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Credit: Rhino/Craft
The power of a compelling narrative can propel and album into the realm of myth. The fractious and protracted recording of The Beatles’ White Album, the bloodshot debauchery of the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, the antagonism and power plays that fed into Pink Floyd’s The Wall – all of those records have gained an additional dimension because of how they were created.
So it is with The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Had Genesis decided in 1974 that their forthcoming double LP should be Mike Rutherford’s suggestion of a musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and had Peter Gabriel not been shown there was life outside his group, it could have all been so different.
They elected to go with Gabriel’s idea: a concept album about Rael, a Puerto-Rican street punk in New York, who represented a congested cross-section of the singer’s brain at the time. Like his full-to-bursting story on the album’s inner gatefold, he also swamped the music with words, words, words.
Five decades on, this detailed and diffuse double enduringly divides Genesis devotees – as will this belated 50th-anniversary box set itself, with banks of keyboard warriors already hammering out how much better they would have been at compiling arguably the most anticipated reissues of the 2020s so far.
Like the best of Genesis’ work, this box is both musical and magical. The super-deluxe edition features a remaster of the album by Miles Showell from the original 1974 tapes, various mixes of the original album, including an Atmos mix overseen by Gabriel and Tony Banks at Real World.
There’s also a complete live show from January 1975, an assortment of unreleased material and a hefty coffee table book on the making of the album, with input from all five band members.
The new remaster is crystal-clear – listen to the nuances such as Banks’ electric piano shadings on In The Cage’s breakdown, Steve Hackett’s attacking guitar chops on Counting Out Time and Phil Collins’ almost doo-wop backing vocals on Lilywhite Lilith. Rutherford’s playing is exceptional throughout; and, given his inner turmoil and how late the project was running, Gabriel’s singing is up there with the best of his career.
Recompiling double albums as single discs is a time-honoured pub pastime. In the case of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, it’s easy – LP one contains some of the greatest and most inventive music the group ever came up with, and the second disc doesn’t. However, in this case both need each other and are impossible to edit.
The idea of making a double-length collection was to stretch out and get all of their ideas across, which is why there are few albums as crammed as this one. There’s little time to marvel over a solo or arrangement before we’re propelled on to the next sonic and lyrical puzzle to unpick.
The live recording comes from LA’s Shrine Auditorium during the second US leg of the Lamb tour. Widely bootlegged before being made available on 1998’s Archive 67-75 box set – and here overseen by longtime Genesis sound keepers Nick Davis and Geoff Callingham – it’s a delight. By this point, both group and audience were comfortable with the material; and, aware that Gabriel’s departure was on the horizon, enjoying it while it lasted.
It reinstates Watcher Of The Skies and The Musical Box, which were absent from the previous box set version. Both sound almost prehistoric next to the Lamb material, even though they’re only three and four years old respectively.
The three download-only outtakes offer a glimpse into the group’s working methods. On the title track and Fly On a Windshield, they sound almost like a jam band, while The Chamber Of 32 Doors sees the singer run riot with his Gabrielese, the scat singing he’d perform while lyrics were gestating. If nothing else, it makes clear why Banks must have been so relieved when Collins took over as lead vocalist – meaning his masterstrokes weren’t constantly sung over.
The hardback book is full of previously unseen photographs (the shot of Gabriel modelling for the slide show is wonderful) and is beautifully assembled. As Guardian journalist Alexis Petridis interviews all five members, marvel again at the ridiculous ambition of a group of young musicians – none older than 24 – who came up with this. It underlines again just how it gave Gabriel little option but to leave the band: there was simply nowhere left for him to take it.
With all its many component parts and forward-thinking modernism, this most celebrated yet problematic Genesis album finally receives the release it deserves. It’s even better than the Rael thing.
The 50th anniversary edition of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is on sale now via Rhino/Craft.
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