B-side "Living Forever" Recorded The Farm, Surrey, 1991 | Released 21 October 1991 Genre Rock | |
Format CD maxi, 7" single, 12" maxi,
cassette Length 4:41 (radio edit)
6:39 (album version)
5:44 (new edit – 1999) | ||
"No Son of Mine" is the first single by the British rock group Genesis from their 1991 album We Can't Dance, which reached No. 6 in the UK and No. 12 in the U.S., and was a top ten hit in most of continental Europe.
Contents
Lyrics and music
The song's lyrics tell the story of a boy who runs away from his abusive home, and—after some reconsideration—attempts to return, only to be rebuked by his father. In interviews, Phil Collins has said that the lyrics are deliberately vague as to whether the narrator or his mother is the victim of the abuse.
The video for this song is particularly melancholic, illustrating the scene in sepia tone. The video depicts what is discussed in the song, a conversation between a son and his father. During the last chorus snow flakes begin appearing flying around the house; eventually, at the end, the scene pulls out to reveal the entire confrontation scenes take place in a snow globe that the son is holding.
The song has a distinctive sound heard during the intro and before the second verse. Referred to by the band as "elephantus," the sound was created by Tony Banks recording Mike Rutherford's guitar with a sampler and then playing three notes on the bottom register of the keyboard, greatly lowering the pitch. The working title of "No Son of Mine" was "Elephantus". The sound is also featured in the opening of the "I Can't Dance" single B-side "On the Shoreline". A similar sound is heard in former Genesis member Peter Gabriel's song "I Grieve", which was released a decade after this single.
The radio edit fades out the song's extended outro a minute in advance and deleted part of the second chorus. The music video makes use of the complete album version.
The single included the eighth track from We Can't Dance, "Living Forever", as the B-side.
Live performances
The song was played live during the The Way We Walk, Calling All Stations (with Ray Wilson on vocals), and Turn It On Again tours.
A live version appears on their albums The Way We Walk, Volume One: The Shorts, and Live Over Europe 2007, as well as on their DVD's The Way We Walk - Live in Concert and When in Rome 2007.
Former one-time lead singer Ray Wilson (who had replaced Phil Collins) continued to cover the song on his solo live albums after his departure from Genesis.