Genesis - "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" : A progressive masterpiece

    Just five gigs into a 101-date tour to promote Genesis’s most ambitious work, Peter Gabriel informed his band mates he was leaving, making the official announcement to press once the lengthy jaunt was completed. His wordy statement spoke of feeling “cooped up” within the group dynamic, and that "when performing, there were less shivers down the spine”.

Performance temperatures notwithstanding, it’s fair to say the wheels were coming off the wagon earlier, during the making of Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (a fable about troubled New York youth recorded in semi-rural Carmarthenshire). Although the sleeve credits all five members as joint writers, reports in years to come suggest Gabriel's attempts to take control of the material rankled the others - "a songwriters’ collective, a regiment of fiercely competitive guys,” as erstwhile guitarist Steve Hackett described them in 2022.

There was also friction when Gabriel absented himself from sessions for long periods to focus on a film project with director William Friedkin, fresh from a slew of awards for The French Connection and The Exorcist, that never came to fruition. Yet, from a not always comfortable working environment emerged an album which proved divisive among fans but ultimately has to be considered a triumph.

Retrospective reviews considering the record’s place in the pantheon of all-time greatest prog albums and what have you often home in on the Gabriel elements, perhaps looking for clues as to how he mapped out his later solo career. But Lamb... is irrefutably a group album, its themes, contradictions, schizophrenia and variety indicative of a working unit of strong, confident - and occasionally confrontational - personalities.

In many respects, 1974 was the zenith of prog; the year Yes topped the charts for the first time with Tales From Topographic Oceans, while Emerson, Lake & Palmer broke box office records across Europe and North American for eight months. For their part, Genesis seemed to be making a wry comment on the prevailing winds by fashioning an album simultaneously forensic and frivolous.

The wit inherent in much of the early 70s Genesis canon is frequently overlooked, but it’s plentiful in the grooves of in its intermittently ludicrous theatricality - it's no surprise Gabriel would later be a touchstone for (and contributor to) comic actor Simon Day’s TV mockumentaries in the guise of prog warhorse Brian Pern.

Case in point is the throwaway, poppy Counting Out Time, in which the singer declares, “Erogenous zones, I love you/Without you what would a poor boy do?” - a curveball choice for first single. Is it a willful attempt by the band to rein in the widely perceived pomposity of prog, to have a little fun at the expense of a genre fanbase with a tendency towards over-analysis? Discuss.

All joking aside, it’s a seriously impressive album on which envelopes are pushed and the grammar of rock music is teased and tugged in myriad directions. The sole additional musician, Brian Eno, weighs in with electronic effects on the maniacal In The Cage and off-kilter cabaret The Grand Parade Of Lifeless Packaging, as Genesis refuse to sit still and repeat themselves.

However, as mentioned above, the album’s arrival in stores divided fans, some of whom wholeheartedly embraced musical curiosity and the pursuit of avenues new, while others entrenched in a love for Foxtrot or Selling England By The Pound felt their heroes were playing fast and loose with the rulebook. The latter contingent could be accused of forgetting that “prog” is a contraction of progressive.

The requisite beils-and-whistles deluxe box is, compared to others of its ilk, relatively modest. A Blu-ray disc houses an ATMOS mix of the album, but of wider interest will be the small handful of demos (although they’re hardly revelatory) and a full live show from the subsequent tour. It’s here the songs seem less confined, more direct and powerful, specifically the duelling between Tony Banks’s keyboards and Mike Rutherford’s bass on In The Cage, and the quirky carousel of Riding The Scree.

A sprawling 94 minutes of ideas, oddities and a hunger to both entertain and wrongfoot its intended audience, Lamb... remains an album that relishes its ability to surprise. Yet, in its determination not to follow familiar paths it would hasten the band’s journey to the end of a particular line.