Hand Of Glory Records are thrilled to present a newly discovered rock opera from January 1969, A Story by The Genesis

First release from an extraordinary and previously unknown cache of over 80 songs recorded between 1964 and 1974  A Story slots neatly into the established rock opera chronology between SF Sorrow and Tommy. Discovered via sound clips on an eBay listing of a broken electric piano.

‘It’s surprising what the mind remembers, things that happened so long ago…’

It is firmly established in rock lore that the first completed ‘rock opera’ is the Pretty Things’ masterwork SF Sorrow, and that

The Who’s Tommy, while widely spoken about in 1968, actually came in second. But what if there had been another contender for the silver medal in this particular race, albeit one that has taken a bit longer to come to an audience?

In 1966, Lutonians Chris Stokes (keys and vocals) from The Mantis Set, Snip Turner (lead guitar) of local heroes Bryan and The Brunelles, Derek ‘Jock’ Carleton (guitar and vocals), Steve ‘Siggi’ Holmes (bass), and Mick Loughton (drums) formed a new band. After a brief spell as The Regency Five, they rebranded as Genesis* and shifted focus from soul covers to Stokes’ original songs, with wilder performances inspired in part by an all-band trip to see The Jimi Hendrix Experience at an early show in Brixton.

In 1968, in the spirit of the times, and with ambitions beyond the somewhat stale local gigging scene, Holmes suggested they should compose a suite of connected songs with a story threaded through; or, as the local paper described it, ‘a pop cantata’. Crafted by Holmes and keyboardist Stokes over the latter half of the year, The Story is a quasi-gothic tale of romantic misadventure culminating in murder, with philosophical reflections on the nature of existence itself! With the narrative based on a love affair not just fading out, but spiralling into a heavy, dark nightmare, the album is a far cry from the gentle, flower-power psych of fellow private press contemporaries

Forever Amber, and closer to an actual operatic tragedy. Despite having previously recorded at Jackson Studios in Rickmansworth (birthplace of Sallies Fforth by Rainbow Ffolly, amongst others) Luton’s own Genesis gratefully accepted the offer of free downtime at the newly founded Sky Studios, run by local teacher Ted Wagstaff, and Dave Richardson, later of pioneering private pressing legends SRT.

With no pre-existing template as to what a ‘rock opera’ should sound like, lacking a label and manager, and only able to dream of the budget enjoyed by stars such as The Who and Pretty Things, what they created was the sound of a classically literate mod beat group taking a leap of faith into the unknown and creating something entirely new on their own initiative. The Story is free of the most obvious late-1960s blown out rock signifiers. There’s no fuzz, no phasing, barely any reverb, no Marshall stacks or Mellotrons: just the band’s modestly-priced and well-used gear.

The album’s tone is dark, but the classically influenced songwriting is bright and dynamic: key songs include the enchanting, pastoral ‘Nightmares’ (which segues quickly into the dark-groove of ‘Lazy Teenager’), the wide-eyed philosophical musings of ‘L.O.V.E.’, and the deeply creepy ‘Murder’ (which features one of the most sinister whispers ever cut to a record).

‘Realisation in my brain.

Life in a breath.

These are your last thoughts,

just before death.’

Grammar school pupils in other bands may have been quoting from The Classics, but this band were deeply versed in the dramatic stories of post-war British boys’ comics, the gruesome cultural heirs to the Victorian Penny Dreadful; and the tale they tell is dark, sometimes shocking, but always entertaining.

Recording had been completed in one intense afternoon session in January 1969; but with no plan for a release and greatly enthused by the creative process, Holmes and Stokes jumped straight into writing another concept piece, The Seven Deadly Sins. This developed no further than home demos; and with the band now no longer gigging or recording, the project lost momentum as the group fizzled out. The Story was shelved, and that was the end of Genesis, until…

…Half a century later, Hand Of Glory’s Will Twynham (aka Dimorphodons) was hunting for interesting instruments on eBay and spotted an old Hohner Cembalet, painted matte black and with missing keys. The listing included a sound clip of a home recording from the mid-1970s, and the Cembalet sounded amazing; but more importantly, so did the track. His interest piqued, Twynham won the auction for a grand total of £10, and was delighted when the seller – Chris Stokes – offered to deliver the keyboard.

In person, Stokes mentioned that he had about 80 unheard tracks on tape, dating from 1964 to 1974, ranging from classic beat group workouts to mod, psych, prog, and glam. And: ‘Oh, also, there’s a complete unreleased rock opera from 1969.’ And that is the serendipitous sequence of events that brings us to this release.

Initially, the only available recording was a cassette that Stokes had transferred from reel-to-reel in the 1980s. This sounded pretty good, but a search nevertheless began for a cleaner copy. By something of a miracle, this was eventually found in the loft of Steve Holmes’ widow, Gill. Unmarked (and also containing several Cream albums), the tape reel offered significantly improved sound quality overall. However, it was missing a minute or so of music in the middle, ran at a different speed from the cassette copy, and sounded markedly brighter. With both sound sources skilfully combined by Mike Hillier at Metropolis, the release you hear today is as close as possible to the original intent.

As a snapshot of a moment in time, of songs developing from beat via psych into something truly progressive, it sounds like nothing else, and represents a moment of convergent musical evolution. Five working lads from Luton inadvertently inventing prog rock on limited funds, and then forgetting about it for 60 years.

Had this album been released in its time, it would have stood alongside Forever Amber’s Love Cycle as one of the earliest privately pressed full length albums of original material by a British group, and it doubtless would have parallelled Grannie and Dark Round The Edges as one of the most elusive and legendary UK releases of the era.

We at Hand Of Glory Records are delighted to present this release, and to start to rewrite this small niche of musical history.

*A name they had adopted independently of and prior to the establishment of any other band, ahem. After legal consultation, we have changed this from The Story by Genesis to A Story by The Genesis.

Forthcoming releases on Hand Of Glory

Lottie Brazier: TBC (2025)

Mantis Set: TBC (2025)

Previous releases on Hand Of Glory:

Dimorphodons: Waui (2025)

RJ McKendree: Wallflower (2022)

Kiran Leonard: Bowler Hat Soup: (2013)

Mary Epworth: Dream Life (2012)

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