German Railways (Deutsche Bahn) article

A gentleman – unplugged

What remains, after everything had been achieved: With his second solo record ex-Genesis singer Ray Wilson becomes unassuming again.

You hardly expect a 36 year old rock singer to prefer silence and inner peace to glamorous parties, but Ray Wilson had already revelled in success on stage, and had that “enough and to spare”! This actually sounds like a threat from his mouth. The musician is sitting in the departure lounge of Colgone-Bonn’s airport. All around him is moving, hectic, noisy, and he – in the very centre of it – tries to re-invent piece of mind. The airline staff aren’t kind to him: There are problems with his instruments being no cabin baggage. The Scot stays courteous, no coarse English, but his smoky voice does it all, the guitar is allowed to be taken in.
He owes his career’s launch to jeans manufacturers Levi Strauss. 1994 they discovered Wilson’s band Stiltskin and their hit “Inside” became their promo-song. Stiltskin instantly conquered Europe and was no. 1 in the charts. Wilson’s voice got that well known that he was taken into account to succeed Phil Collins. The miracle happened: After auditing he became the new lead singer of Genesis, that legendary rock band of Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks celebrating world successes since the 1970’s.
What happened next, is the dream coming true of every musician: instead of gigs in small venues there were concerts with several ten thousands of people, first-class hotels, first-class parties and first-class studios. Ray Wilson did his job well. Being that young, he admittedly was the “boy” amongst the “elder gentlemen” of the band, but some songs of the album “Calling all Stations” (1997) had been co-written by him. After some initial fuss about the common record ceased, big success failed to appear. Even if 250 000 records were sold in America, which was a fair lot for Ray Wilson, it wasn’t for Genesis. First they postponed cooperation, then cancelled it. Genesis didn’t need to hurry at all, “Calling all Stations” was their 18. record in all. Ray Wilson couldn’t keep that cool. At the age of a scant 30 years he had gained a lot – and lost too much. His relationship split up, his dream house became a financial disaster, peace of mind was gone. “I asked myself, why go on at all?”
If he is now talking about this “depressive phase” he apparently seems quite cool. But looking evasively he reveals he doesn’t want to experience that again anymore. By now his wife is looking after this, too. Being his personal manager she keeps the music industry off him.
The following two years didn’t see any sign of Wilson. With German rockers Scorpions he performed – supported by the Berlin philharmonic orchestra – at Expo 2000’s opening in Hannover. “One song in two years’ time, that was all I did!”
Too little for someone talking about himself as of being a nobody without music. Thus he started anew. He wrote new songs, performed in small pubs and told little stories like the great idols of his youth had done, singers/songwriters such as Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. “If my audience doesn’t feel like sitting in my living room, then something’s going wrong.” “The Next Best Thing” is his latest solo record with songs featuring stations of his life, sometimes solo with just the guitar, sometimes hard rocking, supported by the band, to which his brother belongs, too.
It’s a good time for Wilson: a new record, a new tour and a lot of free time to tell anecdotes to small audiences. For example about Tony Banks, one of the Genesis gentlemen, who used to read the “Times” during studio recordings, or everyday stories of the new life he now has to lead without prominent support.
He prefers travelling by train to hectic airports: no problems with his guitar, no problems with check-in, no problems with the weather and enough spare time for some movies he always takes along in his backpack. With notebook and headphones – “of course!”, the Scot emphasizes. He doesn’t want to deprive other people of the silence he’s looking for, here’s to his being a real gentleman after all.

Translated by Anne Weber