10 Greatest Keyboardists Of All Time
6. Tony Banks
At the turn of the 60's, rock was broadening its landscape and songs no longer had to be confined to the simple 3-minute pop song. Out of this scene, Genesis came with an amalgam of different influences which manifested into prog rock.
As the band worked relentlessly throughout the 70's, their songs began to get much grander, with some spanning anywhere between 8 to 23 minutes. At the center of it all, Tony Banks was an integral part of the band's sound as he provided a sonic road map through each track. Given the sprawling epics the band would compose, Bank's work on piano, organ, and synth would lead the listener through these songs with incredible ease.
Instead of the songs turning into pretentious drones, the way Tony's piano stylings would nimbly shift between time signatures was an impressive feat of musical genius. Even when the band went from their prog roots to more commercial material, Bank's parts on songs like "That's All" and "Invisible Touch" are some of the greatest pop hooks of the 80's. As he has gone into classical composition in his later years, there seems to be no limit to what Tony Banks is capable of behind a piano.