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| Phil taking photos of the audience |
What a weekend! I was at Wembley Stadium on Saturday to see Genesis perform at the Live Earth concert and at Twickenham Stadium on Sunday to see their only London concert for the tour.
After listening to their music for over 20 years, it was great to finally see them live. They played a 20 minute opening set on Saturday afternoon, leaving straight afterwards to travel to Manchester for their own concert that night. I nearly didn't get to attend Sunday night's concert, as all 100,000 tickets for the Manchester and London shows sold out in only 90 minutes last December! Luckily, an online auction was held a few days later, where I was able to bid for a seat in the first 10 rows :) Twickenham was a fantastic show, I was in the second row right in front of Phil's mic! Great to see all the band members close up, with the stage purposely designed so they were close together. As with previous tours, they were using the latest technology. The stage featured a 64m curved screen made from over 9 million LEDs that displayed graphics and images during the show, including images of the audience.
Took some good photos at Twickenham, which I've uploaded here. Mike's double neck guitar was custom made for the tour, combining a Gibson 12-string with a Yamaha 4-string bass. Phil and Chester performed a cool drum duet, starting off playing on 2 bar stools, then moving onto the drums. Great stuff! Also took a 25 minute movie of the last 4 songs using my camera, which came out really well. Bought some t-shirts and tour booklets too. I was amazed how many people were wearing Genesis or Phil Collins t-shirts from previous tours! A real cross-section of ages there too, which was good to see. There were a few famous people in the audience, including Brian May, Nick Mason and Jeremy Clarkson. Brian and Nick can be seen in this video of the In the Cage medley. Brian is a friend of Phil's and has mentioned being influenced by Steve Hackett's guitar playing in the early 70s, particularly on The Musical Box from the album Nursery Cryme. Rained a bit, though nothing too heavy. At one point Phil said "f****** rain", then mentioned the BBC would probably tell him off for saying that! He was referring to causing a bit of controversy at the Live Earth concert the day before, by singing "And though she will f*** up your life" during the performance of Invisible Touch. Tony looked a bit emotional at the end, as they were saying goodbye. Could well be the last time they tour. Not bad going after 40 years though.