The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is a double album by Genesis, released on November 18, 1974. It reached #41 on the Billboard 200 Top LP's chart, and #10 on the UK Albums chart. In 2012, the album ranked #5 in Rolling Stone's "Readers' Poll: Your Favorite Prog Rock Albums of All Time".
The album tells the surreal story of a half Puerto Rican juvenile delinquent named Rael living in New York City, who is swept underground to face bizarre creatures and nightmarish dangers in order to rescue his brother John. Several of the story's occurrences and places were derived from Peter Gabriel's dreams, and the protagonist's name is a play on his surname. In the 1991 documentary "Genesis: A History", Phil Collins remarked, "It's about a 'split personality' (referring to the live performance of "it."). In this context, Rael would believe he is looking for John but is actually looking for a missing part of himself. The individual songs also make satirical allusions to mythology, the sexual revolution, advertising, and consumerism.
It was their sixth studio album and the last album by the group to feature the involvement of lead singer Peter Gabriel. He was absent from the album's writing and rehearsal sessions due to personal problems – his first wife was having difficulties with her first pregnancy. For this reason, most of the music was written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford, with some contribution from Steve Hackett and, at first, virtually none from Gabriel. Gabriel, for his part, insisted on writing the story and all the lyrics himself, which caused friction, in particular because Rutherford had originally suggested another project for the band – an album based on Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince. Banks and Rutherford did write the words for "The Light Dies Down on Broadway", as Gabriel could not come up with a linking piece between "Ravine" and "Riding the Scree". In addition, when Gabriel put lyrics to a piece of music written by one of the other band members (such as Banks' "The Lamia" and Hackett's "Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist") the composer would often insist on adjusting the lyrics to better fit the music, an action Gabriel did not take kindly to. Gabriel's then-wife Jill noted that he wrote the main melody for "The Carpet Crawlers", of which he is especially proud. Tracks like "Anyway" and "Lilywhite Lilith" were developed from earlier unused 1969 compositions by the band ("Frustration" and "The Light" respectively) which were likely to have been group efforts.
During the album's pre-production, Gabriel was contacted by filmmaker William Friedkin (at the time enjoying success with The Exorcist), about a possible film project after Friedkin read Gabriel's short story on the sleeve of the Genesis Live album. Despite his bandmates' disapproval, Gabriel left them to work on some early script drafts. However, the project came to nothing (Friedkin instead working with Tangerine Dream to score his next film, Sorcerer), and Gabriel returned to the band.
REVIEW
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, allmusic
Given all the overt literary references of Selling England by the Pound, along with their taste for epic suites such as "Supper's Ready," it was only a matter of time before Genesis attempted a full-fledged concept album, and 1974's The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was a massive rock opera: the winding, wielding story of a Puerto Rican hustler name Rael making his way in New York City. Peter Gabriel made some tentative moves toward developing this story into a movie with William Friedkin but it never took off, perhaps it's just as well; even with the lengthy libretto included with the album, the story never makes sense. But just because the story is rather impenetrable doesn't mean that the album is as well, because it is a forceful, imaginative piece of work that showcases the original Genesis lineup at a peak. Even if the story is rather hard to piece together, the album is set up in a remarkable fashion, with the first LP being devoted to pop-oriented rock songs and the second being largely devoted to instrumentals. This means that The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway contains both Genesis' most immediate music to date and its most elliptical. Depending on a listener's taste, they may gravitate toward the first LP with its tight collection of ten rock songs, or the nightmarish landscapes of the second, where Rael descends into darkness and ultimately redemption (or so it would seem), but there's little question that the first album is far more direct than the second and it contains a number of masterpieces, from the opening fanfare of the title song to the surging "In the Cage," from the frightening "Back in NYC" to the soothing conclusion "The Carpet Crawlers." In retrospect, this first LP plays a bit more like the first Gabriel solo album than the final Genesis album, but there's also little question that the band helps form and shape this music (with Brian Eno adding extra coloring on occasion), while Genesis shines as a group shines on the impressionistic second half. In every way, it's a considerable, lasting achievement and it's little wonder that Peter Gabriel had to leave the band after this record: they had gone as far as they could go together, and could never top this extraordinary album.
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Maybe so, but they make several good post Gabriel albums too.
I would have loved to have seen a film made about this album. It's always been a surreal mystery to me. I'm sure my favorite songs on it have shifted throughout the years, but I always enjoy hearing it when I put it on.
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Originally Posted by firth5th
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