On February 15, 1971, “Decimal Day,” The United Kingdom and Ireland converted from their traditional “old” currency (pence, shillings, and pounds) to a “modern” decimal model. While the conversion reportedly went smoothly—largely due to a carefully orchestrated government informational campaign—the event represents a collision between the “old” and “modern” Britain. Genesis came of age as a band at about the same time, and, starting with “The Musical Box” and “For Absent Friends” on Nursery Cryme (released in November 1971), they began to develop unabashedly British themes in their writing. 1972’s Foxtrot continued this trend even more, commenting on housing and social policy in “Get ‘Em Out by Friday,” invoking the legend of King Canute and the waves on “Can-Utility and the Coastliners,” and finally bursting forth in surreal display in the “Willow’s Farm” segment of “Supper’s Ready.”

 

Selling England by the Pound (1973) wrests the icons of historic Britain into 1970s present-day Britain, a collision of old and new much like Decimal Day (to which the album title obliquely refers—after all, the pence was devalued considerably in the process of the currency conversion). While this theme of cultural collision can be found in earlier British pop music, Selling England represents the collision between the “old” British themes of Foxtrot and the emergent “American” themes of The Lamb and the Phil Collins-led incarnation of the band.

 

In this presentation I investigate Selling England by the Pound’s themes of the Old and New Britain colliding. I also examine existing bootlegs of the studio sessions to show how their formally complex songs were assembled. The tapes show the band’s approach to be much more “compositional,” compared to the jam-based approach of The Lamb and later albums such as Abacab.

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Keywords: Genesis, British history (1970s), composition, Peter Gabriel