As the keyboard player and founding member of progressive rock giants Genesis, Tony Banks helped create landmark albums 'Selling England By the Pound', 'Duke' and 'Invisible Touch' and notch up worldwide record sales of over 150 million copies before developing his own solo career and composing a number of movie soundtracks.

Born in East Sussex, Banks was a teenager when The Beatles and Elvis Presley changed the face of rock & roll and pop music, and was inspired to start his first group Garden Wall with school friend Peter Gabriel. They went on to merge with a rival act led by Mike Rutherford and - together as Genesis - took the regulation blues rock stomp of the era into complex, meandering new fantasy worlds alongside the likes of Yes, King Crimson and Pink Floyd. They later evolved into a lighter, stadium-pop outfit, but Banks began exploring new ideas in 1979 when he took an unused instrumental piece and started making a concept album inspired by the Daniel Keyes novel 'Flowers for Algernon'. It turned into his debut solo record 'A Curious Feeling' and reached number 21 in the UK charts. Banks reluctantly took on vocal duties himself on his soft-rock follow-up 'The Fugitive' in an attempt to bring more of an identity to his music, and repackaged himself as slick, angular pop outfit Bankstatement in 1989, but it was his soundtrack work where he really pushed his sonic ambitions as he worked with the National Philharmonic Orchestra on his score for period drama 'The Wicked Lady' and with punk-pop diva Toyah Wilcox on the music for sci-fi romp 'Starship'. He also collaborated with singer-songwriters Fish and Nik Kershaw on the breezy, upbeat 'Still' in 1991 and fully immersed himself in the classical, orchestral world later in his career with albums 'Seven: A Suite for Orchestra' in 2004, 'Six Pieces for Orchestra' in 2012 and 'Five' in 2018. Though record sales never reached anywhere near Genesis levels and critics were often harsh, his solo back catalogue stands as an insight into an eccentric, adventurous musical mind and a prog-rock pioneer.

Tony Banks

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