Dick’s Picks: The debut Genesis album, From Genesis To Revelation

From Genesis to Revelation was the first album by Genesis released in March 1969 on Decca Records in England. Produced by Jonathan King, who discovered them back in 1967, while the members of Genesis were pupils at Charterhouse School.

The LP featured the original line up of Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips. Once one of their demo tapes caught the attention of Jonathan King he took them under his wing. After replacing Chris Stewart with John Silver on drums, Genesis’ producer had them compose an album’s worth of songs loosely based on the Bible.

This slightly pretentious venture was cut in August 1968 – while the boys were on school holidays – and later overdubbed with strings, much to the band’s chagrin. This concept album with no gaps in between the tracks is a statement of their sound at that time, which changed radically in later years.

From Genesis To Revelation was issued in a black sleeve with its title scribed in gothic gold on the top left hand side. With little else to go by, the record shops stacked the LP in the religious sections and it was consequently impossible to find. Its initial sales tally was an embarrassing 600 copies, of which, only about 150 were Mono.

Other than being part of the album title, the band’s name was omitted from the sleeve because Decca had recently discovered an obscure American act also calling itself Genesis, and asked the band to consider changing its name to avoid confusion (they obviously never did).

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