15 years of the German Genesis Fanclub 'it'

After releasing a fan club CD for our 10th anniversary, we wanted to release a DVD for our next anniversary five years later. However, we didn't want to include rare video material from Genesis/solo, but rather a visual retrospective of 15 years of fan club history. We had in mind a kind of mix of slideshow and videos covering all previous fan club projects. And because it would be material that we had photographed/filmed ourselves, it would be much easier legally this time compared to the fan club CD… well, that's what we thought.

But first, we worked on the content. None of us in the editorial team are professionals when it comes to video production. But Helmut had already put together a few things in Apple iMovie, so he got the job. The DVD was to have six menu items: Publications, Interviews, Events, On Air, Miscellaneous and Outtakes. So a lot of material was scanned and formatted, and then we started editing and adding music by Genesis & Co. …

Releases

Part 1 was a slideshow showing the covers of all fan club magazines and screenshots of the website from different years. Part 2 consisted of short excerpts from the band members' greetings (from the fan club CD It's Only Knock And Knowall) strung together and visualised with portraits of the greeters and the album cover.

Interviews

This slideshow showed, in chronological order, all the interviewees we had interviewed up to 2006 (74 in total!). This was followed by some humorous excerpts from the audio recordings of interviews, such as the one from 1992 in which Anthony wonders about our question about the 'drinks on From Genesis To Revelation' … but we meant the 'strings'. Or the moment in 1998 when we asked the studio crew of Calling All Stations whether Anthony Drennan was more of a guitarist like Hackett or Rutherford, and Nick Davis's answer probably didn't amuse Mike as much as it did the crew. Moving images were also included for the first time in the form of two video messages we had recorded in 1999 from Steve Hackett and Anthony Phillips.

Events

In this section, we presented previous meetings and events chronologically, showing either a slideshow of photos or video recordings (or both) of the respective event. There were excerpts from legendary performances by Bernd Vormwald and Steffen Gerlach, Eddy Pachali, Andres Lauer and Sabine Behmer, Christian Meier, John Morell and, of course, from the events of the previous two years, when Ray Wilson and Richard Macphail were our guests. And, of course, a few snapshots of the audience were also included. This category then made up a large part of the DVD's content.

On Air

The fan club had been featured on radio and television a few times until 2006, and of course that couldn't be left out here. Helmut and Bernd's visit to the radio station HR1 in 1993 included a few photos of the two in the studio and a short excerpt from the one-hour programme. However, the DVD included the complete ZDF 'heute nacht' TV report from 1996 on Phil Collins' departure from Genesis, in which Peter Schütz was interviewed. Also included uncut on the DVD was an interview conducted by WDR television in 2005 with Christian Gerhardts, among others, on the sidelines of the Collins concert in Düsseldorf.

Various

Here, we presented a further slideshow featuring all kinds of material from 15 years of fan club work: the first classified ads for the club in music magazines, flyers that we distributed at concerts, and much more.

Outtakes

This slideshow contained snapshots of our editorial work and trips to interviews/concerts.

In the end, we had a number of video files and a reasonably usable product, but still no master for a reproducible DVD. So we asked club member Volker Warncke for help, who was already known for his video recordings and video/audio editing skills. With this master, we contacted a small German company that offered DVD duplication and had 60 copies made there.

For the DVD cover, Helmut was inspired by the first draft for the Genesis box set Archive Vol.1 – 1967-75, which was based on the leather cover of a very old book. The title 'it Archive 1991-2006' also alluded to the box set.

The covers were printed, the cases purchased, and the DVDs were soon delivered and looked great. Incidentally, the label featured a slightly modified version of the 'Mad Hatter' motif familiar from Genesis/Charisma LPs. So everything was perfect, and we were delighted to be able to offer this souvenir to visitors to the 'Evolution of Genesis' event in October, in addition to the guests of honour Armando Gallo and John Mayhew.

But then we received notification that the manufacturer had forwarded information about the 43 original music tracks (background music for the slideshows) contained on the DVD to GEMA … 62:05 minutes of music within the two-hour running time of the DVD. And then it dawned on us that we had made a serious error in judgement when we assumed that everything would be legally unobjectionable. After consulting with GEMA, it soon became clear that the rights holders of the music would probably also find out about the DVD, and that could certainly lead to complications or even legal consequences for us.

So what should we do? Ask management afterwards if we can use the music? Or go ahead and release the DVD, even at the risk that this could be reason enough for the legal department of one of the record companies involved to sue us? Neither option made much sense to us. So we looked into alternatives and ended up having to recycle (destroy) the 60 DVDs upon presentation of proof, thus closing the entire case.

Countless hours of work had been in vain. It was only a small consolation that we were able to show some excerpts from the DVD material on screen at the event.

That was almost 20 years ago, and when we watched the DVD material again for this report, we thought it would be a shame if no one could see it… especially those who became club members in the 1990s, perhaps attended the early fan club meetings, and might like to refresh their memories. The video and audio quality is often borderline. We recorded it with the (non-professional) equipment available at the time as a memento for ourselves, and the editing of the material for the DVD was also simply amateurish (apart from Volker's mastering). But they are historical documents that have their charm. And because the legal situation for uploading to YouTube is somewhat different today than it was for a DVD release in 2006, we have now published the entire contents of the DVD on our channel:

You can watch the full video here.

The description indicates at which playing time the individual menu items and content begin.

And so everything has somehow come to a happy ending after all…

Author: Helmut Janisch (2025)
Video Editing: Volker Warncke