The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) will provide a deep
dive into the music and visual elements around this seminal album and pivotal period of time for
the band. The album was the pinnacle of the band’s early success and is regarded as one of the
most important progressive rock records of all time.
The Genesis band members have been involved in the oversight and approvals around this new
Super Deluxe Edition of the album, including new liner notes. The album will celebrate its
50th Anniversary in 2024.
By Nick Tate
This review includes excerpts from interviews by the author with
Steve Hackett (July 2025), Phil Collins (phone interview in 2007).
It’s the Genesis album that has divided progressive rock fans and
critics for five decades: “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” has been both
revered and reviled as the most experimental album featuring the
classic lineup of Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks, Mike
Rutherford and Phil Collins. The 1974 double album (Gabriel’s last with
Genesis) marked a huge departure from the band’s prior five studio
recordings. While those earlier Genesis works centered on mythical
themes and characters (carnivorous weeds, woodland hermaphrodites and
watchful space aliens), “The Lamb” chronicled the story of a Puerto
Rican street punk named Rael and his surrealistic journey of
self-discovery on (and below) the streets of New York City. Even the
music veered sharply from the pastoral Victorian Englishness that
defined early Genesis to embrace an edgy contemporary urbanity.
Early reviews were mixed, with some critics praising the album’s
ambitious reach and others deriding it as the epitome of prog-rock
excess (“an unfocused mess,” as one put it). While the years have
softened some of the initial criticism, even the band members recall
that the album’s release was hardly the watershed moment Genesis hoped
it might be back in the day.
“When ‘The Lamb’ came out, people hated it!” Collins told me once in a
candid interview that was never published (until now). “What makes me
laugh about this actually is that people talk about the Gabriel days in
revered terms today — the golden age of Genesis. We had our hardcore
fans, of course, and some of them are still hanging on. But the farther
away it gets from when it happened, the more glowing the memories
become.” Banks has echoed Collins on the early response to “The Lamb”
and made no secret that he feels the band’s prior two albums —“Selling
England by the Pound” and “Foxtrot” — were superior efforts (Ultimate Classic Rock).
And even Hackett, who is reprising selections from “The Lamb” on his
current Genesis Revisited tour, called the record an outlier in the
band’s catalog. “I think it’s a one-off,” he said in an interview during
a break in his new tour. “I don’t think there are any other Genesis
albums that are quite like it. It has its fans, its adherents, and it
has its critics. So, you cannot say that this is Genesis’s ‘Sgt.
Pepper.’ But time is a great healer and I do think that some things
sound sweeter with the passing of time.”
Hackett also told me that “The Lamb” recording sessions were fraught,
revealing deep divisions in the band that would lead to Gabriel’s
departure and a sea change in Genesis’s sound and approach. The concept
album was primarily Gabriel’s brainchild, and he insisted on writing all
of the lyrics himself, leaving the musical composition largely to the
others. This approach broke from the collaborative songwriting approach
the band had taken on previous albums and it didn’t sit well with
everyone, Hackett said.
“It was almost as if this was Pete’s solo album within the band
context; you could see that Pete was heading towards a solo career,” he
noted. “It is a concept album, it is a story, and it’s driven by one
person’s need to describe that narrative and have that control over it —
and that was Peter Gabriel.”
Another complicating factor: Gabriel’s wife, Jill, was pregnant with
their first child, and both the pregnancy and birth were difficult, so
he was frequently absent from the sessions. On top of that, Gabriel had
been approached by Hollywood director William Friedkin (of “Exorcist”
fame) to write an ill-fated screenplay, which prompted him to quit the
band for a time. He eventually returned to complete work on “The Lamb,”
but the groundwork was laid for his departure from Genesis long before
the album hit record store shelves, Hackett said.
“This was his swan-song with Genesis, and he made it conditional — he
insisted on writing all the lyrics — so there was a division and the
tensions ran high. Unfortunately, all of that was just too much, and the
string just had to break at the end of the day.” That said, those
troubled sessions would end up producing the most groundbreaking Genesis
album. Love it or not, “The Lamb” was a landmark that helped define
first-wave progressive rock. Released in November 1974, it cracked the
Top 10 on the UK Albums Chart and reached No. 41 on the U.S. Billboard
200, despite the mixed reviews.
Now, 50 years on, the album is being reissued in a five-disc boxed
set containing the original studio recordings, a gussied-up concert from
1975 and a few rare demos, remixed and remastered in stereo and 5.1
surround sound. “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition)”
arrives just as several new album tributes are also hitting the
shelves, inviting fans and critics alike to revisit and reassess the
most audacious of the Gabriel-era Genesis albums.
Of course, there’s little point in discussing the finer points of
what made “The Lamb” such a high-water mark for the band. The real
appeal of the new deluxe edition is the superior quality of the
high-gloss remixes of these studio and live tracks, in addition to a few
previously unreleased rarities. If you’re on the fence about whether
those extras are enough to warrant owning this release, the answer is an
unqualified: Yes.
These new mixes carve out each member’s individual contributions with
gemstone clarity, revealing how the distinct musical personalities of
Genesis combined to create the band’s signature sound. Finer details and
textures, barely audible in prior releases of “The Lamb,” are crystal
clear — giving the mixes a sparkling new sheen so fresh it’s almost like
hearing these classic tracks for the first time. Among them:
• Gabriel’s tour-de-force vocals pop from the speakers with 3D-like
depth, as he summons every trick in his vocal bag and moves seamlessly
from romantic balladry (“The Carpet Crawlers”) to blue-eyed soul (“The
Chamber of 32 Doors”), punk-Pavarotti theatricality (“Back in New York
City”), social commentary (“The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging”) and
bizarro histrionics (“The Colony of Slippermen”).
• Banks’ keyboard wizardry is high in these new mixes, emerging as a
defining feature of the best tracks here — including the trilling
electric piano lines on the title track, “The Carpet Crawlers” and “The
Lamia,” and dazzling synth runs on “Back in New York City” and “In the
Cage.”
• Hackett’s master-of-darkness fretwork lends an otherworldly quality to
“Fly on a Windshield,” “Broadway Melody of 1974,” and “The Waiting
Room.” But he also taps a deep vein of soul on “The Chamber of 32 Doors”
and “Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist,” reflecting his mastery
of multiple genres of acoustic and electric guitar
• Rutherford’s contrapuntal basslines pop and snap, driving the band
forward with every measure, notably on the opening track and the booming
“Lilywhite Lilith,” which pulses like a beating heart.
• Collins delivers the most inspired drumming of his career, bridging
rock, jazz and even tribal percussion to thunderous effect on “Back in
New York City” and “In the Cage.”
• In many places, the band cooks with orchestrated ensemble jams that
showcase some of the best prog-rock collaborations ever recorded
(“Riding the Scree,” “Broadway Melody of 1974”). They’re so strong, in
fact, a few instrumental-only extras would have been welcome.
In addition to the studio recordings, the deluxe edition features a
complete live show, taped at the Shrine Auditorium in L.A. on January
24, 1975 (the only one of the tour’s 102 dates recorded in multi-track).
It includes “The Lamb” in full, as well as the show’s previously
unreleased encore — “Watcher of the Skies” and “The Musical Box.”
It is a fine musical time capsule of Genesis in concert back in the
day, with a few caveats. First of all, this is not an entirely live
performance from 50 years ago. Gabriel re-recorded some of his vocals in
the mid-1990s for the original release of the Shrine show on the 1998
“Genesis Archive 1967–75” boxed set because the elaborate stage costumes
he wore sometimes muffled his voice. (The closing track, “It,” is an
entirely re-worked studio version from the 1990s because the original
concert tape ran out.)
Secondly, Hackett also opted to redo some of his parts in the studio
in the 1990s because an injury to his left hand, sustained just before
the start of the “Lamb” tour, affected his playing ability. The injury,
from a broken wine glass, forced him to modify his technique and undergo
physical therapy (including shock treatments to his hand) on the road.
“I had to fix a couple things on the Shrine live version because my
thumb was literally hanging off my hand at the time it was originally
recorded,” Hackett explained. “I severed a tendon and a nerve, and I had
a shirt button sewn on the end of my thumb in order to keep things
straight!”
While both artists’ overdubs are seamlessly merged with the
(unretouched) live performances of Banks, Collins and Rutherford — a bit
of studio magic that is truly amazing — Gabriel’s do-overs are more
noticeable and obtrusive than Hackett’s because his voice had deepened
over time. It’s easy to distinguish between Gabriel’s 1975 and 1995
vocals, which are sometimes presented side by side in the same song. The
new vocals differ not only in quality and timbre, but also in new
phrasings Gabriel gives them. As a result, some tracks are stripped of
the urgency of the originals — such as “Back in New York City” (as close
as Genesis ever came to punk-rock) and “Counting Out Time” (an ode to
adolescent sexuality).
It’s almost as if Gabriel elected to step out of the role of Rael
(delivering his protagonist’s first-person story in the moment) to
assume the role of an older narrator recounting the story of his
long-lost youth. This must have been a deliberate choice that clearly
improved on the quality of the show’s original vocals, which can be
heard in bootlegs that have circulated among fans for years. But
Gabriel’s overdubs won’t be everyone’s cup of Earl Grey.
Even so, this is a minor, very-inside-baseball quibble that is easily
forgiven with a package as rich as this one. And, as others have
suggested, Gabriel’s involvement with anything Genesis-related after
1975 is a cause for celebration. But it does beg the question: If
two-fifths of the band elected to re-record some of their parts in the
1990s — and “It” —why didn’t all five redo the whole thing or regroup
for a “Lamb” tour? After all, this lineup recorded a new version of “The
Carpet Crawlers” issued as a single in 1998.
Was that ever even a possibility that was discussed?
For the record, Hackett said the answer is, yes — the band did indeed
discuss reforming for a series of “Lamb” shows years before Collins,
Banks and Rutherford regrouped for two reunion tours in 2007 and
2021-22. “Pete wanted to do something based on the Cream model — maybe
we’ll do two shows in London and two shows in New York,” he said. “Then
there was a bit of banter that maybe there could be a month’s worth of
shows.”
Hackett said he was open to it and, at one point, it seemed like it
was going to happen. “When I was approached about it, I said, ‘yeah,
great.’ I knew what would happen if we had toured with that lineup,” he
said. “Whether it had been with all the costumes, with the avatars, in
full technicolor and all the rest, or had been much more stripped down
and more bare, I think would have been extraordinary.”
Collins agreed, suggesting a Genesis reunion tour would have been a
watershed event for the classic five-man lineup. But he acknowledged
even getting the band together for the new recording of “The Carpet
Crawlers” in the late 1990s was “like pulling teeth — I don’t think
everyone was ever in the room at the same time!”
Still, Collins said he would have welcomed it. “Personally, I would
have preferred to go back to the original Genesis and be sitting there
playing the drums,” he told me. “For me, the fun of it would be to get
together, rehearse ‘The Lamb’ for a couple of weeks and just take out a
well-lit show and play the music.”
Hackett added that the band had discussed other possibilities in the
1990s.“There were other things on the table,” he said. “There was the
idea that maybe ‘The Lamb’ could be a film or maybe a stage musical.”
But, of course, none of those things materialized — something Hackett
regards today as a missed opportunity. “Then again, Genesis was full of
missed opportunities,” he said. “But at the same time, it was a highly
productive band in all of its various incarnations. Life is full of what
ifs.”
About that time — perhaps in response to those uneventful band
conversations? — Hackett launched his own Genesis Revisited project,
reprising most tracks from the albums he made with the band between 1971
and 1977. Since 1996, the long-running juggernaut has been performing
and recording live shows virtually nonstop and is currently playing nine
tracks from “The Lamb” on its current tour.
“With Genesis, I’ve always said, ‘Yeah, OK, fine, include me in or
include me out — whatever.’ ”Hackett said. “Meanwhile, I will go out and
celebrate it myself, because with band politics, the wheels can move
very very slowly, and it doesn’t always come to a thrilling conclusion.
So, to protect and take the heritage forward, I have now celebrated
‘Selling England By the Pound,’ ‘Foxtrot,’ ‘Seconds Out’ in their
entirety, and ‘The Lamb’ partially.”
For the record, Hackett suggested “The Lamb” wasn’t his clear
favorite of the early Genesis albums, partly because of the divisions
within the band when it was recorded. “When I look back on ‘Foxtrot’ and
‘Selling England,’ I think of that as a golden period for Genesis,” he
said.
He added, however, that the new mixes of “The Lamb” are perhaps the
best representation of the band’s sound and progress in 1974 — marking
the end of one era and the start of another for Genesis.
Worth noting: In addition to the remixed studio and live “Lamb”
recordings, the deluxe edition features a few extras to sweeten the pot
for uber bans. There’s a 60-page booklet, replicas of the 1975 tour
program, ticket and promo poster, and several early demo takes of “The
Lamb Lies Down on Broad/Fly on a Windshield,” “The Chamber of 32
Doors/The Lamia,” and “In the Cage.” These few works-in-progress demos
(available via download) are rough and raw low-fi takes. But they offer
glimpses of the band in the early stages of capturing lightning in a
bottle with what would become one of the most celebrated (if
controversial) progressive rock albums ever made.
The bottom line: This richly expanded boxed set captures the classic
Genesis lineup at the very top of its game — a cohesive masterwork that
reveals the whole was far greater than the sum of its parts, live and in
the studio. It is the definitive edition of one of prog’s most striking
concept albums. You’ll want to make room for this one on your top music
shelf, alongside Yes’s “Close to the Edge,” ELP’s “Tarkus,” Jethro
Tull’s “A Passion Play,” Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” and King
Crimson’s debut album.
Post-script: For “Lamb” fans wanting more, three additional tributes to the album are out or soon to be available:
• Steve Hackett’s latest album, “The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal
Albert Hall” — recorded during his current tour — features highlights
from “The Lamb,” along with other Genesis fan favorites and his own solo
works. Check out the review here:
https://progreport.com/steve-hackett-the-lamb-stands-up-live-at-the-royal-albert-hall-album-review/
• Dave Kerzner’s Sonic Elements has released “IT — A 50th Anniversary
Celebration of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway by Genesis” — which
reimagines the album as a film soundtrack of sorts, featuring a Who’s
Who of contemporary prog artists. Read more here:
https://progreport.com/it-a-50th-anniversary-celebration-of-the-lamb-lies-down-on-broadway-by-genesis-album-review/
• In November, Nick D’Virgilio is releasing a remastered version of
“Rewiring Genesis: A Tribute to the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” his
2008 reworking of the album with co-producer Mark Honsby, featuring
Nashville studio musicians, some of whom had never heard the original.
Here’s a promo video from the album:
https://progreport.com/nick-dvirgilio-shares-fly-on-a-windshield-broadway-melody-of-1974-with-steve-hackett-on-guitar/
Posts
