“We have an identity crisis. People say, ‘I knew every one of those songs, but I had no idea they were yours’”: Mike + The Mechanics’ history is a bit more rock’n’roll than Genesis’

OSLO, NORWAY - APRIL 29: Mike Rutherford of Mike & The Mechanics performs at the Rockefeller Music Hall on April 29, 2019 in Oslo, Norway. (Photo by Per Ole Hagen/Redferns) — (Image credit: Getty Images)

In 2014 Genesis guitarist Mike Rutherford looked back on the story of his other band, Mike + The Mechanics, telling Prog about a few of the ups and downs he’d encountered with them.

Mike Rutherford formed Mike + The Mechanics in 1985 as a secondary outlet for his Genesis songwriting, only for debut single Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground) to become a pretty decent-sized UK and US hit.

“It was unbelievable,” he says. “After Phil’s success, the chances of me or Tony getting something off the ground seemed highly unlikely.”Fortune, though, played its part.

Rutherford had drawn up a list of potential songwriters and got lucky with the first two, producer and 70s comedy actor Chris Neil (see Adventures Of A Plumber’s Mate et al) and pop singer BA Robertson (of Kool In The Kaftan and Bang Bang fame).

The three wrote an album’s worth of songs before Rutherford cast around for a band. “Once again I got lucky, because the first two singers through the door were Paul Carrack and Paul Young.”

Carrack sang the ballads while former Sad Café man Young handled the more rocky songs. From there on in, Mike + The Mechanics released five albums and enjoyed a run of Top 20 hits – including The Living Years – before Young’s death from a heart attack in 2000.

In contrast to the group’s MOR image, he was a bon vivant with a prodigious appetite for drugs and alcohol. In his memoir, Rutherford recalls Young ransacking a hotel room looking for booze, and Angie Rutherford spiking his drink with a sleeping pill in a desperate attempt to calm him down.

“I loved Young,” says Rutherford, “although there were times when I could have killed him. But he had his demons and that was very much a part of his character.”

Rutherford dissolved the band after 2004’s unsatisfying album Rewired. “It wasn’t a very good album and without Young, the chemistry had changed.”

Then in 2009, he began working with new musicians, including singer-songwriter Andrew Roachford (of the 1989 hit single Cuddly Toy) writing songs that “sounded like Mechanics songs.”

Roachford arrived at their first writing session thinking that working with Rutherford would be an intense experience. “He thought I was going to be like this,” says Rutherford, furrowing his brow and adopting a pose like Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker. “He was surprised when he found out that Genesis were never like that.

“We were never tortured artistes. Roachford was shocked to discover that we wrote songs by jamming like a jazz band. We play like a train smash, with lots of wrong notes, and something good comes of it. That’s how Tony and I always worked.”

The revived Mike + The Mechanics now features Rutherford with vocalists Roachford and Tim Howar. “These are great songs to play live,” says Rutherford. “It’s different from Genesis because the songs are lighter and the audiences are probably lighter.

“But we do have an identity crisis – I know that. After the gigs we often have people come up and say, ‘I knew every one of those songs but I had no idea they were all by Mike + The Mechanics!’”

Mike + The Mechanics - Over My Shoulder (Official HD Music Video) - YouTube

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Mark Blake is a music journalist and author. His work has appeared in The Times and The Daily Telegraph, and the magazines Q, Mojo, Classic Rock, Music Week and Prog. He is the author of Pigs Might Fly: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd, Is This the Real Life: The Untold Story of Queen, Magnifico! The A–Z Of Queen, Peter Grant, The Story Of Rock's Greatest Manager and Pretend You're in a War: The Who & The Sixties.

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