Jonathan King liked the tape these four serious young men presented him so much that he got them a record deal with Decca and produced their first two singles "The Silent Sun" and "A Winter's Tale", and their debut album "From Genesis To Revelation" - whence, of course, came their name. The group at that time was Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips, Tony Banks, Michael Rutherford and drummer John Silver. Recorded in just one day (!) "Revelations" was already ambitious, somewhat Biblically retelling human evolution as a suite of 16 songs. Yet smothered as it was in insipid string arrangements, the band never really considered it their own, and, after selling just 650 copies, they moved on from King and from Decca. "The Genesis Archive" features several recently-unearthed demos of tracks which found their way onto the album: "In The Beginning", "Where The Sour Turns To Sweet" and "One Day".
"The fourth CD is made up from demos, and some songs recorded for a BBC Nightride programme in 1969. Some of these tapes were copies of copies of what were not very good recordings in the first place, you have been warned. The songs "Dusk" and "Going out to Get You" are part of a tape of demos recorded pre-'Trespass'. 'Going out to Get You' went through many changes; at one point it was twenty minutes long. It survived a long time in our stage repertoire and we finally recorded a version as a potential single in about 1971 but the tape is now lost. "Shepherd", "Pacidy" and "Let Us Now Make Love" are taken from the Nightride tape. All were stage songs which didn't make it on to the next album, "Trespass". "Let Us Now" would have been on, but we had decided to hold it back as the single, which we then never recorded. There were many other songs we played live, and recorded to varying standards, which have never found their way onto a Genesis album, some of which are included here though many others have been lost.
"In The Wilderness" was included on, "From Genesis to Revelation"; this is a rough mix before the addition of strings. At the time we were not too happy with the added arrangements feeling they made the album sound weaker. The best songs from this period however, are included on this album and really it needs to have been heard to put the songs found here in context. Since the CD version of this album includes the first single B-side ("That's Me") and the follow-up single A and B-sides ("A Winters Tale"/"One-eyed Hound") they have not been included here, although they were not on the original LP. "Build Me A Mountain" was recorded for inclusion on this record, as was "Image Blown Out" but both were left off, along with a version of "Visions of Angels" which turned up in expanded form on the next album. All the rest of the songs are demos recorded before this first album. Most were done with just piano and accoustic guitar adding the vocals after, it would have been nice to have been able to lose the backing harmonies, known affectionately at the time as the wild boars.
