649 Copies

Genesis's 1969 debut, From Genesis to Revelation, sold 649 copies. Today it comes back as a four-CD, Blu-ray and Atmos box with a 68-page book.

Today Genesis put out a box set of their first album: four CDs and a Blu-ray with Dolby Atmos and 5.1 mixes, a disc of 1967-68 demos, and a 68-page book. The album it celebrates sold 649 copies.

The five boys who made it were between 15 and 17 when they signed, Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford among them, with a drummer who was swapped out partway through. The producer picked their name, hoping it would mark the beginning of a new sound. The music went down in three days in August 1968, Decca put it out on March 28, 1969, and the title was From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible from the first book to the last.

There is a legend that record shops filed it under religious music because of the title. Rutherford, who was there, has been fairly direct about it: “Legend has it that it ended up being shelved in the religious music section of record shops as a result, but the fact is we only sold 600 copies.” Nobody mis-shelved it. There weren’t enough of them to mis-shelve.

The producer kept the rights. Once the band got famous, the album kept coming back under other names: In the Beginning, Rock Roots, And the Word Was…. This time, per Peter Gabriel’s site, Gabriel, Banks and Rutherford went back to AIR Studios in London to approve Stephen W. Tayler’s new mix, and the footage is on the Blu-ray. The book carries a new essay, with contributions from Gabriel, Banks, Rutherford and Anthony Phillips, the original guitarist.

Sixty-eight pages of book for an album that sold 649 copies. That is one page for every nine and a half.