Here it is, the best musical show ever seen in the entire five-decade-plus history of Dorseyland: The mighty Genesis at the peak of their powers, having finally got some gumption in the guitars and their knees not yet buckling under the weight of fame’s ego. It wasn’t a concert, it was a revelation, and one that came straight out of the Bible. I have never had another experience like it since.

To begin at the beginning, though, my weathered old typewritten concert list seemed a bit muddled when I dusted it off recently to check the concert details. It insisted that I saw two Genesis shows at Massey Hall within a few months of each other. How could that be? I distinctly remember the triumph at Massey Hall, with the tunes from what was then the new album, “Selling England by the Pound”, sailing through the air along with the older stuff; and then there was the show that followed at Maple Leaf Gardens when “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” came out.

Uh-oh, there was a ghost show in between. A May 2, 1974, show at Massey hadn’t registered in my memory. I’m going to have to blame it on concert-shear. I’d been keeping up a hectic schedule: I spent most of 1974 at concert halls, with three outings the month before Genesis, including the sonic maelstrom that was Hawkwind, and then Savoy Brown and Mott the Hoople almost immediately afterward.

We’d better focus on the Genesis concerts I do remember, beginning with the best show anyone has ever performed anywhere anytime — November 8, 1973.

Genesis had begun making Toronto a habit earlier that year. They first played there on April 9, 1973, at a venue that no one seems to have recorded. Then in October “Selling England” was released and they did a slew of UK dates before heading back across the Atlantic, starting out at the Capitole Theatre in Quebec City the night before Toronto.

So there it was: We were the second batch of North Americans to see England being sold by the pound. With only the tiniest idea of what we were in for, other than it was supposed to be “colourful”, I and three friends made the chilly drive into the city and scarfed down some mystic mushrooms as we neared the hall. They were excellent fungi and good friends to both us and the band, but I suppose I have to stress here that they had little if any bearing on my level of appreciation for what Genesis served up that night. The performance was visually and aurally enhanced, to be sure, but I’m certain that stone-cold sobriety still wouldn’t have prevented sheer awe knocking me off my chair several times that night.

We had seen photographs of the performance, beginning with the azure cover from the live album showing Genesis in mid-performance and ending with an astonishing shot of Peter Gabriel walking in mid-air high above the stage. We expected wonderful costumes and general spectacle. And we still weren’t anywhere near adequately prepared.

To start with, Gabriel had shaven a V-slice into his scalp, kabuki-style, to accentuate his thrills and chills pantomime. Then his bottomless magician’s trunk of outfits and props seemed bent on outshining the music, which would have been quite a feat if it had. From being as delicate as an angel dancing on a pinhead to shouting at the world demonically, he led us through a vast Neverland where we heard many fairytales of the scary sort, saw the Dark Ages illuminated and cautioned our hearts not to get too fond of the romping music, which somehow was neither rock nor folk nor blues nor psychedelia. It had sneaked in the door and no one knew where it came from.

The lighting, the mime, the charm, the summonings of saints and devils, it was hard to keep up with. In “Musical Box” Gabriel actually transfomed from a child into a gruff and raunchy old man. “I Know What I Like” was all rollicking pop. We rode heavy horses through “The Battle Of Epping Forest”, got all swept away at “The Cinema Show”, got freaked out by the evil landlord in “Get ‘Em Out by Friday”.

Gabriel never did walk through the air, but the audience gladly did it for him.

Mike Rutherford’s double-neck kept blurring the ground between bass and rhythm guitar. Phil Collins gave us quite a moment when he stopped drumming: He left his kit behind and put on a big old cardigan and came to stage front to sing “More Fool Me” in his tiny, harmony-friendly falsetto.

This is before he became a solo hit engine and Genesis fell into the MTV murk, of course. He was one of the best drummers in rock, you know — he could keep an astonishing off-beat rhythm going in multiple time — and then Gabriel left the band and Collins had to be the frontman, and they got a backup drummer.

Steve Hackett always made me chuckle, because there was a fuddy-duddy cliche about “screeching guitars”, and actually, until Hackett came along, no rock guitarists actually made his guitar screech (other than an occasional Hendrix squeal, of course). Hackett enjoyed doing it.

Tony Banks had loads of stunning sequences on “Selling England”, but his glory always waited for the Watcher. The stage was bathed in blue, as another cliche goes, and the band inhaled and exhaled through the grand introduction to “Watcher of the Skies”. Gabriel in his batwing headdress and cloak, thumping on a bass drum of his own. Rutherford and Hackett in low-range staccato strafing. Collins at the helm nailing every crosswave and jumping the rest of the boys onto another crest. It was a magnificent tall-masted ship in full sail on a roiling sea.

And that wasn’t even the “best in show”. “Supper’s Ready” had everything, more a buffet than a supper, really, but of true banquet proportions, and my God was it filling. A 23-minute master class in stage dynamics.

Gabriel doing the Twist as he sang some long-lost lady a love song, then crossing his arms and standing stock-still while Banks and the guitars formed a soft procession of rising hopefulness. “Can’t you see he’s fooled you all?” Peter warned of the Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man, constantly evoking the plight of “the children”.

That must have been us, yet next thing we knew we were headed into battle! Bang, bang, bang! Then a soaring trill signalled celebration, but we were no sooner rejoicing than Peter was mourning about someone who’d “been stamped ‘human bacon’ by some butchery tool”. Ah, it’s only Narcissus he’s talking about. Surely no threat there? And look, he’s wearing flower petals around his head.

So things were looking up, but then the band started this freaky caterwauling and suddenly got all silent again, and Jesus Christ! now they were hammering away about the the dogs of Magog and 666 and and fire coming down from the sky. What a roller coaster ride this was!

Were those church bells? Yes, and with a humongous explosion of flashpowder, Gabriel was doing the Twist again, but he had a glittering silver jumpsuit on this time — alien origins confirmed — and guess where he was taking us now? To the New Jerusalem, no less. So this is what the Second Coming is going to look like, I thought, the swirling crescendo crashing in my ears.

For a pretty decent-quality video of “Supper’s Ready” live, try this YouTube link.

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And then there was Rael. Loud sigh. When we next see our heroes, there’s a giant lamb turning off the lights on Broadway. Or something.

“The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”, a double-album set in a sleeve by Hipgnosis, was released in November 1975, and Genesis swiftly brought the new show to Toronto, on December 16, the full Maple Leaf Gardens this time.

But what had happened?? The thrilling costumes had become just silly. No one to this day had been able to explain the concept of the storyline, for apparently there was one. Rael, a graffiti-spraying Puerto Rican street punk in New York City, is swept off on a spiritual journey through a parallel reality, encountering the bizarre Lamia of Greek myth and the leperous Slippermen.

There were some beautiful airs, like “Carpet Crawlers” and “In the Rapids”, and “Back in NYC” was great rock, but “The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”, as one of the titles put it, was all so confusing, a rush to get material out because, perhaps, they knew the band was imploding.

When darkness fell on Broadway and the Lamb tour ended in August, Gabriel announced that he was leaving Genesis, saying the band had run its artistic course. The others begged to differ, and plodded on without him. Collins was now the lead singer.

I bought the first Genesis album without Gabriel and liked it, especially “Ripples”, and I saw them twice again live — on April 1, 1976, and March 6, ‘77 — both shows drawing and then largely disappointing eager crowds at the Gardens. There was a fresh and swelling contingent of fans, though, who liked the new songs with their mainstream pop trappings. For me and many others, it just wasn’t the same anymore.

I don’t think Gabriel took the magic with him; I think he’d lost it too. He indulged his social conscience while Collins discovered R&B. The fairies were later discovered suffocated to death in their own glistening dust.

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Two weeks after the last time I saw Genesis, Peter Gabriel resurfaced in Toronto with another excellent band, touring behind his first, excellent solo album. That was March 22, 1977, in the half-Gardens Concert Bowl, and he left all the costumes at home to focus on terrific music with the help of Steve Hunter, Robert Fripp, Larry Fast and Tony Levin. (The astounding Fripp and Levin I would next see in King Crimson.)

I’ve read that Gabriel’s first solo single, the wonderful “Solsbury Hill”, was about the breakup of Genesis. If so, World Music and Womad awaited as he sang:

To keeping silence I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut
Turning water into wine
Open doors would soon be shut

So I went from day to day
Tho’ my life was in a rut
till I thought of what I’d say
Which connection I should cut

I was feeling part of the scenery
I walked right out of the machinery
My heart was going boom boom boom
Hey, he said, grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.
Yeah back home

Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes, but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me

Today I don’t need a replacement
I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart was going boom boom boom
Hey, I said, you can keep my things, they’ve come to take me home.

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The Compleat Dorseyland Concert Directory — six pages of memories — is now online.