10 years 'it' – Genesis & solo – It's Only Knock And Knowall – Making of-Special

The period around 2000/2001 was full of challenges for the it editorial team. We discontinued the printed magazine and had a difficult start to the online era. At the same time, we were preparing for the Lamb Lies Down event, which was to be our biggest fan club event to date. As if that weren't enough, November also marked our 10th anniversary, which we naturally wanted to celebrate in style – but exactly how was not entirely clear for a long time.

The plan was to have a big special feature on the fan club on the website, with as much material from the past ten years as possible. The fans were to play an active role in this and send us private photos, videos or reports. We put out a call for submissions in June 2001, but even after a follow-up request in August, we didn't receive any material. So the special feature ended up being much smaller than planned and consisted of just one long article about the fan club's 10-year history. Incidentally, this article has been updated on each subsequent anniversary and can be found here. But there was still one real highlight to mark the anniversary…

Five years earlier, to mark the club's fifth anniversary, we wanted to press an interesting CD single that every club member would receive as a gift together with the anniversary edition, issue no. 21. We had considered Pennsylvania Flickhouse by Anon (which we did release many years later) and Jetzt kommt die Flut by Peter Gabriel. The Anon track was initially approved, but then rejected under a pretext. And for the German version of Here Comes The Flood, Realworld gave us conditions that would have completely blown our budget, and the CD would not have been available exclusively from us. So nothing came of it, but the idea remained in our minds.

In view of the upcoming anniversary, we made another attempt to release a fan club CD at the beginning of 2001. We assumed that we would once again be denied permission for particularly rare tracks or that unacceptable conditions would be imposed on us. And so we planned in a different direction. It was to be the first CD compilation with tracks from Genesis and solo projects by the band members… in other words, already released and well-known material, but never before together on one CD.

The selection of tracks was partly obvious. First and foremost, it was not supposed to be a compilation of hits. We wanted to include one track from each important era of Genesis – from the Gabriel era, the early Collins years, the more commercial phase in the 80s and the new start with Ray. In addition, one solo track each from Tony, Mike, Phil, Peter, Steve, Anthony and Ray. And the CD should be packed full, so it would be close to 74 minutes of playing time. The individual tracks that were then shortlisted were, of course, chosen with the personal preferences of the it editorial team in mind. Helmut put together an initial selection and, after a few phone calls with Peter and Bernd, this provisional track list quickly emerged:

Genesis – Can-Utility And The Coastliners oder Watcher Of The Skies
Genesis – Squonk oder Down And Out
Genesis – Domino oder Home By The Sea/Second Home By The Sea
Genesis – There Must Be Some Other Way oder Calling All Stations
Tony Banks – You
Phil Collins – Do You Know Do You Care
Peter Gabriel – Family Snapshot
Steve Hackett – Spectral Mornings oder The Steppes
Anthony Phillips – Now What?
Mike Rutherford – Moonshine
Ray Wilson (Cut) – Ghost oder Gypsy

In addition, or in exchange for another track, there was talk of including the version of it from the Genesis Archive Vol. 1 box set (the pseudo-live version with newly recorded vocals by Gabriel). Although the track would not be representative of an era, it was the one after which the club was named. To establish a connection to the anniversary, we also wanted to include spoken greetings from as many band members as possible on the CD.

Back in January, we sent a general enquiry to Virgin Germany (with whom we had a long-standing good relationship at the time) asking whether we could count on their support for the project and what the conditions would be for using already published material. As expected, we were told that this would first have to be clarified with Virgin UK and Genesis's management, Hit & Run.

In the meantime, we researched what the total costs for mastering, production, GEMA, licence fees, etc. would be. Volker Sassenberg from Decision Products, with whom Helmut had worked before, helped us with this and kindly agreed to do the mastering and handle all the necessary tasks involved in the actual production of the CD for us. It would be a considerable sum, but more on that later.

Some time passed, and given the time-consuming preparations for the Lamb event in June, our focus was initially on that. Since we hadn't heard anything more from Virgin, we followed up in April. We learned that Hit & Run still wanted to know how much the CD would sell for and whether we would release it ourselves and only sell it to fan club members. Once that had been clarified, things started to move forward.

At the beginning of May, Jon Webster contacted us by email. We already knew each other from the Calling All Stations tour. Jon was already a legend in the music business at that time. From 1987 to 1992, he was managing director of Virgin Records and continued to work as a consultant afterwards, maintaining good contacts with the entire 'Genesis family'. He wrote that he would take care of our request. A few weeks passed, and in July Jon informed us that we now had permission to use the Genesis tracks as well as Mike and Tony's solo tracks, but that the others had not yet been finalised. The greetings from the band members had not been forgotten either. However, for the Collins track, we had to contact WEA (Warner Music Group) in Germany directly, which we then did.

When you approach record companies and management about a fan project like this, it's not exactly at the top of their to-do list. So time passed without us hearing anything from anyone. Slowly but surely, we started to run out of time, because the CD was supposed to be ready in time for the anniversary in November. Because of the spoken greetings, we had in the meantime directly approached those with whom we had personal contact: Steve Hackett, Anthony Phillips, Daryl Stuermer, Chester Thompson, Ray Wilson, Richard Macphail, Christ Stewart and Paul Carrack. Sometime during the summer, Paul Carrack's greeting finally arrived.

At the beginning of September, we followed up with both Jon and Hit & Run. Apparently, the only reason for the delay was that WEA had not yet approved the Collins track. And Jon had not yet had any success with the greetings from Mike, Tony and Phil. So we sent our request to these three again directly, together with a return envelope and a DAT tape inside. And lo and behold, in October and November, these envelopes came back to us, each with a spoken greeting from the gentlemen. All the other greetings had also arrived in the meantime. We actually didn't receive the last one until January from Chris Stewart.

We had had plenty of time over the summer to think about the details of the CD. It was clear that Helmut would do the artwork, as he had already proven himself through his work on CDs by Anthony Phillips, among others. The cover had to be something special, preferably with a Genesis connection and perhaps even by someone already known for their album covers… so maybe Kim Poor or Paul Whitehead.

Kim Poor is more associated with Steve Hackett's solo work, so we wrote to Paul and asked if he could offer us something for our fan club CD. And indeed, he had something that was a perfect fit – a painting that was originally intended for the inside of Foxtrot, but was then repainted by Paul in a modified form because the square format did not fit the gatefold cover. But it was perfect as the front cover for our CD. See also Paul's info in the booklet. We received a scan of the painting in October for a reasonable licence fee.

The track listing changed somewhat over the course of the months and was almost finalised by October. it from the box set was now definitely going to be included. For the early Collins years of Genesis, we chose Entangled. Family Snapshots was replaced by its German version, Schnappschuss. The Serpent Said from the Strictly Inc. album was included on the CD instead of You, and Now What? was replaced by Pulling Faces as the Phillips track. Unfortunately, the Ray/Cut track was dropped because it would have exceeded the maximum playing time (including the greetings).

For the Rutherford contribution, we initially switched to Time And Time Again, but then we had an even better idea. Why not ask for a previously unreleased track (on CD): the single B-side Compression from the Smallcreep's Day sessions. Surprisingly, neither Mike, Hit & Run nor Virgin had any objections to its release. The only difficulty was finding the master tape of the recording, which was only located in December, copied onto DAT tape and sent to us by Hit & Run.

Due to the many delays, we were quite behind schedule. Even though the exact release date was not yet known, we let the cat out of the bag on 2 November, just in time for the anniversary, and announced the release of the CD. The CD could now be pre-ordered for 12 euros plus shipping. The edition was to be limited to 500 copies, each of which would be numbered. As mentioned at the beginning, the total cost of the project would be quite high.

Since the club was not profit-oriented then, as it is now, it did not have any capital of its own that we could have used for this purpose in 2001. So we asked for help with (interim) financing. Anyone who lent us at least £100 would be mentioned in the CD booklet. And indeed, 37 club members took part in the campaign, for which we were very grateful.

Meanwhile, the artwork for the CD was also being created and Helmut was working on the details. The front cover was adorned with the aforementioned painting by Paul Whitehead. The back cover was colour-coordinated with it and had a spectral colour gradient, with a piece of paper with the CD's track listing lying on top of it. The CD did not have a barcode because it was not available in stores and was only sold directly by us. But Helmut had come up with something that looked like a barcode but actually only contained the text 'Sorry no barcode'.

Also on the back was a small field left blank for the numbering of the 500-copy edition. To mark the anniversary, the booklet contained a short summary of the club's history in German and English. On the next page, Paul Whitehead wrote something about the front cover motif. This was followed by brief background information and the official credits for the individual tracks. The greetings were illustrated with small portraits.

Finally, the booklet contained the promised list of club members who had supported us financially, as well as the general credits. On the back of the booklet, Helmut placed a photo of some of the items he had received from Genesis & Co. for this project – envelopes and recordings. The CD label was designed in the style of the famous Charisma Pink Scroll label, with the it logo in place of the Charisma lettering.

At the beginning of December, we received official approval from Virgin and WEA, and the contracts were signed. Production of the CD could now begin. As mentioned at the beginning, Volker Sassenberg kindly took on the editing of the music and greetings, the mastering and everything related to the production, GEMA processing, etc. of the CD. He had a recording studio and was active in the music business, but mainly in the field of radio plays. In the 1990s, his company Decision was also the German distributor for Anthony Phillips for a short time.

By January 2002, Volker had received almost all of the pieces and greetings from us, and now his work began. The problem with eleven tracks from different sources and years is that there are sometimes enormous differences in playback quality and sound. Of course, this should not be noticeable on our CD, so Volker adjusted the recordings accordingly. It was even more difficult to harmonise and edit the spoken greetings. The spectrum of greetings we received ranged from a noisy, quiet recording on a music cassette to professional recording studio quality on CD, DAT or MiniDisc.

The length of the greetings varied between 10 seconds and almost two minutes, and some contained pauses, crackling or background noise. What should Volker edit or cut out, and what should he leave in? It was difficult to discuss this from a distance, so on 24 January, Helmut travelled to the Sauerland region with fan club veteran and musician Steffen Gerlach to be there in person during the editing process. Over the course of the day, the final versions of the greetings were created there.

A week later, the pre-master was ready, requiring only a few minor corrections, and on 11 February, the CD order was placed. The CDs were delivered at the end of February, and shortly afterwards, the it editorial team met at Peter's place in Braunschweig, where Sabine Zindler numbered the 500 copies by hand and the orders received so far were packed and prepared for dispatch.

On 24 March, the release party for the fan club CD took place as part of the club meeting in Welkers. In the exhibition, we displayed the original envelopes and recordings sent by the band members and Paul Whitehead. Helmut also talked about how the CD came about and we played the twelve greetings to the audience. Especially for this occasion, we had also made a life-size cardboard figure of Janis Schündler (a fictional combination of the three editorial members) holding the cover of the fan club CD as a promotional gag. Of course, the CD was also available for purchase on Club Day.

It took over a year from the initial idea to the release of the CD. We had thought it would be quicker and, above all, easier. But the decision-making processes at Hit & Run, Virgin and WEA took forever. In the end, however, the CD turned out exactly as we wanted it to be, and we would do it exactly the same way again today.

Author: Helmut Janisch (2025)
Photos: Peter Schütz, Helmut Janisch

More links

It's Only Knock And Knowall – CD-review
It's Only Knock And Knowall – The booklet, redesigned as an article