“I won't be coming home tonight, my generation will put it right”

April 30, 2022 11:11 AM

Land of Confusion was a 1986 hit by Genesis (No. 4 in the U.S. and No. 14 in the UK). The video featured many political and celebrity puppets from the UK TV show Spitting Image, most notably Ronald (the video being based on a dream he is having) and Nancy Reagan, an allusion to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and much more detail. The video won a Grammy, and was nominated at the MTV music video awards but ironically lost to Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer. Previous FPP with commentary.
posted by Wordshore (34 comments total)

(Alternate link to the video)
posted by Wordshore at 11:37 AM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

"We're not just making promises that we know we'll never keep."

.
posted by box at 12:20 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Cor that's a blast of nostalgia there. I must have listened to that song a million times when I was maybe ten or eleven, along with the rest of Invisible Touch, I didn't have many tapes. A friend's dad had the video on VHS and we got to watch it occasionally and marvel at all the weird faces and I suppose wonder vaguely who most of the funny puppets were. Still can't figure out a lot of them.

I'm really sorry we still haven't been able to move on from worrying about nuclear apocalypse, ten year old me.
posted by tomsk at 12:27 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I loved this video as a kid, then as a slightly older kid realized I loved the music too... I know it's blasphemy, but I still love the trio iteration of Genesis the best.

For many years I've wished I could buy a "Nurse/Nuke" button to have on my desk at work.

The post title line has always stuck with me too. If I ever meet Mike Rutherford I'm going to ask him "WTF happened? You said you guys were going to fix things!".
posted by equalpants at 12:32 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

So, I first discovered Genesis with their Wind & Wuthering album, which is admittedly a strange album to enter with for this band and their career arc. I quickly went backward from there (which is quite an adventure deep into prog, and then there's the Peter Gabriel thing which had its own adventures going on...) And then I sort of sailed along with them as their career progressed.

And there's a post that I cannot really put together because it's entirely too GYOB.... but there was this really bizarre time in the 80s when, despite everything else going on, suddenly ALL of these experimental and prog rock bands from the 60s and 70s had these chart-topping popular music hits. Genesis, most certainly, but also Yes, and Rush, and Peter Gabriel, and Emerson Lake & Powell had hits with Emerson Lake & Palmer. And we can't go without mentioning the most nightmarish of all, the evolution of White Rabbit into We Built This City, with Starship's contribution from that era.

I have no idea what was going on. I thought it was fascinating to see all these bands I'd know about forever getting popular success and then watching people actually turning on to their older material after finding their newest stuff. Like, there's probably a good 6 or 7 years in there when a vast catalog of progressive rock was being willingly sought out and digested by masses of people who had never thought to explore it before.

Anyway, the runaway success of the Invisible Touch album was thrilling to watch having kept up with the band for at decade at that point. I saw them on their The Last Domino tour just this past November, during a brief COVID lull. It was a completely amazing show, once again taking the light show and live experience to places I hadn't seen before.

So, thanks Genesis, for having existed for so long, and for being so good to me. And thanks, world, for recognizing them eventually.
posted by hippybear at 12:38 PM on April 30, 2022 [11 favorites]

This song is on my "Anthems" YouTube playlist, which is a collection of songs I find inspiring and/or uplifting. I love its acknowledgement of the fact that it is a confusing, chaotic, troubled world and it's hard to know what to do... but that it's the only one we have, and one has to use the life and resources one has, and to try to not repeat the mistakes of previous generations.
posted by orange swan at 12:43 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

...and then disturbed covered it a generation later, and made the same promises.
posted by Clowder of bats at 12:44 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

P.S. A slight derail, but I'd strongly urge all fans of 80s Genesis to check out Cardiacs, especially this album: A Little Man and a House and the Whole World Window. (A tiny little side comment on a MeFi post introduced me to these guys, always hoping to pass on the favor...)
posted by equalpants at 12:51 PM on April 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

Peter Gabriel on backing vocals. Same concerns.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 12:55 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Spitting Image - rarely ever as funny and never as cutting as people think it was. Except once.
After polls closed for the 1987 general election (usual tory landslide) they closed the show with this - Tomorrow Belongs to Me, with the Nazi's in the beer garden replaced by their tory puppets. Chilling and hilarious.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 1:05 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

The moment in the video where the weird puppet hands open to reveal the actual tender little baby's hands always got to me; still does.

Now this is the world we live in
And these are the hands we're given
Use them and let's start trying
To make it a place worth fighting for
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:20 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Invisible Touch album's remaster is one of those that's actually really worth it. I'd go into more detail but I don't want to sound too much like Patrick Bateman.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 1:25 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

I didn't mind PhilGenesis, and even went to see them once, but the only song of theirs that I still listen to is "Mama", which is sublimely creepy (even more so than "In the Air Tonight", despite the latter's cloud of urban legends); I think that it's the song that is the most deliberately Gabrielesque.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:32 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

ironically lost to Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer

Hardly ironic. Sledgehammarremains an awesome song and video, while this Genesis music was stale when it was new, and the accompanying video is just hideous.

Better 'Land of Confusion' tossed into history's dustbin while I turn my attention to the Temptations!
posted by Rash at 1:32 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another fun little connection with this video: the Spitting Image puppet of Ronald Reagan was, if memory serves, voiced by Chris Barrie, who some of you may know as Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf
posted by SansPoint at 1:33 PM on April 30, 2022 [8 favorites]

Balls of Confusion: See also the Undisputed Truth the Neville Brothers, and Edwin Starr, all of whom bring something a little different while remaining in the same general area, Leon Bridges' serviceable version, and (this is the point where I would duck out) versions from Love and Rockets, the Bouncing Souls, Duran Duran, and Anthrax.
posted by box at 1:53 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Continuing the X of Y thread, "Eve of Destruction" recorded by Barry McGuire, also done with schmaltz by RCA's house vocal group Living Voices.
posted by credulous at 2:41 PM on April 30, 2022

Spitting Image - rarely ever as funny and never as cutting as people think it was.

Maybe for Brits, but I thought they were pretty raw for US puppet-based political satire. They had a couple of specials in the US around the time this video came out, which really blew my 13-year old mind.

Although the line I’ve always remembered is basically a dad joke, so maybe that proves your point:

Supervillain (after a plot is foiled): Dolts! Fools! Am I surrounded by incompetence?

Lackey: Uh, there’s no one *behind* you, sire.
posted by bjrubble at 2:46 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

A little off topic but Dave Matthews doing Sledgehammer live is a great version.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 2:48 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Spitting Image broke my mind in the 80s. I loved it, but, you know, I was a dumb little kid in a nothing town at the blank center of America. So, what the hell did I know?

Eh, fuck it. Spitting Image is cool. Phil Collins too.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 3:45 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

War of Confusion is the best mashup ever.
posted by dragstroke at 4:06 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Ronald Reagan voiced by Chris Barrie, who would go on to be more well-known as Arnold Rimmer from Red Dwarf. (oops just saw someone else mentioned this upthread)
posted by jozxyqk at 4:37 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

According to one of the Youtube comments, Phil Collins still has his puppet. I should think so. If it were me and I had a Spitting Image puppet of myself, I'd put it in a safe and half expect to live forever.

I was another American kid who was creeped out by these puppets back in the day, but then I was pretty easy to spook. I remember taking fright at the puppets inside a stomach on The Young Ones.
posted by Countess Elena at 4:44 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Land of Confusion and Sledgehammer were both awesomely mind melting pieces of work. So original both of them. I was fascinated by them at age 13 when they came out and they still hold up.
posted by Liquidwolf at 5:25 PM on April 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

Ronald Reagan voiced by Chris Barrie

...who is also the voice of Reagan on the various 12" mixes of Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Two Tribes.

Tomorrow Belongs to Me, with the Nazi's in the beer garden replaced by their tory puppets.

Spitting Image always was very hit and miss I think; but when it hit it hit hard. The ones I remember are Thatcher's "what about the vegetables?" "oh, they'll have the same as me"; and the weekly savaging of David Steel as being literally in David Owen's pocket, of which both I think have said that they felt it weakened Steel's public perception.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 5:32 PM on April 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

Just curious about the end parade of puppets. Here's what wikipedia has to say:

As the video nears its climax, there are periodic scenes of a large group of spoofed celebrity puppets, including Tina Turner, Sting, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Bill Cosby, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana and Hulk Hogan singing along to the chorus of the song, with Pope John Paul II playing an electric guitar.

Coincidentally, I was the same age when this came out as my daughter is now. In that list of characters, my daughter is familiar with Michael Jackson (the best stuff, not the worst stuff), Queen Elizabeth II and, I just asked, and she is a little confused about the difference between Madonna and Rihanna. Was Madonna's belly button particularly scandalous at that time? I think she got even more interesting later.
posted by amanda at 7:20 PM on April 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Madonna's clothing and exposure of various body parts was indeed scandalous even at the time. There was this whole weird thing between Madonna, Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and maybe one other as to who was acceptable for what kinds of "crowds" as we might has described ourselves in high school. It's hard to see Madonna from later incarnations and believe she was once grouped with these others, but she was.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on April 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I know that end parade of puppets singing in a group is meant to parody the We Are The World thing.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on April 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I was 15 when this song came out and when Madonna was the hottest thing around. The main thing I remember people saying about Madonna was "She's wearing her underwear on the outside LOL" and stuff about her belly button. Good gravy, she was hot.
posted by SoberHighland at 4:38 AM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Continuing the X of Y thread

I am loving this X of Y side quest, so, in no particular order:

Book of Love
Band of Gold
Heart of Gold
Queen of Hearts
Two of Hearts
Ace of Spades
posted by box at 5:18 AM on May 1, 2022

List of famous people and characters seen in the Land of Confusion video, according to the Spitting Image fandom wiki:

The band: Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford.

The White House: Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Bonzo.

Field of heads: Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Leonid Brezhnev, Barbra Streisand.

Podium of speeches: Benito Mussolini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muammar al-Gaddafi.

TV screen: Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, Walter Cronkite, Richard Nixon, Leonard Nimoy (as Spock), Bob Hope.

TV Station: Prince, Tina Turner, Madonna, Grace Jones, Pete Townshend, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger.

Singing Crowd: David Letterman, Queen Elizabeth II, Clint Eastwood, Sting, Prince Andrew, Sarah Ferguson, Yoko Ono, Hulk Hogan, Mr. T, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Cosby, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Popeye, Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton, Princess Diana, Bette Midler; Tammy Faye Bakker, Paul McCartney, Pope John Paul II, Elton John, Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, Prince Philip.

Unconfirmed: Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Robert Maxwell, David Owen, Richard Branson, Prince Charles, Idi Amin, Bob Hawke, Sylvester Stallone, François Mitterrand, Tammy Faye Bakker, Thomas Gottschalk, Leopoldo Galtieri, Helmut Kohl, Erich Honecker, Urho Kekkonen, Alan Greenspan.

Unconfirmed in crowd(?): Freddie Mercury, Joan Rivers, Cyndi Lauper, Stephen King, Bob Geldof, Faye Dunaway, Cliff Richard, Boy George, Jimmy Somerville, Florence Henderson.
posted by Wordshore at 5:22 AM on May 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

(Hello to MeFites, many years into the future, who did a site-search on one of those many celebrity/politian names and unexpectedly now find themselves in this thread, about a mid-1980s latex puppet music video)
posted by Wordshore at 5:48 AM on May 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

there was this really bizarre time in the 80s when, despite everything else going on, suddenly ALL of these experimental and prog rock bands from the 60s and 70s had these chart-topping popular music hits

Feel free to throw Bowie's "cashing in" period into the mix, too...
posted by gimonca at 5:02 PM on May 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

On later and more mature analysis Peter Gabriel’s solo stuff is more boring than I thought and Genesis is better than I remembered.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:04 PM on May 2, 2022 [1 favorite]