song for his solo output. "Please Don't Ask" is a song Collins wrote during his divorce from his first wife. Biographer Ray Coleman said the song is "a searing mixture of a love letter and a lament for the loss of his children". Collins recalled Banks and Rutherford chose to include the song as it had a Beach Boys feel. The group found the writing process easier and more enjoyable than ...And Then There Were Three..., which was primarily songs written in advance individually by the members. Rutherford summarised his time writing songs for Duke as "getting back to the basic stage of ideas being worked on jointly". Banks reasoned much of the band's refreshed attitude was down to not having worked together in a while, which resulted in good ideas being put forward, something that he said had not happened for some time. Collins felt the band interacted "as a group much better ... there's definitely a side to us coming out which wasn't on the last album; the playing side". Rutherford would later describe the writing process for the album, alongside the one for Abacab, as a "rethink" of Genesis' approach, refocusing their output to group writing and improvisation. In contrast to earlier Genesis albums, most tracks were short with the exception of the ten-minute "Duke's Travels"/"Duke's End" suite that closed the album. The group went to Polar Studios to record the album, starting on 12 November 1979, and recording up to the end of the year. As with several earlier albums, production duties were shared by the band and regular co-producer David Hentschel. Collins used the Roland CR-78 drum machine for "Duchess"; the first time he used one on a Genesis song. The cover art was drawn by French illustrator and taken from his book L'Alphabet d'Albert, published in 1979. The band liked his work and decided to use it as the cover, but Collins maintained the character depicted is neither the album's titular character nor related to any song on it. The "Duke Suite" "Behind the Lines" was the first song arranged for the album and "Duchess" came about from rhythms that Collins had played on his set of drum pads. In its original form, "Behind the Lines", "Duchess", "Guide Vocal", "Turn It On Again", "Duke's Travels", and "Duke's End" were one 30-minute track that told a story of a fictional character named Albert which had