In the Summer of 1967, the first Summer of Love, two would-be pop groups of school boys from one of England's oldest and most exclusive public schools, Charterhouse, decided to become one. Between them, The Anon and The Garden Wall - singer Peter Gabriel, pianist Tony Banks, guitarist Anthony Phillips and bassist Michael Rutherford - would go on, through a handful of personnel changes - to become one of the next two decades' most famous rock groups. Yet that Summer, when they presented a tape to Jonathan King, a former pupil of the school now revisiting it in the wake of his own Number One single, they didn't even have a name. Incredibly, The Genesis Archives features three demos the band actually recorded as early as 1967, while still at school: "Patricia", "Try A Little Sadness" and "She Is Beautiful".
"It may sound strange but Genesis would definitely never have existed if I hadn't decided to return to my old school Charterhouse for an Old Boys Day. I, of course, was delighted to show off ... I'd written and sung a monster hit record - Everyone's Gone To The Moon - and become a POP STAR! Ghastly for poor old Charterhouse! The pupils, of course, adored it ... I ousted Baden Powell as their most famous Old Boy.
So, to irritate the masters and delight the students, I returned in triumph. And was given a grubby little tape (which I still have to this day) containing a few songs by the nameless school band. None of the members dared approach a Superstar so a friend did it for them.
Because they were a couple of years younger than me, I'd never met them during my school time. But I liked the sound of the songs, especially the vocals of the lead singer, Peter Gabriel.
So I met them, agreed to produce some tracks with them in the school holidays and christened them Genesis to celebrate the start of my serious career as a Producer ... I felt Genesis had genuine song writing and performing ability.
Sadly, the excellent debut LP - from Genesis To Revelation - did very little when it was released on Decca. One of the reasons may have been that we used no group name on the cover (there was a soul band called Genesis in America and I was trying to establish our name as the official one worldwide) so most retailers dumped the rock album into the religious section!"
Jonathan King
