Rare Genesis to be Released

Good news for us hard-core Genesis fans: it looks like the Jackson Tapes are going to see the light of day! It has been reported that the band have secured the tapes and that they are to be released via the Genesis website in the near future.

Here's the skinny from the band's webpage:

A BBC television producer heard about Genesis in late 1969 when they were based in the cottage owned by Richard Macphail's parents. He came down to see them and thought they might be the sort of group he was looking for who could write some music for a TV programme about artist Mick Jackson and his painting. The band put together 4 tracks and then went into a BBC studio on 9th January 1970 to record them. The resulting mono tape featured 15 minutes of music. One interesting thing is that Paul Samwell-Smith (of Yardbirds fame) did the production on this recording.

A copy of the master tape together with some rapidly hand-written notes describing the ideas for the proposed programme were put together to give to a commissioning editor who would approve it. It's this copy tape (and the notes) that came to light at the end of 2001 and which were initially offered for sale via auction. No-one knows where the actual master tape of the session is or indeed if it still exists.

The four tracks recorded during the session were referred to in the notes as relating to themes of Provocation, Frustration, Manipulation and Resignation although these are not the titles of the tracks that the band gave them. These tracks contain some very interesting hints of things to come:

Provocation includes a theme from "Fountain of Salmacis" plus much of what ended up in "Looking For Someone".

Frustration is an early version of "Anyway" from The Lamb but with totally different lyrics.

Manipulation is a version of "F Sharp" that we now know from Ant's Archive Collection (and is an early version of what became "Musical Box") although this is more fully arranged with Tony Banks adding an organ part to Ant & Mike's 12-strings.

Resignation includes parts of a track from that period called "Peace" which Genesis never used anywhere else.

Here are samples courtesy of Simon at The Movement:

Resignation
Provocation
Frustration
Manipulation