Paul Conroy at Charisma Records
Being on tour while waiting for the release of their upcoming album Foxtrot, Genesis wanted to do something extra to attract the attention of the audience to the album well in advance to its release. Paul Conroy at Charisma Records thought that it would be a good stunt to get someone on-stage dressed up in a red dress and a fox's head, the central image of the front side of the album. Gabriel said about that later in an interview: "I think he really fancied doing it himself. And I thought, 'Well, damn it, if we're going to do it, I want to do it! I want to be the centre of attention!'" And the Peter Gabriel on stage in his Red Dress and Fox's headrest is history, as they say. The first time that he tried it out was at a boxing ring in Dublin. Without any of the other band members knowing what he was planning to do, he walked off stage during the instrumental part of The Musical Box and returned to do the rest of the vocals of the song dressed in a red dress he had borrowed from his wife Jill and a fox's head. Gabriel later told about that moment: "I remember being very nervous as I walked onto the stage in the middle of a number. The audience was shocked by the weirdness of a man dressed up in woman's clothing and a fox mask - but I loved it! This performance gave me an unquestionable authority, and I thought, 'I must be on to something here.'"
Some of the other Genesis members were shocked when they saw their singer's attire, although they had to admire the fact that Gabriel had the guts to do such a thing. Still, the action was not without effect. Collins remembers: "When we played the Rainbow, there was a picture of Pete in his fox's head on the front page of the Melody Maker - which doubled our earnings straight away. We went from earning £300 a night to earning £600 a night, which was a lot of money in those days. Suddenly people had something to write about - you can't really write about the crashing cymbals, thudding drums and the swirling keyboards for very long. They needed some new angle, and suddenly Peter had given it them. The Rainbow concert was definitely the beginning of all that."
Gabriel felt encouraged by the success of the fox's head to develop the visual element of the Genesis shows further. The fact that the mask and the dress were only referring to the album cover of Foxtrot, but did not have anything to do with the subjects of the songs or the characters in them, Peter Gabrieldid not feel quite right to him though. He then went on to create a fitting costume for every song, or - in the case of the multilayered Supper's Ready - part of the song. Acting out the part of the alien, Gabriel would appear during Watcher Of The Skies with Day-Glo painted around his eyes, which glowed spookily in the ultraviolet light they were using for that song, while wearing batwings on his head and a brightly coloured cape around his shoulders. A crown of thorns illustrated the part of Supper's Ready called The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man. He wore a daisy headdress for the "A flower?" bit before the start of Willow Farm, and donned a black cape and a red geometric box headdress to act out tPeter with Wingshe antichrist in Apocalypse In 9/8. In the grand finale of Supper's Ready he would throw off the headdress and cape to reveal the angelic, sparkly white jumpsuit he wore underneath. On a few occasions he would amplify the effect even more by carrying an ultraviolet tube while singing the final lines.
Having been sceptical at first about Gabriel's expansion of his masquerades, the other band members began to see other merits apart from the raise of their incomes they caused. As Collins put it: "Our songs and words often had more to them than met the eye. They weren't regular rock and roll lyrics. So when Peter started coming in wearing these masks it was just an extension of the fantasy element."
