The Genesis reissue campaign soldiers on, this time with the band’s studio output during the half-decade between 1976 and 1981 which includes A Trick of the Tail (1976), Wind & Wuthering (1971), And Then There Were Three (1978), Duke (1980) and Abacab (1981). The 1976-1981 era was a transitional period for Genesis on a couple of different levels, but the music that emerged within those years helped take a prog-heavy gang of musicians and turn them into proper pop/rock heroes.

The idea of Phil Collins taking over for Peter Gabriel, Genesis’s original lead singer, was not one which had been planned from the beginning. Indeed, when Gabriel bid the band adieu, Collins, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett, and Mike Rutherford held auditions for a new singer, and even as they were doing so, Collins would’ve been just fine if Genesis had carried on and played nothing but instrumentals. After almost bringing aboard a gentleman named Mick Stickland as their new singer, the band and Stickland ultimately opted against moving forward with their collaboration, predominantly due to the fact that the backing tracks for the band’s new album had already been recorded, and they weren’t in the best key for Stickland. After additional auditions proved unsuccessful, Collins opted to take a shot at singing “Squonk,” after which he found himself more or less drafted for the position.

Some have said that A Trick of the Tail feels like a spiritual sequel, at the very least, to Selling England by the Pound, but whether that’s because the band wished to return to that sound in the wake of Gabriel’s departure or that it’s simply the way their creative juices were flowing, it’s hard to say. Whatever the case, even setting aside how successful Collins’ time with Genesis ultimately proved to be, what was most important at the time A Trick of the Tail was released was the fact that it cemented Genesis as a viable commercial entity without Gabriel. Not only did it hit #3 on the UK Albums chart and #31 on the Billboard Top 200, but its sales were double those of its predecessor.