FROM GENESIS TO REVELATION
-
50 Years On
A New Appreciation by Andy Thomas
Prologue: The world in 1969
Richard Nixon
becomes president
- Concorde makes its first test flight
-
John Lennon
and Yoko Ono marry - Students riot at Harvard University
- The Stonewall
riots in New York mark the start of the gay rights movement
- The
Rolling Stones' Brian Jones drowns
- The crew of Apollo 11 lands on the
Moon
- Charles Manson and his followers carry out their murder spree
-
British troops are deployed in Northern Ireland
- The
Woodstock Festival is held in New York State
-
Monty Python's Flying Circus is first broadcast
- Details of the 1968
My Lai massacre by US troops in Vietnam are made public
- Colour
television begins in Britain - Violence erupts at the Altamont Free
Concert in California
Significant
album releases in 1969:
Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin & Led Zeppelin II
- MC5:
Kick Out The Jams
- The Velvet Underground: The Velvet
Underground
- Sly & The Family Stone: Stand!
- The Who: Tommy
- Crosby, Stills & Nash: Crosby, Stills & Nash
- Procol Harum: A Salty Dog
- Yes: Yes
- The Beatles: Abbey Road - King Crimson: In The Court
Of The Crimson King
- The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed - Deep
Purple: Concerto for Group and Orchestra
...and then there is From Genesis to Revelation,
by an unknown band, without
- according to the sleeve
- even a name as
such. And yet this album, released on 7th March 1969, would herald the
beginning of a unique and extraordinary career.
The Genesis of
Genesis
In the mid-1960s the British public school of Charterhouse in Godalming,
Surrey, found that even it was not immune to the huge cultural shift
occurring around it. Boys started
playing pop music in their spare time,
pushing against institutional repression. Two Charterhouse 'groups'
began to come to the fore: Anon (featuring guitarist Anthony Phillips
and guitarist/bassist Michael Rutherford) and Garden Wall (featuring
singer Peter Gabriel and pianist Anthony Banks). The two units gradually
pulled together as a songwriting collective with drummer Chris Stewart
and brought themselves to the attention of ex-Charterhouse pupil
Jonathan King, now a pop star and producer, when he came back to visit
the school.
Demos were exchanged, with initial enthusiasm (particularly for Peter
Gabriel's voice) but then ambivalence from King after less impressive
follow-ups. However, the artful contrivance of a song with Bee Gees
tendencies, 'The Silent Sun', designed to catch the ear of Bee Gees fan
King, did the trick. After two (failed) singles were released, in 1968
the young men were gathered to record an album, losing Stewart and
hiring John Silver as their new drummer. King suggested a conceptual
theme, loosely telling the story of the Bible, and christened the band
Genesis. The discovery that a US group already existed with that name
meant that the resulting album was issued without a band name and only a
title:
From Genesis
to Revelation. Released in 1969, the record sold a few hundred
copies and then sank without trace- before being resurrected in
countless reissues once the band hit big. Genesis decided to keep
their name and began to contemplate a career without King.
But what of the album itself? How, 50 years later, should we approach
this fragile, and yet crucial step, for a group that would both change,
and help write, the language of rock? Is it now possible to find a whole
new appreciation for From Genesis to Revelation in its own right?
 |
The first album
From Genesis
to Revelation
is, by default, the very first Genesis album. Not, as is often said,
Trespass (which would follow in 1970). And yet it is frequently
implied, even by band members, that this crucial debut is some kind of
proto-Genesis project, uncanonical and unworthy of discussion. This is a
shame and has seen the opening to Genesis's studio career unjustly
suffering something of the same treatment regularly served to its
closing (studio) curtain call Calling All Stations, often equally
dismissed as an ignorable side-project. In truth both are fundamental
bookends that leave gaping holes in the band's evolutionary chart if
left out of the picture. From Genesis to Revelation, especially,
is unwisely overlooked to the detriment of the Genesis legacy.
The album's low standing
hasn't been helped by the multiple re-releases licensed by Jonathan
King's company over the decades, which have seen a variety of mutilated
versions in a series of mutant covers, only a few of which slightly
resemble the original's Spinal Tap-anticipating 'artwork': i.e. plain
black with a simple title in an ecclesiastical font. Extra tracks are
generally spliced into the running of the re-releases at the beginning
or end, or the album is split over more than one disc, with the clever
linking instrumental passages often horribly clipped, masking the
intended symmetry of the experience.
Like many, drawn into the
world of Genesis by my love for the band's mid to late 70s period, I
came to this album through its first 1976 re-release in Decca's Rock
Roots series of cheap compilations, which threw together early
efforts from bands who later made it big. Featuring that now ubiquitous
photo of a very young Genesis, with Phillips cutting a studious pose,
Rutherford appearing stoned and the others looking moody, its
juxtaposition with the standard Rock Roots artwork of an old 60s
Dansette-style boxed record player somehow made it seem all the more
ancient by the time I discovered the band. Though at that point the
music on it was less than ten years old, it somehow already seemed like
a relic from the deep past; something to be investigated with curiosity
but not necessarily played for pleasure. An astonishing forty and more
years later, this impression has continued to colour numerous listeners'
view of From Genesis to Revelation. It is a great pity as, if not
quite a lost masterpiece, the album has many delights to offer and
points the way to much that would follow. |
A big step
What, then, of the
listening experience itself? Don't indulge the deniers: the fact is that
From Genesis to Revelation is the most significant step the group
ever took, allowing a bunch of students a first taste of the big bad
music business and introducing them to the potentials of using sound to
create dreams in a studio. Both adventures, flawed as baby steps usually
are, would provide valuable lessons which would serve Genesis well in
future. Moreover, musically, the album sows important seeds that would
blossom soon enough. To act as if this record doesn't exist is both to
foolishly warp history and lose the opportunity to enjoy some
infectiously tuneful gems that are never less than charming.
Indeed, what is striking
about the album, and the clutch of demos and cast-offs available from
this period, is how remarkably fully-formed Genesis are as they first
come into the world. Although primitive and naïve in places, as one
would expect, there's nonetheless an impressive confidence in the vision
being created that seems almost hubristic. This is not a gaggle of
fledglings who don't know what they want. The years spent bashing out
old R&B hits in cold Charterhouse anterooms have clearly gifted valuable
lessons in song construction and playing skills that, though still
antediluvian, are strong enough to have given them ideas above their
station. This kind of self-belief can knock down any barrier, and
Genesis would become experts at pressing on regardless in the face of
sometimes savage critical opposition. They may have initially seen
themselves (as claimed) as primarily fronting some sort of songwriters'
collective to provide material for others, but in reality being their
own masters was going to be the only way ahead to assuage this kind of
conviction. Photos of the studio sessions show very young men,
incredulous over their luck at getting this professional opportunity-
but they also look determined and serious about what they're doing. [1]
Of the talents breaking
through, it is without question Gabriel's vocals that demonstrate the
most initial promise. The youthful tones are rich and melodic in an
attractive style that is never quite recaptured when maturity soon
afterwards gifts the singer his huskier and more familiar melodramatic
style, beloved though it is. There's a hint of things to come as Gabriel
barks out the chorus of 'In the
Wilderness' and other livelier moments, but for now the
overwhelming impression is one of honeyed tones and late-teenage
self-confidence that goes a long way to distracting from the rather
crude production hampering the instrumentation. Aside from Jonathan
King's unfortunate predilection towards youthful males (as later
prosecutions would expose), it is still easy to understand why it was
Gabriel that he was most drawn to on hearing the demos.
In terms of playing, Tony
Banks stands out as the main glue holding the songs together. His piano
skills are rarely less than competent, bar the odd bum note (in the
first bars of the opening link to 'Window', for instance), inevitable on
an album essentially thrown together in a few days during the summer
holidays of 1968. [2] Anthony Phillips,
though clearly still developing, demonstrates a visceral style on his
occasional moments in the sun, which are entertaining and encouraging
when not being traduced by the strings and brass which infamously claim
many of the lead breaks. This is a chrysalis stage for the most part:
reduced to a rhythmic strum for much of the album, Phillips's true
transcendent ability would eventually emerge for its brief and glorious
Genesis flutter on the next record, Trespass. But there are
glimpses, and they are promising ones. Mike Rutherford's own true
skills, likewise, would be revealed later, but the bass, when audible in
the production mirk, pretty much does what it needs to here. Chris
Stewart's drumming on the singles, and John Silver's on the album-
neither much valued by either the band or King it would seem- generally
fulfill a metronome service over performance, as they tap away to a
basic effect. According to King: "neither Chris Stewart or John Silver
were very good drummers and they knew it; the result was that the drums
are very low in the mix." [3]
Shaker and tambourine do seem to hold the rhythm down as often as a full
kit. A few (usually distorted) fills stand out, but Genesis would have
to wait a couple of records for percussion to take its proper place in
the soundscape.
The concept
As for the themes of
From Genesis to Revelation, the Genesis studio years begin with the
very thing that many detractors wrongly believe the band spent most of
its 28-year recording career producing: a concept album. The concept
itself- "absolutely pathetic," says Banks, perhaps rather harshly
[4]- was a wheeze reportedly invented by King and
provides for an extremely loose journey through scenes and themes
concerning humankind's development- as recorded in the Bible, hence the
title. The emphasis, though, is firmly on the book of Genesis,
justifying the band name, even if it is bizarrely undeclared on the LP
cover. In honesty, beyond the earlier and more obvious references to
"new-born worlds" and serpents, one would be hard-pushed to pick up
the theme from a casual listen but being aware of the premise does give
a wider gravity to an otherwise essentially lightweight song cycle. The
end result is a collection of perfectly hummable and attractively
delicate pop confections with wisely nebulous lyrics that can be taken
as a greater whole or treated (as many of them were originally written)
as merely a miscellany from innocents taking their first tentative steps
towards conquering the world of rock. Either way, the experience is
valid and makes for nothing less than an amiable 43 minutes. Listeners
would have to wait another five years for Genesis's one and only proper
concept piece, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the premise of which, it could be
argued, is even more obscure than this for all its undoubted delights.
In superimposing the
Biblical imagery, his simplistic production aside, King had clearly
spotted what even the band members themselves hadn't at this stage; that
there was something in their demeanour and musical ambition that might
suit a wider screen than the average pop band. Although King himself
seemed unwilling to grant full voice to the admittedly unproven musical
talents of his protégés, cutting out solos and long
arrangements and preferring to gloss things with easy-listening
orchestration, kudos should nonetheless be granted for his attempt to do
something different for them by encouraging an overarching theme, even
if the band were robbed of a name at this stage. Those members not
called Gabriel having rejected the deliciously-alluring
suggestion (apparently
made by
King's then business
partner Joe Roncoroni)
of 'Gabriel's Angels' as a moniker- "which appealed to me!", says Gabriel, "Somehow this didn't seem to
register with the others" [5]- the band
accepted 'Genesis' instead- only to have to ditch that too due to
legalities, as the quote below explains. Hence just the album title
appears on the original sleeve, with no defining outer illustration, in
hindsight an act of marketing sabotage that presented the record as some
kind of cryptic project (a musical? A compilation?) rather than a band
product, condemning the players to anonymity. The quirky back-cover
notes, seeming to anticipate the mock-intellectual nonsense that Frankie
Goes to Hollywood would thrive on 15 years later, even make a boast of
this:
"The group started as Genesis, biblical centuries ago. But fate
intervened, other groups became Genesis and who were we to fight. So we
changed our name in America to Revelation. Moments later, up came
another Revelation. Now we are the group without a name, but we have a
record and we want to give it to you, name or not."
Legend states that, as a
result, the album got filed away in the little-sought 'Religious'
sections of some record stores. True or not, this arcane novelty wasn't
going to elevate anyone to immediate stardom, for all its pleasures.
Most of Genesis agree that had it actually sold, their subsequent career
may never have happened, as continuing contractual ties with King would
likely have held them back as an ephemeral pop phenomenon with
diminishing returns. The universe thus moved in a mysteriously
beneficial way. Despite the booing that would greet his typically
self-aggrandising introduction at the Milton Keynes 'reunion' gig (minus
Phillips) in 1982, and aside from the justifiable resentment at the
eventual revelations about his character, the fact is that King was
almost certainly the svengali the band needed at this stage. And he
vanished at about the right moment, allowing the next crucial stage of
evolution to take place.
A mutual letting-go
appears to have taken place in the twilight of this failed release.
After briefly appearing to split, Genesis would quietly reform and King
didn't try to stop them. By way of legacy, he had gifted the band some
vital work experience and, as importantly, given them a name, the
legalities of which appeared not to be a problem in the end. Few members
of Genesis ever seem to have liked this name much, and its implications
of high-minded grandeur would haunt them in the mainstream power-pop
years, but in the absence of anything better it stuck- and thus rock
history was written.
'Where the Sour Turns to Sweet'
Let us turn to the album itself, then. Rock history always begins with
the songs. Occasionally a band hits big first time but others need
prototypes before success. From Genesis to Revelation is
undoubtedly an exercise in prototypes,
some of which would turn out to be dead ends
-
but others were roads to
the future. The record opens with an impressively moody bit of 60s slink
to announce 'Where the Sour
Turns to Sweet'. The groovy finger clicks set against pensive
piano chords and Gabriel's cryptically direct statements ("We need
you with us; come and join us now") are effective and suggest
deviant and jazzy themes to come- but this is a deception. The track
abruptly stops. After a dramatic pause, proceedings reboot and the
album's real stall is set out with something more akin to what will
follow; major-key piano and strummed guitar, over which Gabriel's mellow
tones slide. Genesis would never really toy with jazz, and only this and
the somewhat misplaced experiment of
'The Magic of Time', one
of the demos from this period, with its Dave Brubeck-like patter, edge
into it. A tiny nod would resurface in the bluesy sampled sax lines of
the aptly-named 'Run Out of Time', the very last original studio song
Genesis released in 1998.
Fleshing out the
straightforward if melodic verses of
'Where the Sour Turns to Sweet'
are wordless choirboy oohs and aahs which seem to have sprung
straight from the echoing voices that would soar into the rafters of the
school chapel, an influence that Gabriel has acknowledged: "Hymns used
to be the only musical moment at Charterhouse...The organ in Chapel was
magnificent and the playing was great...excellent. Everyone would
stand up and scream their heads off." [6] These
layered harmonies, a little rough and ready as some of them are, smooth
over passages that might sound empty or bland without them; they are
dutifully and generously deployed here and across the album and demos of
this period. The 'choirboy' effect would persist as far ahead as 1971's
Nursery Cryme, and occasionally beyond, before rich layers of
Mellotron and synths filled the gaps instead.
On a fanciful day the
album's opening lyric, inviting the audience into the story ahead
and presumably suggestive of angelic realms calling humankind into
being, could also be seen as a wider invitation to join Genesis on a
journey that would run far longer than surely anyone could have
envisaged when these wide-eyed ingénues were throwing together their
first full-length creation. Disappointingly, the stark bravery of the
opening finger-clicks and reprise at the close of the song isn't
followed up for the rest of the LP, although the chorus restates the
chords under its layers of euphoric strings and brass.
 One of the original 4-track masters for the album. |
Orchestration
Ah yes, those
strings.
One controversy continues
to dog some people's enjoyment of this otherwise inoffensive album.
Appearing to lack full confidence in the talents of his fledglings to
rise to the heavenly heights he was envisaging, King hired one Arthur
Greenslade (with help from Lou Warburton), a well-known session
conductor and arranger whose impressive credits include Shirley Bassey's
'Goldfinger', to retrospectively enhance what the band had thought were
essentially finished mixes, bar the odd production embellishment. Not
made party to the full nature of the additions, in the same way that
Paul McCartney reportedly exploded at hearing Phil Spector's overly-lush
reworkings of the infamous Let it Be sessions, Genesis were far
from happy with the end result. Phillips, in particular, reportedly
became apoplectic on hearing the final version of From Genesis to
Revelation, with its plethora of overriding string lines and brass
fanfares: "I tore out of the room and I went and lay down for about two
hours... It was an indescribably awful feeling. I felt as if my whole
world was caving in." "The strings were a big mistake... We had an image
of a bank of warm string sound, with acoustic guitars, which would have
been lovely. Not just a single-line melody which was really dominant." [7] |
(The mono version, independently
mixed, appears to have less reverb on Gabriel's vocals, the strings and
brass do seem a little quieter and the song lengths are slightly
different, but the general effect remains.) Parts of the King oeuvre
demonstrate that it was possible to get good recordings-
Gabriel's uncannily clear voice on the single 'A
Winter's Tale' for example- but haste and a frugal budget
seem to have left the long player with the then bog standard sound
reserved for B-list acts. It's sobering to reflect that something so
dynamically crude was released in the same year as the sonic treat of
The Beatles' Abbey Road.
Love or hate it, the
orchestration is without question well played and expertly arranged and,
to this ear, adds more than it subtracts. The fuss over the strings
often eclipses the observation that the brass and horns are often very
effective, especially on Side 2. The fact that it is almost impossible
to hear the Greenslade-free mixes without the brain adding the missing
elements back in- notably on an available basic mix of 'One Day'-
suggests an appropriateness to the embellishments that King might have
been right about, and 'Where the Sour Turns to Sweet' is an example of
their best use. That Banks would spend the next few years surrogating
not dissimilar string lines with Mellotron (1971's 'Seven Stones', for
example) says much. It would, perhaps disappointingly, be another twelve
years before any kind of horn section would be allowed near Genesis
again, and further orchestral outings would be restricted to a brief
association with a live Australian string section in 1986. Apart from
these and Brian Eno's modest contribution to vocal effects on
The Lamb, musical
collaboration would never really be for Genesis, perhaps because of this
first unsettling experience.
The main criticism that
can probably be levelled at the strings is that they do in the end
become somewhat unimaginatively ubiquitous. A certain weariness sets in,
particularly in the second half, when it dawns on the listener that the
possibility of using other palette-broadening instrumentation was
clearly dismissed in favour of an easier route from the start-
suggesting that King always knew what he had in mind for the
final effect even if he didn't tell the main players.
It would, however, be
unfair to say that King allowed no adventuring. One of the joys of
From Genesis to Revelation, pointing the way to future
experimentation, is the series of short instrumental links that bridge
many of the tracks on the album. With the band already champing at the
bit to break free of convention (by all accounts), King, who had no
interest whatsoever in longer arrangements, encouraged them to stick to
standard pop structures. The presence of these intriguing connecting
passages, then, sometimes mysterious and atmospheric as they are, feels
like a concession, and the fact that they were allowed onto the record
at all is something to be grateful for. Indeed, it is these apparently
throwaway jams and short pieces that perhaps give the first real glimpse
of the Genesis that would emerge post-King. Acting as mortar between the
bricks of the main concept, the links are not as random as they may at
first appear, often resolving into related chords or appropriate pauses
that perfectly set up the following track. It is this quality of a
genuine effort having been made to present the album as more than just
beginners' pop bunged out randomly into the market that mitigates much
of the criticism thrown towards this period: it could easily all have
been so much less. Whatever commercial dreams King may have had for his
Gabriel's Angels, he didn't take the obvious course and
did allow the expression of at
least some of the band's less conventional ambitions, potentially
risking mainstream appeal in the process.
'In the Beginning'
Perhaps the bravest piece
of linking experimentation occurs with the lurking organ chord that
opens 'In the Beginning',
giving way to a tearing electronic throb which itself steps aside for an
insistent bass riff, one of Rutherford's few memorable- and audible-
moments on the album. The courage of this avant-garde intro is never
matched thereafter, but it does set the scene for one of the record's
highlights. And there are no strings.
'In the Beginning', a
colourful description of God creating his world
("Father, son, looks down with
happiness, Life is on its way"), provides the first glimpse of the
kind of excitement that will punctuate the best musical moments of
Genesis's career, with Phillips getting a rare chance to assert himself
between the choruses and Banks holding back with a quiet but effective
little piano chord that rides abstractly over the verses. An "ocean of motion" and scenes of geophysical drama ("furnace of
frenzy")- not exactly standard pop fare- are depicted with
evocative phrasing, and it won't be the last time lava gets a mention in
the life of the band. But it's in the repeated and ecstatic 16-bar
hymnal sections that things lift up and we get the first of those
spine-tingling unrelenting minor-key riffs under soaring vocals that
Genesis will perfect and thrill aficionados with for years to come. It's
hard to hear Gabriel's triumphant Cecil B de Mille-like calls of "Is
that the chariot with stallions gold?
Is that a prince of heaven on the ground? Is that the roar of a thunder
crash?" and not feel
some stirring of primal awe and Biblical fear somewhere deep in our
loins.
Gabriel's uplifting
performance already begins to show the vocal qualities that will help
lift the group to unimagined heights. This is impressive stuff and
although the song's heart-racing conviction is something of a one-off
for the album (mirrored, perhaps, only by 'In Limbo's final section) it
is clear by now that this isn't going to be just another record. The
fact that the band included 'In the Beginning' in the early live
performances that would help produce the Trespass
material, when the rest of its stablemates had fallen by
the wayside, suggests that Genesis also saw this as an early highlight.
The of-its-time 'Itchycoo Park'-style 'phasing' effect plastered over
the instrumental breaks only adds to the fun.
 Ant during the sessions for the album. |
'Fireside Song'
It's not clear at what
stage the 1968 demo 'The Magic of Time', with its amusingly mistimed
jazzy brush fills and jaunty piano, was actually written, but its
bustling lyrics about rain filling rivers, life emerging on the ground
and a direct reference to a "silent sun" fashioning the world suggests this song may at some
point have been intended to follow 'In The Beginning' in the conceptual
sequence. Instead, the LP's narrative, such as it is, following a moody
and portentous piano piece which anticipates the long intros of 1972's 'Time Table' and 1973's
'Firth of Fifth', jumps to a calmer moment of
creation with 'Fireside Song'. With the fallback strings, strums and
major keys present and correct, here the lyrics already look back to a
time of "confusion,
disappointment, fear and disillusion", as if such days of chaos have
now passed, fulfilling the rejected demo's role of explaining how "it
came to pass that nature's creatures came to face the world".
Although firesides are never actually mentioned, the implication is of a
settled early humanity now warm and protected, where it sees "hope
reborn with every morning" in the song's sweet and dreamily mellow
chorus. A serpent will soon be along to change all of this. The
meticulous diction of the ensemble group vocals (with Banks to the fore)
is rather charming in its innocence; perhaps the point.
Banks has stated that
'Fireside Song' was originally more chordally complex, but that he
simplified it to give it a more commercial edge, a sign that he was
learning a pop sensibility that might have taken Genesis more directly
down a mainstream route in some parallel universe. [8]
Instead, this approach would be put on long hiatus for over a decade
before eventually being rediscovered to great reward. From the next
album on, the complex chords and convoluted arrangements would have
their say first. Rutherford's autobiography implies that writing simpler
songs is harder than the progressive genre where different segments are
just continually added: "Long songs might appear clever and hard to
write but for us they were easy. We'd just take bit A and bit D and
segue them together. What we didn't realise was that it was generally
better if you didn't try to use the whole alphabet every time."
Referring to 'Looking for Someone', on
Trespass one album on, Rutherford adds: "If I had it now, it'd be a
fabulous song as I could make something out of just the first couple of
bits. Back then we rambled on with another eight minutes, throwing in
bits and pieces." [9] |
Fan conflict over the
relative merits of the 'longer' and 'shorter' songs has never gone away.
But plenty of short poppier songs are present and correct in their
overtly progressive period ('I Know What I Like' being Exhibit A, but
see also 'Harold the Barrel', 'Time Table', 'More Fool Me', much of
The Lamb, etc.) and didn't
seem to present a problem to listeners at the time. Even when Genesis
did return to predominantly shorter songs and rediscovered their pop
roots, the fact that the longer pieces were never entirely jettisoned
suggests they knew well that both sides were an essential part of their
make-up. It was perhaps the disappointment of a
certain section of the
audience at the letting go of the symphonic approach that was more the
issue rather than the existence of shorter songs
per se. The accusation that the later short tracks were simply
substandard moneyspinners has always been rightly denied by the band,
summed up by Collins in the booklet notes for 2014's
R-Kive compilation: "It's not
like we get the shorter songs out of a cheap barrel, and the other stuff
is finely aged. They all come out of the same source." [10]
'The Serpent'
The longest song at this
stage of the band's evolution (albeit at only 4.36) was 'The Serpent', a
reincarnation of a much earlier version. One of the key 1967 demos that
first caught King's attention was a song called 'She is Beautiful'.
Widely available online, as an extra track on some of the multiple
Revelation re-releases, and on
the Archive collection, it's
not hard to see why King liked it. Although very basically recorded,
with minimal percussion, the sinister bouncy riff on the lower keys of
Banks's piano and an icy-sharp performance from Gabriel create a
striking impression. Its rather threatening, and potentially troubling,
portrayal of female vanity signifies a fear or bemusement around
femininity that will permeate lyrics throughout Genesis's career. In
what at this stage was likely a hangover from the then-Public School
personification of women as an entirely different species to be avoided
where possible (thus setting up an inevitable counterintuitive
curiosity, entirely unrealistic expectations or ingrained reservations),
early lyrics often characterise females as figures of preying danger or
betrayers of apparently innocent men (a spectre inflated to fantastical
levels on The Lamb- Phil
Collins would later find his own reasons to lyrically angst over such
issues).
The song's protagonist
here attacks the object of his apparently obsessive infatuation as a "nervous wreck with a sweet façade", whose rising career as a model
is perceived in direct inversion to her cold rejection of the man, as
she supposedly sacrifices her feelings and integrity for empty success
("vanity arrived with fame").
Yet the pathetic yearning of "Give
it up, baby, Honey give it up and come back to me" reveals the real
agenda, compounded by the closing hilarity of "Don't
take my love away from my arms, Oh no, I need her near me every single
day, Please don't take her away, I need my love". The woman is not
so hard and undesirable after all, then- it's just sour grapes. All
this makes for a genuinely entertaining and powerful song, but some
counselling is surely going to be needed for the protagonist somewhere
along the way.
 The Serpent was the B-side of the 1974 Italian 7" single release of In The Beginning. |
Although 'She Is
Beautiful' was primarily a Banks/Gabriel composition, around the same
time, in a life-imitating-art irony, Phillips was finding himself in a
similarly difficult romantic situation with a successful ballerina that
would tear itself apart soon enough. Phillips has stated that this
contributed to the fragile mental state that would help build to his
departure from the band just a year or so after- but it did later gift
the world his lovely songs 'Lucy Will' on 1979's
Sides album, and 'Lucy: An Illusion' on 1980's
Private Parts and Pieces II: Back to the Pavilion.
Loving 'She is Beautiful'
but failing to see how it could fit the conceptual sequence of
From Genesis to Revelation,
King appears to have persuaded the band to rewrite the words- while
still retaining the female betrayal theme ("And
god created womankind, The vessel of Satan's hold"). While some of
the raw impact of the original is lost, in its new guise 'The Serpent'
remains one of the most memorable contributions to the record, full of
atmosphere and a suitably dramatic hint of dread to announce the arrival
of Devilish influence into Eden. With bass replacing the low piano notes
of the original in another rare prominence for Rutherford, and the
addition of distinctive clicking drumsticks (in a
very rare prominence for John Silver, assuming he is playing them)
replacing the hesitant chords of the bridging sequences, this strings
and strums-free track stands out from the rest of the album. The echoey
stick strikes seem disturbing simply for being unexpected, aptly
denoting perhaps the sudden presence of an outside force that doesn't
quite belong there, while Banks's 'House of the Rising Sun'-style
background organ adds an archly melodramatic horror-film feel to enhance
the effect.
The lyrics are sharp and
inventive here, and fruitfully pantomimesque: "Creator
made the serpent wise, Evil in his tempting eyes, Man is wonderful, very
wonderful, Look at him- Beware the future." The inference is that
the world has as much to fear from humankind as from the serpent, or at
least that the two are interminably entwined: "I'm
waking up, the day of Man has come". Given the effectiveness of this
more literal lyrical interpretation of the album's concept, it's perhaps
surprising that such directness is shifted to more nebulous themes from
hereon. Then again, yet more direct Biblical references might have seen
the album still filed in the 'Religious' racks today.
'The Serpent' is prefaced
with one of the most telling of the linking instrumentals, a moody minor
key jam of guitar, bass and pattering bongos that wouldn't be out of
place on The Lamb. Remarkably, just before the fade, Phillips unexpectedly
breaks into a stand-out riff that will eventually be recycled as the
main theme of 'Twilight Alehouse', a song that would soon feature in the
band's live sets and finally be recorded during the 1972
Foxtrot sessions, although
this would not actually surface until its release as the B-side of 'I
Know What I Like' in early 1974. It's a shame that moments like this
were relegated to such fleeting glimpses at this stage, but the band
never wasted good potential, sometimes storing riffs and whole passages
up for years before calling them into service, as 'Genesis Plays
Jackson' (available online and on the extras disc of the
1970-1975 remasters box set),
which contains elements of several future Genesis classics, makes clear.
|
'Am I Very Wrong?'
Another indelible clue to
the band's future path opens up on the following track, 'Am I Very
Wrong?'. Following a reflective piano interlude, with a curious melody
of spiky notes, it's as if some kind of time portal to
Trespass unexpectedly opens
up, with twinkling acoustic guitars (plucked not strummed) set against
Gabriel's haunting flute, all making their debut in the Genesis
soundscape in what sounds like a lost passage from 'White Mountain'. Any
From Genesis to Revelation doubters should by now be placated that
this is very definitely the same group of their later affections.
With the serpent's
influence, self-doubt seems to be setting in as humankind asks itself
whether life in a compulsory paradise is really the way to go. Is an
eternal life of automated joy without choices actually freedom?: "Am
I very wrong, To try to close my ears to the sound they play so loud?,
Am I very wrong?, The happiness machine is trying hard to sing my song."
The song is too subtle to mention apples or a Tree of Knowledge
(although Banks will directly reference both in his 1978 solo song 'A
Curious Feeling'), but it infers a turning away from the Creator.
Accordingly, as the chorus flies in, seemingly from another realm,
Gabriel's mournful doubts are offset by what appears to be the angelic
voice of the happiness machine itself, courtesy of a Phillips vocal,
reinforcing the point as it attempts to pacify with syrupy tones: "Today's
your birthday friend, everything alright, Let us our greetings to you
send, Happy friend, everything all right, We hope your life will never
end." This torturous promise of eternal pacification is taken up by
Gabriel as an angst-ridden negative in the coda, as he repeats "never
end" to himself in increasingly desperate tones as if the
realisation of what that really means is finally sinking in.
It has to be said that
there's something endearingly sweet about Phillips's boyish, imploring
and fragile tones here. He reportedly had ambitions to be the singer
before giving in to Gabriel's obvious talents. Phillips's delicate voice
would mature and find its own niche in his solo years. In general, the
band's ensemble vocals, which are something of a feature in the early
years (not least in the choirboy layers), fade away as the albums go by,
especially with the arrival of Collins, whose own obvious talents in the
backing vocal department were quickly utilized and would soon begin to
dominate, culminating in his seemingly predestined (with hindsight)
elevation after Gabriel's departure. On that score, in his book
Genesis: I Know What I Like, author Armando Gallo was the first to
note that 'Am I Very Wrong?' appears uncannily to anticipate the dilemma
Gabriel would face when the pressures of stardom and alienation from his
fellow band members crashed in on him in 1974-5: "Am
I very wrong, To want to leave my friends and the curse of the happiness
machine?" ... [11]
 Peter and Ant during the recording sessions. |
'In the Wilderness'
The brighter piano
arpeggio which opens 'In the Wilderness', along with the title, suggests
that some kind of escape or expulsion from Eden has occurred and that
humankind is now on its own as the angelic forces recede, although not
without some relief from both sides by the sound of it: "Leaving
all the world to play they disappear"'. The tones of the happiness
machine clearly still waft down, but people have turned their backs on
it: "Music, all I hear is music, Guaranteed to please, And I look for
something else". The minus of this is that they now have no
protection against the violence from the likes of the coming conqueror,
hinted at with "Fighting enemies
with weapons made to kill, Death is easy as a substitute for pride".
'In the Wilderness' is one
of the straightforward pop rockers of the album, wasting no time in
getting from its simple verse to its big hummable chorus, clearly the
main reason for its existence. There is little else there and no middle
eight beyond a brief repeat of the opening arpeggio (where Silver
manages to throw in a rare big fill without getting snipped out by King)
before the irrepressible chorus returns. The strings work well here-
again sounding uncannily like the Mellotron flourishes that will soon
replace them- and make they no apology for their dominance. Gabriel
rises to the task by giving one of his best performances on the album in
a voice closer to the harder tones he would soon develop, even if he had
to go to desperate measures to achieve it: "It was pitched above my
range. You could hear this desperate sort of retching noise as I
struggled for the high notes. I had to keep taking showers, anything to
try and keep me awake." [12] |
'The Conqueror'
With the break over and
the listener sat back down by the Dansette, the melody of the last
chorus is restated once more in the regretful tones which open Side Two,
as Phillips (backed by Rutherford) now takes up the theme with quietly
muted electric guitar- and an appallingly hissy amp. The continuity now
neatly picked up, the album quickly throws off this melancholia with the
bold lower-octave piano stabs fanfaring the arrival of 'The Conqueror'.
This piano rundown (as with the 'She is Beautiful' demo) provides the
main backbone of the whole track, which, like 'In the Wilderness' before
it, sticks to a solid verse-chorus cycle with no variation or middle
eights until the final stop and restart of the coda. What the song lacks
in variety it makes up for in spirit, with its breezy upbeat insistency
providing one of the dancier moments of the album- not an opportunity
Genesis would provide too often, even in their pop years, as famously
self-referenced in a much later album title.
In some ways 'The
Conqueror' is a precedent to the following album's 'The Knife', both
lyrically and in its propulsive major key verses. The approaching
Conqueror sounds a lot like the latter's angry protagonist, with his
unstoppable idealism and heads rolling in his wake. Does this version
represent the pharaoh that enslaves the Israelites ('In Hiding', which
follows, suggests a period of exile), or just one of the myriad
psychopathic kings and tribal leaders that seem to infest the Old
Testament? If so, there's a hefty lyrical anachronism here that seems to
anticipate the invention of firearms a few thousand years too early: "Hey look out son, There's a gun they're pointing at your pretty face."
Yet the line "He's busy building monuments, To hide inside his empty grave" sounds
like a possible allusion to the pyramids. In reality the conceptual
lyrics pretty much go off-piste from hereon, into generalization that
might refer to scenes from Exodus and the following biblical books which
record tribal wanderings, relationships and conquests, but equally they
might not. By now, the listener probably isn't too concerned about
narrative consistency if they've even been following it this far. Either
way, there are some more feminist issues worthy of discussion, with a
rather risqué reference to concubines, as the "Hero
is working overtime" with his "Five
hundred little women". There is, however, a warning about not taking
action against the rise of fascists: "He's
bought the castle on the hill, He's bought it just to knock it down, The
local power shout him down, They say he's just an empty-headed clown".
For all that, the Conqueror remains firmly on his way and the heads will
soon be rolling; which is what usually happens when the rise of tyrants
remains unchecked.
The relentless
verse-chorus cycle finally ends when the song unexpectedly stops for
breath nearly three minutes in, leaving just Gabriel's voice, backed by
a few sparse chords from Banks, to state rather mysteriously
"And the words of love were
lying on an empty floor, Just in the place where the Conqueror lay".
The main riff then cranks up again at full pelt, at which point
something entirely unexpected occurs- Anthony Phillips gets a guitar
solo. There's been a valiant effort throughout the song to make his mark
with a continuously squirling top-line (on the edge of feedback),
underpinning the verses. With no strings or brass to contend with, when
the final cycle returns it's as if Phillips seizes what he knows may be
a rare opportunity and lets himself go before King can pull down the
faders, which happens soon enough but not before the guitarist gets a
brief moment of satisfaction. It's not his best solo, and Phillips
sounds as if he's standing in a bathroom a couple of blocks away, but it
nonetheless allows for a moment of trippy 60s acid noodling that
successfully sustains the slightly anarchic energy of the track until
the end. While it might have been nice to have heard more of this kind
of improvisation elsewhere on the record, it's still something.
Stand-out solos for the
sake of showing off a player's skills were never really part of what
Genesis did, for all the group's famed dexterity; the needs of a track
and the welfare of the ensemble effect always came first (although Steve
Hackett might disagree over 'The Cinema Show'). As such, it could be
argued that 'The Conqueror' provides one of only six full electric 'solos' that Phillips ever got to give in his Genesis years, the others
being the B-side 'That's Me', elements of the demos 'Build Me a
Mountain' and 'Going Out to Get You', and his two big moments in 'The
Knife'. His soloing style at this stage- although it can still be heard
as late as 1984's 'The Women Were Watching' on his
Invisible Men album- has a
high-register wailing style, fascinatingly bending the notes almost to
the point of being off-key. Phillips's full and rich post-Trespass career would eventually give more than enough exposure to
his unquestionable musical genius.
'In Hiding'
No link or prologue is
granted for 'In Hiding', which bursts straight into the warm harmonies
of its memorable chorus as 'The Conqueror' fades. It's an effective
attention-grabber for another softer piece in the standard production
style. The very simple backing of piano, acoustic guitar and strings
playing in a waltz rhythm, a rare time signature for Genesis, allows
room for Gabriel's honeyed vocals to breathe here, as he gives one of
his most sensitive performances on the album.
The ensemble chorus of "Pick me up, put me down, Push me in, turn me round, Switch me on, let me
go- I have a mind of my own" implies what the character is actually
in hiding from. Now escaped from the tyranny of the Conqueror and his "Factories
of truth", the verses suggest a time of repose, perhaps of exile, or
simply a self-imposed escape to be at one with nature: "I
walk among the tall trees, This is beauty I know, I'm in love with it
all." Sung in lightly tremulous tones throughout, the vocal
effectively conveys a feeling of relief and gratitude for this pastoral
interlude.
The back-to-nature theme
has the feel of a Phillips lyric, but the words were actually written by
Gabriel. Musically, 'In Hiding' is a direct re-use of another early
demo, 'Patricia', a 1967 instrumental first made available on the
Archive set, the earliest
publicly available recording of Genesis that exists (not including the
'Pennsylvania Flickhouse' demo by Charterhouse band Anon). 'Patricia's
scratchy amateurishness, clearly recorded on a home recorder in
someone's living room, is endearingly loveable. Mighty oaks would grow
from such little acorns.
There's an odd moment in
the revised song where the words appear to get a little suggestive: "In hiding, I will take off my clothes"- but this is then qualified
by the line "...that I wear on my
face." Grammatically "I will
take off THE clothes..."
would be more correct and sound less strange, but maybe it's a moment of
poetic licence. This facial undressing appears to come full circle from
the rather peculiar instruction of 'Where the Sour Turns to Sweet' to "Paint
your face all white, To show the peace inside".
 Tony and Ant during the recording sessions. |
'One Day'
The pastoral mood is
maintained by the optimistic fade-in- the first for Genesis- to 'One
Day', which threatens a whole track of default strings and strum. It's
about now that the déjà vu of
predictable arrangements and major keys does begin to grate a little as
the listener begins to wonder whether yet another track can really use
exactly the same recipe, only to find that it can. Some catharsis is
achieved, to be fair, when the band suddenly pause to play the reboot
trick again, at which point Banks strikes up a sunny piano arpeggio to
introduce the main song. Another strong chorus is then pulled out of the
hat as further compensation, with its memorable brass fanfares
complimenting the vocals and with the choirboy backing to the fore.
The consistently high
quality of the album's choruses, never failing to hook, is one of the
more impressive features of From
Genesis to Revelation, and at no point is there a feeling of being
cheated in this department. Even so, there's a growing sense that by now
we've pretty much heard everything the album is going to offer, with no
avant-garde instrumental jams
and barely any minor key moodiness left to offset the sugariness, while
the repeated resort to simple verse-chorus structure, adhered to yet
again here, starts to feel like a lack of ambition. With the songs not
appearing to have been written in order, this dearth of variety suggests
a flaw in King's sequencing of the album rather than a deficiency of the
writers.
Lyrical plans to "fly away" with a lover to "the
kingdom of my dreams", after perhaps over-cutely gaining advice from
birds, cherry trees and animals, suggest an unrequited fantasy love,
rather than anything too real. This is a universe away from 1980's 'Please Don't Ask'. But the nature theme of
'One Day' holds continuity
with 'In Hiding' even if any sense of a story has now blurred into
extreme vagueness, perhaps another sign of production weariness setting
in and someone simply saying "that one will go into the sequence fine
there". |
'Window'
The bouncy piano link that
opens the next track seems to owe a nod to the "Crabalocker
fishwife" moments of The Beatles' 'I am the Walrus', which would
probably have been high on Banks's listening list in these years (just
wait until he hears In the Court
of the Crimson King). The same riff will be recycled on Hammond
organ for 'Visions of Angels' just a year later. What this piano
interlude lacks in playing accuracy, with one stark bum note, it makes
up for with jauntiness.
Sadly, the promise of a
new mood to refresh the crucial two-thirds point of the album isn't
fulfilled, and instead we get 'Window'. Written by Phillips and
Rutherford, on its own it's a perfectly nice piece, but with yet another
resort to pastoral horns, strings and laid-back vocals it's hard not to
feel a sense of resigned weariness at this stage. On the plus side, the
prophetic plucked acoustic guitars are back and the song is graced with
a distinctive middle 16-bar section, the climactic chords of which have
that unique Genesis sense of transcendence, lifting the listener to
heights of anticipation- only to drop them down here with a peculiar
line about Jack Frost seeing someone kissing an albatross (no, really),
which manages to be both surreal and trite at the same time. With other
lines about "The little nymphs
dance in her hair", this is Genesis at their most whimsical.
Happily, the next time we meet nymphs, in 1971's 'The Fountain of
Salmacis', things will have dramatically darkened somewhat.
Lyrically, 'Window'
follows the theme of 'In Hiding', with peace being found in nature and
thoughts of a beloved offering solace: "Guiding
us forward through pastures of dream day, Days to enjoy, peace I knew
once before me, Dawning to dusk on the hills until morning, Come see me,
take my hand..." It's all sweet enough, but it probably isn't going to
win anyone's choice as the album's finest moment. It's worth noting that
on YouTube (which, sadly, may be the only place some new fans hear these
songs, cut into chunks there as they are), 'Window' receives far less
comments beneath it than some of its
From Genesis to Revelation stablemates, which might say something.
'In Limbo'
The pensive piano and
acoustic guitar link which opens 'In Limbo'- not the most rock and roll
title ever coined- threatens another round of starry-eyed walks through
nature. Fortunately, another thing occurs entirely, as even King seems
to have realized that something drastically needs to
happen at this point. Cutting
through the pastoral haze, one of the strongest riffs of the album
bursts in as Banks suddenly hits his lower piano keys at full velocity
(again) to provide the bass lockdown for one of the most exciting, if
unruly, songs in this collection. The brass fanfares rise to the
occasion, brazenly dominating the soundscape yet effective, while the
band seem to let go and relax, with Silver clattering away merrily
somewhere on the squeezed far right of the stereo for this upbeat and
invigorating bit of very 60s grooviness.
In fact everyone seems to
have relaxed perhaps just a little too much here. It's hard to say at
what point in the recording schedule 'In Limbo' was laid down, but
there's a strong sense of studio time perhaps running out and not much
care being taken in any department. The accuracy of the players is loose
to say the least, with a sense of even the usually tight Greenslade
struggling to either time or tune his own overdubs to the mess presented
to him. Everyone seems to be rushing just to get any take at all down on
tape. The very humanly-timed handclaps that add much to the track's fun
are at least provably real, in the days before drum machines. The sound,
however, never great in the first place, seems to disintegrate entirely
here, with mounting distortion and tininess hardly helping to separate
the melee. The sleeve notes suggest a fraught atmosphere in the control
room in general, with references to King "... who screamed, occasionally
had fits and attempted not to turn white-haired", which is an odd thing
to want to point out to a buyer. Yet for all this, there's a joyous
freedom that results here and this track is the lift the album
desperately needs at this stage.
The comforts of being at
one with nature seem to have waned for the protagonist at this point,
with yearnings of wanting to escape somewhere else yet again. Eden
wasn't enough, and now the world at large isn't either: "Take
me away, To the deepest cave of the night, Take me away, Voices of love,
here am I, In the sad, sad world of fear." Things get worse as the
song reaches its exhilarating final apotheosis: "Peace- floating in limbo, Limbo- leading me nowhere, Peace- now without
motion, I cry- when will I die?, God- where is my soul now?, My world,
please set me free." Perhaps talking to that serpent wasn't such a
good idea after all.
This exhilarating coda is
an early example of one of those moments where Genesis seem to
instinctively know how to crank up tension and excitement, supplying the
opportunity for a tingle-down-the-spine experience that Genesis
listeners know so well, even if it is hard to explain to non-believers.
Here, it's present in the way that the bass note is suddenly held and
new chords, both uplifting and anxious, are introduced, while Gabriel's
angst-ridden vocals soar above and the ensemble sound reaches a
crescendo, with Phillips cramming in as many inventive lead lines as he
can possibly muster before the faders are downed. The distorted tape
can't take it and the fade ensures this closing section ultimately
doesn't go anywhere, but Genesis would soon learn to give moments like
these room to breathe by themselves.
 Mike during the recording sessions. |
'Silent Sun'
After this rush of
excitement calmer waters are required and 'Silent Sun' provides a good
reliable anchor point, restoring a feeling of normality and also
allowing space for one of the band's most succinct pop songs,
specifically crafted as it was to catch King's ear with a contemporary
Bee Gees-type melody. From this point of view, it might be argued that 'Silent Sun' is the most important song Genesis (in this case Banks and
Gabriel) ever wrote, given its successful outcome at a moment when
King's attention was threatening to wane before a deal was even made.
The single version- 'The
Silent Sun'- released in February 1968 and featuring Chris Stewart on
drums, saw Genesis making their first tiny, yet huge step into the world
of commercial releases. Its opening piano line and tense high-frequency
string note pulls the listener in immediately and the simple verses lead
effortlessly to an anthemic chorus, while the major key orchestra and
strum template works at its best here. It's even recorded quite well,
perhaps because it may have been put down before the creeping production
ennui and deadlines set in. There seems no reason why this
straightforward song of unrequited love couldn't have been a hit given
proper marketing, being a perfectly acceptable tune that a milkman could
whistle. But fate had other plans in store for Genesis.
The album version
(slightly shorter in duration, perhaps due to a tweak in vari-speeding,
as there is no structural difference) is a simple remix of the single
and therefore features Stewart and not Silver, but nothing jars and both
versions sound much the same. The song's inclusion here in the running
order, given the fact that it was written some time before the album and
its binding concept was even thought of, makes clear that any pretence
at maintaining a narrative has now been dispensed with and 'Silent Sun'
simply provides a good strong pop moment to fill a last few minutes
before the album's hasty wrap-up.
A lover's pleading to a
seemingly unresponsive companion continues (or begins, give the song's
role as the band's first public exposure) the theme of chasing errant
females, something that will perhaps culminate, in Gabriel's era, in 'Counting Out Time'.
Here the frustration is romantic rather than physical. The woman herself
is "the
silent sun that never shines", but she is also "the
warmth of my lonely heart". She is the "tiny
stone that hides from me" and, worryingly, "a
mountain stream that chills the sea". As with 'She Is Beautiful',
it's not quite clear why the narrator insists on pursuing such an
obviously unsuitable partner, but there it is, with the chorus
imploring: "Baby you feel so close, I wish you could see my love". But she
clearly can't. As a song, however, it works, even if the single's
failure denied the nation's milkmen the lift to their morning routine
that it surely deserved to be. |
'A Place to Call My Own'
How, then, to finish an LP
which began with such lofty ambitions? Realistically, it was never going
to be possible to live up to the expectations raised by its grand title.
Short of specifically penning songs about the later books of the Old
Testament, the story of Christ and the hallucinogenic visions of St
John's Revelation, which might have been fascinating but would demand a
double album and probably a religious conversion too, a descent into
hazy cop-out was always guaranteed, and
From Genesis to Revelation
duly delivers one. The mounting desperation temporarily masked by the
undisciplined excitement of 'In Limbo' and the opportunistic insertion
of the ready-made 'hit' 'Silent Sun' is finally faced full-on with 'A
Place to Call My Own', a song seemingly called into service to donate a
hastily constructed 'conclusion' to the story.
The surviving fragment of
a much longer composition by Phillips, the lyrical opening
"... And I've nearly found a place
to call my own" overtly suggests we are hearing the closing moments
of something once intended for bigger things. The mysterious words, sung
portentously against simple yearning piano chords, suggest some kind of
esoteric truth buried under their romantic allusions: "Waking
gently, feel her presence near, Devil shattered, warmth is everywhere, I
am only a child of hers, my guardian goddess, Now I'm reaching my
journey's end, inside her womb". For all that a serpent made its
presence felt on Side One, curiously this is the only direct reference
to the Devil on the entire album, suggesting that some kind of victory
has been attained over him and a reliable partner/lover found at last,
perhaps placing this part of the narrative somewhere beyond the last
events of Revelation in some kind of future paradise. Or perhaps the
otherwise potentially sexually suggestive line about reaching a
journey's end "inside her womb"
is intended to suggest the waiting Christ child waiting to be born from
Mary? Maybe. Maybe not. As with most of the songs on
From Genesis to Revelation, we
are left guessing.
Aware that a token effort
might be needed to end the album with at least some sense of spiritual
transcendency, with the short vocal interlude of 'A Place to Call my
Own' over in a few lines, King, predictably but perhaps aptly, calls
Greenslade into action for one last intense building bonanza of strings
and horns, the band practically invisible bar some distant piano and
bass and a final burst of wordless choirboy la-las, suggesting angelic
realms vanishing into glowing 'The End'-type clouds. Although a
tacked-on epilogue is better than no epilogue at all, a sense of weary
strain is palpable in this slightly forced close. With someone in the
studio apparently keen to get home, job done of providing at least a
kind of finale, the faders are hastily pulled down and Genesis's first
full-length musical adventure is done.
So, over two sides we have
travelled from Genesis, but perhaps not quite to Revelation. Or not yet.
As already noted, Genesis would return big-time to religious imagery in
'Supper's Ready' in 1972 which actually
does take the Book of
Revelation as the inspiration for its last two climactic movements,
unwittingly (or not?) supplying a belated conclusion to what was begun
here.
Conclusion
From Genesis to Revelation, then, while
plainly being a flawed first go from absolute beginners, is far from the
irrelevance that some fans imply, and sets the scene for much that will
follow, both musically and thematically, although the clues are often
subliminal rather than overt. Even the inner lyric insert, with its
scratchy Tolkienesque red line drawings, is not very different from that
which will accompany Trespass (in initial pressings) and the inner gatefold of
Nursery Cryme (followed
eventually by A Trick of the Tail,
Duke,
Genesis and even We Can't
Dance), loosely depicting
scenes from the songs.
The fact that Genesis were
afforded a lyric sheet at all in days of often minimalist packaging for
starter groups in itself says something about the genuine commitment
made to giving the band a real chance. Although sales may not have
materialised at the time, artistically the effort made to elevate what
could easily have been just a pile of re-recorded demos in any old order
pays off. That more expansive vision, encouraged by King from the start,
certainly appears to have influenced Genesis never to shy away from epic
visions. Without the impetus of this LP, it is possible that we might
not have heard much more from this rather creative bunch.
In re-familiarising
oneself with the material from this crucial period, it is possible to
rediscover another 43 minutes of very listenable music from a band that
has surprisingly limited material available from the Gabriel-led era
that so many people claim to cherish; just five studio albums for those
who discount this one. A whole extra album, then, is surely a welcome
experience which deserves reappraisal. What merit is there in fans, and
even band members, walling this achievement off as if it never existed?
While not perhaps a lost gem of priceless value, and with much shinier
riches to come, From Genesis to
Revelation is nevertheless a pretty coloured stone on the path, well
worth picking up for another look.
Andy Thomas
[Many thanks to Jonathan
Dann for checking and suggestions]
Andy Thomas is an established author and lecturer, well known for his
works on unexplained mysteries and conspiracies, as well as history and
folklore. He is also a dedicated Genesis fan and an experienced keyboard
player who has been playing live around South East England for 34 years.
His favourite albums are Anthony Phillips's
The Geese and the Ghost
and Genesis's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Find out more about Andy's work at:
www.truthagenda.org
*
FROM GENESIS
TO REVELATION
Released by Decca Records,
7 March 1969 [SKL 4990]
Side One
1- Where the Sour Turns to
Sweet (3:14)
2- In the Beginning
(3:42)
3- Fireside Song (4:16)
4-
The
Serpent (4:36)
5- Am I Very Wrong?
3:28)
6- In the Wilderness
(3:21)
Side Two
7- The Conqueror (3:44)
8- In Hiding (2:56)
9- One Day (3:16)
10- Window (3:53)
11- In Limbo (3:06)
12-
Silent Sun (2:08)
13- A Place to Call My Own
(1:57)
Produced by Jonathan King
Recorded and engineered by Brian Roberts and Tom Allom
Additional orchestration by Arthur Greenslade and Lou Warburton
Main personnel (names as billed at the time):
Anthony Banks (Piano,
keyboards, vocals)
Peter Gabriel (Vocals,
flute)
Anthony Phillips
(Guitars, vocals)
Michael Rutherford
(Bass, guitars, vocals)
John Silver (Drums,
vocals on From Genesis to Revelation and other tracks/demos from
that period)
Chris Stewart (Drums,
vocals on early singles and demos)
*
Notes and References
2- Recording time:
Sources vary as to how
many days were allowed for the first album's recording. In Hugh
Fielder's
The Book of Genesis
[Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984, page 19],
Peter Gabriel says "We recorded
From Genesis to Revelation in a day". Perhaps more realistically, in
Genesis: Chapter and Verse
[ibid., page 37],
Mike Rutherford says
"the album only took three days." On the other hand, Armando
Gallo's Genesis: I Know What I
Like [DIY Books, 1980, page 14] states "In the summer holidays of
1968, Jonathan King had booked the band for ten days at Regent B
[studios]." The ten-day claim is repeated in Phil Collins's
autobiography Not Dead Yet
(Century, 2016), although of course Collins wasn't there and might just
be quoting Gallo, who wasn't there either. However, it is not clear
whether the "ten-day" Regent B sessions also included the time for the
strings and brass overdubs, which infamously didn't involve the group.
3 -
Jonathan King on Stewart and Silver:
Quoted from
Genesis: Chapter and Verse
[ibid., page 45].
4- Banks on album
concept: "Absolutely
pathetic" quoted from
Genesis: Chapter and Verse
[ibid., page 33].
5- Gabriel on
'Gabriels Angels':
Quoted from Hugh Fielder's
The Book of Genesis
[ibid., page 18].
6- Gabriel on
Charterhouse Chapel singing:
Quoted from
Genesis: I Know What I Like
[ibid., page 14].
7- Phillips on
the added strings:
Quoted from Genesis: Chapter and
Verse [ibid., page 38]
and (second quote) from
Genesis: I Know What I Like (ibid., page 15).
8- Banks on
simplifying 'Fireside Song':
In Genesis: Chapter and Verse
[ibid., page 37], Banks states: "The verse was something I had
originally written using really quite complicated chords and one day I
sat down and thought that the melody line itself was nice, but why
didn't I just use the most bog standard chords I could underneath to see
how it sounded. And I thought, 'That sounds actually a lot better'."
9- Rutherford on
long songs: Quoted
from Mike Rutherford's autobiography
The Living Years [Constable &
Robinson, 2014, page 72].
10- Collins on
writing short songs:
The reference to Banks and Rutherford wanting to write hit singles again
by 1975 is quoted from Collins's
Not Dead Yet [ibid.,
page 142], while his defence of the shorter songs is from the booklet
for the R-Kive compilation
album [Virgin records, 2014, page 5].
11- Armando
Gallo on 'Am I Very Wrong?':
Gallo's observation on the appropriateness of the words to Gabriel's
later situation is made in his own
Genesis: I Know What I Like [ibid., page 158]: "Maybe the most interesting line is from
Peter's 'Am I Very Wrong?' where he seems to predict his split from the
band seven years later." [Six?]
12-
Gabriel on 'In the Wilderness' vocals:
Quoted from
The Book of Genesis
[ibid., page
19].