks. This anthemic solo section would later form the melodic centrepiece of the extended instrumentals at the core of the band's 'Cage Medley' (a combination of song excerpts that Genesis would perform live years after it had stopped performing other songs from the '70s), demonstrating Banks' increasing role as one of the band's primary songwriters.

Ending with the reprise of motifs from the start of the album, "Aisle of Plenty" mournfully brings the album full circle to where it began - nostalgia for old England. The album also produced the shorter track "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)", which became Genesis' first single to receive any sort of chart action, hitting #21 in the UK in April 1974.[1]

Personnel

Charts

Album

Year Chart Position
1973 UK Albums Chart 3
1974 Billboard Pop Albums 70

Certifications

Organization Level Date
RIAA – U.S. Gold April 20 1990

Notes

  1. ^ a b Template:UKChartHits Genesis hits
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