Biography

Lead guitarist of the rock group Genesis from 1971 to 1977.

Wife Kim Poor is an artist and has painted the album covers for all of his post-Genesis albums.

In 1999 he reunited with his former Genesis band-mates Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford for a re-recording of the Genesis song "The Carpet Crawlers" (originally from their 1974 album "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"), which appears on the Genesis compilation "Turn it on Again".

His favorite songs are "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix Experience, "I Want You" by Bob Dylan, "Kashmir" by Led Zeppelin, "All Your Love" by John Mayall, "The Nazz are Blue" by Paul Samwell-Smith, "I Wanna Be Your Man" by The Rolling Stones and "My Generation" by The Who. (Source: November 2006 Classic Rock Magazine).

Worked with Chris Squire in autumn 2007, providing guitar for the "Chris Squire's Swiss Choir" Christmas album.

I know that Genesis inspired a lot of young musicians because people still write to me and say that was the reason why they got into playing. I just count myself fortunate that I've been part of the soundtrack to someone's youth.

I have always believed that one half of me was born to be an acoustic guitar player, the other half to play rock guitar and to do both with equal passion.

[on why he left Genesis] I was getting tired of bringing ideas into the group which I felt they weren't going to do. I felt that the band was heading towards an area that was becoming very safe.

[about Genesis in the years after he left the band] In the positive sense, they were more streamlined and you could say they were very smart in jettisoning what was known as the prog style, in favor of something much shorter and more media-friendly. I do think they threw the baby out with the bathwater, though. They did a 360-degree turnaround and managed to lose a fanbase. This is where Pink Floyd have scored. They can reform whenever they want--with or without the full complement of players. You either like those slow, ponderous, introverted, atmospheric songs or you don't. They're not a band in support of a frontman.

I would say if you are serious about composing structurally and creating interesting sounds with instruments, perhaps one should listen in detail to certain classical music. The minutia of a piece is critically important, especially in classical composition and so taking steps to understand the detail in a piece will help significantly.