They started out as a teenage combo formed at a posh college puddin’ private school outside of London. Back then, they had a different guitarist, and were years away from meeting Phil Collins. With the exception of Peter Gabriel’s voice and the occasional Tony Banks piano flourish, From Genesis To Revelation doesn’t sound like the band they’d become. If anything, they sound a lot like the Bee Gees from the same period, with pretty string and horn arrangements tarting up the space. They even have three-part harmonies.
The music is adventurous pop, and such tracks as the opening “Where The Sour Turns To Sweet” are nothing to be ashamed of. (Well, maybe the finger snaps could’ve been rethought.) Only the distorted introduction of “In The Beginning” gives a hint at the experimentation to follow in years to come; the rest of the tune is fairly straight, with phased effects on the acoustic. The pretty “Fireside Song” continues the idea of moving through a day, or the dawn of creation, or something like that, and then—uh-oh!—“The Serpent” shows up to remind us that all will be pointedly not well if we don’t “beware the future”. “Am I Very Wrong?” is an excuse for some navel-gazing, but they wisely counter the minor-key verse with a major shift in the chorus. The side ends strong with “In The Wilderness”, thanks to its infectious “music, all I hear is music” chorus; there’s even a nice coda with a musical variation that comes in over the fade.
As a hint at some of their hallmarks down the road, their manager apparently had the idea to link the tracks with repeated themes, so “The Conqueror” begins with another variation on the “Wilderness” melody on guitar. It’s snappy, if a bit too heavy on the moralizing; their protest songs would be more allegorical and dramatic going forward. “In Hiding” is unique in that the “I Am A Rock” identity statements are framed by a singalong chorus that could almost fit in any other song. The linking device makes “One Day” seem like a repeat of the previous song, but soon emerges to be a simple love song with the kind of sentiments Gabriel wouldn’t express for another twenty years. “Window” is along the same lyrical lines, but mostly we notice that the vocal melody is doubled on Anthony Phillips’ 12-string. “In Limbo” gets a little lost in itself, not really delivering on the “take me way” motif and too many meter shifts, but coming to life on the heavy half-time coda. “The Silent Sun” was their first single from the year before, and apparently what got them signed in the first place. It doesn’t really work in the context of the album, while somehow “A Place To Call My Own” is an excellent closing statement, and showcases Banks’ talent for structure.
Overall, it’s a nice album, fairly unobtrusive, and not that embarrassing. But it’s also a little ordinary. After all, they were just kids. Nobody bought it when it was first issued, and only after key stages of the band’s worldwide success (as well as that of its lead singers) did it get wider exposure, getting its first release in the US in 1974, and eventually under different titles (such as In The Beginning and And The Word Was) and in different sequences, usually involving some of the contemporary singles. Pointedly, none of these had ever been sanctioned by the band.
That changed in 2026, when they apparently got the rights back from their erstwhile manager, who’d been behind all those reissues. Gabriel, Banks, and Rutherford sanctioned a fresh remix of the album, various B-sides, and an early unreleased version of “Visions Of Angels” as the centerpiece of a deluxe edition. The new mix does balance the band better with the orchestra, bringing their personalities into better scope. This was made available in a package with the original mix on its own disc, as well as in a box that included the original mono mix on its own, 11 demos repeated from the first Genesis Archive box set plus four more on a fourth, and a Blu-ray disc containing the requisite hi-res mixes along with a fresh interview with the trio.
Genesis From Genesis To Revelation (1969)—2½
2026 Deluxe Edition: same as 1969, plus 49 extra tracks (and Blu-ray)
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