Last Updated on 27 January 2026 by Massimo M.
Selling England by the pound is the fifth album created by Genesis in the Gabriel era and is, for many and also for myself, the best produced by the band.
We are in 1973 and Genesis have just finished the tour to promote Foxtrot which had great success in Europe and which led them to also play in the States.
All great then. Really no.
Music criticism, which we now understand is generally worth little, at the time delighted in mistreating the work of Genesis, comparing them with monuments of prog rock such as E,L & P, King crimson, Jethro tull etc.
The band, in the most legendary and, for many, the best line-up of Genesis (Banks, Collins, Gabriel, Hackett, Rutherford), took some time to react in the best possible way to these criticisms, that is, to try to create a record “perfect”, not open to criticism.
And they will succeed because Selling England By The Pound will sweep away criticism, unfair parallels and residual doubts.
Peter Gabriel and his associates, starting from small ideas almost all coming from Hackett, write, rewrite, rehearse, rehearse until they record eight refined tracks with attention to the smallest details.
The example of this almost obsessive attention to detail is Firth Of Fifth, rejected in the Foxtrot recording sessions, but here reworked in such a way that it is impossible to discard it.
Non si deve però cadere nell’errore di pensare che Selling England by the pound sia un disco si perfetto ma sterile. Come mai in precedenza i testi di Gabriel prendono spunto dalla situazione in cui versava all’epoca l’Inghilterra.
The title itself says it all. It is a line from the opening song Dancing with the Moonlit Knight that Peter Gabriel, author of the lyrics, extrapolated from a manifesto of the Labor Party, which with this expression denounced the “selling out” of the country to mere financial interests and economical. Far from being expressly politicized, the lyrics of almost the entire album are vaguely focused on the theme, already dear above all to Peter Gabriel, of the conflict between the austerity of tradition, often confined to appearances alone, and contemporary miseries.
With its memorable opening sung “a cappella” by Gabriel, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight has become one of the band’s iconic songs. The song is articulated through an intricate structure that leads to an almost hypnotic ending which, in turn, leads the listener to the next song, I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe). This second song is a kind of anticipation of the pop and less prog-rock soul of Genesis, which will take over a few years later.
The third song on the track list is one of the pillars of the album, Firth of Fifth. In this song Tony Banks shows off all his talent on the keyboards, creating a truly masterful introduction. This is followed by a long instrumental interlude, composed of three solos of which the first is performed by Gabriel on the flute, then a solo by Banks which takes up the initial piano introduction and finally the third, performed by Steve Hackett, in which the guitar is used masterfully .
More Fool Me is a song that, like For Absent Friends on “Nursery Crime”, represents a preview of what Genesis would become in the 80s, with Phil Collins as the main vocalist.
Side B opens with The Battle of Epping Forest, which with its length of over eleven minutes is the longest song on the album. The lyrics of the song describe with clever irony a settling of scores by two rival gangs from the London suburbs. Among the characters present there are traders, religious men, mafiosi, intellectuals and hippies, who are caricatures of the vices and defects of marginalized London society, whose aggressive side is described to us in a fairy-tale and allegorical form. Musically the piece evolves continuously, starting from the martial introduction it transforms into a rock ride and manages to incorporate jazz and folk lines.
The following song, After the Ordeal, is an instrumental that showcases, once again, Steve Hackett’s guitar skills and ideally acts as a bridge to the following song The Cinema Show, a track inspired by the poem ” The Waste Land” by Thomas Elliot.
The Cinema Show undoubtedly undermines the opening track’s role as the album’s masterpiece thanks to the wonderful lyrics, the delicate acoustic inserts and the long instrumental final part. It ends with a wonderful keyboard solo by Tony Banks that alternates with the organ, the mellotron and the synthesizer masterfully supported by the rhythm section of Phil Collins and Mike Rutheford.
Each of the five members of the group finds their space in Selling England by the pound. Peter Gabriel uses all his vast range of voices and expressiveness, Steve Hackett carves out performances as great protagonists, Mike Rutherford on bass, keyboard player Tony Banks, who here probably gives his best performance, and drummer Phil Collins, on which Genesis grant, as we have already seen, the honor and burden of singing a song, More fool me.
Selling England by the pound is a global work and the cover illustration is also part of it and reinforces the message. Like the last three covers of the band’s albums, a painting was chosen for the illustration, but this time Paul Whitehead, author of cover Trespass, Nursery crime and Foxtrot, it has nothing to do with it.
The title of the work is The Dream and it is a painting by Betty Swanwick, painted long before Peter Gabriel saw it and was struck by it.
The image of The Dream, although not created specifically for the group, somehow seems tailor-made for the story told by Genesis and, in particular, visually tells the story of I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) , second song on the Selling England By The Pound track list.
Track list
Side A
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight – 8:02
I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) – 4:03
Firth of Fifth – 9:36
More Fool Me – 3:10
Side B
The Battle of Epping Forest – 11:43
After the Ordeal – 4:07
The Cinema Show – 11:10
Aisle of Plenty – 1:30
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