Four teenage boys at a public school in Godalming formed a rock band in 1965 that would go on to have over 100 million album sales worldwide. Known then as ‘New Anon’, they changed their name to ‘Genesis‘ and boldly decided to pursue a musical career on the back of selling just six hundred copies of their first album, ‘From Genesis to Revelation’, in 1969.

After a couple of personnel changes, the line-up settled down to guitarists Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett, singer Peter Gabriel, keyboard-player Tony Banks, all born in 1950, with Phil Collins (1951-) on drums. The second album, ‘Trespass’ (1970) began to put the prog-rock Genesis sound together. Fans of this line-up rate the next four albums as the best, e.g. ‘Foxtrot’ (1972), with Gabriel’s unusual theatricality creating a niche style that drew the crowds. He left, however, in 1976 to pursue a solo career.

Phil Collins took over the vocals after the band auditioned four hundred other singers! His songwriting talent also came to the fore and Genesis began to appeal to a wider audience with soft-rock hit singles such as ‘Follow You Follow Me’ (1978). Collins and Rutherford have both had successful projects outside of Genesis and the final Genesis tour was in 2007.

(Image of 1991 line-up of Banks, Collins & Rutherford: David Scheinmann at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Making a stop-frame or stop-motion animation film is a painstaking, slow process, but Nick Parks, CBE, RDI (Royal Designer for Industry), had the patience, enthusiasm and talent to pursue what began as a hobby to produce some of the best-loved British films of recent times. Born in Preston in 1958, Parks was encouraged to design and make things as a child, and his first film animation was made on his mother’s camera using scraps of felt.

His first idea for Wallace and Gromit visualised the inventor Wallace with a bushy moustache and the sagacious Gromit as a cat! It took seven years to complete his first short film animation featuring the two clay figures, entitled ‘A Grand Day Out’ (1989), during which Park joined the Aardman Animations company in Bristol, where the other four Wallace and Gromit films would be created.

‘The Wrong Trousers’ came out in 1993, ‘A Close Shave’ in 1995, ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ in 2005 and lastly ‘A Matter of Loaf and Death’ in 2008. Wallace was voiced by actor Peter Sallis, who died in 2017 aged 96, and it is difficult to imagine any other voice portraying the same lovable, well-intentioned, gently eccentric character, or the same delight for ‘Cheeeeeese!’.

(Image: Jordanhill School D&T Dept at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)