Michael John Cloete Crawford Rutherford (born 2 October 1950) is an English guitarist, bassist and songwriter, best known as co-founder, lead guitarist and bassist of the rock band Genesis. He and keyboardist Tony Banks are the group's two continuous members.
Initially serving as Genesis's bass guitarist and backing vocalist, Rutherford also performed most of the band's rhythm guitar parts—frequently on twelve-string guitar—in collaboration with successive Genesis lead guitarists Anthony Phillips and Steve Hackett. Following Hackett's departure from Genesis in 1977, Rutherford assumed the additional role of lead guitarist on the band's studio albums (beginning with ...And Then There Were Three... in 1978). Rutherford was one of the main Genesis songwriters throughout their career and wrote the lyrics for some of the band's biggest international hits, such as "Follow You Follow Me", "Turn It On Again", "Land of Confusion" and "Throwing It All Away". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.
In addition to his work with Genesis, Rutherford released two solo albums in the early 1980s. In 1985, he formed Mike + the Mechanics, which became a chart-topping act and significant live draw in its own right. The group earned Rutherford an Ivor Novello Award for the 1988 single "The Living Years", as well as two Grammy nominations.
Michael John Cloete Crawford Rutherford was born on 2 October 1950 in Chertsey, Surrey. His father, William Francis Henry Crawford Rutherford (1906–1986) was a Royal Navy Captain (awarded the DSO and CBE) who became a manager in industry (including for aircraft manufacturer Hawker Siddeley). Upon his retirement from the service he married his wife, Anne. He has an elder sister, Nicolette.
Rutherford received his first guitar at the age of 8, and played in his first band, The Chesters, so named because by then they lived near Chester, in the following year. He attended The Leas, a preparatory school in Hoylake, Merseyside before he moved to Charterhouse, a private school in Godalming, Surrey in September 1964. He co-formed the school band Anon (short for Anonymous) with guitarist Anthony Phillips in 1965, but was forced to leave the band when his housemaster banned him from playing guitar. After Rutherford got the ban lifted, he played with a band called Climax and was later reinstated into Anon. When the lead vocalist and bassist of Anon both quit, Rutherford switched to bass and lead vocals for a time. Anon played one last concert in this trio configuration in December 1966, after which they split and Rutherford and Phillips started writing songs together during the Christmas holiday. They formed Genesis in 1967 with fellow Charterhouse pupils, keyboardist Tony Banks, vocalist Peter Gabriel, and drummer Chris Stewart. Rutherford disliked his time at Charterhouse, and was expelled for instances of minor misconduct.
Rutherford's playing style has been shaped by his unorthodox performance requirements within Genesis, where frequent shifts between instruments (or shifts of role between instruments) were common. Though his work with bass and guitar has been praised by some critics, he has described his playing as average and said that he considers himself a songwriter first and foremost.
Rutherford's bass guitar playing initially involved the use of a pick and a high-treble setting. He would also employ a relatively harsh, horn-like distortion setting to differentiate the instrument's tone from the rest of the ensemble. In the mid-1970s he would begin to play fretless bass guitar on Genesis songs (in particular on ballads) and would experiment with 8-string bass guitar.
Rutherford's rhythm guitar playing was initially characterised by his use of electric and acoustic 12-string guitars. A distinctive sound of early Genesis recordings was Rutherford's double acoustic 12-string playing intertwined with that of Anthony Phillips or, later, Steve Hackett (keyboard player Tony Banks would occasionally also play 12-string guitar parts to make up a duo or trio). As a rhythm guitar player and writer, Rutherford has favoured melodic, minimalist chords or progressions of single notes, as in the Genesis songs "Follow You Follow Me", "Turn It On Again" and "Invisible Touch", or the Mike and the Mechanics song "The Living Years".
Rutherford assumed lead guitar duties for Genesis in 1977 after Hackett left the band. Previously he had made occasional lead guitar contributions to Genesis music if they were best played by him (such as the electric sitar parts on Selling England by the Pound), but following the departure of Hackett and the band's decision not to replace him with a new guitarist, despite toying with auditioning new guitarists or using a studio guitarist on ...And Then There Were Three..., Rutherford assumed all guitarist roles in the recording studio, having felt confident enough to double up on lead guitar as well as bass. As a lead player he has favoured long, melodic tones, bending the notes into plaintive, almost vocal lines. This results in "singable" solos or the creation of sonic atmospheres rather than showy displays of technical prowess. Post-Hackett, he has also diversified his rhythm guitar approach beyond his initial twelve-string-based approach.
Following the departure of Anthony Phillips, for a time Genesis performed without a dedicated guitarist, so Rutherford had to play all the guitar parts, using bass pedals to simultaneously cover the bass. Rutherford found that he liked this configuration, and following the recruitment of Steve Hackett he continued to play bass pedals both live and in the studio, often playing simultaneous twelve-string guitar and bass pedal parts in order to cover rhythm and bass parts at the same time. Initially using a Dewtron "Mister Bassman" bass pedal synthesiser, he had moved onto Moog Taurus bass pedals by the 1976 Trick of the Tail Tour. Frequently Rutherford's bass guitar, 12-string guitar, and bass pedal playing have featured in different sections of a single Genesis song, "Supper's Ready", "Firth of Fifth" and "The Cinema Show" being good examples of this. Sometimes Rutherford's bass pedals are used to set up a steady drone as the basis for an individual song (such as "Afterglow").
In concerts during the first half of the 1970s, Rutherford often played a double-necked instrument, custom built from a separate Rickenbacker hollowbody 12-string and 4001 bass. Rickenbacker later issued double neck bass/guitar combinations with 4080/6 and 4080/12 models. However, Rutherford assigned the guitar neck to the top position rather than the 4080's stock guitar on bottom. He later had a custom Shergold double-neck made, with the body modified so that each neck could be detached and played as a standard single-neck instrument, or swapped out in favour of alternate halves (allowing the 12-string half to be switched to a 6-string when needed). On post-1977 Genesis live shows, Rutherford would alternate parts with touring band member Daryl Stuermer. Stuermer would typically play all of Hackett's original guitar parts (while Rutherford concentrated on bass, twelve-string guitar and pedals), but play bass guitar on most songs from the post-Hackett era (for which Rutherford would move to guitar).
Rutherford also contributed other instrumental work to Genesis, performing occasional cello parts on their early 1970s records and playing the drumkit on live performances of the song "Who Dunnit?" in 1981.
According to Anthony Phillips, Rutherford did very little songwriting on Genesis's debut album, From Genesis to Revelation, and it was with their second album, Trespass, that he emerged as a prolific songwriter. Genesis typically wrote songs collaboratively, with Rutherford's more well-known contributions including the transition to the electrical segments of "The Musical Box", the music to the first half of "The Cinema Show", and the lyrics to "Follow You Follow Me" and "Turn It On Again". He also wrote a few Genesis songs by himself, including the minor hit "Your Own Special Way".