{"id":481494,"date":"2019-01-29T10:50:03","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T17:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=785266"},"modified":"2019-01-29T10:50:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T17:50:03","slug":"guitarist-daryl-stuermer-talks-40-year-career-with-genesis-phil-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/guitarist-daryl-stuermer-talks-40-year-career-with-genesis-phil-collins\/","title":{"rendered":"Guitarist Daryl Stuermer Talks 40-Year Career With Genesis, Phil Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On June 23rd, 1974, 21-year-old jazz-fusion guitarist Daryl Stuermer was watching the short-lived talk show Speakeasy<\/em> when the guests for the evening included Beach Boys singer Mike Love, English guitarist John McLaughlin, jazz flutist Charles Lloyd and Genesis<\/a> frontman Peter Gabriel. Stuermer had never heard of Genesis and the brief video segment showing their performance of \u201cSupper\u2019s Ready\u201d did little to win him over. \u201cPeter was wearing a flower on his head,\u201d says Stuermer. \u201cWhen I saw that I thought, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s not my kind of thing. This is ridiculous.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Little could he have imagined that not only would he join the band just four years later, but the young drummer in the background \u2014 a complete unknown named Phil Collins<\/a> \u2014 would become one of the biggest music acts of the next decade and that he\u2019d bring the guitarist along for the ride. To this day, Collins has never played a solo concert without Stuermer by his side and he\u2019s been a key part of every single album besides 1994\u2019s Both Sides<\/em>. Stuermer has also been on every Genesis tour going back to 1978 besides the short-lived 1998 tour with replacement vocalist Ray Wilson.<\/p>\n

As he gears up for yet another leg of Collins\u2019 ongoing Not Dead Yet! comeback tour, Stuermer phoned up Rolling Stone<\/em> to chat about his long career with Phil Collins and Genesis.<\/p>\n

Who were your guitar heroes growing up?<\/strong>
I started playing when I was about 11, so I started pretty much listening to guitar players seriously when I was about 12 or 13. Probably the first guitarists that I really started noticing were in the band the Ventures and then Duane Eddy and Chet Atkins. I couldn\u2019t play Chet Atkins, but I sure admired him. That was the very, very beginning and it seemed like as I went along I started getting interested more and more in the blues guys like Mike Bloomfield and Albert King and B.B. King.<\/p>\n

Then when I was about 15, I noticed that I was starting to get interested in jazz guitarists. What happened was Joe Pass had put out an album called The Stones Jazz<\/em> where he did all Rolling Stones songs. I thought, \u201cOh, my God, let me check this record out.\u201d It got me interested in jazz because he was playing things that I couldn\u2019t possibly play, notes that I had never heard in rock music. That got me involved with that and probably my favorite jazz guitarist turned out to be Wes Montgomery. And then [Jimi] Hendrix also became a big influence in the rock world.<\/p>\n

How aware were you of Genesis in the Peter Gabriel era?<\/strong>
I wasn\u2019t really aware of their music until Phil Collins became their singer and Jean-Luc Ponty, who I was working with at the time, gave me a cassette of their album A Trick of the Tail.<\/em> He said to me, \u201cYou must hear this band. These guys are excellent.\u201d On one side of the tape was A Trick of the Tail<\/em> and another side was Wind and Wuthering<\/em>, though they both ran out around 45 minutes. But they turned me into an instant fan. That was pretty much my formal introduction to Genesis.<\/p>\n

How did you get the audition?<\/strong>
Someone else that actually auditioned was a bass player who played some guitar, but what they needed was a guitarist that could play some bass. And so when that that musician didn\u2019t get the gig with them, he actually recommended me and so that\u2019s how that all began. So they flew me to New York and they put me up at the Plaza hotel and I went to the first audition, which was just [Genesis bassist\/guitarist] Michael Rutherford at SIR [Studios]. They had sent me a cassette with five songs on it, including two from their new album \u2026And Then There Were Three\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

They had a cassette player there and they wanted me to play along to the recordings. We probably did two or three minutes of each song and then I remember him saying to me, \u201cI think you\u2019re the one.\u201d I was kind of surprised by that. I also remember him saying, \u201cWell, I have four more guitar players that I\u2019m auditioning here in New York, but I\u2019ll call you at the Plaza at 5 p.m. and I\u2019ll get together with you to tell you the songs that you should learn for the next tour.\u201d That\u2019s what happened. I got back together with him after the audition.<\/p>\n