After his attempt to save his marriage (which ended in divorce), Collins returned to the UK in August 1979, and found himself in a holding pattern while Banks and Rutherford were working on solo recordings. With time to spare and new equipment in his home, Collins immersed himself in the recording of home demos that would become his first solo album Face Value (released in 1981) and provide two songs for the upcoming Genesis project. In addition, he rejoined Brand X for their 1979 tour[citation needed], and appeared on their album Product. When the three bandmates came back together to begin recording their next album, Duke, the product was much more the result of all three working together equally. Duke was the real transition from their 1970s progressive rock sound to the 1980s pop era.[16] The use of a drum machine became a consistent element on subsequent Genesis albums, as well as on Collins's solo releases. The first Genesis song to feature a drum machine was the Duke track "Duchess". The more commercial Duke was well received by the mainstream media, and was the band's first UK number one album, while the tracks "Misunderstanding" and "Turn It On Again" became live performance favourites.
Duke was followed by Abacab, which features a collaboration with the Earth, Wind & Fire horn section on the track "No Reply at All". Much of the album's rehearsals took place at The Farm, the band's newly-built studio in Surrey, and the site where all of their subsequent albums were recorded. The album used a forceful drum sound which used an effect called gated reverb, which uses a live—or artificially reverberated—sound relayed through a noise gate set, which rapidly cuts off when a particular volume threshold is reached. This results in a powerful "live" sounding, yet controlled, drum ambience. The distinctive sound was first developed by Peter Gabriel, Collins, and their co-producer/engineer Hugh Padgham, when Collins was recording the backing track for "Intruder", the first song on Gabriel's 1980 solo album. The technique, in addition to Padgham's production, had been apparent on Face Value (1981), Collins' debut solo album. The "gated" drum sound would become an audio trademark of future Genesis and Collins albums.[27]
The Abacab tour was also a significant moment in live entertainment history; in that it marked the first public appearances of the Vari-lite automated moving light system, the development of which had been paid for by the band and their management.
In 1982, the band released the live double album Three Sides Live. The U.S. version contains three sides of live material—hence the album's title—in addition to a side of studio material. The studio material includes the song "Paperlate", which again features an Earth, Wind and Fire horn section. In the UK and the rest of Europe, the studio material was replaced by a fourth side of live recordings from previous tours. 1982 closed with a one-off performance alongside Gabriel and Hackett at the Milton Keynes Bowl, under the name Six of the Best. The concert was hastily put together to help raise money for Gabriel's WOMAD project, which at the time was suffering from considerable financial hardship.[28] Hackett, who arrived late from South Africa, performed the final two songs of the show ("I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" and "The Knife") with his former bandmates.
1983's eponymous Genesis album became their third consecutive number one album in the UK. The album includes the radio-friendly tracks "Mama" and "That's All", and re-introduced the band's flair for lengthy pieces in "Home by the Sea". The track "Just a Job to Do" was later used as the theme song for 1985's ABC detective drama The Insiders. The album became a worldwide success, although somewhat unusually for a Genesis album, it provides no "extra" material. The sessions from the previous five studio albums dating back to 1976's A Trick of the Tail had all generated other songs that would be released as B-sides to singles or on EPs. Any other song ideas were held back for solo projects, in which all three members were, by this time, heavily involved.
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