Armando checking print

Los Angeles - July 10, 1998:

Foligno is a renaissance city in the heart of Italy, in the region of Umbria. It's market square is where St. Francis of Assisi gave away all of his father merchandise to answer his mystical call. Today the square is closed off, heavily damaged by the devastating earthquake of last September. Assisi is 20 minutes to the north. Spoleto is 15 minuted to the south. Trevi, where the Romans found one of the purest waters spring (the Trevi fountain in Rome is where they took it) is only 5 minutes away. I couldn't hope for a better setting to find a printer for my Genesis book. In 1980 when I first printed the book the printing house was owned by the publisher of the magazine I worked for.

Armando with colour pages

They made things easy for me. I arrived in January with the design under my arm and in 21 days we did the separation, the plates and the printing.

On my birthday, January 24, I flew to London to meet the band and showed them the book. I had 3 different covers and I left to them to choose the most appropriate. I arrived in a very special moment. Tony, Mike and Phil were in the final stage of the recording of "Duke". They were in the final cutting of the album., the final editing of the songs succession. They did that and then they chose the cover of the book. Mike and Tony left saying "Now nobody call me for at least two weeks." Phil and David Hentschel, their producer/engineer stayed behind to listen to the album in its finished form for the first time and

Book is printed

Phil did something that I will never forget. He set me in the producer chair, at the center of the mixing board, lit up something very cool, and hit the 'play' button. It was his amazing way to reward me of a job well done.

18 years later I was travelling again to Foligno to reprint the same book that throughout the years had also been accepted by so many fans as "the Bible" of the band that we came to love so much. Genesis were getting ready to release the long awaited CD Box and new fans were eager to get the book. The last few people that got me with instant messages on my E Mail were 17, 13, 14 years of age. Their favorite Genesis album? "Selling England By the Pound. I felt that these messages were good omens for what I was committed to do: a special reprint of 2000 copies of the book printed in the best glossy paper, hard bound, with the Genesis old logo impacted in gold and with a new

Checking new cover

dust jacket designed by Paul Whitehead, my friend for so many years, since the time that he designed the covers of "Trespass", "Nursery Cryme" and "Foxtrot".

The printing house in Foligno had gone through some changes. They had changed ownership a couple of times, but most of the people that were working there in 1980 where still there. Nerio, the talented guy who supervised the printing of the color pages and the cover was now the head printer. Lino was still in charge of the binding and Elda, the assistant to the plant manager was now the manager herself. It was like going back in time and finding good old friends. Them and the old film of the book that we printed in 1980.

Colour pages check-up

The films had been kept in mint conditions and the mounting to make the plates required only little cleaning up.

They all knew of my arrival and by the time I got there from Los Angeles the plate were ready to be mounted on the presses. It was a joy to see those machines rolling out pages after pages. The presses were rolling and Nerio said: "I have a little more paper. Look how beautiful it looks... We can run 3000 copies" I looked at him and said, "Why not, 3000 is a more perfect number than 2000. Let's go for it!"

From Los Angeles I had brought with me the film separations of the new cover and the changes to the introduction of the new book.

We mounted all and went to print. We were happy. The book was printed very quickly and all we needed was now the dust jacket that will cover the hard bound book. But something wasn't right.

Colour pages printed

The colors of the legendary images of Peter Gabriel's masks, the image of Genesis of the early '70s were getting contaminated by the black background. The press were rolling, adjustment were being made, but something wasn't right.

The following morning we sent some copies to be laminated to see if that would solve the problem. We realized that the film separations made in Los Angeles wern't good enough. They were good. But not good enough. I got the disc from LA and went to Rome to consult with my brother Claudio, a graphic designer. We came to the conclusion that it would be fair to all of you who want the book and cherish it for a long time to come, to redo the separations in Rome. This is being done right now as I write this. We will have to wait a little longer for the book, but believe me, it will be worth our while. I am proud of this book.

Mounting films of cover

It is probably one of the incredible experiences of my life. A labour of love that comes only once or twice in a lifetime and I am very happy that it happened for a band that gave us so much creativity, great inspiration and wonderful music.

So, please be patient a few weeks more and I will come back to you with details on how to order the book. In the meantime I am sure you can use your hard earned dollars, pounds, francs, lira, marks to check out the Box set. I personally find it beautiful and full of great memories, but I wished that the people at Virgin spelled my name right. Its Armando you guys, not Amando. The English can't roll the 'r' and that's understandable, somehow. I had the same incident happening on the cover of "Foxtrot" - so there's some weird link there. 'Amando' is also the gerundive tense of the Italian verb 'amare' - to love. So I became 'Loving Gallo'.

Cool runnings guys! Thanks for all the encouraging notes and mail.

One Love!

Armando 'loving' Gallo

Check out Gallo's press release.
More facts about ordering, payment etc.