genesis-1973

Genesis might tour North America this fall; watch restored footage of 1973 Bataclan show

The current lineup of Genesis — including the nucleus of the ’80s/’90s version with Phil Collins, Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford — had planned on spending most of 2020 on The Last Domino? tour before the pandemic hit. It was to have been their first tour since 2007. Only UK and Ireland dates had been announced previously, and those were postponed to fall 2021.

However, Stereogum notes that Mike Rutherford was recently on the Rockonteurs with hosts Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet) and Guy Pratt, where he said those UK/Ireland dates might not happen (“I can’t see it at the moment”) — but North American shows might. “American shows might be in November [on the East Coast],” Rutherford said. “They are confident, they want to do it.” We shall see, stay tuned. You can listen to the podcast below and dates as they stand are here.

Meanwhile, newly restored video of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis playing Paris’ Le Bataclan on January 10, 1973 was recently uploaded to YouTube, Rolling Stone points out. While versions of this footage have circulated around the band’s fan community for years, this 4K video, shared by the Genesis Museum, is the highest quality that has been available to stream.

Unfortunately it’s only part of the concert. There are four songs here — “The Musical Box,” “Supper’s Ready,” “Return of the Giant Hogweed” and “The Knife” — and only “The Musical Box” is a full song. Says the Genesis Museum of the restoration process:

The first step was to work on the sound, as the sound was missing for the first part of The Musical Box. The sound still exists but, well…this is another even longer story. Unfortunately, there were not many great recordings that were close enough in time to match the video performance. The best match turned out to be from the official Live LP, although I had to jump through many hoops to not only match the video from a month earlier, but also to match the rest of the audio in “tone”. I then inserted a “patch” of audio to erase the overdub from the narrator. This also had to be EQed to match as reasonably close as possible. In the end I used more than one source as the camera is behind the keyboards during this portion, and they needed to be higher in the mix than found in most soundboard Musical Box recordings.

Despite being incomplete, this is amazing footage from the days when they were very theatrical. Gabriel sports ghostly face paint and, at one point, a fox mask and a red dress (this was the Foxtrot tour). The cameras are on stage, making for a very intimate document. You can read more about the process of the restoration here and watch the 33 minute video, that includes some hard-to-hear backstage interviews, below.

Genesis Live Bataclan France 16mm January 10, 1973 (4K) tracklist:
00:00​ The Musical Box
10:03​ Supper’s Ready
21:22​ Return Of The Giant Hogweed
26:48​ The Knife
33:21​ Interviews