Many Genesis fans cite 1972’s “Supper’s Ready” is the ultimate example of the band’s ambition, a sprawling 23-minute epic divided into seven sections. It namechecks figures from the bible, ancient history, greek mythology and British political life, and was once described by Peter Gabriel as “the ultimate cosmic battle for Armageddon between good and evil in which man is destroyed, but the deaths of countless thousands atone for mankind, reborn no longer as Homo Sapiens.” It’s complicated. “Supper’s Ready” is a song by the band Genesis. The original recorded version appeared on their 1972 album “Foxtrot”, and the band performed the song regularly on stage for several years. Peter Gabriel summed up “Supper’s Ready” as “a personal journey which ends up walking through scenes from Revelation in the Bible….I’ll leave it at that”. He was also quoted in the book “I know What I like”as saying that the song was influenced by an experience his wife had of sleeping in a purple room, and the nightmares it gave her. The song as been reported as the band’s “undisputed masterpiece”
So why would anyone choose to spend months making an illustrated video to accompany the song? NathanielBarlam knows the answer. An artist and architect based in New York City, he works for a company that specialises in designing complex façade systems for skyscrapers and other large projects, but in his spare time he play drums… and works on illustrating songs. Nathan’s video for Supper’s Ready may just be the ultimate expression of his ambition.
Genesis before touring their new album, found themselves looking once more for a drummer – and also a new guitarist. After seeing their advert in Melody Maker, Phil Collins travelled to Peter Gabriel’s parents’ house to audition for the role of drummer, snagging the gig by virtue of his playing and singing skills, and having a personality that fitted the band.
A brief stint as a four-piece followed, before the group found an advert that prospective guitarist in Steve Hackett who had himself placed in Melody Maker, seeking a band that was “determined to drive beyond existing stagnant music forms”. Duly hired, Hackett joined the new-look Genesis on the road in early 1971, before the group settled in to record their third LP, Nursery Cryme, in August. Genesis transitional Nursery Cryme served more as a signpost for future breakthroughs than a stand-alone accomplishment. The album actually became the bands first U.K. Top 40 album, but that was only after it became clear how important the then-recent additions to the band.
They brought a wealth of new musical ideas and energy to the group, which had released two largely ignored albums before Nursery Cryme arrived on November. 12th, 1971.
“Something definitely changed when Phil joined the band,” singer Peter Gabriel has said. “He was a real drummer – something I had never been too convinced of with [previous members] Chris Stewart and John Mayhew.”
For his part, Hackett eventually found a creative spark as a guitar-playing collaborator especially with keyboardist Tony Banks. “I will say, being in the band with Steve, who is also very masterful with the guitar and could get lots of different sounds with it, the combination of the two of us produced some combinations that were kind of unusual,
The Musical Box, by Genesis is a wonderful track that opens the album “Nursery Cryme“, released this month in 1971 on Charisma Records. The first album with the classic line-up that lasted until after the tour for “The Lamb Lies Down OnBroadway” in 1975. Here are few nuggets about this song and album:
Peter Gabriel described the lyrics of the song: We have a number called ‘Musical Box’, that is composed in this way. It’s quite a complicated story about a spirit that returns to bodily form and meets a Victorian girl. He has the appearance of an old man and the relations with the young lady are somewhat perverted, so he gets bumped off into the never-never.” Steve Hackett said about his tapping technique: “I came upon the tapping technique when I was trying to play Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue. I realized that I couldn’t play it the way I wanted to hear it using standard technique, so I started tapping onto the fretboard with my right hand. I used that technique all over Nursery Cryme including parts of ‘The Musical Box’ and ‘The Return of the Giant Hogweed.’”
Artist Paul Whitehead about the album cover: We wanted an Alice in Wonderland look, but with menace. The idea was this girl who is haunted by a Musical Box but we took it a bit farther and we had her playing croquet with her brother’s head.” It was the first time the band’s name logo appeared on an album cover. The band wanted an older look for the painting. Whitehead: “I did the varnish and I put it out to dry. Insects decided to commit suicide on the wet varnish. If you look at the cover you can see real insects.” Spot the flies on the bottom and top left of the gatefold.
Album credits: Tony Banks – Hammond organ, Mellotron, piano, electric piano, 12-string guitar, backing vocals Mike Rutherford – bass, bass pedals, 12-string guitar, backing vocals Peter Gabriel – lead voice, flute, oboe, bass drum, tambourine Steve Hackett – electric guitar, 12-string guitar Phil Collins – drums, voices, percussion, lead vocals
But if you are of a slightly earlier vintage, you will remember these fine musicians for an entirely different reasons. The high-seriousness of Genesis, as fronted in its heyday by Gabriel, with Collins pounding the drums. Though the band persisted well into the 80s and 90s after Gabriel’s 1975 departure, and as Collins took the lead, die-hard Genesis fans swear by its classic configuration, with its surreal concept albums and stage shows rivaling Wall-era Pink Floyd or Bowie’s Stardust phase. If you’re none too keen on later Genesis, but recall the aforementioned flamboyant productions of English prog-rock tea, then here is a treat for you.
Just above is a fully restored concert film of a 1973 performance at England’s Shepperton Studios, “perhaps,” the single best representation of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis on film.” Though the concert precedes the band’s Gabriel-era swan song—double concept album,The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway—it does showcase the strongest material from their two previous records, Foxtrot and the truly excellent Selling England by the Pound. Prominently on display are the eccentricities that sharply divided critics and enamored fans: the odd time-signatures and abrupt tempo changes, virtuosic musicianship, literate, esoteric lyrics, and Gabriel’s theatrical makeup and costuming. The effect of it all is sometimes a bit like Rush in a production of Godspell, and while This is Spinal Taptook a lot of the air out of this sort of thing three decades ago, the film remains an impressive document even if the performances are hard to take entirely seriously at times.
tracklist:
“Watcher of the Skies” (8:04)
“Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” (9:02)
“I Know What I Like” (5:46)
“The Musical Box” (11:39)
“Supper’s Ready” (23:59)
The story of this film’s restoration is intriguing in its own right. The Shepperton footage was rescued by a small group who pooled resources to buy it in a New York estate sale. Since then, Youtube uploader King Lerch and his confreres have upgraded the original restoration to the HD version you see above. Read more about the impressive project here, and see a much more stripped-down Gabriel-era Genesis below in a not-so-HD television concert from 1972. And for a full history of the mercurial Genesis, be sure to check out this comprehensive 1991 documentary.
Shepperton Studios, UK: 30/31 October 1973
Watcher of the Skies (0:00)
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight (8:36)
I Know What I Like (17:40)
The Musical Box (24:00)
Supper’s Ready (37:10)
It was 40 years ago that Genesis performed in this studio and 10 years ago that I did our first transfer of this 16mm film in PAL format (720×576). The results of this effort along with the generosity at meeksgenesis, SAB for the audio work, RH for the artwork, and a host of others well documented, created a masterpiece that has been used countless times after on TV, bootlegs, “review” DVDs, and even the official Genesis boxed sets. Who would have thought that our work would go so far? Well, I am here to try to push the envelope a little further…I give you Shepperton HD.
The definition we are presented with here is amazing HD (1440×1080), and a beautifully low contrast image. If you thought it was impossible to see more detail than the DVD we created 10 years back, your eyes will feast on this. Cymbal grooves, wood grain, each string on a 12-string guitar…it’s all here. Of course in addition to even more film grain, we can see new imperfections like hairs and dust. But I noticed that most of these imperfections switch as the camera view switches, and then switch back when the angle switches back. This means is that these are as a result of the original film recording/creation/editing, and are permanently on the print I have and cannot be removed. I did “clean” some of these digitally, but this is an inexact process and I estimate I was able to remove only about 30% of these imperfections.
Because of the amazing video transfer, I felt that the audio was a not a good match in quality. This 16mm film uses “optical” audio, printed down the side of the film like waveforms. This is common for 16mm and fine for dialogue, but not good for music. And unfortunately, there is no great machine to get a better audio transfer, and no great audio source has been discovered even after all these years. So I decided to resync it. Of course there are stories before some songs that could not be redubbed, so they are there in their original form. But I estimate that I was able to achieve about a 90% match for the entire film. I used various soundboards and radio shows, switched and layered and cheated and fine tuned to get it as close as possible. Thanks to Willem for help reviewing my work and suggesting alternate audio sources, and to Dave Raphael for some amazing original artwork as well as suggestions on the film itself.
Here’s a rare treat for fans of early 70s progressive rock: Peter Gabriel and Genesis together at the beginning of the band’s classic period, performing live on the Belgian TV show Pop Shop in March of 1972. The half-hour film captures the group a little more than a year after Phil Collins and Steve Hackett joined, and before Gabriel started dressing up in outlandish costumes. The lineup includes Gabriel on flute, tambourine and lead vocals, Collins on drums and backing vocals, Hackett on lead guitar, Tony Banks on keyboards and rhythm guitar, and Michael Rutherford on bass and rhythm guitar.
Here’s the setlist:
“The Fountain of Salmacis”
“Twilight Alehouse”
“The Musical Box”
“The Return of the Giant Hogweed”
The songs are all from the 1971 album Nursery Cryme except “Twilight Alehouse,” which the group had been performing live since 1970 but wouldn’t release on an album until 1998, when the song was included in the boxed set Genesis Archive 1967-75. PeterGabriel co-founded Genesis in 1967 and left the band in 1975. Phil Collins then took over on lead vocals.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is a double concept album recorded and released in 1974 by the British progressive rock band Genesis. It was their sixth studio album, and the last to feature original singer and frontman Peter Gabriel.It was only a matter of time before Genesis attempted a full-fledged concept album, and 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was a massive rock opera: the winding, wielding story of a Puerto Rican hustler name Rael making his way in New York City. Peter Gabriel made some tentative moves toward developing this story into a movie with William Friedkin but it never took off, perhaps it’s just as well; even with the lengthy libretto included with the album, the story never makes sense. But just because the story is rather impenetrable doesn’t mean that the album is as well, because it is a forceful, imaginative piece of work that showcases the original Genesis lineup at a peak. Even if the story is rather hard to piece together, the album is set up in a remarkable fashion, with the first LP being devoted to pop-oriented rock songs and the second being largely devoted to instrumentals. This means that The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway contains both Genesis’ most immediate music to date. Depending on a listener’s taste, they may gravitate toward the first LP with its tight collection of ten rock songs, or the nightmarish landscapes of the second, where Rael descends into darkness and ultimately redemption (or so it would seem), but there’s little question that the first album is far more direct than the second and it contains a number of masterpieces, from the opening fanfare of the title song to the surging “In the Cage,” from the frightening “Back in NYC” to the soothing conclusion “The Carpet Crawlers.” In retrospect, this first LP plays a bit more like the first Gabriel solo album than the final Genesis album, but there’s also little question that the band helps form and shape this music (with Brian Eno adding extra coloring on occasion), while Genesis shines as a group shines on the impressionistic second half. In every way, it’s a considerable, lasting achievement and it’s little wonder that Peter Gabriel had to leave the band after this record: they had gone as far as they could go together, and could never top this extraordinary Album.
Genesis
Tony Banks – Hammond T-102 organ, RMI 368x Electra piano, Mellotron M400, Elka Rhapsody synthesizer, ARP 2600 & ARP Pro Soloist synthesizers, acoustic piano
Phil Collins – drums, percussion, vibraphone, backing vocals
Peter Gabriel – lead vocals, flute, oboe, tambourine, experiments with foreign sounds
Steve Hackett – electric guitar, classical acoustic guitar
Mike Rutherford – bass guitar, 12-string guitar, bass pedals, fuzz bass
How important are Genesis, which incarnation their early work under the idiosyncratic vocals of Peter Gabriel intellectural artsy music and the holy grail of Progressive rock with sprawling masterpieces of the 1974 double album “The lamb Lies Down On Broadway” In 1975 Genesis continued with Phil Collins taking the lead vocals and moving from epics like the “Eleventh Earl Of Marl” to poppy songs from “Invisible Touch” but Genesis have made great music in every era from the insanity of “Suppers Ready” to the “Hold On My Heart” the band members recently reconvened for the BBC2 documentary Gabriel, Collins, Hackett, Banks and Rutherford plus there is a 3cd box set that spans the career of the famous five
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE……..taken from the second album “Trespass” full of 12 string guitars and big church organ type sounds the album is bookended by two huge tracks this one building from a soulfull whisper to a thundering Climax and “The Knife” .
AM I VERY WRONG…………from the debut album “From Genesis To Revelation” they were all teenagers when this debut was recorded and with pop producer Jonathan King at the helm this gentle melodic ballad with lush piano from Tony Banks and Anthony Phillips 12 string guitars.
ON THE SHORELINE…………from the “We Can’t Dance” album of 1991 Phil Collins pushes his voice to the tops of his vocal range and with Tony Banks synths drifting through the song like the sea and the mist.
THE LADY LIES ……………with the band becoming a three piece this track was a prog rock tale of a an eager warrior and his demon disguised damsel
TWIGHTLIGHT ALEHOUSE………..recorded during the Foxtrot sessions and a staple of early setlists becoming a b-side for the major hit “I Know What I like In Your Wardrobe”
FEEDING THE FIRE …………..As the B-side of the huge hit “Land Of Confusion” an alluring dark tale with a great chorus with Phil Collins belting out the song “Mama” style
GOING OUT TO GET YOU………..Written during the “Trespass” period and became a highlight of the bands early setlists but was left off that album for the more dynamic “The Knife” this version is taken from the 1968 Archive Box Set 1967-1975.
The FOUNTAIN OF SALMACIUS…….Steve Hackett and Phil Collins made their debut recording on the album “Nursery Cryme” this overlooked closing track this triumphant epic is with its jazzy interludes tony banks mellotron and keyboards are outstanding.
The Fat Angel Sings 