Raymond Wilson (born 8 September 1968, Dumfries, Scotland) is a Scottish musician, best known as vocalist in the post-grunge band Stiltskin, and in Genesis between 1996 and 1998. He has released eight solo albums (including five live albums), as well as five band releases.
Wilson started off in a band called Guaranteed Pure in the 1990, which featured himself along with Paul Holmes (keyboards), Steve Wilson (guitars), John Haimes (bass) and Chris Cavanagh (drums). They released an album called Swing Your Bag, the title track of which was included on a compilation album on the label of Fish entitled The Funny Farm Project : Outpatients '93. He then joined Stiltskin; they released one album and had a number one hit in the UK with the single "Inside".
Wilson is probably best known as the lead singer of Genesis from 1996 to 1998, after Phil Collins officially departed in March 1996. Founding Genesis members Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford were handed a CD of the Stiltskin album The Mind's Eye from Virgin Records executives. They were very impressed with Wilson's vocal abilities and had their manager, Tony Smith, call him for an audition. Wilson was officially announced as the new lead singer of Genesis in early June 1997. Their only album with Wilson, ...Calling All Stations..., was released that September and became a top 10 hit worldwide, except for the US where it reached No. 54 on the Billboard 200 album charts. The album was re-issued in 2007. Genesis toured Europe in the winter and spring of 1998, but the American leg was cancelled due to low ticket sales. After the commercial failure of the album, the band announced they would go on an extended hiatus. In May 2001, during an exclusive interview with Dave Negrin for website WorldofGenesis.com, Wilson said, "They basically phoned me up and said, "Ray, we're not continuing." I've never really felt that I was out of the band as such; it's just that the band doesn't exist any more (laughs).
Wilson went on to release the album Millionairhead with a solo project called Cut_. It was re-released in 2007 (remastered) including three additional songs.
In 2003 he released a solo album under his own name titled Change. The next year he released another studio album entitled The Next Best Thing, which included yet another cover of "Inside". In 2006 he released another Stiltskin album called She, and in 2007 a Stiltskin live CD featuring (amongst others) 8 of the 12 songs from She. This live CD was recorded 25 October 2006, at Harmonie, Bonn, Germany.
In 2013 Ray Wilson joined Steve Hackett for his "Genesis Revisited II" Tour as a guest singer. He was featured in a special edition of the "Genesis Revisited 2" album on the track "The Carpet Crawlers". It was the first time since 1998 that Ray had worked with a Genesis member.
source: wikipedia
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