The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition) by Genesis
Release date: September 26, 2025Label: Rhino
So, let’s start with the big bang, where was I when The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway came into my life the first time, I heard it? It started back in December of 2000 when I got this album as a Hanukkah gift as I was delving into the world of the Peter Gabriel-era of Genesis. I had known about the previous albums such as Selling England by the Pound, Foxtrot, From Genesis to Revelation, Nursery Cryme, and Trespass. Back then, I thought it was Phil Collins’ band. Boy was I in for a big surprise.
So here I was, wearing my headphones, in my bedroom, putting this album on my old boombox, putting the CD on, and I was taken to a world that was like a tripped-out version of Alice in Wonderland that Peter Gabriel had wrote. The cover which was made by Hipgnosis, says it all. From the moment Tony Banks’ glorious piano introduction kicks in with the title-track, it was off to the races.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 51 years since this album came out back in 1974, originally released on the Charisma label in the UK, and on the ATCO label here in the States. But it also marked the end of a golden-era as Peter was ready to leave the band to embark on a successful solo career after he had finished the tour with Genesis for The Lamb back in 1975.
The origins of the story go back to the last two shows of the Selling England tour in May of 1974 at New York’s Academy of Music. According to Rael’s Prog Rock Documentaries on his YouTube channel, the Academy of Music was a 20-minute walk away to the Elgin Theater which was home for midnight showings during that time frame. One of the films that was shown, was a surreal avant-garde western called El Topo directed by Alejandro Jordowosky released in 1970.
This was the moment where Peter saw the movie and it had a big impact on him to see where he would like to see the next direction of the band, and where he wanted them to go into. With its surreal imagery, violent sceneries, and twisted sequences, Gabriel knew that this was the key ingredient to walk into the story of a street punk graffiti artist named Rael.
Understand, this was punk before punk. For Peter, to go beyond ‘The Musical Box’, ‘Watcher of the Skies’, ‘Dancing with the Moonlit Knight’, and ‘Supper’s Ready’, he wanted to go beyond the reverse mohawk, different costumes, masks, and tackle the underworld, the spiritual journey, and finding the inner self.
There are some naysayers who have mixed opinions about The Lamb. Some love it, some don’t. And that’s okay, not everyone has to like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. For me, I adore this album because of the bravery in which the band were kind of challenging themselves into a corner of finding the right moment, the right key, and the right ingredient to see what they’ll have up their sleeve.
The 2025 remasters from the original analog tapes are spot on. It definitely beats the 2008 stereo mix which came out from the 1970-1975 box set. Which I have some mixed feelings on. But I won’t go into that. But I will say the 2008 mix that Nick Davis had done, was re-mixed way too loud and un-listenable at times. I had felt the same similarity when listening to The Beatles Yellow Submarine Songtrack when it was remixed and it was very, very loud back in 1999 at the time the movie was coming back on VHS and DVD with the ‘Hey Bulldog’ sequence put back in the original movie.
But onto the review. Miles Showell has brought clarity and faith to the original analog tapes from the album. You can hear the tambourine bashing away on the title-track, Tony’s keyboards flying out of nowhere during ‘In the Cage’ which caught me by surprise that wasn’t heard in the 2008 mix, nor I believe in the 1994 mix. And the count on ‘The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging’ with Eno’s vocal effects he did on Gabriel’s voice.
There are times where Peter had transformed himself into a dalek during the song, and giving Doctor Who, a big run of their money. Rutherford’s playing using a fuzz tone behind not just the title track, but on ‘Counting Out Time’ (including Hackett’s wacky solo work on two lovers doing…. you get the general idea what the song is about), ‘Lilywhite Lilith’, and the musique concrete nightmarish avant-garde approach of their instruments going haywire behind ‘The Waiting Room’.
The double-tracking vocals returns on Gabriel’s voice on ‘Anyway’ which was removed in the 2008 mix. The loneliness, dying on the inside, and as the moment the band kicks in thanks to Tony’s concerto-like explosion, it becomes a whirlwind inside Rael’s head, not knowing when the nightmare is about to end and finding his way home.
There’s so much detail, so much explained answers and mysteries, followed by repeatable listens to see what you’ve been missing, we’re almost wanting to return to Rael’s journey more and more and finding out why he’s been sent down in this mysterious world. And as Alejandro Jordowosky once said in the 2005 documentary, Midnight Movies: From Margin to the Mainstream on his take about his movie El Topo, “I hate crazy who is normal. Who they call normal I hate. The most excited like this feeling of the monstrosities and parallel of life. It’s a beautiful of life”.
Then we get to the next set which is their live performance at the Shrine Auditorium on January 24th, 1975 during the second leg of The Lamb tour. This recording is considered the holy grail of bootleg of all bootleg live recordings amongst Genesis fans before it was released on the 4-CD box set Genesis Archive 1967-75 released in 1998. Not to mention, the full-length un-editied version of the recording is on Wolfgang’s Vault website.
While it is wonderful that they brought it back for the box set for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, it’s also a bit disappointing that they used the overdubs that Gabriel had recorded his vocals, which is understandable because of the Slippermen costume. But I wished that both Nick Davis and Geoff Callingham had used some sort of AI software, almost like the MAL (Machine-Assisted Learning), a custom-developed AI technology that Peter Jackson had worked on The Beatles ‘Now and Then’, to fix Peter Gabriel’s original vocals and that would have been okay for the Shrine recordings.
You can feel the audience’s rooting and supporting Genesis during the tour and the venue which would at one time be home to the Academy Awards and then the E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), an annual trade event for the video game industry back in 2014. However, with a little help from Stephen W. Tayler who had done the mixing on the last two encores that is featured on the Shrine recording; ‘Watcher of the Skies’ and ‘The Musical Box’, sound magnificent and were on fire the way the band had done throughout their stages in the progressive circuit.
While this marked an end of an era for Peter Gabriel, who had an amazing seven-year ride with the band, going from a Bee Gees-psychedelic structure into prog-rock loyalty, it was time for him to depart and embark on a successful solo career. And the rest as they say between him and Genesis, is history.
With its puzzling story, often considered the maddest prog album considered by Classic Rock Magazine nearly ten years ago, up there with; Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Aphrodite’s Child’s 666, Bo Hansson’s Lord of the Rings, Egg’s The Polite Force, and Yes’ Tales from Topographic Oceans, this album is definitely getting the recognition it truly deserves. It is here; it is finally ours!
