| The Early Gigs | Nursery Cryme | Foxtrot | Selling England by the Pound | The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway | A Trick of the Tail | Wind and Wuthering | ...And Then There Were Three... | Duke | Abacab | Three Sides Live | Six of the Best | Genesis (Mama) | Invisible Touch | Atlantic/Knebworth ('88/'90) | We Can't Dance | Cowdray Ruins, '93 | Calling All Stations | MMF Dinner ('00) | Turn It on Again: The Tour | The Last Domino? | An aside: Set Opening Numbers What did they play, and when did they play it? Below, to the best of my knowledge, are the answers to those questions. This list was obviously quite an undertaking, as Genesis has been touring off and on for 30 years (!), but I had a lot of help since Scott McMahan, Alan Hewitt, and Simon Funnell have already provided this information in some form or another in their respective pdf, book and web site. However, since their lists do not exactly coincide, and since Alan's was not really meant as an exact representation of the set list but was often more an amalgam of various sets played over the period of a year or so (Simon's lists are also just an idea of what was played on a tour), I felt that it wouldn't hurt to put together their information and cross-reference it for accuracy with the a-z website, other fan sites, the official site's Archive pages, and my own collection of live recordings. I've also had help from some sections of one of Armando Gallo's books and some pages from one or two Record Collector articles (many thanks to José Carlos Maltez for providing me with those). It is mostly impossible to get an accurate, single set list for each tour, since the sets changed often and sometimes drastically. Live recording track lists are obviously the main source of information, but they have to be checked carefully. Sometimes recordings are labeled with the wrong date, songs from different dates are combined, and the ordering is altered (mostly in order to fit recordings into the time constraints of LP records, but shorter radio broadcasts were often reordered after the fact). I have tried to avoid using inaccurate information. I have also noted specific dates when rare songs or one-off performances happened. This is not broken up by year, but by album tour; in the beginnings of the band's touring, this is harder to delineate, as they often just started playing new songs as soon as they had written them (or had them partially written), and did not wait until the next album was released. For the first few tours the way I delineated the duration was by ending the previous tour when the recording for the next album began. Thus, the FGTR tour I ended at June of 1970, because this was when Trespass was recorded. The same goes for the ending date for Trespass, as Nursery Cryme was recorded after this gig. This list does not include equipment lists and is not meant to be a gig guide--I do not have the resources to research gig dates and others have already provided accurate and detailed lists for these things. Genesis has also done quite a few television appearances over the years, as well as sort of studio/live recordings for radio shows (like the BBC sessions of 1970-72); none of those are presented here. I stuck with live performances in front of audiences, usually on tour. If you know of any odd live performances I have missed, please let me know. I am very open to corrections/changes, and would welcome them from anyone with solid information; please email me with any comments. Without further ado:
For the whole period that I have delineated above as the FGTR tour, the line-up for the band would have been: Ant/Pete/Tony/Mike and John Mayhew on drums. Ant and Mayhew left the band not far into the Trespass tour; John Mayhew was replaced by Phil in August 1970, and after a few months Hackett joined the band (his first gig being 14/1/71). From January of '71 on the line-up would have been the classic Gabriel-era five piece: Pete/Tony/Mike/Phil/Steve. Information on the early, formative years of the band is, as I have said before, scanty, so set lists are very hard to obtain. With evidence from the Record Collector magazine, I was able to put down some very early set lists which I hope are accurate. But you could never lay down a "typical" set list, because it was constantly changing as the band wrote new material (and in their early period they seem to have written a lot of songs). Mike Rutherford has stated that so much new material was being inserted into the set from gig to gig that the set list was almost totally changed every day. All of my sources had slightly differing opinions about what was played in the early days, and rather than prefer one source over another, I have provided varying lists. This section is probably among the longest on this page for that reason. The most solid set lists probably come from Gallo's book and the Record Collector article. In the (very) Beginning: THE FIRST GIG One certainty (or as close to a certainty as they come) is the date for "The First Gig," 23/9/69, which was played at Balmes' (or Balms's) Dance--actually a Sunday School teacher's home in Chobham. (Pete's mother: "These local friends had a dance for their children, and they hired Genesis for £25.") I have been given a quote from Gallo's book which says the band studiously worked out four sets for this gig, and stuck to them rigidly, which may account for the innumerable songs they seem to have played at that gig (see below). Set one: (Crossroads (C)) All tracks marked (C) are covers, not original Genesis tunes. The last song, "Crossroads," is only mentioned by the a-z site, and the a-z site does not mention "Grandma," "Movement," or "Family." Otherwise, the list of songs that the a-z site marks as having been played at "early gigs including first gig" exactly jibes with this list, which is taken from a photograph printed in an Armando Gallo book. I'm taking this list from the right side of the paper, which is headed "Order" and which has been broken into four groups which must be the four sets the band rehearsed. McMahan also took a list of first gig songs from Gallo, but his is much shorter and only includes a dozen of these songs. These are songs on the left side of Gallo's paper that are not mentioned on the right; it's possible they were considered for the first gig but not actually played: Eastern Magic Boogie The First "Official" Gig The following set list for this show was provided by I believe Record Collector magazine, with recollections from Tony Banks. The order is probably not accurate and it's possible that the set is not complete, but this is an interesting look into a landmark gig: In the Wilderness Note the appearance of both "Looking For Someone" and "Twilight Alehouse." Generalized Sets for The Early Days First, from the horse's mouth; in interviews, Anthony Phillips agrees on the following songs being played live: "Pacidy," "Little Leaf," "Going Out to Get You," "Let Us Now Make Love," "The Shepherd," "In the Beginning," "White Mountain," and "The Knife." Ant also says that "later" the song "Looking For Someone" was played live, and he also mentions "Dusk" (or "Family," as it was known at that time). Here is what Hewitt says was probably played in the early days: In the Beginning What McMahan calls the "second set" of 1969 pretty closely resembles this, except it also includes "Silver Song," "The Movement" and "One Day." The a-z site states confidently that "Silver Song" was never played live, even though it was considered for the first gig (as mentioned above). "The Movement" is probably actually a song called "Movement," as mentioned in the first gig set. "The Movement" is an incredibly long Genesis instrumental, which could not feasibly have been played live. "Movement" is a Genesis song which is probably shorter and more pop-oriented. The a-z site agrees with "One Day" as being an early live number (see above, from info on first gig). Other songs that the a-z site says were possibly played live at early gigs are: -Classic The official site adds these two songs to the bewildering list of early live numbers, in their Genesis Music FAQ: Winter Flies By Armando Gallo in his book provides a look into a slightly more structured set from around March 1970. At this time in the band's history, they were playing regularly at the Upstairs at Ronnie's club and had developed a sound that built from quiet, acoustic songs up to loud, pounding rock. Their line-up would still have included Ant and would have featured John Mayhew on drums. (4 or 5 acoustic songs, then) Another very short set list provided by McMahan which purports to be from 1970 consists of: White Mountain Hewitt's vision of the 1970 set list is like this: Stagnation Hewitt never mentions "Dusk," "Looking For Someone," or "White Mountain," (he does mention "White Mountain," but not until 1971, but I believe by that time it had been dropped) although it is probable that these songs were played at some time during the early days. More Solid Sets, 1970-1971 Eel Pie Island Hotel, London, 10 April 1970 Another early gig mentioned in Record Collector was this one at the Eel Pie Island Hotel in London (according to the dates I set up, this puts it kind of late in the FGTR period). Here is the set provided: Grandma Here we see that all the covers are gone from their set, and the whole album of Trespass is already present. Many of these songs are available on official releases. "I've Been Travelling All Night Long" makes a rare occurrence in a set list; it has been described as an early, instrumental-only version of "Can-Utility and the Coastliners," which will make some other appearances in various forms and under various titles in succeeding tours. Now, later in the Trespass tour, after Ant had left the band and had been replaced by Steve Hackett, I have some interesting information about songs that were played. By this time in the band's evolution the set had become more standardized and evolved more slowly. January 1971 Moss This information comes from articles that used to be on the official site. The presence of "Moss" is interesting, since I haven't seen it mentioned much of anywhere else as being a regular live number. In fact, the a-z site isn't even sure it was ever played (although below you will see corroboration for this song)! A couple more months into 1971 and Genesis' set list looked much like this: March 1971 Happy the Man This set comes from the very first audience-recorded bootleg of the band, from their first overseas gig in Belgium. Interesting to note that only three of these songs actually appeared on album releases of the time; and even "The Musical Box" had not been recorded yet! Both this song and "Happy the Man" were in earlier, different versions at this point. Record Collector has provided me with one more vintage set list, this one coming from the following classic gig: Aylesbury Friars Club, 19 June 1971 Happy the Man This was in fact the famous show at which Pete broke his ankle. Note a second occurrence of the rare "Moss." Note also the appearance of "Salmacis" and "Hogweed," two more which would become regulars during the next tour. In fact, minus the two odd songs, "Moss" and "The Light," this is exactly the set of the early NC tour. In these early days of the band the set slowly evolved from tour to tour instead of sharply changing at the release of a new album. | |||
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Once again I had to make an educated guess with the span of dates for this tour. I had it begin right after the album was recorded, and end (as Simon Funnell does) a few days after the recording/mixing of Foxtrot. By the beginning of this tour Genesis had already settled on its classic line-up of Tony/Phil/Pete/Steve/Mike. This set, as were many of the early days, was slowly evolving as time went on and did not stay totally consistent. The band added new songs as they were being written, or played a few only a couple of times. Generally their earlier set consisted of the following songs: Happy the Man (or Harlequin) This is in fact very similar to the last set of the Trespass tour. "Harlequin" was a sometime replacement for "Happy the Man," and while "The Knife" was generally the encore, it may not have always been played. It's also possible that in the very early days of this tour they were still playing "The Light." However, having written a new album the band wanted to focus on new material and a lot of their older songs were dropped. Some other songs that were sometimes played: Bye Bye Johnny (AKA Rock My Baby) "Going Out to Get You" and "Bye Bye Johnny" were both played during their Italian tour in April of 1972. "Bye Bye Johnny" (which also went by the name of "Rock My Baby") was placed in the set between "Twilight Alehouse" and "The Musical Box." This song was an early, prototype version of "Can-Utility and the Coastliners;" it had more music with lyrics in different places. This one is only present in this form on two recorded occasions. It appears that when this song was played, "Stagnation" was omitted from the set. "Going Out to Get You" was an encore (it was probably already being referred to as an "old number" at this point, having been around in some form or other since 1969) which was always played after "The Knife" on the recordings in which it appears. The drum solo was played when the electricity was down or there were other technical problems, to fill up the time needed to resolve them (Peter often told a humorous story about Phil's drum training to go along with it). "Seven Stones" may have only been played once, near the very end of the tour on 22 August in Genoa (it replaced "Get 'em Out by Friday" in the right hand set, below). I'm not sure how their set looked in May or most of June of that year, as no bootlegs seem to exist from that period; but by 28 June, they had written quite a few numbers that would end up on Foxtrot, and their set structure had changed to something more like the following (left):
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These are two different sets, one from the end of June and one from the end of August of 1972. They clearly show how the newer songs replaced the Trespass-era leftovers; "Can-Utility" knocks out "Stagnation," while "Happy the Man" is moved further down the list and finally dropped in favor of "Get 'em Out by Friday." Genesis also played the Reading Festival on 11 August, for which they played a shorter and radically rearranged set (The Knife/Twilight Alehouse/Watcher of the Skies/The Musical Box/The Return of the Giant Hogweed). I'm much more certain about at least the ending date for this tour, as the SEBTP tour started a month afterwards and with a significantly altered set list. This tour was another one that had some evolving in it, though not as much as the previous tours. It marks the first time Peter ever dressed up in a costume, 28 September 1972 at the Dublin National Stadium. It was his wife's red dress combined with a fox head mask--he was imitating the Paul Whitehead album cover, and not the other way around. Watcher of the Skies Some early shows (from 3 to 29 October '72) were probably very short, featuring only: Watcher/Friday/Box/Hogweed. This was because Genesis basically started this tour with other Charisma label bands and had to play a shortened set. "Twilight Alehouse" was played a few times--it only occurs twice in live, before-an-audience bootlegs from this tour: once on 29 October '72 and once on 15 January '73 (in both instances it actually replaces "Can-Utility" in the above set). "Can-Utility" is also a very rare number, appearing only twice in bootlegs of this tour, both in late September. The handy "One-Handed" drum solo was also still played periodically when things went wrong (in one case the band were actually forced to open their set with it!). There is one odd set I'd like to describe from early in this tour. A recorded gig from the Kennington Oval on 30/9/72 seems to have a set in the following order: Knife/Salmacis/Friday/Watcher/Box/Hogweed. I had previously thought this ordering was incorrect and had been scrambled before being put on a bootleg, but recent evidence has made me change my mind. Like the Reading Festival of this same year, this is a very rare ordering which saw a nearly unique opener of "Knife" and one of the only times before the Lamb tour that "Watcher" was not the set opener. A possible explanation for the altered set is that, according to the official site, this was the Melody Maker Poll Awards Concert, and Genesis were supporting other winners in the poll like Emerson, Lake & Palmer and Wishbone Ash. Genesis were apparently voted "Brightest Hope, number 6." Beginning on 10 November of '72 at Brunel University in Uxbridge, "Supper's Ready" entered the set (the first recorded version took place on 18 November at Imperial College). It was not played earlier in the tour because (as mentioned before) Genesis were touring with other Charisma bands like Lindisfarne and had to keep their set down to something like 50 minutes. "Supper" may have also been held back because it was simply a long piece and a chore to play. This may explain why recorded evidence of the gig of 15 January 1973 in Heidelberg shows that "Supper" was omitted from that set. Every other available audience recording of a Foxtrot show after October '72 has "Supper" in the set. "Fountain of Salmacis" made some very rare appearances early in the tour (notably the Kennington Oval gig--and according to an article reviewing it, the big premiere gig in the US at the Philharmonic Hall in New York on 13 December '72), then returned for a couple shows in Italy in late January 1973. By this time, the set looked like this: Watcher of the Skies "The Knife" was probably not always played. It's possible that sometimes "Hogweed" was played before "Supper," leaving "Supper" as the last number (but on the bootlegs in which this occurs, I believe it quite possible that the order has been shifted, probably in order to place "Supper" on one side of a record). I have also seen written that the following songs were played on this tour, but I haven't seen them listed in boot track lists or in Hewitt's gigography, so I don't really think they were: Happy the Man, Harold the Barrel, Seven Stones (highly doubt this one). The presence of these songs in some people's set lists from this tour may merely be due to confusion over what dates the tour actually encompassed; "Seven Stones" "Happy the Man" and "Harold" were played in 1972, but before this tour began. "Harold the Barrel" was probably not played on this tour; I have a bootleg where the crowd is shouting for "Harold," but Phil makes some kind of comment that leads me to believe the band considered the song dropped from their set at that time (the date for this is 9/2/73, during this tour). It is still always possible that these songs actually were played very rarely on this tour, though, so I mentioned them.
Though it proved a very difficult writing and recording session, Selling England by the Pound was a classic Genesis album. Hackett at least was very fond of the finished product and subsequent tour, and many of the numbers became live classics that were played for years and years afterwards, surviving two changes in lead vocalist. This tour marked a new level of popularity in the band, so that their tours are much easier to date and their set list became much more standardized. Of course, it's still not standard enough for me to write just one list of songs: Watcher of the Skies This is the set on the recording of what was most likely the first gig. Less than a month later the set had settled down into a more standard ordering, as follows: Watcher of the Skies This was pretty consistently played through most of 1973, and with some variations it was followed for the rest of the tour. "Epping Forest" may not have been played every night, as it is missing from several otherwise complete recordings from this tour (I've heard it said the Peter had difficulty singing this one, so I think it was among the first to go when, for instance, the band had multiple engagements at the same venue and wanted to shorten the set). For a couple of sets in November of '73 and for a few of the famous Roxy gigs in December, "Horizons" was played. It also crept into the set from time to time in 1974, but it does not occur on many recordings. The first recorded time it was played it was the direct prelude to "Supper;" it was played in that position a few other times but was usually either before "More Fool Me" or replaced that song in the set. "More Fool Me" was very regularly played for most of the tour, but it was periodically omitted (this happened more often in April and May of 1974). Usually this seems to have been on multiple dates at the same venue, where to vary the set the band swapped out MFM for "Horizons." "Harold the Barrel" was a very rare number on this tour, only played during the European leg of the tour during late January-early February 1974. Most of the time it was positioned as listed above, but on one recorded occasion it was played after "More Fool Me," and once it appears to have been an encore. "The Knife" still appeared as an encore from time to time, but rarely. In recorded form, it was played early in the tour in Glasgow, at the more famous Felt Forum show on Thanksgiving 1973, and for the Italian gigs of early February 1974. This is an important point to note, because some people seem to have the impression that "Knife" was a regular encore for the set--in fact, the truth of it is that at this point in their career, the band felt that "Supper" was a strong enough closing number that any further encore would be somewhat pointless and anti-climactic. I have also heard unsubstantiated rumours that "Hogweed" was played a few times at the beginning of this tour; it's entirely possible, but no recorded evidence of it seems to exist. Finally from time to time the "One Handed Drum Solo" was still used when there were technical problems, although not as often as in the past.
The last date for this tour, being the last real show Peter Gabriel played as a member of Genesis, is a little questionable. The last number of this tour and a bank of earlier shows (29/10-12/11) were cancelled, the former due to lack of interest and the latter due to a hand injury Steve Hackett received by crushing a glass in his own hand. This was a very stressful time for the band and a very painful and technically cursed tour. But I have a soft spot for it, as it was in support of my favorite Genesis album, and as the set list is by far the easiest to document. They just played the whole album. The only thing that varied (besides the stories and the sections in certain songs which were more improvisational in nature, such as the flute solo in "Cocoon" or the introduction to "Slippermen," or of course the entire song "The Waiting Room") was the encore number, as you will see below:
Encores: The Musical Box, Watcher of the Skies, The Knife The encore was almost always at least The Musical Box. It's most likely that Box was always played as first encore and that sometimes (perhaps quite often) Watcher was added on as a second encore. The Knife was the rarest encore (McMahan does not even mention it, but Hewitt does, and it does exist on at least three bootlegs from this tour), and when it did appear it was always as a second encore, after Box. The encore was also possibly just Watcher of the Skies on a few occasions. Many of the boots from this tour are incomplete, but as far as I know the whole album was always played. Early in the tour Peter would begin the show with an introductory story, but as the tour progressed this seems to have been dropped and the show started with the title song--Peter's first story did not come until after "Grand Parade." There was also at least one occasion on this tour (late in May '75 in France) when the old Drum Solo from Phil was played to fill up a technical glitch. This hardly counts as part of the set, but there it is.
With Phil Collins taking the helm, Genesis began their twenty year "experiment" and took their first non-Peter show on the road. Perhaps as a result of the perceived tentative nature of Phil's position as front man, song intro duties were shared by the core group members, who all took a turn at the microphone (except Tony Banks, who remained hunched over his keyboards, bobbing his head like one of those little plastic birds that dip up and down, up and down). Someone had to play drums while Phil was up there wiggling his bum, so Genesis employed Yes and King Crimson member Bill Bruford (the Prog Rock Keystone, I call him), who drummed, clashed, rang, tingled, and generally overdid it in the percussion department. This was quite a shift in the live sound and perhaps it was all these changes which resulted in the most stable and consistent set list up to that point (excepting the Lamb tour's set, but I think even that one changed more than this one), as seen here: Dance on a Volcano Another result of the tentativeness of Phil's front man position was a leariness of playing "Supper's Ready" without Peter. The first couple nights of the tour (in late March of 1976) were played without that song in the set. After that, however, the song was put in and the set remained consistent for the rest of the tour. The "Lamb Stew" bit, one of the first if not the very first medleys of the Genesis live machine, was a brief whiff of the previous tour and could also be known as "Lamb Casserole" or "Lamb Cutlet," depending on what Phil felt like calling it that night. There is confusion as to which song is actually played after "The Lamb;" on some boots it's labeled as "Fly on a Windshield," on others "Broadway Melody." I maintain that the stew always consisted of both ingredients: "Windshield" and "Melody." No one else seems to label it this way (and indeed, even Phil describes the medley as only consisting of three parts, not four), but I'm certain that I'm correct. Like I said above, as far as I know this set is exactly the one they played every night. The only thing that might have differed was the encore number, "It/Watcher of the Skies," which may not have been played at every venue (however, when it was played, "It" was always an abridged version with lots of the lyrics taken out). There are also vague rumors that "Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging" was played once on this tour, though I highly doubt that such a thing could have happened without there being some kind of recording or solid evidence to prove it. Also the very rigidness of their set this tour seems to preclude the possibility of this sort of one-off performance. Also also, I have it on good authority that the rumors are indeed false--the song was never played. This tour marks the only time Phil sang "White Mountain," and the only time "Dance on a Volcano" or "Los Endos" were performed in their entirety (on other tours "Volcano" faded into the drum duet before reaching the final instrumental section--except on the 3SL tour, when it was played as a stand alone, but still without the ending section; "Endos" after this tour lost its opening section). Also the only tour featuring the powerful "It/Watcher of the Skies" medley, and the only tour with Bruford on drums.
Genesis again tried this for the following tour in '77, starting on their first night of the tour with "Eleventh Earl of Mar," the first track from their new album (Wind and Wuthering). However something must not have worked with this, as for the rest of the tour the opening track was "Squonk," a track from the first side of their last album (not a first track). From this point on, every tour that Genesis played featured an opening number from the previous tour's album. I would guess the philosophy that dictated this choice was the idea that it was better to play new songs later in the set and to make the audience comfortable by starting with numbers they were more likely to know. Thus: the '78 tour opened with "Mar," a track from the last year's album (presumably the band had decided the previous year that it was folly to open the set with this song, not because it was a song that did not work live or was not well-suited to open the set, but because the audience might not recognize it if they had not bought the new album). The next tour of 1980 in support of Duke opened with "Deep in the Motherlode" from the '78 album (excluding the few shows from near the beginning of the tour which opened with "Back in NYC"). Abacab's tour opened with "Behind the Lines," from Duke. The Three Sides Live tour of 1982 was an odd tour in that it was not in support of a studio album, and its opening track does not fit in with the pattern (they started the set, as they had done in '76, with "Volcano"). However the Mama tour started with "Dodo/Lurker" from the last album, and the IT tour set started with the psuedo-title track from the previous album ("Mama"). The WCD set always kicked off with "Land of Confusion" from IT, and even the CAS tour of '97-'98 featured an opening track from the previous album: "No Son of Mine." It's interesting that the set-opener, while very consistently being a song from the previous studio album for the over 20-year period from early '77 to '98, was not always the first track from that album ("Dodo/Lurker," "Deep in the Motherlode," "Squonk," "Land of Confusion"). Sets from summer '72-'76, '78, '81-'82, '86-'87 and '97-'98, however, all started with songs that appeared as track 1 on the corresponding studio album. Clearly the idea being that if it was good enough to start the album it was good enough to start the set.
For their second tour with Phil Collins on lead vocals, the band kept the same core line-up but replaced Bill Bruford with Chester Thompson. This would prove to be Steve Hackett's last tour with the band. The song introductions were still handled by multiple band members, but the set list was not as rigid as that of the previous year. The very first gig of the tour, played on New Year's Day at London's Rainbow Theatre, featured a unique order of numbers that would not be duplicated at other shows (it is mostly from this set, I believe, that Hewitt takes his list for this tour--this gives a very misleading picture of the standard set list, because as you will see, by the middle of the tour the ordering had drastically changed and a few songs had been totally dropped): Eleventh Earl of Mar This is most likely the correct order, though I had to take the listing from an incomplete bootleg for this. It's possible that the "Lamb/Musical Box" medley was not played this first night, but it certainly became a regular part of the tour afterwards, and my guess is that it was there (though the bootleg of that performance dies out before reaching the end). "Lilywhite Lilith" and its medley companions were never played again, and "All in a Mouse's Night" and "Your Own Special Way" would not always be a part of the set. The 3/1/77 show, which is available in soundboard form, already displays some heavy rearranging of the set, as shown below: Eleventh Earl Of Mar Note the mysterious disappearance of the Quiet Earth/Afterglow medley! Other sets in January looked more like this: Squonk "Mar" has been pushed far down and "Squonk" is the new opening number. Strangely, I have heard multiple eyewitness accounts that put "Mar" as the opening number later in the tour, but no bootleg after that of the very first gig of the tour bears this out--all of them (barring a few which are blatantly out of order or which are missing the first few numbers) begin with "Squonk." According to an eyewitness account the 26 February show at Onondaga County War Memorial in Syracuse, New York had "Mar" as the first number--but bootleg evidence contradicts this. Mysterious. After a few shows in January with the set as listed above, "Firth of Fifth" was moved up to right after "Your Own Special Way." Then "Carpet Crawlers" seems to have moved up with "Firth of Fifth." This pushed "I Know What I Like" to a position later in the set. Once the initial January tour of the UK ended, "All in a Mouse's Night" was dropped--it did not return. Many sources claim that "Unquiet Slumber for the Sleepers..." the first part of the instrumental whose main section was "...In That Quiet Earth," was played during the North American leg of the tour in mid-February. But I have found various evidence including that of my own ears and that of Simon Funnell that this song was never played live by the band. I dare anyone to prove me wrong (and if you can, please send me a copy of the song as proof ; ). Interesting to note that the idea that "Unquiet Slumbers" was played live was probably a result of people being misled by Phil himself, who sometimes described the "ITQE/Afterglow" medley as consisting of three pieces of music--which it did not! By the beginning of the North American tour in February the adjusted set list looked like the following list, on the left side:
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This lefthand set was the most consistenly played set of the tour, and was carried on until 10 May of 1977, when for Genesis' inaugural visit to Brazil (and to coincide with the release of their Spot the Pigeon EP) they introduced "Inside and Out" into the set. This was a rare appearance of a b-side in a live performance. This song replaced "Your Own Special Way" in the set and was probably played until the end of the tour. For their shows in Paris on 11-14/6/77, I believe "'...in that quiet earth.'" was removed altogether from the set and "Afterglow" was played on its own; this is the version of "Afterglow" heard on the Seconds Out album. On 17 and 19 June the band played special open-air concerts in Cologne and Offenbach Germany; the Offenbach show was performed along with Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Gentle Giant, and Lake. Due to the long bill it is likely the band intentionally shortened their set and played only the following numbers: Squonk/One For the Vine/Firth of Fifth/The Carpet Crawlers/'...in that quiet earth.'/Afterglow/I Know What I Like/Supper's Ready/Dance on a Volcano/Drum Duet/Los Endos/The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/The Musical Box (closing section). For their appearances at Earl's Court from 23 to 25 June 1977, "The Knife" was added as an additional encore. This is a rare occurrence of this song during the Phil era. So the righthand list, above, is pretty much the set they played from May until the end of the tour. As a last note: I once was under the impression that at this late date the band was still occasionally making use of an altered version of the "One-Handed Drum Solo," because I had seen a '77 show (from March 3, in Quebec) which had a track early in the set called "Drum Solo." However as it turns out this track was just part of the intro story for "Your Own Special Way," in which Michael Rutherford informed the audience of how sailors had to do a special courting dance to win the attentions of one "Myrtle (or Mertle?) the Mermaid." Of course, this intro was merely an excuse for Phil to show off his early drama school dancing lessons, and it was Chester Thompson who provided a snappy drum background to Phil's tap dancing--it was not a solo to cover technical problems, just a sort of goofy filler (although during the '78 tour this dance or one very like it was in fact made use of as a cover-up for technical problems). As such, I have not included it above in my set discussion, and I am now fairly convinced that the drum solo as a device to cover technical problems had been given up when Phil became the frontman, as he was less in a position to jump on the drums. If there ever actually was a drum solo performed, I believe it was always done by Chester as a mere accompaniment to Phil's dancing. As an additional note: I have taken a perusal of the interesting section of Simon Funnell's fantastic web site labeled "Interesting Incidents." In there you will find various unique happenings at Genesis concerts. It happens to detail many times when technical glitches resulted in odd set changes. According to this page Phil still (albeit very rarely) used the drum solo to fill pauses in the '78 tour. However in one or two cases my own collection of bootlegs has enabled me to listen for these occasions and in my opinion the claims are incorrect--what fans describe on that page as drum solos by Phil during the '78 tour are almost all drum solos by Chester played while Phil is busy dancing. If you listen to the December Tokyo gig and the April Kalamazoo gig you will hear Phil declaring his intention to dance, not play the drums. I've now spent way too much time discussing this question; let's move on!
With Steve Hackett out of the band, Genesis was down to a trio in the studio (a fact of which they were acutely aware, as evinced by their album title), but maintained a five-piece line-up on stage for their first tour without him. His position was filled by Daryl Stuermer, and Chester Thompson returned on the drums. This line-up was one they would keep until the end of the WCD tour. By this time, Phil's position as front man was pretty set, and having lost Steve they gave up the idea of sharing song intros. The first date, above, was taken from the official site's archive page. It's worth noting here, since an earlier rehearsal recording is available from this tour, that I do not include rehearsals as actual tour dates, but start with the first show played in front of an audience. This tour marked Genesis' first visit to Japan, which is where they were for the last few gigs. There were a lot of small, minor set changes over the approximately eight months of this fairly huge world tour. From the beginning of the tour well into August, the set was as follows: Eleventh Earl of Mar Because they are very short passages, most bootleggers do not mention either the "Riding the Scree" riff or the "In That Quiet Earth" bit from the "Cinema" medley, but I am fairly sure that both were present for every performance of the song. On 31 July of this year "Afterglow" was played without the preceding medley (it was probably related to a technical difficulty involving the keyboards which kept the band from playing for a while before that song). "Down and Out" was played at the beginning of the tour and for a large majority of the shows into June. At the very beginning of June "Ballad of Big" was played in its place for a few gigs, which happened from time to time in later shows into September. For one night (14/6/78) in Germany, the ending sections of "Supper's Ready" were played as an encore (as shown in the above list). Genesis toured all over the world but only played one gig in their home country: they headlined the Knebworth Festival on 24 June 1978. For that gig they played a shortened set which probably omitted "Down and Out" and "Say It's Alright Joe" from the above list. On the 29 July show in Madison Square Garden, Peter Gabriel had a brief reunion with the band and sang the encore number, "I Know What I Like." On 28 August in Vienna, that usual encore was replaced by the encore from the previous year's tour, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/The Musical Box (closing section)." This may have happened on other rare occasions in the tour. By October for their third leg in North America, the band had dropped "Down and Out/Ballad of Big" and "The Fountain of Salmacis" from their set. "Down and Out" was not played after mid-July it seems (there is only one recorded instance of it in July), but "Ballad of Big" was still being played periodically as late as 6 September. On 13 October Genesis played the Uptown Theatre; this show was broadcast over the radio and has been bootlegged numerous times, resulting in what many consider the ultimate recording from this tour. The set they played that night was unique: Eleventh Earl of Mar Aside from the odd "Moonlit Knight/Musical Box" medley, which was probably only played that night (it has been suggested that the medley was played much earlier on 6 April in Chicago, but this is highly unlikely given Phil's introduction of the song during the Uptown Theater gig, in which he suggests it's the first time they've played "Moonlit Knight" since the SEBTP tour), this is probably the set they were playing from October to the end of the tour (including their short inaugural tour of Japan). There are also supposedly rumours that "Undertow" was played a few times on this tour, but I have seen no evidence to support these rumours. The a-z site also claims that a stand alone version of "The Musical Box" may have been played, but again, I have seen no evidence. Finally it seems to be known that the old drum solo was dusted off from time to time when things went wrong--though IMO played by Chester, not Phil (see my comments at the end of the previous tour for even more boring info on this). Near the very end of the tour when Genesis were playing their first gigs in Japan, a synthesizer failure forced Phil to dance for the audience while Chester played a snappy solo; I imagine this was very similar to his mermaid courting dance of the '77 tour. He employed this dance at other gigs where the synths failed--notably 4 April '78 in Kalamazoo. In 1979 the band had taken an entire year off from touring for the first time since forming; Phil, Mike and Tony took the opportunity to do their own solo albums. Finally coming back with a new album for 1980, the band fulfilled their promise of two years before and kicked the tour off with a series of gigs at smaller venues in the UK. UK fans, having been unable to see the band all of the previous year and at only the Knebworth gig in all of 1978, were ecstatic and packed the small clubs, making for some energetic and positive (and very rowdy) performances. By the time this album was released, Genesis had amassed quite a lot of songs and their set was impressively long as a result. The actual amount of material from the new album was rather small, and was played altogether in something I like to call "The Duke Suite" (all except for "Misunderstanding," that is). The Duke part of the concert was prefaced by "The Story of Albert," a humorous little intro. The band intros were often done after "Ripples," and usually involved a humorous bit about their bisexual drum machine (whose name was often changed from night to night). There was also a story before "Ripples" about the band's smoke machine, which the roadies were allowed to play with if nothing was going wrong during the gig and they were bored (this sequence often ended with a reference to the audience's use of marijuana). Both of these skits were performed throughout the tour almost from its very beginning. Their set went through a few shifts in numbers and orderings, though it mostly stayed the same. It started out like this: Back in NYC However, almost immediately the set was fooled with. For 19-22 March, "Ripples" appears to have temporarily dropped from the set, and on 20 and 22 March "The Lady Lies" was played in place of "Squonk," which was dropped. "Back in NYC" was played as the first number for the first few shows, and marked a rare performance of that number during the Phil era. On 27 March "Deep in the Motherlode" became the opening number and "Back in NYC" was pushed down after "Carpet Crawlers," replacing "Squonk"--this is the only time it would appear in this position, and after this date it seems to have dropped from the set for a long while. "The Knife" was played as an encore on 22 March (it appeared again on 29 March, 9, 18/19, 23, 28 and 30 April, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 25 May, and 6 June...and I've also heard through an eyewitness that it was played on 31 May, though no recording exists). By 28 March the set had settled down to what it remained until the UK shows were over and the North American tour had begun, in mid to late May: Deep in the Motherlode When the US leg of the tour began in late May, "Misunderstanding" entered the set. It was played directly after "Ripples." (In some performances "Misunderstanding" seems to segue smoothly into the "In the Cage" medley.) After a couple shows of this (including 25 May) they dropped "Say It's Alright Joe." Also, "Carpet Crawlers" was dropped and the "Moonlit Knight" intro segued into "Squonk" instead (starting 23 May or possibly earlier--though "Crawlers" was played in its usual place at the Roxy show on 25 May before being dropped altogether). On a few odd occasions, "Ripples" was not played either, one being 9 June (an odd gig because Daryl was not in the band that night due to illness); and another 13 June, where "Say It's Alright Joe" was played instead of "Ripples." On 16 June at the Spectrum and on 24 June in Toronto "The Musical Box (closing section)" was played as an encore instead of "The Knife," a big rarity from this tour. I have also received information from someone who was there that the 17 June show at the Spectrum in Philly had "Back in NYC" back in the set, as the encore. For the 29 June show at MSG, near the very end of the tour, "Back in NYC" was the first encore before the more regular IKWIL (this gig is available in recorded form). The set now looked like this: Deep in the Motherlode In the last weeks of the tour, "Follow You Follow Me" was dropped from the set (the last time it was played was probably 16 June--there were a few gigs before that missing the song). The "Supper's Ready in 16 seconds" bit is a comedy thing that Phil did a couple of times, notably 18 June and 25 May. By this time Genesis had amassed such a huge catalogue of songs that it was impossible (they felt) to include the full "Supper's Ready" in their set and still have enough time to do justice to all of their other music (note that the song, excepting only one gig, was also not played either in full or in part during the previous tour of 1978); still, they were aware that their audiences wanted very much to hear the song, and this skit was a humorous way to sort of fulfill that desire without taking up 25 minutes of the concert. It didn't always make the fans very happy, though... By this time Phil's solo career had taken off, and his writing became a larger force in the band's compositions. This album, recorded at the band's own new recording studio (The Farm), marked a big sound change for the band; they became more streamlined, more electronic, and their songs seemed simpler and more accessible. Musical influences ranged from R&B to reggae, a change in style that did not go down well with some of the older fans (this tour features the memorable and infamous "booing" concert). Even with this sometimes lukewarm audience reaction, a very large percentage of the shows of this tour have been recorded, giving us a very clear picture of the changing set. It started out like this: Behind the Lines The first three numbers were always played first and in that order, with BTL segueing into "Duchess" and that song fading into "Lamb." Also "Man on the Corner" basically segued into "Who Dunnit?" and "Dodo/Lurker" was followed immediately by "Abacab." "Me and Virgil" was a very rarely performed number and was probably only played at the first two dates of the tour, both in Spain. It was dropped very quickly and the set went through some jumbling in late September before it settled into this order: Behind the Lines Starting 6 October "Crawlers" entered the set--earlier sets in October were identical to the above but without "Crawlers." Every once in a long while the band did their little "Supper's Ready in X Seconds" number (6 October was one gig during which it was done). On 14 October "Crawlers" was moved to an earlier spot in the set, and the set order seems to have jumbled up a bit. After a couple of gigs, however, the set settled into this order: Behind the Lines The set maintained this structure from around mid-October to the end of the tour, so basically after a few changes in the beginning this tour's set remained consistent. "Like It or Not" was only played a very few times, notably 26 and 30 November, and 2 and 4 December (according to the bootlegs for these four shows; the November shows have it in the set order as I have placed it above, but 2/12 has it directly after "Crawlers" and 4/12 has it being played right after "Firth of Fifth"). It seems that whenever "Like It or Not" was played, "Me and Sarah Jane" was not. For the very last show on 23/12 in Birmingham, "The Knife" was played before "I Know What I Like." As far as I know, this is the only time the song was played on this tour, and the second to last time it was ever played by Genesis (the very last time being the reunion gig, below).
To me, the idea of touring in support of a live album which covers the tour you've just finished is ridiculous--after all, it is indirectly a tour for a tour, a concept surreal in its redundancy. Nevertheless, this is exactly what Genesis did for two months in 1982, playing a series of gigs in support of their newly released Three Sides Live album. Though Hewitt does not differentiate this tour from the Abacab tour, and McMahan groups their dates together, this was a different tour and it had an altered set list, as seen below: Dance on a Volcano As in the previous tour, the first three numbers seem to segue into one another, as do "Dodo" and "Abacab." "No Reply At All" and "Paperlate" were both performed with the Phenix Horns on 9-10 and 22-23 August. On the 22 and 23 August shows, both songs were played in a row after "Abacab" instead of the way they are shown above (the above ordering is how it was on 9 August). On the 9 August show, Bill Bruford came on for the last two numbers. I don't know much about the 10 August show as it does not seem to exist in recorded form (at least not as a bootleg). These are the only days these songs ("No Reply" and "Paperlate") were played on this tour, and the only times that "Paperlate" was ever played live. However, aside from those two songs, this set pretty much remained the same for every show. After all, the tour only lasted two months, so they didn't have much time to fiddle around. I'm fairly certain there were some few shows in which "Man on the Corner" and "Who Dunnit?" (usually played as a segued pair) were omitted from the set--this happened at the end of August for the last few shows of the North American tour, for instance. There are also some even fewer shows in which only "Who Dunnit?" was dropped and "Man on the Corner" was played by itself. Also there appears to have been at least one show (27 September '82 at the Marquee Club, available as a very very good quality audience show) in which "Who Dunnit?" was not played and the order of "Misunderstanding" and "Man on the Corner" was reversed. There were some few occasions on which the band dropped the second encore. Band intros were normally before the "In the Cage" medley. This is an interesting set, as it is the last appearance of the full "Supper's Ready" (besides the reunion gig--in fact the reason they played the full song on this tour is because the tour was sort of a rehearsal or warm-up for the reunion gig, and they probably needed some time to get used to playing this huge, complex number again), and because "Dance on a Volcano" has been taken out from the medley with "Los Endos." I mentioned above in the ATOTT tour that it was the only tour in which the entire "Dance on a Volcano" was played live, and I am still right about that; this version was played without the instrumental ending or "dance" section. Also this is the only time the unique "Lamb/Watcher" medley was attempted. Interesting to note that "Behind the Lines" started out being played as part of a huge type of medley as part of the Duke Suite during the Duke tour, on the next tour it was played with "Duchess" only, and on this tour it was played all by itself. In the following tour it would only occur a few times as part of a medley. The famous "Volcano/Drums/Endos" medley was also undergoing part of its evolution on this tour. In '76 "Volcano" and "Endos" were played separately, at the beginning and end of the set. Starting in '77 and on through 1981, they were played in the "Volcano/Drums/Endos" medley, which became the standard closing number of the Genesis set. Starting this tour, "Volcano" was uncoupled from the "Drums/Endos" part. In the next tour, "Volcano" was gone altogether, and by '92, "Endos" was dropped leaving only the drum duet (although "Volcano" made a return in the "Old Medley"). For the CAS tour of '97-'98, not even one section of the three-part medley was played. Odd that the drum duet, something that started out as a segue between two more important numbers, ended up as the only remaining piece of the picture.
Peter Gabriel lost so much money after his WOMAD event that he was even willing to reunite with his former band members (the present line-up of Phil, Mike, Tony, Chester and Daryl; add Pete and you've got six) in order to climb out of debt. Tony Smith helped arrange it, Johnathan King introduced the band, Steve Hackett came in for the last couple of numbers, and the rain helped make the show at the Milton Keynes Bowl a typical Genesis open-air event. The rest is history, and it went like this: Back in NYC The set was full of classics, even one or two that had never been played by Chester or Daryl before, and drew heavily from The Lamb, probably the album Pete was least embarrassed by. Pete obliged the audience by telling some of his old stories, many of them of the rarer variety (and some of them never heard before), and indulging in some humorous nostalgia. Apparently he came on in a coffin. What does this symbolize? Unearthing the ghost of old Genesis? Maybe they did. The performance surely had its rough edges and forgotten lyrics, but for all that it touches a chord and leaves one feeling they have experienced something very special. (If you'd like a copy of my bootleg of this performance, let me know!)
Perhaps the self-titled nature of their new LP was meant to convey the idea of a new beginning for a band that was used to redefining itself. Perhaps it was just meant to confuse fans trying to identify it. Whatever the reason, in this album Genesis experimented with more musical styles (Country/Western anyone?) and shocked Alan Hewitt by writing a six minute hit single about a prostitute. Their tour (which seems short at four months, but was actually longer than their last three tours) showed more than ever their tendency towards more popular music, as well as their seeming fixation on the medley: Dodo/Lurker This is the set from the first show. Note that, for the first time since the Lamb tour of '74-'75, IKWIL is not a part of the set. The "Eleventh Earl of Mar" medley changed after the first two shows. In this version Phil sang the lyrics of part of the song, but in later versions the "Mar" section was instrumental only, and the "Ripples" section was dropped. The "Turn It on Again" medley was generally a collection of old classic rock tunes, not by Genesis; its composition changed and at the beginning of the tour it was rather short (see below for more info on this). After the first few shows "Crawlers" was moved down to before "Keep It Dark" and "Abacab" was moved up into its place as the second number. They also began waiting until after the "Mar" medley to play "Illegal Alien." This made the set look like this: Dodo/Lurker "Misunderstanding" often segued directly into "Turn It on Again," just as it had segued into "In the Cage" during the tour of 1980. Starting around mid-December 1983 "Carpet Crawlers" was dumped. Around mid-January of 1984 the "Mar" medley altered, dropping "Squonk" and inserting "Behind the Lines" and the closing section of "The Musical Box." Here's the new set: Dodo/Lurker At the end of January the "Mar" medley altered once again to include "The Lamb" (the medley with "Behind the Lines" started somewhere around 15/1/84 and was played last on 25/1/84--very few boots exist with it). At about the same time, "Man on the Corner" and "Who Dunnit?" were gotten rid of. The set once again: Dodo/Lurker On 3/2/84 "Man on the Corner" was played in its usual spot one more time before being given up completely. As February progressed, "Misunderstanding" was not always played, and by the end of February for their last four shows at the NEC in Birmingham (26-29; yes, it was a leap year), it had been dropped and "Carpet Crawlers" was back in. For the first gig at the NEC, the 25th, "Misunderstanding" was in the set. These five nights, 25-29 February, were when the video for this tour was shot--and btw, interesting to note that these shows are the only ones of the tour played in the UK; all other dates were in the US and Canada. One more curiosity: a recording of what purports to be the soundcheck from 27 February at Birmingham exists and contains the shortest little snippet of the band jamming to "Just a Job to Do." This is the only recorded instance that I know of of this song being played outside of the studio. So, the final set list ran as follows: Dodo/Lurker The "Turn It on Again" medley, bemoaned by many fans and called "That Damn Medley," was rather long and changed possibly more often than the "Mar" medley. Here, for your consideration, are a few different forms of it. The earliest version was not, I think, a finished version, and included only small snatches of Everybody Needs Somebody to Love and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. A more standard version of the medley, probably played some of November and December of '83, was this: Everybody Needs Somebody to Love/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction/The Last Time/All Day and All of the Night/In the Midnight Hour. This was played at the famous Spectrum gig in November of 1983. Another version used more contemporary songs: Everybody Needs Somebody to Love/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction/Twist and Shout/All Day and All of the Night/Baby Let Me Take You Home/Karma Chameleon/Every Breath You Take/Pinball Wizard/In The Midnight Hour. There were also versions without Karma Chameleon and Every Breath You Take. In other versions, the following songs could also appear: Born In The USA, Glad All Over, Going Back to Miami, Sunshine of Your Love, You Really Got Me.
The IT tour was the first really long world tour from Genesis in quite a while. With an incredibly popular album and a load of fans (many of whom may have first heard of the band on a beer commercial), the band settled in and got to work. Having reached the full height of complexity with the "In the Cage" medley of the previous tour, the band took a step back and went with something much simpler. However, they retained the full bombastic "Turn It on Again" medley, though in a slightly altered form. For the first bunch of dates in the tour, played in the US and Canada from September to October 86, their set looked like this: Mama After this, from November to December of 1986, Genesis embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand; in Australia they used a local orchestra which was dubbed "The Invisible Strings" and which backed them up on "In Too Deep" and "Your Own Special Way" (a version of the latter song is available on the second box set). Since very few bootlegs of this period of the tour are available, my lists are rather tentative.
The lefthand list, above, is that for the introductory show on 23/11/86, the only show in New Zealand. This was most likely the last time the "Supper" portion of the "Cage" medley was played, as it was on this occasion that Phil did something awful to his voice in the process of singing the "Apocalypse" section. It was not played after that night. The audience recording of the New Zealand gig is incomplete but it is likely that its set was identical to the North American sets of September and October. The Australian set was definitely shorter and was probably as listed above on the right. "Follow You Follow Me" and "That's All" appear to have traded places in the set from night to night. After Australia, Genesis came back to the US in mid-January of 1987 and played a set that was kind of like the first set from this tour, but with FYFM dropped, the altered "Cage" medley in, and "That's All" in a different place. Also a few songs may not have been played. There was jumbling of the set in general, none of which was I able to pin down, as it only occurs on one or two boots. However, from the very end of January on to the end of the tour in early July, the set stayed like this: Mama Note that in addition to "Follow You Follow Me," "In Too Deep" is now also gone, and the order of the remaining tracks has been rearranged. It's interesting to note that on 20 June 1987, "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was not played, as torrential flooding at the venue of Mannheim, Germany forced the band to relocate the stage and a song had to be cut for time reasons. Now, as for the "Turn It on Again" medley, during this tour it went like this: Everybody Needs Somebody to Love/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction/Twist and Shout/Reach Out and I'll Be There/You've Lost That Loving Feeling/Pinball Wizard/In the Midnight Hour. Some versions of the medley probably also used these songs: Baby Let Me Take You Home and It's My Life. There is also a rumour (which is most likely not true), mentioned by Scott McMahan and the a-z site, that "Squonk" was played as a stand alone once on this tour. In the long period that followed the IT tour, before the release of their next album, Genesis made a couple of appearances. For Atlantic Records' 40th Anniversary concert on 15 May 1988 at the Madison Square Garden, Genesis made an appearance and played an interesting one-off medley that was one of the only times the band ever played material by solo members: Turn It on Again medley: Genesis and Phil Collins solo appeared at the Knebworth '90 Festival on 30 June (it was called the Silver Clef Concert, a charity event held at Knebworth Park). Genesis were backed by Phil's "Serious Band" for "Turn It on Again." They played the following numbers: Mama The medley for "Turn It on Again" was the same that they had played during the IT tour.
Another huge tour came out of this album, the last that Genesis made with Phil Collins (not counting later reunion tours!). This tour is well-documented by an official 2-disc live set, a tour DVD, and one or two cuts on the second box set. There were also plenty of TV specials at the time. Some dates were cancelled due to a French truck drivers' strike, and some were cancelled due to Phil's throat problems (a sign that he was not the young man he once was, no matter how magnificently preserved his torso might be). The tour covered the US and the UK thoroughly and also took in various spots in Europe. The set started out looking like this: Land of Confusion "Tonight, Tonight, Tonight" was played without the instrumental middle and it segued into "Invisible Touch." "Turn It on Again" was played without the medley. By 19 May, "Mama" was gone from the set (though it made one more appearance in recorded form on 28 May before being given up completely). "Dreaming While You Sleep" was played sporadically; it went away at the end of May, returned in the beginning of June in a different position, and then got dropped again by 18 June. "Throwing It All Away" was moved up into "Dreaming"'s original spot, and "Dreaming" was pushed down. So in June the set looked like this: Land of Confusion This was pretty much the same set played, less "Dreaming While You Sleep," all the way up to 2 August, which at the time was supposed to be the last night of the tour. Indeed, the band were off for all the rest of August and most of October, but then returned for some extra UK dates at the end of October and November of 1992. At the first of these dates on 23 October they played "The Carpet Crawlers" in the place of "Dreaming." It was the only show of the whole tour in which this song was played. Starting sometime not too long after this show (definitely by 28 October), "Dreaming" came back into the set in the same spot above. By this time, "Throwing It All Away" had been dumped. "Dreaming" was not played every night. It appears that during this final period of the tour "Dreaming" and "Driving the Last Spike" were swapped out for each other, and never played together in the same set. Sometimes when "Last Spike" wasn't played, "Dreaming" was played in its place. At other times, "Dreaming" was simply played in its regular spot and the Old Medley came right after "No Son." "Dreaming" and "Spike" were never both absent at the same time. The final set list looked very similar to the above set, with only minor alterations. Here's an approximation: Land of Confusion Now for the Old Medley. It is said that some of the tiny snippets of songs were changed from night to night, so I probably won't get them all, but this is a fairly good idea of how it was structured: Dance on a Volcano (first half)/The Lamb (first half)/The Musical Box (closing section)/Firth of Fifth (instrumental)/I Know What I Like (in Your Wardrobe) (with small bits from: That's All/Illegal Alien/Your Own Special Way or Misunderstanding/Follow You Follow Me/Stagnation, and possibly others).
This gig was played as part of a charity concert (the King Edward VII Hospital Benefit), featuring the likes of Pink Floyd, Eric Clapton, and the remaining members of Queen (in fact, Roger Taylor, Queen's drummer, played the drums on the Genesis numbers at this show). Genesis provided a few numbers, namely: Turn It on Again I'm not absolutely sure that these are all the songs they played, but they definitely played at least these. This proved to be the very last Genesis gig with Phil as lead singer until the reunion tour (unless you count some much later one-off performances, which will be detailed further below).
This tour, the last tour by Genesis in support of an album, was ill-fated and probably a disappointment for the band itself. Lack of publicity and interest in the US led to a pile of cancellations and the eventual scrapping of the entire US tour. The revised set of dates ended up focusing mainly on the interior of Europe and the UK, where reception for the album was more favorable. This combined with the fact that the band were still getting accustomed to their new lead singer, drummer and guitarist, and still trying to find out what they were capable of, resulted in a tour that had a very hard time getting off the ground. After the album's release various radio and TV appearances were made by the band which usually consisted of severely shortened sets played to very select audiences. It's hard to say when the real "tour" began, though probably the best guess would be 29/1/98 in Budapest. This was the first gig played in a normal auditorium to a normal, paying audience. However I felt it would be remiss to ignore all the various pseudo-live appearances made by the band starting way back in August of '97 and leading all the way up to late January '98 when the real "tour" began, so I've included descriptions of those as well. So bear with me while we wade through all these set changes. The first few kick-off gigs looked like this:
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After these introductory shows, the band did some rehearsing at Chiddingfold, then did another radio show (probably to a small, select audience) at Danish Radio Studios in the Hotel Richmond, Copenhagen Denmark, on 15 November 1997. This was their first electric live set and was as follows: No Son of Mine Another radio show in early December of '97 (probably the 9th) was perfromed by the band, this time back in acoustic mode; the set was short again and consisted of No Son of Mine/Turn It on Again/Follow You Follow Me/Lover's Leap/Not About Us. Basically this was the launch gigs' set with FYFM added in. On 13 December 1997, Genesis played a radio gig similar to the Denmark one, this time at RTL Studios in Paris. The set for this show was much fuller and was more like actual, subsequent shows: No Son of Mine This performance marked the only time the song "Small Talk" was ever played before an audience. Following this show, Genesis played a few warm-up/dress rehearsal gigs in Bray Studios and then at the Sportshalle in Budapest, in preparation for actual touring in Europe. Immediately following these, on 29 January 1998, Genesis played their first full show of the tour in front of a normal live audience, once again at the Sportshalle in Budapest, Hungary. Here's a look at what they were playing at this time:
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The insteresting thing about these gigs is that they both include "Hold on My Heart" and the first has "That's All." Both of these songs were soon given up. "Hold on My Heart" was in fact performed for the last time on 29 January, having been played a few other times at previous warm-up gigs. "That's All" was played only once, at the 23/1 show. Now Genesis had truly begun their tour of Europe. On 31 January they played their next gig in Katowice Poland, and their set consisted of the following: No Son of Mine This order was basically stuck to, with the odd track seemingly dropped from time to time. The songs that are most often missing from boots are "Alien Afternoon" and "Shipwrecked" (and later "There Must be Some Other Way"). "Shipwrecked" was in fact dropped from the set after 19 February, and did not return. "There Must be..." would sometimes be swapped out for "Alien Afternoon," but after around 17 February they were never played together in the same set. At the end of February, "Not About Us" was added to the end of the acoustic set. A sample set list from this period looks like this: No Son of Mine Notice that "Alien" is now played after "Carpet Crawlers," rather than before. Sometimes a track called the "Old Medley" replaces "Firth of Fifth" in bootleg track lists. This is just another (and erroneous) name for the "Firth of Fifth" instrumental. Probably it was given this name because the instrumental was present in the previous tour's "Old Medley," but it's really not a medley at all and this name only causes confusion. Regardless, the set carried on in this manner, sometimes trading "There Must be..." for "Alien," until 5 April 1998. At this show Ray announced that it was the last gig of the tour. This proved to be untrue, however, and two more gigs were played on 30 and 31 May of 1998, both at rock festivals (the first was called Rock in Ring Festival, the second Rock in Park; both were held in Germany). At these two gigs it is likely that a shorter set was played with a slightly different ordering of songs. The boots for these last two gigs, which are probably accurate and complete, show the following sets:
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"Lamb" is gone and the first numbers have been rearranged, while both "Alien" and "There Must be..." are also gone, as well as "Carpet Crawlers" and FoF. Notice that besides the slight rearranging of the first numbers, the set order is fairly consistent with previous gigs; it's just that multiple songs have been removed. The two sets are fairly similar, though some switching and swapping is made, and the first day's set is a bit shorter than the last.
This was the last place that I know of that Genesis performed together for almost seven years. Phil, Mike, Tony and Daryl reunited for a short, "semi-acoustic" set: Invisible Touch Phil played bongos and Mike and Daryl played acoustic guitars. Tony of course was on keyboards. This information comes from a previous incarnation of the Genesis official site, which was at http://genesis.m3w.com, and which featured a low quality Quicktime movie of their performance of "I Can't Dance" (it's actually quite good, even though they hadn't played together live since '93!). They were all there to celebrate Tony Smith getting an award--I believe Peter Gabriel was there as well, but he was not about to get on stage with the guys again and relive his infamous past. Genesis in the form of Mike, Tony and Phil also sort of reunited again to play some basic versions of some of their hits for the Songbook DVD--however this was not a live performance and anyway I don't really have enough information about it to really detail what they played and in what order.
On November 7, 2006, it was announced officially that Phil, Mike, and Tony were reuniting and taking their old live bandmates Daryl and Chester along on a short run through Europe and the United States. Before the actual tour began in June, however, the reunited five-piece band performed a short set at the VH1 Rock Honors concert in Mandalay Bay Resort, Las Vegas, on 12 May 2007. The songs played were: Turn It on Again (One could even go further back than this, to 17 April 2007 at the Lincoln Center in New York, where the band played "Follow You Follow Me" as part of a tribute to Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun. But I don't think this really counts.) On 4 June 2007 the band did a dress rehearsal in Brussels to a small group of lucky fans and members of the media; their set was as follows: Behind the Lines/Duke's End/Turn It on Again You'd think that the band would want to distance themselves from the rather embarrassing Ray Wilson Era, and naturally there are no songs here from the CAS album. But in fact their set has many rather surprising similarities to the 1997-98 CAS tour set: "No Son" and LoC are among the opening numbers, the FoF instrumental section is there, and quite a few of the other songs played were also present in the CAS set in similar positions. The opening number however is an interesting and unique medley drawing heavily from the Duke album, and necessarily includes "Turn It on Again," the tour's anthem. The tired old "Cage" medley of the Phil era is dragged out once again, though in a slightly changed form. Note also that though the "Drum Duet/Los Endos" medley (last seen in 1987) has returned, "Endos" is for the only time in its very long live career not the closing number of the regular set: that distinction now goes to TX3/IT, formerly an encore medley on the WCD tour. This set remained absolutely consistent throughout their tour of Europe and North America, the only real variation being on July 7 when they opened the UK portion of the Live Earth concert. There, they played a very curtailed set consisting of the following: Behind the Lines/Duke's End/Turn It on Again On the penultimate show of the North American tour (12 October 2007 in Los Angeles), rain forced the band to omit the encores from their set--the show ended after "Invisible Touch." This was the only other variation in the set list.
(I should note that the information that I have for this tour comes entirely from the Wikipedia article.) On 3 March 2020, it was announced officially that Phil, Mike, and Tony were reuniting once again after a 13-year break to do some more shows. This was originally envisioned as a few dates in the UK only, but was later expanded to a tour of the US and Canada in late 2021, and some additional dates in Europe in March of the following year. The COVID-19 pandemic caused multiple show cancellations and delays, but a good 47 shows were eventually played. The live band line-up was shaken up with the omission of Chester, who was replaced by Phil's son Nic Collins (who had already done some drumming on Phil's recent "Not Dead Yet" shows). Phil did not do any drumming that I know of, nor did he even stand during most of the show, remaining seated due to back problems and using a cane to get himself on stage. His voice was beefed up by a couple of backing vocalists (Daniel Pearce and Patrick Smyth). This tour very likely puts a final period (not a question mark) on the end of the band's touring career. Behind the Lines/Duke's End/Turn It on Again Having never seen or heard any of the shows from this tour, I have to rely on the information in the Wikipedia article and extrapolate. It appears that "Duchess" (always a very symbolic song for the band, since it's about the full arc of a singer's career) was replaced for only a couple of nights at the beginning of the North American tour, with "Misunderstanding." I don't have any other information about set list variations, and given their behavior on the previous reunion tour, I suspect there were very few changes to this. Looking at what's here, it's clear that the band stuck with their opening number from the last tour, and included many of the same songs from 2007. We see the same juxtaposition of FoF with IKWIL, and TX3/IT. "I Can't Dance" is again an encore. There are some interesting adjustments, however. Note that "In the Cage" is finally gone. In its place in what was previously an "old medley" are the first couple of verses of "Fading Lights" (another very symbolic song about endings). The inclusion of an "acoustic set" is also interesting; I'd love to hear how the Lamb sounds in this form. It's also very fun to see the "Moonlit Knight/Carpet Crawlers" medley coming back; I looked back on this page and this particular pairing was only a regular on 1980's Duke tour. I believe the last time this was played was the Milton Keynes show in 1982! Again, I haven't given this tour's set the close research that I applied to the others, so I am very open to any corrections or additions; feel free to email me if you have those! |