1974–75: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
and Gabriel's departure
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the sixth studio album from the English rock band Genesis, released as a double album on 18 November 1974 on Charisma Records. It is their last album recorded with Peter Gabriel as lead vocalist before his departure from the group in May 1975. Its concept centres around a Puerto Rican youth in New York City named Rael and his spiritual journey of self-discovery and the characters he meets on the way. Recording was met with several incidents, including Gabriel's temporary absences and his insistence on writing its lyrics, which put strains on the group.
It marked the start of Gabriel's increasingly strained relationship on the rest of the group which contributed to his departure. The album was written at Headley Grange in East Hampshire where upon their arrival, the building was in a state left by the previous band with excrement on the floor and rat infestations.
Gabriel objected to Rutherford's idea of an album based on The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, thinking the idea was "too twee". He persuaded the band with a less fantastical and more complicated story involving Rael, a Puerto Rican youth living in New York City who embarks on a spiritual quest to establish his freedom and identity while meeting several bizarre characters on the way. Gabriel wrote the story with influences from West Side Story, "a kind of punk" twist to Pilgrim's Progress, author Carl Jung, and the film El Topo by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Most of the album's lyrics were written by Gabriel, leaving much of its music to the rest of the group. His absence from a considerable amount of writing sessions due to difficulties with his wife's first birth was something Rutherford and Banks "were horribly unsupportive" of.
Gabriel also left the group when director William Friedkin asked him to write a screenplay, but returned after the project was shelved. In August 1974, production moved to Glaspant Manor in Carmarthenshire, Wales with Burns, as co-producer, operating Island Studios' mobile equipment. Further work and mixing took place at Island where Brian Eno contributed synthesizers and effects that the album's sleeve credits as "Enossification". When Gabriel asked Eno how the band could repay him, Eno said he needed a drummer for his track "Mother Whale Eyeless". Collins said, "I got sent upstairs as payment". Gabriel was pleased with Eno's work but Banks was less enthusiastic.
Tracklist:
1. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway 0:00
2. Fly on a Windshield 4:52
3. Broadway Melody of 1974 7:37
4. Cucoo Cocoon 9:48
5. In the Cage 12:01
6. The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging 20:13
7. Back in N.Y.C. 22:59
8. Hairless Heart 28:44
9. Counting Out Time 30:54
10. Carpet Crawlers 34:35
11. The Chamber of 32 Doors 39:50
12. Lilywhite Lilith 45:35
13. The Waiting Room 48:24
14. Anyway 53:41
15. Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist 56:58
16. The Lamia 59:47
17. Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats 1:06:45
18. The Colony of Slippermen: Arrival / A Visit to the Doktor / Raven 1:09:46
19. Ravine 1:17:58
20. The Light Dies Down on Broadway 1:20:04
21. Riding the Scree 1:23:36
22. In the Rapids 1:27:43
23. It. 1:30:05
