I've been a fan of Genesis since
my late teens. I heard my first album by the band, Wind and Wuthering,
in 1979, although I had unwittingly heard some of their singles before that, I just
didn't know it was them at the time. I only became familiar with the earlier
records, the Peter Gabriel era, after becoming familiar with the Phil
Collins-fronted band. Of those later works, Abacab has long been my
favorite. I think it perfectly balances their progressive tendencies with their
then recent foray into pop music territory. It has commercial appeal, and a lot
of hooks, but it also features inventive instrumental passages and creative
song structures, which were always a mainstay of the band's work. The lyrics
are imaginative, not perfunctory, and nicely matched to the melodies.
The most important aspect of the
album, for me personally, was the conceptual framework of Abacab. I'm
not suggesting that it was pre-conceived as a concept album, per se, but the
connections between the songs are unmistakable. It took more than a few listens
to notice, but eventually I understood the main themes of the album to be
identity and loss. These two ideas are closely linked, and perhaps ineluctably
so on Abacab. The writers employ clever ways to express the themes,
often using humor and oblique references.
The opening song, the title track
of the album, is an almost 7 minute long, very danceable groove. Except for the
long instrumental break that rides out the last 3 minutes, Abacab is a pop song ripe with radio-friendly 1980s commerciality,
which the single-edit proved. The song's lyric, like many of their songs (on
this album and on others), has a kind of detachment about it, a sly vagueness,
yet it's written well enough that this doesn't necessarily hit you right away.
The themes of identity and loss are not always obvious, but come in to focus if
you analyze the lyrics.
The verses are mostly like
scene-setting vignettes, the first merely directing the listener to the vague
features of a room: "Look up on the wall / There on the floor / Under the
pillow / Behind the door." The intense tone of the vocal doesn't merely
point out these features, but suggests the possibility of something interesting
to be found in the room. The vagueness leaves questions as to what might be
interesting and gives the verse a mysterious quality. The second verse adds
fragmented details, seemingly of a complicated relationship: "If you're
wrapping up the world / Cause you've taken someone else's girl / When they turn
on the pillow / Even when they answer the telephone...Do you think they'll find
out?" It's unclear, again, exactly what is being sought, who
"they" are, and what might be found out. Most of this verse is made
up of conditional statements, and are incomplete thoughts, as well, which could
be seen as a meta-commentary on identity (i.e. the lack of it). The last line is
a question, and it is unclear who is asking, and who is being asked.
The third verse seems to comment
on what it is all supposed to mean. "It's an illusion / It's a game / A
reflection / Of someone else's name." The questions from the first two
verses are beginning to be answered, but perhaps only with a riddle. Further,
this verse also directly comments on the meaninglessness of the song title. The
word “abacab” seems to be the answer (at least in the chorus -which we'll get to), yet that doesn’t tell us
much. This leads to a final statement in the form of an extended metaphor:
"When you wake in the morning / Wake and find you're covered in cellophane
/ Well, there's a hole in there somewhere." The earlier reference to
"wrapping up the world," is seemingly re-iterated, and it sounds
dire, like a relationship (or the end of one) feels suffocating to the narrator.
The chorus contains perhaps the
clearest clue to the themes, with the line, "When they do it / You're
never there." The entire album, in fact, is replete with lines like this,
statements that negate the existence of something, or someone. The word "abacab"
is stated as if it were the answer to a riddle, and yet it is a meaningless
word, a word without context (at least unless you know the story of the title).
In interviews, the band revealed that the title came from the chords in the original
song structure. At the time it was merely a working title, listing the parts of
the song repeating in the form, A-B-A-C-A-B. Interestingly, though, once the
completed musical track had been developed, it no longer had that structure,
and the lyric seems to be, partly, a way of using that fact as a metaphor for some
kind of failed relationship. The lyric ending of each chorus, "Abacab
isn't anywhere / Abacab doesn't really care," offers an oblique
explanation for the rest of the text, but as a metaphor it works as if it was a
rational answer, that the relationship doesn't exist anymore.
It's quite brilliant for a pop
song lyric to work on this level: telling a story, albeit with fragmented
details, and then both commenting on and enriching the story with the use of
metaphor. Further, it's equally clever that the song's title is a reference to
a previous version of the song, one that also no longer exists. The ill-defined
relationship is gone, too: identity and loss figure heavily as the answer to
the riddle.
One of the album's biggest hits,
among several, was the second track, the horn-driven, very danceable, No Reply At All. The title of this one
makes it easy to see the themes at play. Once again, the lyric is a vignette of
a relationship, but here metaphor isn't much needed as the lyric merely
balances on a scheme of postulating positives and negating them. As the
narrator works through a list of verbs (talk, look, dance, be, listen), they
are attributed to the function of the relationship, and then immediately
negated, seemingly relegated to the past. The tone of each verse is
significant, the first line a command followed by a negation, as in, “Dance
with me / You never dance with me,” the second and third lines statements
focused on the narrator's subjective perception, and the last line another
negation, using the tag line, "there's no reply at all." The narrator
is an active agent, a subjective protagonist, but seems to have no objective
antagonist, presumably no romantic partner, to validate his existence: identity
and loss.
One of the more progressive
tracks on Abacab is Me And Sarah
Jane, a song that takes a lot of musical twists and turns, not unlike the
British science fiction television series that inspired it. Well, perhaps
"inspired" is presumptuous - the lyric doesn't seem on the surface to
have any obvious connections to Dr. Who, but it’s vagueness certainly leaves
the lyric open to a possible connection. It's ostensibly a love song, but it
could be the love between friends going through adventures together - for
instance, adventures involving time travel. It could well be that the writer(s)
meant to keep the lyric vague, open to various interpretations. Regardless,
there are certainly lines that support the main themes ("I invent a name...Searching
for a clue...Traces in the sand...Words lost in the wind," among others).
The song is a remembrance of a prior relationship, and the title suggests the
TV show by simply referencing Sarah Jane, a well-known Dr. Who sidekick. The
themes are represented in both textual and meta-textual forms. One could argue
that this reading goes too far, but there are other such references on this
album to words that question identity. Using the word "who" as a
meta-textual trope is actually very clever. At any rate, identity and loss are
undoubtedly present in this song on some level.
The side one closer (I bought it originally
as a vinyl release), Keep It Dark, is
a riff-heavy rock song with a repetitive guitar figure that is present throughout
most of the song. It is a perfect blend of progressive and pop styles, hooky
but still a bit edgy. Lyrically, it is far more narrative than most of the
album's songs, and yet there is still an eerie detachment within the narrative.
It seems to concern a man who has reunited with his family after having been
abducted by aliens, or at least thinking that he had been. He wants to tell
them all about the wondrous, and probably frightening, experiences he had, but
presumably he knows that they would have difficulty believing it all. Instead,
he tells the authorities, and after that his family, that he was robbed by
thieves. The ideas of loss and identity are significant in this work, most
importantly in the subjective isolation of the narrator, and in his lie (about
robbery, no less).
Side two kicks off with another
longer track, arguably the most progressive rock sounding song in the set,
called Dodo/Lurker. This lyric, as
evinced by the title, concerns the plight of existence, the fight for survival
of an entire species, so it’s thick in the theme of loss. Identity figures here,
as well, though - what is more lacking identity than an entire species that existed,
but is now completely gone? Before the instrumental break
leading to the song's conclusion, the narrator says, "Meanwhile, lurking
by a stone in the mud, two eyes look to see what I was, and then something
spoke, and this is what it said to me." This passage speaks to the theme
of identity in three significant ways: by juxtaposing the idea of senses (eyes
yearning for identification) with a vague lack of detail (“something spoke”),
by juxtaposing tenses (for
example, “Meanwhile...two eyes look to see,” juxtaposed with “what I was...and
this is what it said to me”), and by positing the idea of an unreliable
narrator (a member of an extinct species reporting a conversation with an
eyewitness to its past existence). The last vocal section continues
the theme, despite providing some additional, albeit confusing, details:
"Clothes of brass and hair of brown / Seldom need to speak, don't need no wings to
fly / And a heart of stone / And a fear of fire and water - who am I?" It
sounds a lot like another riddle, even ending with another instance of the word
"who," and nothing is revealed, keeping the lurker's identity a
secret.
In their attempt, perhaps, to
keep up with new wave trends, Genesis wrote a fairly quirky piece called Who Dunnit (Phil Collins, in interviews,
naively referred to it as their "punk" song). As idiosyncratic and
dated as it is, it still has some interesting elements, and it still
contributes to the overall themes of the album. Synth-heavy, with treated drums
and a punchy rhythm, the song may be understood to musically contribute to the
idea of loss by making (many) Genesis fans wonder where the progressive band
they loved so much had gone. Of course, there is little chance that this was an
intended characteristic of the song.
Lyrically, Who Dunnit begins with a series of binary questions: "Was it
you or was it me, or was it he or she, was it A or was it B, or was it X or
Z?" As if the theme of identity was not covered enough by the questions
alone, the next section is a denial, the narrator singing with a kind of
suspiciously guilty, stuttering voice: "I didn't do it, I didn't do
it." A third vocal section then changes character again, and posits,
"We know, we know, we know...," and this is carried out in repetition
quite long until, seemingly tired, the singer finally changes his mind, or in
any case, must admit, "We don't know who did it." If one can get past
the new wave pastiche of the whole thing, the effect is quite interesting, a
confusing cycle, almost like the intense internal conversation of someone with
split-personality syndrome. My personal enjoyment was heightened once I
realized that the themes of loss and identity imbue the entire album so
completely. Who Dunnit stands as one
of the most blatant contributions to the themes, and oddly, I found that
forgave any negative opinions I previously had about the track.
The three remaining songs are all
about feelings of loneliness and longing, both of which feed the main themes of
loss and identity. Deeper than average pop songs, the lyrics delve into these
themes, (seemingly) intentionally by using multiple repetitions of certain
ideas: lack of knowledge (not knowing), waiting (time passing), losing, and
pleading.
Man On The Corner is a slow, soft ballad-styled
song that delivers the aforementioned ideas with a vague detachment similar to
the title track, almost making the entire song a universal plea for someone to
help, not just a particular man, but any person in his position. The second
verse seems to match the kind of posit/negate scheme that earlier songs used:
"Looking everywhere at no one, he sees everything or nothing at all, when
he shouts nobody listens, where he leads no one will go." This is pretty
bleak for a pop song that reached very high on the sales charts. It seems that
our protagonist can do nothing but wait "for something to show," as
the last line announces. The man in the song is the "everyman," a
person of no specification, a person not named, a person who has no identity, a
person who has lost, seemingly, everything.
Like It Or Not is a mid-tempo rock song that
was likely written during the band's previous album, Duke (the line,
"You're just another face that I once used to know," appeared on the
song, Turn It On Again, from that
release), or was, at least, written just after that album. The lyric for Like It Or Not begins with the idea of a
return, perhaps the attempt to patch up a previously broken relationship. It's
a fitting song for near the end of the Abacab album, because most of the
record before this is about failed relationships, complete with the feelings of
loss and the struggling to find one's identity that can accompany such events.
This song, however, does nothing to show the healing of these struggles, but
once again sets the listener up for a negation. The song's language is also
about the longing for healing, but the healing never comes. Despite the
narrator's pleas, as in the line, "If there is still a chance to hold on
to our love," the wish remains unfulfilled. As in previous songs on the
album, there are lines about absence: "...You're not anywhere / You're
just another face I used to know; ...I gave you everything / But what have I
got to show?" The end features a repetition of the line, "It's been a
long, been a long, long time / Since I held anybody, since I loved
anyone." This song, like Man On The
Corner, presents the ideas of knowing, waiting, pleading, and losing, and
cements the main themes with an almost plaintive wail of emotion.
Another Record, the last song on Abacab,
tries to soften the mood a bit with humor, but it still contributes
significantly to the ideas of loss and identity. The lyric concerns another
"everyman" kind of character, the singer laying out a plea for
someone to help him, to "Put another record on / Cause he likes that
song." It is as if the dejected, lovelorn man from the last song is now homeless,
and some concerned person (a friend) is telling his story. The language in this
song doesn't reflect the themes as much directly as the others, but there are
familiar sentiments expressed. The question, "Did he think about changing
his name," recalls the focus on titles and names from earlier songs, as
well as a focus on questions, and, "I'm gonna tell him it's the same old
game," suggests that the game spoken of in the song, Abacab, is being referenced. Finally, "Everyone I know looks
the other way," works as a nod to the idea of not being seen, in this case
an uncomfortable, willful exercise on the part of a public who are probably
just too busy to care.
I remember my first listen to Abacab
left me slightly disappointed. Like so many other Genesis fans of the early
1980s, I wanted to hear more albums like Wind And Wuthering. I simply
had not had my fill of that huge, enveloping sound of their earlier material,
the rhythm changes, the intricate chord structures and melodies, with lyrics
about faraway lands and fantasy. Abacab was a jolt to that, but I did,
in fact, like the songs right away. It did not take long until I had the entire
album stuck in my head, and just as with other of their records I had
experienced, I played it often, and I still
do. The extra dimension of understanding how and why the songs on Abacab
fit together so well gave me a greater respect for the album, a fuller
enjoyment with every listen.
by Todd Franklin Osborn
