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77 of 79 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a strange masterpeice (the chamber was in confusion), January 4, 2003
Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is an incredible achievement of artistic ambition and serious musicianship led on the heals of five very talented head strong men all thinking that they knew what direction the band should go in. The end result is something so confusing to follow yet strangely exciting that people will be listening to it for many years to come wondering about it's mystery just as one wonders about the Mona Lisa's smile. Of course the musicians involved have no answers themselves. The new blend of musical ideas such as Eno-esque soundscapes (Brian Eno actually worked on this album), incredibly inventive drumming by Phil Collins; Peter Gabriel pushing his voice to new arenas of sound (he never sounded better before or since) making each character and emotion have it's own voice; Tony Banks creating amazing keyboard passages that rank with anything that Keith Emerson had ever done; Steve Hackett, always under used but always finding just the right phrase to add to put a song to the top; and Mike Rutherford played great bass throughout the album (check out: In the Cage). The theme of Lamb Lies Down on Broadway itself seems to be too much of an enigma but the bottom line is that it is about the inner turmoil of a young NY punk trying to get it together. There are liner notes in the CD further explaining the story, but you need a magnifying glass to read them and even if you do have good eye sight you still may not see what the hell is going on. But since when in art are you supposed to figure it all out at once. The music is more the focal point anyway- the songs work well individually and as well as collectively baring (at times)the theme. For me the first disc has always captured my attention a bit more than the second. We start out with a manic piano diddle that swirls around until it comes down at hits you "and the lamb... lies down... on broa-wo-adway.." Guitar riffs tripping down Rael's voice is heard- he's a kid that hears all the sounds sees all the sights and is working towards sensory overload. The song works almost like a Bob Dylan type observational song. You get that through this he becomes alienated from his surrounding. As the songs continue the alienation and confusion take more of a hold and they are expressed with such eloquence both in the clarity of the phrasing and the utter babble of the lyrics. The irony is that as degenerately abstract as the first disc gets the second disc is complete madness. The music is all over the place (the chamber was most definitely in confusion), yet there is a sense of cohesion here as well as passage. The songs lend to each other a complementary feeling making the music feel like a '67 Coltrane solo without sounding like one. Which all leads to what Coltrane was trying to talk about, "what is "it"?". In summation Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is better than anything that has been done in the last 30 years (of course that's my opinion), the album is all about alienation and they didn't have to say the word once (take note radiohead). The music is still extremely vibrant and vivid sounding like it was created today- and explains the turmoil of dealing with modern times very well. Genesis never made an album like this before or after. Peter Gabriel left the band after this and made some terrific solo albums but never captured what made Lamb Lies Down on Broadway so alluring and ambitious. Genesis moved on to make some very beautiful albums (that made it sound like L.L.D.o.B. never happened) basically Trick of the Tail sounds like a follow up to Selling England by the Pound. I recommend this to anyone regardless of musical preference who wants a good intellectual challenge and to be highly entertained.
NEWS:
To coincide with the Genesis tour, EMI Records will be re-issuing 14 Genesis studio albums in three stages during 2007. All the releases will be SACD/DVD double disc sets featuring newly re-mastered 5.1 surround sound and stereo mixes. The release schedule is as follows:
March 2007: A Trick Of The Tail (1976), Wind & Wuthering (1977), ...And Then There Were Three...(1978), Duke (1980) Abacab (1981)
June/July 2007: Genesis(1983), Invisible Touch(1986), We Can't Dance (1991), Calling All Stations(1997)
Late 2007/Early 2008: Trespass (1970), Nursery Cryme (1971), Foxtrot (1972 ), Selling England By The Pound (1973), The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway(1974)
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38 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Something's changed, that's not your face. It's mine!, April 9, 2006
Released in 1974, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is THE magnum opus in the Genesis catalog. A sprawling and impenetrably dense concept work, this double album saw Peter Gabriel pulling out all of the stops in the concept department. Interestingly enough, the album was an attempt to move away from fantasy matter and take on a more modern subject which, in this case, involved a Puerto Rican juvenile delinquent named Rael who had a split personality. As an aside, Mike Rutherford initially suggested that the band use the story of The Little Prince as the concept for the album, but Peter felt it was too much like "prancing around in fantasyland". I for one am glad they went in the direction that they did.
Peter's story mixes Rael's recollections of his home in New York with images of a nightmarish world populated by colonies of hideously deformed Slippermen; the deceptive and wily Lamia that are part female/part snake; blind "seers"; factories where people are "made"; and most importantly, Rael's alter ego "brother" John. Ultimately, the differences in Rael's split personality are reconciled at the end of the album, as he saves John (Rael) from certain death in the raging rapids of a large river. Rael is surprised as he pulls John from the river only to find himself staring at his own face. Peter referred to the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in interviews as his version of a "Pilgrim's Progress", and was ultimately a "transformation" story. Sound intense? Trust me, it is.
The music itself is proportionally intense and features classic Genesis workouts with pieces like In the Cage; The Colony of Slippermen; and the mind-numbing complexity of Riding the Scree. In addition, Genesis wrote very experimental tracks such as the Waiting Room (which was alternately titled "Evil-jam"). Although there are some tracks that may seem like filler, I feel that every single note on this album is absolutely essential. In general, the performances by Steve Hackett (guitar); Tony Banks (Hammond Organ, piano, mellotron, ARP Pro-soloist and 2600); Mike Rutherford (bass, 12 string acoustic); and Phil Collins (drums, backing vocals) are simply breathtaking.
The sheer length of the album stemmed from the length of the lyrics themselves. In fact, it got to the point where the band would finish recording the music, only to have Peter ask them to write more to fit with his additional lyrics. When Peter was finally done writing, he went into the studio and recorded his vocals over all of the music - much to the shock of the band. Based on what I have read, it was assumed that a number of sections were going to be instrumental, so when lyrics appeared everywhere, they were a little irritated. I admit that I have to agree with them. In fact, the medley of the album performed during the 1976-1977 tours (entitled "Lamb Stew") included instrumental versions of certain tracks and the vocal-less tracks were very powerful, especially Fly on a Windshield.
When the album was released, Genesis played it in its entirety to an audience that was expecting concert favorites like Watcher of the Skies and Firth of Fifth - as you can imagine they were completely baffled. To make matters worse, Peter's vocals were sometimes unintelligible, especially when he was wearing the Slipperman costume - apparently he could not get the microphone close enough.
Sadly though, this album was to be Peter's last performance with Genesis and also marked the end of the classic Genesis period.
This album is very highly recommended along with Nursery Cryme (1971); Foxtrot (1972), Selling England by the Pound (1973); and the 1967-1975 box set, which includes a live version of the Lamb recorded at the Shrine Auditorium.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
THE LAMB STILL STANDS UP, July 2, 2001
A curious one, this. A mass of contradictions. A sprawling, pompous prog-rock concept album packed with taught, snappy tunes. A showcase for the virtuoso musicianship of this most British of progressive bands, but featuring some of the most awesomely tight ensemble playing you will hear this side of a Bartok string quartet. This was the sort of music that punk rock was invented as an antidote for, and yet its obession with the phenomenology of inner city street life was two decades ahead of its time (rap is still going down the same graffiti-strewn alley today).
The story behind the stylish, surrealistic lyrics is that of Rael, a young Puerto Rican graffiti artist on the streets of New York, who finds himself catapulted into a symbolic underworld (a sort of Jungian Hades) where the meaning or possibly the meaningless of his former street life is played out in a series of surreal cameos involving a cloning (The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging), religion (Carpet Crawlers), various sexual urges and anxieties (The Lamia, The Colony of Slippermen, The Doktor, etc.), disorientation (The Chamber of 32 Doors), and death (Anyway, The Supernatural Anaesthetist). The final message about saving one's own self through self-sacrifice is almost but not quite religious, and its curiously cautious optimism does not at all clash with the rest.
This was the last album Genesis made with Peter Gabriel as principal lyricist and vocalist, and the last but two featuring the astonishing Steve Hackett (now a successful solo artist in his own right) on lead guitar. Provided you can cope with the odd few minutes of self-indulgence it ranks as one the band's best albums. It certainly contains some of the best playing and one of the best studio productions of their career. In fact many would see it as the high point of Genesis' career as a real rock band (i.e. before it became a matching accessory for Phil Collins' solo career).
A particularly interesting feature of "The Lamb" is how modern it still sounds. Apart from a few cheesy moog noises that clearly date the work to the days when synths were an exciting novelty, it is all tasteful and clean. The rhythm section of Collins and Rutherford shows an almost uncanny rapport - they seem to work better together than on some much later cuts, while Gabriel's vocals and lyrics are a good advert for the stellar solo career that was about to be launched.
As usual it is Banks who provides the matrix that holds everything together - one of the enduring mysteries of rock is why his solo projects never quite gelled with the record-buying public. The classically trained keyboard virtuoso provided much of the unique quality that set Genesis apart from other progressive bands in the seventies, and that keeps their early material sounding fresh and challenging today, viz. a grasp of musical architecture. They knew how to use space, different instrumental textures and compositional structure in a way that no other rock band ever equalled let alone surpassed.
To me and to many others, the band's subsequent inch-by-inch descent into the swamps of adult-orientated radio rock is one of the great musical tragedies of the late 20th century. "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" is not perfect and is arguably not their best album. Nevertheless, in this mixture of good and average, punk and classicism, indulgence and discipline, experimentation and pop, "The Lamb" captures everything that almost made Genesis the greatest rock band ever. And as with all true classics, much of sounds even better now, nearly 30 years on, than it did on first release.
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