The Musical Box: And Then There Was… Phil – Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 17th June 2026
AND THEN THERE WAS PHIL
(But were we worthy of him?)
The Musical Box
Usher Hall, Edinburgh
17/06/26
I went with a good friend (who drove, as it’s always nice to be chauffeured) and travelled to Edinburgh on Wednesday. The day of the week that was invented to give Monday and Friday something to feel superior about. Usher Hall is one of those venues so grand that it makes you feel like you’re underdressed in your best shirt while simultaneously overdressed compared to the guy next to you, who is wearing a 1977 Wind & Wuthering tour tee. People like this were filling the auditorium at an alarming rate, middle-aged guys in sensible shoes vibrating with bottled-up excitement. Women who came with their partners and departed with an understanding that they knew a lot more about the Eleventh Earl of Mar than they’d bargained for. One bloke up towards the front looked like he’d waited for the show all his life, and indeed maybe he had. Tonight, there was a congregation, and The Musical Box from Canada was coming to preach to them.
Now, it might seem artistically remiss — and a little embarrassing on my part — not to remind everybody what exactly Genesis were. Apparently, some people think Phil Collins invented pop music, drum machines, and visible scalps in the same year and the same breath. These people also think Sussudio is a proper word. They didn’t start there.
The late ’70s are generally considered Genesis’ heyday — and a period when they were possibly among the most innovative and important acts on the planet. Along with bands like YES, ELP, and King Crimson, they were helping to define the prog genre: elaborate, theatrical, literary, structurally inventive, performed on keyboards and instruments that most rock musicians would struggle to master. Peter Gabriel adorned himself with fox-head masks onstage. Tony Banks built keyboards like a man possessed. Steve Hackett produced sounds from his guitar that seemed to indicate secret communications with some sort of inhuman creature. This was music not for stadiums; this was music for those who had read too many books, felt too much, and whose parents were starting to worry.
All that ended in 1975 when Gabriel left. The music press pronounced Genesis dead, but Phil Collins, the band’s drummer since 1970, became lead vocalist in a desperate bid to revive them. Not only were they revived, the 1976 album A Trick of the Tail proved how much of a success they could become without Gabriel, showcasing such classics as Squonk and Ripples, with Collins’ vocal giving the band an element they had been lacking. The album proved hugely successful in both the UK (No.3) and the US (No.31). The dead began to stir, smoke a cigarette, and ask if anyone had noticed his drumsticks lying around.
Wind & Wuthering marked the final gasp of prog for Genesis, the last of their glorious, peculiar, beautiful albums that made music in a way nobody else had ever done before. It was majestic and difficult — and sometimes hard to penetrate, because music like that comes from the depths of very clever minds attempting to convey very profound sentiments. Unfortunately, guitarist Steve Hackett was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the fact that his contributions to the band were frequently being sidelined to accommodate the dominating duet of Banks and Rutherford. He decided to leave the band after the tour that produced Wind & Wuthering. The poor bastard left Genesis to create a perfectly fine solo career that nobody talks about at parties. …And Then There Were Three… was the next release in 1978. The band went poppier and gave us their first US Top 40 hit: Follow You Follow Me. The change of direction had commenced.
1976-1980 is the period The Musical Box has chosen to reconstruct this evening: when Genesis were transforming from the theatrical masters of prog into the stadium-rock behemoths who ruled the world. This was a period full of change — full of tension and the sense of becoming something else. And that’s the vibe you can hear throughout the music they created in this time: the vibe of a bruised genius in transition.
When talking about tribute bands covering the material of other musicians, it usually implies that they are either too polite to refuse or that the musicians in question needed the money. The former is certainly not applicable in this case: Phil Collins’ endorsement of The Musical Box goes above and beyond politeness — and hints at a craftsman approving another craftsman for taking the trouble to read, file, and laminate his instructions.
This was the thirtieth anniversary of The Musical Box’s activity. Their previous performances had recreated the theatricality and complexity of Gabriel-era Genesis with an obsession that borders on forensic science: costumes, props, period-accurate sound of analogue equipment that was played too loudly in a building with problematic acoustics. But now, as they enter the realm of the Collins era, they choose the groundbreaking period between 1976 and 1980 — one of the most fascinating epochs in the band’s career that resulted in their metamorphosis into a worldwide phenomenon. The performance at Usher Hall today faithfully reproduces the stage set of the 1978 Mirrors tour, featuring vintage instruments, equipment, and costume design along with that tour’s revolutionary mirrored lights rig. It is less of a concert than a time machine, and less of a tribute than archaeology.
Denis Gagné is the one responsible for this reconstruction, handling both the vocal duties of Phil Collins and the drumming at once, which should be impossible and remains disconcerting. The man is singing while drumming at the same time, displaying an equally impressive combination of warmth and rhythmic prowess — that’s exactly what Collins did and exactly how difficult it was to achieve. Paul Duffy handles the guitars, bass, saxophone, and vocals with the vigour of a man well aware that any show of such precision leaves no room for approximations. Duffy plays several instruments at once; perhaps he constitutes a band on his own and simply hasn’t announced it yet. François Gagnon and Sébastien Cloutier recreate the complex harmonic structures of the legendary Genesis chords created by Tony Banks, and Bob St-Laurent keeps the rhythm of drums and percussion.
The ‘Eleventh Earl of Mar’ got the performance off to a rousing start. If you need a warming up with the Eleventh Earl of Mar, you should probably go home; you’re in the wrong place for this particular evening. Genesis’ battering ram of seven minutes is a song that features Banks’ keyboards spiralling out of control while Collins drives it forward with his rhythm — and you cannot ignore the fact that he was, is, and remains one of the greatest drummers in the history of rock music.
‘One for the Vine’ followed, with the band tackling another nine-minute theological and musical masterpiece with the dedication that had the man in the 1977 tour tee temporarily losing consciousness from sheer concentration. ‘Burning Rope,’ one of Wind & Wuthering’s gems, is a song that showcases the band’s ability to play anything — and this one was no exception.
‘Ripples,’ of course, is one of those songs that always takes you somewhere sad and beautiful. Listening to it is always as if you suddenly received a letter from the past — an old letter that forces you to rethink everything that happened there and then and afterwards. This, indeed, is the musical version of an old letter. ‘Wot Gorilla?,’ on the other hand, is the palate cleansing for those who managed to develop an excessive number of feelings due to the above.
The second half of the gig is dedicated to ‘Duke’ territory: ‘Behind the Lines,’ ‘Duke’s Travels,’ ‘Duke’s End,’ the territory of Genesis in transition. This setlist shows just how much the band changed in terms of composition, how the prog DNA reorganises itself into something more streamlined, more direct and powerful — and still retains the ability to impress the listener with the depth of its structures. ‘Dance on a Volcano’ is nothing if not ferocious, while ‘Entangled’ hits the spot with the kind of quiet precision only possible for extremely talented musicians.
‘Deep in the Motherlode’ and ‘Blood on the Rooftops’ are two songs that come straight out of the albums that are long forgotten yet familiar to heart. Unquiet ‘Slumbers for the Sleepers’ and ‘…In That Quiet Earth’ blend seamlessly into each other as they always do — one serves as an introduction to the other, an anticipation of the wave that will soon come crashing into you. The performance finishes with ‘Afterglow,’ and if you didn’t experience anything at that point you may want to visit a shrink because there’s something wrong with your ability to feel and enjoy music.
The encore was, objectively speaking, perfect: ‘Follow You Follow Me’ as the single these men were eventually permitted to have and delivered with self-aware affection it deserves (this is the moment when Genesis ceased being deliberately difficult and realised that there’s enough in three minutes to fill nine). ‘In the Cage,’ because they wouldn’t let you out softly. ‘It’s Yourself’ — for people who came from even further than I did (several people outside of Scotland, which deserves recognition, really), and for the people who couldn’t have missed that. ‘Los Endos’ because there’s no other way to end a Genesis set, and because the piece of music composed by Englishmen who were trying to become a pop band yet remained stubbornly proggish until the very end remains one of the most architecturally satisfying works ever.
Usher Hall stands atop Lothian Road and has hosted everyone from the Scottish National Orchestra to Mogwai, and it handled this show exceptionally well. The lighting rig brought back the atmosphere of the epoch so accurately that I forgot it was 2026. And the show itself was tight, precise, and flawlessly coordinated. Denis Gagné is the central force around which the performance is built, and watching him play drums and sing at the same time is the definition of virtuosity.
What criticism usually applies to performances like these — the fact that they’re somehow reduced, a mere reflection of the thing itself — loses traction with this particular act. What The Musical Box has built is not a replica but a reconstruction: not an imitation but the revival of the original that is lost to time, and it teaches you more about it than the original could ever do.
The reason why Genesis remains important is that they occupy an incredibly rare space in the musical universe: incredible talent combined with emotional availability, the music that is always technically perfect yet never lacks warmth. The 1976-1980 period marks the very hinge on which the whole of their legacy is turning. This is a hinge that The Musical Box has located, lubricated, and swung wide open for two and a half hours in Edinburgh.
We drove back from Edinburgh through Midlothian, listening to Afterglow on the stereo. The navigation system offered us a different route, but we ignored it. Some decisions are better made voluntarily and thoroughly than others, and there aren’t many like that in my life.
Links
https://www.themusicalbox.net/
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialTheMusicalBox/
https://cultureedinburgh.com/our-venues/usher-hall
https://www.facebook.com/UsherHall/
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Jon Deaux and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
