Firth Of Fifth - 2004 Remix

The title doesn't appear in the lyric, which is not unusual for Genesis. In this case, it has little to do with the song, but is something the band found amusing. In Scotland, there is a river called the Forth, and "firth" is a term meaning an inlet or estuary. Thus, the Firth of Forth. Tony Banks named the track "Firth Of Fifth" as a play on this. "We're talking about the early '70s here, so it was a little bit pretentious," he said in a Songfacts interview. "It sounds more profound, in a way, than it is because it was supposed to be just a slight joke, really, as a title."

Running 9:36, most of this song is taken up by instrumental passages, but there are some lyrics, which seem to be set in medieval times and describe a journey of some kind. Peter Gabriel sang lead, but Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford this particular lyric. "It was just following the idea of a river and then I got a bit caught up in the cosmos and I don't quite know where I ended up, actually," Band told us. "But, it just about stands up, I think, for the song. For me, musically, it's got two or three really strong moments in it and fortunately they really carried us along. It's become one of the Genesis classics and I'm very happy for that."

A live favorite, the band played this song in concert throughout their career, with Phil Collins handling vocals after Peter Gabriel left in 1975.