Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Genesis
Label: Virgin Records
Released: 1998
Rating: 5/5
Most Genesis fans will agree with me that the band’s classic lineup (Gabriel, Hackett, Rutherford, Banks and Collins), which ran from 1971 to 1975 and recorded prog rock classics like “Nursery Cryme” (1971), “Foxtrot” (1972), “Selling England By the Pound” (1973) and “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” (1974), was their best. I probably won’t have trouble finding plenty of kindred spirits on another point either: under the vocal and stage leadership of the unforgettable Peter Gabriel (from 1967 to 1975), Genesis were a far more energetic, innovative, creative and provocative band than in later years, when Phil Collins took over the mic and gradually turned them into a global pop attraction, sacrificing their lofty artistic aspirations along the way. In short, quite a few people will agree that after Gabriel’s departure their creative standards slid downhill, slowly but steadily. So after the live album “Genesis Live” (1973), a lot of Genesis fans spent ages waiting for any kind of official live recordings featuring the classic lineup, and had to settle for unofficial bootlegs with lousy sound quality. Luckily, the wait is finally over: in 1998 almost all the former members got together and dug some golden recordings out of the archives, stuff that had never made it onto CD before, and put them on this bombastic box set, which packs four CDs of mouth-watering material.
The first two discs hold the complete live performance of their most ambitious album, “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” (1974), recorded in 1974 at New York’s Shrine Auditorium, which is without a doubt the highlight of the whole compilation. The third disc will make happy everyone who has been missing a live recording from the “Selling England By the Pound” (1973) tour, which many consider the live peak of the Peter Gabriel lineup. The fourth disc contains the band’s earliest recordings, still with Anthony Phillips on guitar and the first three drummers (Chris Stewart, John Silver and John Mayhew), who hardly ever get a mention these days. Most of it was recorded before their debut “From Genesis To Revelation” (1969) came out, and it’s hugely important for any fan of the band. The box set also comes with a hefty book full of previously unpublished articles, photos, newspaper clippings, the band’s family tree and other goodies, including Gabriel’s own account of why he decided to leave the band. My only small gripe is the chronological inconsistency of some of the articles, which keeps the reader from tracing the band’s whole evolution. I’d also quietly hoped for more insight into Gabriel’s out-there ideas, including the story behind his more-than-strange costumes. But those are all totally minor flaws that do absolutely nothing to spoil the fun of listening to most of these recordings.
In the live rendition of “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”, Genesis mostly stick faithfully to the studio version, though you can feel that Banks and Hackett were extra motivated that night. With some additional keyboard wizardry on this recording, Banks will especially thrill all you Mellotron lovers, while Hackett was clearly still under the influence of his painful divorce, which you can hear in his particularly subtle guitar work. On the other hand, it’s strangely Gabriel’s vocals that are the weakest link on the recording, since he doesn’t squeeze out everything this exceptional artist is capable of. You can tell that his vocals were additionally polished up in the studio for this release as well. It wasn’t one of his best vocal nights anyway, and you can feel that by then he was no longer 100% in sync with the rest of the band. Hackett reportedly also touched up his guitar in the studio on a few parts, though you can barely tell. Still, overall this is a very good performance of an enormously ambitious and demanding project, and it won me over from the first listen every bit as much as the studio version. I’m especially glad that Gabriel’s dialogues with the audience, and his storytelling between songs, weren’t cut, since that adds to the overall enjoyment and lets you sink completely into this excellent live take on a great artistic project. If the band ever gets back together in its classic lineup, the number one thing on their live setlist will without a doubt be a full performance of “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”.
On the third disc we get to revel mostly in an excellent recording of a 1973 show at London’s Rainbow Theatre. The big hits are the live versions of masterpieces like “Dancing With The Moonlit Knight”, “Firth Of Fifht” (with Hackett’s solo reworked), “I Know What I Like” (all from “Selling England By the Pound, 1973) and “Supper’s Ready” (Foxtrot, 1972), which in my opinion is their magnum opus, if I had to pick their best creation. All the performances are superb, and here too Gabriel’s in-between chats with the audience are a delight, as he tells all sorts of stories about the surreal England he created in his lyrics and visions. There’s also the ballad “More Fool Me” (Selling England By the Pound, 1973) with Collins on vocals, which Gabriel introduces in French, and which is a bit of a glimpse into their future. It doesn’t bother me, but I probably wouldn’t have missed it, since they could have picked plenty of more interesting pieces instead. The real jackpot, without a shadow of a doubt, is the live version of the immortal super-epic “Supper’s Ready” with Gabriel on vocals. That’s what most fans have been waiting for for years, having had to make do until now with Collins’s take from the live album “Seconds Out” (1977). Now they can all lick their lips, because this version falls short of the studio one in absolutely nothing, and in places even tops it. And most people will agree with me that no Phil interpretation of this masterpiece can outweigh Peter’s.
For those of us who miss live recordings from the early years (especially from the albums “Trespass” and “Nursery Cryme”), it’s a real treat that there’s also a live recording of the gorgeous masterpiece “Stagnation” (Trespass, 1970), which was recorded in 1971 for the BBC radio station and is truly worth its weight in gold. Both singles that had never been released on CD before, “Twilight Alehouse”, which originally came out as the B-side of the “Watcher Of The Skies” single, and “Happy The Man”, are finally here in all their glory. The mysterious and mystical “Twilight Alehouse” is an excellent, one-of-a-kind piece, almost a masterpiece, that could easily have landed on a studio album, so I really don’t get why the band put off re-releasing it for so long. The jolly “Happy The Man”, on the other hand, is among their less noticed pieces, though it’s an interesting hybrid of folk and pop. Worth mentioning, too, is the fun fact that a cult American art rock band from the late 70s took its name from it. Then there’s an alternate version of “Watcher Of The Skies” (Foxtrot, 1972), with its majestic intro chopped off, which has more collector’s value than fan value, since it’s robbed of one of its best moments that way.
The fourth disc, covering alternate takes, demos and BBC recordings from 1967 to 1969, is of exceptional value to collectors despite the mostly poor sound, since it also includes the very first recordings the band ever made. Some versions are quite similar to those that came out on the debut “From Genesis To Revelation”, but there are also a few pieces that were never heard before. Among them are the Celtic-flavored “Shepherd”, which features very good backing vocals from Banks, “Pacidy” and “Let Us now Make Love” (which has an outrageously funny, hippie-tinged lyric), all recorded in 1970 for the BBC. They all point to the band’s in-between style at the time, still searching for its real sound and moving from folk and pop toward the symphonic style that would later dominate (that transitional sound also comes through nicely in some of Phillips’s solo work of the period). There’s also plenty of previously unreleased goodies that, sadly, are mostly plagued by weak sound, such as “Going Out To Get You”, “Build Me a Mountain”, “Hidden In The World Of Dawn”, “The Magic Of Time”, “The Mystery Of The Flannan Isle Lighthouse”, “Hair On The Arms and Legs”, and so on. The early version of “Dusk” (Trespass, 1970) is without a doubt the best piece of all the recordings on this disc.
“Archive – Volume 1: 1967-75” is a priceless release for any Genesis fan, and especially for everyone who wouldn’t trade Gabriel for Collins for any money and still hasn’t forgiven Gabe for leaving the band more than 30 years ago. The huge amount of previously unreleased live and studio recordings, the complete live performance of “the Lamb” and the live version of “Supper’s Ready” with Peter on vocals are the main diamonds that will delight every last lover of the creations of these prog rock legends. The only downside is that some of the live recordings were additionally processed in the studio and so lost a bit of authenticity. That might put off and annoy the purists who’d like their recordings preserved in original form, while collectors and true fans of the band won’t pay much attention to it. They’ll be in seventh heaven just knowing that all these legendary recordings, some of them practically relics by now, are finally collected in one place. No true fan of the band should go without this box set, and if by chance he still doesn’t have it, while you’ve owned it for years and make him drool over it every time he drops by, the best way to make him happy for his birthday or the New Year is to buy it for him or order it from your favorite seller.
Lineup
Peter Gabriel – vocals, percussion, flute, bass drum
Steve Hackett – guitar, 12-string guitar
Mike Rutherford – bass guitar, guitar, 12-string guitar, backing vocals
Tony Banks – keyboards, 12-string guitar, backing vocals
Phil Collins – drums, percussion, backing vocals, vocals
Anthony Phillips – guitar, 12-string guitar, backing vocals
John Mayhew – drums, percussion
John Silver – drums, percussion
Chris Stewart – drums, percussion
Production
Genesis, Nick Davis and Geoff Callingham
Track list
CD 1: 50:39
1. The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (6:28)
2. Fly On A Windshield (4:38)
3. Broadway Melody of 1974 (0:34)
4. Cuckoo Cocoon (2:17)
5. In The Cage (7:56)
6. The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging (4:25)
7. Back In N.Y.C. (6:19)
8. Hairless Heart (2:22)
9. Counting Out Time (3:59)
10. The Carpet Crawlers (3:59)
11. The Chamber Of 32 Doors (5:52)
CD 2: 52:31
1. Lillywhite Lilith (3:04)
2. The Waiting Room (6:15)
3. Anyway (3:29)
4. The Supernatural Anesthetist (3:57)
5. The Lamia (7:12)
6. Silent Sorrow In Empty Boats (3:15)
7. The Colony Of Slippermen (8:46)
8. Ravine (1:39)
9. The Light Lies Down On Broadway (3:37)
10. Riding The Scree (4:30)
11. In The Rapids (2:25)
12. IT (4:20)
CD 3: 73:03
1. Dancing With The Moonlit Knight (7:05)
2. Firth Of Fifth (8:29)
3. More Fool Me (4:02)
4. Suppers Ready (26:31)
5. I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) (5:36)
6. Stagnation (8:54)
7. Twilight Alehouse (7:48)
8. Happy The Man (2:54)
9. Watcher Of The Skies (3:42)
CD 4: 72:38
1. In The Wilderness (3:00)
2. Shepherd (4:00)
3. Pacidy (5:42)
4. Let Us Now Make Love (6:14)
5. Going Out To Get You (4:54)
6. Dusk (6:14)
7. Build Me A Mountain (4:12)
8. Image Blown Out (2:12)
9. One Day (3:08)
10. Where The Sour Turns To Sweet (3:15)
11. In The Beginning (3:31)
12. The Magic Of Time (2:01)
13. Hey! (2:28)
14. Hidden In The World Of Dawn (3:10)
15. Sea Bee (3:05)
16. The Mystery Of The Flannan Isle Lighthouse (2:36)
17. Hair On The Arms And Legs (2:41)
18. She Is Beautiful (3:47)
19. Try A Little Sadness (3:21)
20. Particia (3:05)
Total running time: 248:51
