Charterhouse 1967 Dublin 1972 The Farm 1980
Twelve-string guitars that had to be retuned between every song, and a singer who filled the silence with stories, then with a fox’s head, a flower, a helmet and a pair of bat wings.
Ultraviolet on the muslin, as on the Foxtrot tour.
Gabriel as Britannia, Massey Hall, Toronto, 8 November 1973 (Jean-Luc Ourlin, CC BY-SA 2.0). Genesis in 1971: Gabriel, Banks, Rutherford, Collins and Hackett (Buddah Records press photo, public domain). Gabriel in the Watcher of the Skies costume, Massey Hall, 1974 (Jean-Luc Ourlin, CC BY-SA 2.0).
Charterhouse, Godalming · 1967–68
Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips were pupils at Charterhouse, where simply forming a band counted as rebellion. Their school groups were called the Anon and the Garden Wall.
Two bands at one school. Slide them together.
With John Silver on drums, the first Genesis was more a songwriters’ collective than a rock band, making demos in the hope that other artists would cover their songs.
Years later, I Know What I Like slipped in a nod to the Garden Wall, Banks and Gabriel’s school band.
A working boarding school, not open to drop-in visitors. Look from Charterhouse Road; Godalming station is a short walk downhill.
Free of Jonathan King, the band took themselves off to a country cottage just outside Dorking and spent six months there eating, sleeping and rehearsing.
Apart from afternoon walks they never left the place. Mike Rutherford later said they were far too intense to enjoy themselves.
By the time they started playing gigs, they had a carefully prepared show.
A private house, named here only by its town and left off the map. The photograph looks towards Dorking and Box Hill.
Between numbers · 1969–70 · silence 1 of 4
Gabriel remembers the twelve-string guitars needing a retune between every number while the others sat in silence and the hall’s energy drained away. Out of desperation, he started telling stories. Louder / Classic Rock
The last number has ended. Start the silence.
The front of the stage is empty except for the singer. Start the silence, then stop it with a story: six months in a cottage.
The Foxtrot, Selling England and Lamb tours · 1972–75
The stories grew into costumes, worn in front of a white muslin curtain lit by ultraviolet. Bring each one out and it opens the hall where it was worn. Louder / Classic Rock
The Musical Box · 1972–73
First worn in Dublin without telling the band, and back on in Paris that January. uDiscover MusicRolling Stone (Australia)
Opens 2 places
South Circular Road, Dublin 8
During The Musical Box at Dublin’s National Stadium on 28 September 1972, Gabriel walked out in his wife’s red dress and a fox mask. The rest of the band had not been told.
Gabriel remembers the night as October 1972, the dress as Ossie Clark, and the struggle getting into it.
A boxing arena that still hosts fight nights and concerts. Go to an event; there are no tours.
50 Boulevard Voltaire, Paris 11e
A film of Genesis at the Bataclan in Paris on 10 January 1973 circulated among fans for years before it surfaced in 4K.
About seven minutes in, Gabriel comes out in his wife’s red dress and a fox’s head for the climax of The Musical Box.
A working concert hall. Go to a show; listings are on its own site.
Selling England by the Pound · 1973
Selling England by the Pound was recorded in three weeks in August 1973 at Basing Street Studios in West London.
The producer was John Burns, who had engineered Foxtrot.
They had rehearsed in a friend’s family living room near Chessington Zoo until the neighbours complained, then in a dance school in Shepherd’s Bush.
A former chapel, now flats. See it from the street, a few minutes from Portobello Road.
The Battle of Epping Forest, on Selling England, is an 11-minute comic operetta about gangland warfare on the fringes of north-east London, a story said to be rooted in truth.
From late 1973 into 1974 it gave Gabriel the chance to pull on stocking masks on stage.
Steve Hackett says it died a death in America, where nobody had heard of Epping Forest.
Open forest, free at all hours. Start at the High Beach Visitor Centre, open Friday to Sunday and bank holidays, 10am to 3pm in winter.
High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex · Free
Walk the forest of The Battle of Epping Forest from the volunteer-run visitor centre at High Beach. Open Friday to Sunday and bank holidays; 10am to 3pm once the clocks go back.
Plan a visitThe Lamb Lies Down on Broadway · 1974–75
In 1974 the band moved into Headley Grange, the house Led Zeppelin had used, to live together while they wrote The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Phil Collins remembered it in a terrible state, with rats as the main occupants. They spent three months there.
Room one · the band
The band wrote and rehearsed in one room while Gabriel worked on the lyrics and vocal melodies in another.
A private house. Named here by its village and left off the map; the photograph shows Headley, not the house.
Room two · the singer
William Friedkin wanted Gabriel to write a film. When the band refused him time off he quit; the management stepped in and he came back.
On the Lamb tour Genesis played the Empire Pool, now Wembley Arena, on 14 and 15 April 1975.
They played the whole new album every night, with Gabriel as characters from it such as the Lamia and the Slipperman.
Four dates into the American tour in late 1974, Gabriel had told the band he was leaving. He stayed six more months.
In August 1975 he made it public with a press statement called Out, Angels Out.
Still an arena, now OVO Arena Wembley, a short walk from Wembley Park station. Go to a show.
Line-ups · 1971 to 1980
Three1978
On 24 June 1978 Genesis, by then a trio of Collins, Rutherford and Banks, headlined A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Knebworth, with Jefferson Starship, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Brand X and Devo also on the bill.
It went so well that the promoter added a second day that summer, on 9 September, and Peter Gabriel played it.
Park and gardens open at weekends, bank holidays and school holidays in season; the 2026 season ran from 21 March to 27 September.
Three days after Christmas 1970, Genesis gave a free lunchtime concert at the Lyceum on the Strand.
On the 1980 Duke tour of small UK theatres, a fourth London night was added at the Lyceum after three at Hammersmith.
The BBC recorded that 1980 Lyceum show; it is on The BBC Broadcasts, curated by Tony Banks and Nick Davis and released on 3 March 2023.
A working West End theatre. See what is playing and book on its own site.
Chiddingfold, Surrey · from November 1980
A private studio on a working estate, never open to visitors. Named by its village only and left off the map; the photograph is Chiddingfold’s green.
Genesis bought a farm in November 1980 and spent four months of hard building work turning its cowshed into a studio.
Planning rules made it quicker to build a new studio inside the old shed than to knock the shed down.
They wrote Abacab in the farmhouse while the builders worked, and started recording it in the new studio in March 1981.
By 1992 it was an 80-acre estate with a Grade II listed 16th-century farmhouse and barn, within 15 minutes’ drive of the members’ homes.
The original Invisible Touch credits say the album was written, recorded and mixed at The Farm in 1985–86.
We Can’t Dance was made there too, on the studio’s 48-track machine.
The Green, Petworth Road, Chiddingfold, Surrey
An inn dating back to the 14th century in a corner of Chiddingfold’s village green, the village nearest The Farm. Eight rooms in two styles: older ones with four-poster beds, newer ones in a contemporary style.
Book a room12 places you can visit. The cottage outside Dorking, Headley Grange and The Farm are private, so they are named by their town or village and left off the map; Charterhouse is a working school, seen from the road.
Pins mark public places; private homes are named but not pinned.
General reference · Restricted access · Coordinate precision: site · Not an exact scene or camera position; not a visitor route. A working boarding school, not open to drop-in visitors. Look from Charterhouse Road; Godalming station is a short walk downhill.
Charterhouse Road, Godalming, Surrey
Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Anthony Phillips were pupils at Charterhouse, where simply forming a band counted as rebellion.
A working boarding school, not open to drop-in visitors. Look from Charterhouse Road; Godalming station is a short walk downhill.
Stay
An inn on Chiddingfold’s village green, the nearest you can sleep to The Farm.
The Green, Petworth Road, Chiddingfold, Surrey
An inn dating back to the 14th century in a corner of Chiddingfold’s village green, the village nearest The Farm. Eight rooms in two styles: older ones with four-poster beds, newer ones in a contemporary style.
Book a roomGo there
Epping Forest from High Beach, and music walks through Soho and the West End.
High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex · Free
Walk the forest of The Battle of Epping Forest from the volunteer-run visitor centre at High Beach. Open Friday to Sunday and bank holidays; 10am to 3pm once the clocks go back.
Plan a visitSoho, London
Live marketplace results for rock and music walking tours of Soho and the West End, the streets of Trident, Ronnie Scott’s and the Lyceum. Check each itinerary; none is about Genesis alone.
Live marketplace results · itineraries change
Compare toursWhat’s on
The guitarist of the costume years, playing Genesis songs around the UK this month.
Checking current event dates…
Take it home
An original Genesis poster from our store, the band’s own book, Mike Rutherford’s memoir, and five records tied to these places.
An original 1991 poster for the album the band made at The Farm. 23 × 43 in, rolled, mint.
In stock
View posterTony Banks, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford
The band’s history in their own words.
Find the bookMike Rutherford
Mike Rutherford’s own memoir, by a founder who was there from the Anon onwards.
Find the bookGenesis · LP, Charisma CAS 1020, 1970
Recorded at Trident in Soho in the summer of 1970.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyGenesis · LP, Charisma CAS 1058, 1972
The album of the first costumes, released the month after the fox’s head in Dublin.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyGenesis · LP, Charisma CAS 1074, 1973
Three weeks at Basing Street in August 1973, with The Battle of Epping Forest.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyGenesis · 2LP, Charisma CGS 101, 1974
Written at Headley Grange, recorded in Wales.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyGenesis · LP, Charisma CBR 101, 1980
The album of the 1980 small-theatres tour and the Lyceum night.
Live marketplace search · listings and condition change
Find a copyDates, prices, rooms and stock change: confirm with the provider before you travel or buy. A stay or tour is described as a filming location only where the card says so.
Every place and moment behind this page, with sources.
15 of 15 places · 21 of 21 Moments
Charterhouse Road, Godalming, Surrey
Two school bands at Charterhouse become one songwriting group.
Jonathan King hears the tape, names them Genesis and records a first album almost nobody buys.
Near Dorking, Surrey
They rehearse outside Dorking until the show is ready.
Chiddingfold, Surrey
The band buy a farm and build a studio inside the shed.
Written, recorded and mixed at The Farm.
Headley, Hampshire
Three months, two rooms and a lot of rats.
47 Frith Street, Soho, London W1
A six-week residency above the jazz.
Twelve-strings need retuning between numbers, so Gabriel starts telling stories.
St Anne’s Court, Soho, London W1
Recording at Trident, with a night off for Friars.
Wellington Street, off the Strand, London WC2
Three days after Christmas, on the Strand.
A fourth London night on the Duke tour, taped by the BBC.
Basing Street, Notting Hill, London W11
Three weeks in August at Basing Street.
High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex
The Battle of Epping Forest on stage.
Engineers Way, Wembley, London HA9
Two nights at the Empire Pool with the whole album.
Gabriel’s leaving goes public.
South Circular Road, Dublin 8
A red dress and a fox mask, unannounced.
Shuter Street, Toronto
Gabriel in helmet and Union Jack, photographed from the hall.
The Watcher of the Skies costume, photographed from the hall.
50 Boulevard Voltaire, Paris 11e
The red dress and the fox’s head again, on film.
50 East Ida B. Wells Drive, Chicago
The Lamb tour reaches the Auditorium Theatre.
Knebworth, Hertfordshire
Three of them, top of the bill.
