Sign in Genesis: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway [50th Anniversary] Peter Gabriel's last album with Genesis, which is one of my favorite records ever, gets a lavish anniversary edition Genesis—The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway [1974] The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway [50th Anniversary Edition; Super Deluxe] [1974; 2025] “On the opening night of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour, midway through the set, I notice something large filling with air just next to me. It’s a huge inflatable penis. But of course it is. Next thing I see is Peter [Gabriel], dressed in his Slipperman costume, crawling through it.”—Phil Collins, from Not Dead Yet: The Memoir. That Slipperman costume, as described by Genesis drummer Collins in Not Dead Yet: The Memoir, is “a rather nasty outfit comprising a body piece with inflatable balls (as in testicles. It has an almost Elephant Man look).” Gabriel had a wardrobe full of costumes during the early days of Genesis. It was an era when he took to the stage dressed as a sunflower or sporting a head shaved so it’d mimic the male pattern baldness that eventually bedevilled him. As the group convened to write The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway— their fifth album, a 1974 double-LP that is now subject to a lavish anniversary box set—Gabriel came to believe that “prancing about in fairyland was becoming obsolete.” This instinct contradicted the grandiose inclinations of the rest of Genesis. “Supper’s Ready,” the 23-minute epic that closed Foxtrot, was such an attraction on the Selling England by the Pound tour, the group decided to write an explicit concept album. Guitarist Mike Rutherford wanted to adapt The Little Prince, but Peter Gabriel balked. According to Collins, “Peter’s argument is: if it is going to be a story album, it should be one person writing the story, and therefore the album.” Gabriel later concurred, explaining that “There weren’t many novels created by committee,” but The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway isn’t a novel, it’s a rock album: the feuds give the music depth and heft. Squirrelling themselves away in the rat-infested Headley Grange—a favorite locale of Led Zeppelin—Genesis was experiencing considerable growing pains at the time, experiencing losses they’d prefer not to discuss in polite company. In his memoir, Collins points out that Gabriel’s “wife Jill is having a difficult pregnancy, which is not something I’m aware of at the time.” They also wouldn’t talk about professional opportunities that arose, such as director William Friedkin’s desire to write a film with Peter Gabriel. Fresh off The Exorcist and The French Connection, Friedkin wanted to make a sci-fi film and was seeking “a writer who’d never been involved with Hollywood before,” so he contacted Gabriel because the director loved the story the singer wrote for the liner notes of Genesis Live. The rest of the band bristled at this idea, shooting down the idea of Gabriel taking a hiatus to work with the director. Loath to be the figure that broke up the band, Friedkin pulled back, leaving Gabriel to finish Lamb with a second chip on his shoulder. The distance between Gabriel and Genesis on The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is the key to the record, the reason why it feels sui generis: it points toward the flinty, avant-rock of Peter Gabriel’s early solo career while still being rooted in the fantastical realms of Genesis. There is a narrative, but it’s impenetrable. Gabriel wrote the story that appears on the album sleeve the “night before the sleeve went to the printing presses,” dismissing it as “appallingly written. When I reread it, I’m quite embarrassed, but it was done so hastily. Often, I’ve wondered if I should have another go, as the interest in the album doesn’t seem to have died down.” Gabriel isn’t reluctant to revise his work. Witness the bonus material here: a full concert from January 1975, held at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California. Apart from an encore of “Watcher of the Skies” and “The Musical Box,” the Shrine Auditorium gig was released as part of the 1998 box Genesis Archive 1967-75, whose compilation provided Gabriel with an opportunity to re-record vocals due to “costume restrictions.” A plausible explanation, but listening to the live Lamb on either box set gives the impression that Gabriel couldn’t leave a single original vocal in place. Here, he’s clearly a middle-aged veteran singing songs designed for a much younger man; maybe his vocals are clearer and controlled, but that adds contextual dissonance. It’s also possible that he wasn’t the only member of Genesis tinkering with the tapes. The Shrine Auditorium does contain a hint of kinetic live energy, largely due to the muscle of Collins, yet it also feels oddly fussy and precise; it feels more overcooked than the album it accompanies. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway doesn’t play as if it was designed for stage, anyway. It’s fully an artifact of its age, a concept album that can’t contain its ideas and can’t convey its story. It hits harder than any previous Genesis record, yet it also has the band’s most obtuse music, some of which was enhanced by Brian Eno, who agreed to participate only if Collins would return the favor by drumming on Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). Collins, the lone Roxy Music skeptic in the bunch, wound up striking up a partnership striking up a kinship with Eno, which speaks to the inherent weirdness of Lamb: it goes in directions it shouldn’t, abandoning possibilities that could’ve proven fruitful. Large stretches of Lamb find Genesis detaching from the idea of concrete songs, particularly in the second half where Gabriel’s lead character Rael gets stranded in a colony of Slippermen during a pivotal passage in his coming of age. Fittingly, it often seems Gabriel is the one pulling Genesis back to earth, sharpening hooks and forcing the band into the realm of popular culture. They’ve lost any pastoral flair: they’re hard and grimy, occupying a space that feels conversant with glam and synth-rock. Gabriel also litters his lyrics with references to popular tunes: the Drifters’s “On Broadway” is naturally here but so are “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll (But I Like It),” the familiar words sung to different melodies. These allusions ground the album in the modern world as much as the urban milieu that provides Gabriel’s with his inspiration. The specific references tie Lamb to its time as much as its sinister sci-fi undercurrents; like ‘70s Doctor Who, it has the eeriness of futurism done on the cheap. Collins wrote in his memoir that The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is “one of the few Genesis albums I can put on and be surprised by, not that I can ever remember having listened to it in its entirety.” I’ve listened to Lamb countless times in its entirety and I still can still be startled by the pieces coming together in ways that contradict my memory, or hearing a melody I’ve consigned to my subconscious, unaware of its origins. Possibly because it was created by musicians who didn’t want to linger in the mystery, the album contains riddles that can not be explained and that’s why it still can surprise fifty years after its release. So It Goes is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe Source: https://sterlewine.substack.com/p/genesis-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway