January 9, 1970. Genesis records what will go down in history as the Jackson Tapes.

A BBC producer commissions the music for Genesis for a documentary about the painter Mick Jackson.

The producer heard about Genesis in late 1969, when they were working on what will become the Trespass album in the cottage owned by Richard Macphail's parents.

Richard tells in his autobiography that the Genesis in the Christmas Cottage they spent time writing music.

The stay was far too disciplined. They got up and had breakfast
and at 10 o'clock they started to work.

Mike proposed a sequence of chords, Tony added something and
Peter had a rhythm with which he often started a composition. According to Macphail Ant was the musical giant, while the other crucial element was Tony's ability as a keyboard player and arranger.

It is here that the BBC producer met them and understood that they could be the kind of group he was looking for and that they could write that certain type of music.

The band puts together 4 tracks and then goes in a BBC study on January 9, 1970 to register them.

The mono tape contains 15 minutes of music. A copy of the master and some handwritten notes describing the program have been put together to be approved by an editor.

This copy, with the notes, came to light in late 2001 and was initially offered for auction. It is not known where the official registration of the Session.

The recording is almost contemporary with that of BBC Nightride Sessions.

The four recorded tracks were titled Provocation, Frustration, Manipulation e resignation even if they're not the ones the band gave them.

These tracks contain ideas that would be taken up later (in particular):

- Provocation includes a theme that we find in Fountain of Salmacis by Nursery Cryme e  in Looking For Someone by Trespass.

- Frustration is an early version of Anyway from The Lamb, but with totally different texts.

- Handling is a version of F Sharp which is an early version of The Musical Box although Tony Banks adds an organ part to Ant & Mike's 12-string guitars here.

- resignation includes parts of a track from that period called Peace that Genesis have never used elsewhere.

The project is not successful, the TV program was never made: the TV documentary is lost, while the audio tapes they recorded were for 15 years before returning to the hands of the Genesis themselves. 

Direct result of this Session was that Paul Samwell-Smith asked Peter Gabriel to play the flute in the piece Katmandu that he was producing for Cat Stevens.

Here is a special episode of Horizons Radio (in Italian)

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright Horizons Radio MAIL: CLICK HERE