Selling England by the Pound

Selling England by the Pound
Studio album by Genesis
Released	12 October 1973
Recorded	August 1973
Genre	Progressive rock
Length	53:21
Label	Charisma, Atlantic
Producer	Genesis & John Burns
Professional reviews
Allmusic link Blender link Robert Christgau (B) link Rolling Stone (somewhat favourable) link
Genesis chronology
Genesis Live (1973) Selling England by the Pound (1973) The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)

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] where it remained on the charts for 21 weeks. 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) was released in the UK on 11 November 2008, including extensive interviews with the band and footage from concerts performed during 1973-74.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford. 

Singles

• "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)"

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, drawing on elements from "The Fire Sermon", the 3rd section from T. S. Eliot's long poem The Waste Land.

Sound and 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 of Fifth" and "The Cinema Show" make prominent use of Tony's recently acquired ARP Pro Soloist, marking the first use of a synthesiser on any Genesis recording. "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 Hackett's trademark intertwining acoustic guitars, providing the backdrop for mythological lyrics, and leading to a long-form synthesiser solo by Banks in which Gabriel and Hackett played no part; during live performances, they both left the stage for this section. 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

• Peter Gabriel – lead vocals, flute, oboe, percussion
• Phil Collins – drums, percussion, backing vocals, lead vocals on "More Fool Me"
• Tony Banks – backing vocals, piano, keyboards, acoustic guitar on "The Cinema Show"
• Steve Hackett – lead guitar, backing vocals on "I Know What I Like""^{[citation needed]}
• Mike Rutherford – bass guitar, bass pedals, rhythm guitar, sitar on "I Know What I like", double bass on "The Cinema Show"^{[citation needed]}

Charts

Album

Certifications

Notes