In October 1973 Genesis made their way to the BBC’s studios in Shepperton, west of London, to film a five song set for broadcast on Italian television. Filmed at the climax of the UK leg of the Selling England By The Pound tour, it found Peter Gabriel and the band performing Dancing With The Moonlit Knight and I Know What I Like (In Your Wardobe) from that album, plus Watcher of the Skies and Supper’s Ready from the previous year’s Foxtrotand The Musical Box from 1971’s Nursery Cryme.
The footage – now considered by many to be the single best live representation of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis – gathered dust for years, until a group of fans pooled their resources to buy it, sight unseen, at a New York estate sale in 2003. This damaged 16mm footage was transferred to digital the same year, and five years later was included on the band’s 1970 – 1975 box set. A high definition version was produced in 2013, and now it’s been remastered again.
The latest upgrade is from the same team who worked on the footage of Genesis playing at the Bataclan theater in Pariswhich emerged in 2021, and uses the latest software to enhance both the audio and the video.
“I rescanned the reels (both audio and video) and started the project from scratch to see where this could lead,” reads the blurb accompanying the video’s release. “Not only do 4K scanners make more resolution available, but the audio scanning technology has been greatly improved.
“I then used all my tools and techniques to restore this film to its full glory, much as we did the Bataclan and other films. This even involved cleaning thousands of frames by hand and correcting color shot by shot. The amount of work was immense , so we hope it was all worthwhile in the end.”
The Genesis Museum has also produced a video which shows a side-by-side, before-and-after representation of the increase in quality of the Shepperton footage. Both videos are below.
