The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
| The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway | ||||
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| Genesis studio album | ||||
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Publication |
November 29, 1974 |
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admission |
August – October 1974 |
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| Label (s) | Charisma Records (UK) ATCO (USA) |
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Format (s) |
CD, DVD, Hybrid-SACD, LP |
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Title (number) |
23 |
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running time |
95:17 |
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| occupation |
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Genesis, John Burns |
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Studio (s) |
Island Mobile Studios, Wales (England) |
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The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway ( English "The lamb lies down on Broadway lower" ) is the sixth studio album by British progressive rock - band Genesis . The concept album is the last album of the first regular cast with Peter Gabriel as singer and was released in November 1974.
On the album, the band tells the surreal and dreamlike story of the Puerto Rican boy Rael, who lives in New York City . He is drawn into an adventure full of danger and unusual situations and in the end saves his brother John. The work contains satires on mythology , advertising and commerce and follows a concept by Peter Gabriel, who wrote the lyrics.
The release was followed by a world tour during which the story of the album was musically and visually portrayed through a slide show and the use of various costumes by Gabriel.
Track list
It is a double album with a total running time of 95:17 minutes. All titles were written by Tony Banks , Phil Collins , Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford .
page 1
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (4:50)
- Fly on a Windshield (4:23)
- Broadway Melody of 1974 (0:33)
- Cuckoo Cocoon (2:11)
- In the Cage (8:15)
- The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging (2:45)
Page 2
- Back in NYC (5:42)
- Hairless Heart (2:13)
- Counting Out Time (3:42)
- The Carpet Crawlers (5:14)
- The Chamber of 32 Doors (5:40)
Page 3
- Lilywhite Lilith (2:42)
- The Waiting Room (5:24)
- Anyway (3:07)
- Here Comes the Supernatural Anesthetist (2:59)
- The Lamia (6:57)
- Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats (3:07)
page 4
- The Colony of Slippermen (The Arrival / A Visit to the Doktor / Raven) (8:13)
- Ravine (2:04)
- The Light Dies Down on Broadway (3:32)
- Riding the Scree (3:57)
- In the Rapids (2:26)
- It. (4:14)
History of the songs
The protagonist Rael comes out of a New York subway tunnel in the early morning and hides the spray can he used to spray graffiti . When he walks down the street, he sees a lamb , located on the Broadway resigns (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) . A dark cloud covers Times Square and Rael is trapped in dust (Fly on a Windshield) . He sees a military parade and loses consciousness (Broadway Melody of 1974) . When he comes to, he finds himself spun up in a cocoon (Cuckoo Cocoon) . Stalactites quickly form a cage around Rael, who discovers his brother John. He asks for help, but John just looks at him without a word. (In The Cage) . The cage begins to rotate so that Rael loses sight of John again. The protagonist observes the " Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging" .
Rael recalls his old life in New York City (Back In NYC) . He tells of the unsuccessful attempt to become the perfect lover through a guide (Counting Out Time) . Then Rael comes to a long corridor and sees people crawling over a carpet to an exit ( The Carpet Crawlers ) . Rael goes through the exit into a chamber with 32 doors, only one of which leads to the outside (The Chamber of 32 Doors) .
A blind woman leads him into a new room (Lilywhite Lilith) and asks him to wait there. He experiences fear of death (The Waiting Room) . Rael has come to terms with his death (Anyway) and death comes over (Here Comes The Supernatural Anesthetist) . Rael escapes and arrives at a pond with pink water, where he has an erotic experience with several lamias (The Lamia) . In the end the lamias died (Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats) .
Rael finds himself in the goofy colony . The only way out is the doctor, who uses castration to suppress the libido ; Rael chooses it. He is given the result in a plastic container, which a raven steals right away. Rael asks his brother for help again and is disappointed again (The Colony of Slippermen (The Arrival - A Visit to the Doktor - Raven)) . Rael followed the raven into a gorge (Ravine) . His old life on Broadway appears through a gate, but at the same time he hears the cries of his drowning brother John, who is fighting for his life in the rapids . Immediately he decides to save John and thus against the way out into his old life (The Light Dies Down on Broadway) . He fights his way down an embankment full of scree to the river (Riding the Scree) . He saves John at the risk of his life when he realizes that John suddenly has his face (In the Rapids) .
History as a cover text
The story is printed as prose text on the inside of the LP and contains additional details that cannot be found in the lyrics - so the information that (Counting Out Time) is Rael's "first time". The Waiting Room collapses and Rael is buried under the rubble; only then does it become clear why Rael comes to terms with his death in Anyway .
Cover
The cover design comes from the Hipgnosis agency . Various situations are shown on the front and back in a comic strip-like design using black-and-white photographs that are reminiscent of Rael's story without being able to be precisely assigned.
Emergence
After completing the tour for the album Selling England by the Pound in May 1974, the group in Hampshire , southwest of London , began work on a new album, which was conceived as a double album from the start . It was decided to work in a dichotomous manner, so that Peter Gabriel developed the overall lyrical concept and the other band members composed the music. Gabriel was able to prevail in advance against Mike Rutherford , who preferred a setting of the story of the little prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry .
During the composing process, the problematic pregnancy of Gabriel's wife Jil caused tension within the group, so Banks and Rutherford wrote the text of The Light Dies Down On Broadway . In addition, Gabriel considered a collaboration with the American director William Friedkin , which was never realized in favor of the composition phase. The recordings finally took place in Swansea , Wales with the help of Manor Mobile Studios , followed by the final mixing at Island Studios in London.
During the preparations for the tour there were further delays due to a hand injury by Steve Hackett, so that the album was released on November 29, 1974, after some gigs in the USA had already been completed.
music
The music on the album corresponds to the typical characteristics of progressive rock of the 1970s in terms of its composition , the harmonic basis and the instrumentation . In addition to the surreal plot that is visually portrayed on the album cover and in the live show , there are complex instrumental sections dominated by electric guitar and electronic keyboard instruments (Fly On a Windshield, In the Cage, The Waiting Room, Riding the Scree) Rhythms and odd time signatures (Back in NYC, The Colony of Slippermen, Riding the Scree) , experimental musical passages deviating from the avant-garde (The Waiting Room, The Colony of Slippermen: The Arrival) as well as conclusions and variations of musical motifs that have already been used (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, The Lamia, The Light Dies Down on Broadway) in a majority of the titles. In contrast, song-like , tightly structured pieces such as The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway , Counting Out Time and The Carpet Crawlers have been composed.
In general, compared to the albums previously published, shorter titles were combined in a meaningful way through musical transitions into a unit, instead of conceiving a few individual titles that were too expansive. The prelude with the title track The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway as well as Fly on a Windshield , Broadway Melody of 1974 and Cuckoo Cocoon represent an overarching musical context, which before In the Cage , with which the album reached its first culmination point, through an inconspicuous Fadeout is intervened. A comparable approach to composition was used, for example, in Supper's Ready (1972) on the album Foxtrot , whose sentence-like structure, however, was aggregated into a music title.
As a musical extreme in the oeuvre of Genesis arises from a improvisation formed as The Waiting Room combination referred to an atonal musical sequence with psychedelic repetitive figures represent:
“The Evil Jam came about when Steve was trying new effects and Tony was playing around with a couple of synthesizers at the same time - we all just tried to make some really nasty noises. It got really violent: Peter blew the reeds of his oboe into the microphone and played the flute through the echoplex when it suddenly thundered and began to rain. [...] We all made these strange noises when the rain started. And then we all changed the sound and got into this very melodic mood. "
Individual instrumental musical sections testify to a certain pragmatism , so that the singer Peter Gabriel was given sufficient time in the live situation, for example in Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats , to dress in the appropriate costume for the piece The Colony of Slippermen . In retrospect, Phil Collins remembers the masquerade , which had a negative effect on the musical quality: “He was in that 'Slipperman' costume and tried to get the microphone somehow close to his mouth, got entangled and completely out of his mind Breath. Towards the end I found that the vocals couldn't really be heard. ”With Hairless Heart , The Waiting Room and Ravine there are other purely instrumental tracks on the album.
The Carpet Crawlers was released as a single from the album, which was re-recorded in 1999 by the Genesis band members from 1974 as The Carpet Crawlers in 1999 and appeared on the compilation Turn It On Again - The Hits .
Live performance
All tracks on the album were part of the set list during The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway Tour , which took place from November 1974 to May 1975 in the USA and Europe . For the visual representation of the story, a three-part canvas was stretched behind the band's instruments, on which the action is illustrated by slide projections and related to the concept through photomontages. Through various costumes, Gabriel embodied the protagonist Rael and his adversary, their odyssey, in which Gabriel in his role a. a. spun into a cocoon, surrounded by packaging material, and with the help of slide projection, illustratively wanders through endless tunnels and corridors and has to defend itself against a bumpy monster, which forms the optical element of the show.
On subsequent Genesis tours, the piece In the Cage , which was always combined in a medley with other titles such as The Colony of Slippermen and The Cinema Show from the album Selling England by the Pound (1973) , established itself in the set lists can. The title track The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was also regularly used , which was used in full length during the Calling All Stations Tour 1998 or as an element of a medley during the We Can't Dance Tour 1992 . On the farewell tour Turn It On Again - The Tour in 2007, In the Cage and The Carpet Crawlers were also included.
The following versions of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway pieces are featured on official Genesis live albums :
- Seconds Out (1977): The Carpet Crawlers , The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
- Three Sides Live (1982): It (in medley with Watcher of the Skies , British version only), In the Cage and The Colony of Slippermen (in medley with The Cinema Show )
- The Way We Walk , Vol. 2 (The Longs) (1993): The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (in medley with Dance on a Volcano, The Musical Box, Firth of Fifth and I Know What I Like )
- Archives I - 1967–1975 (1998): Complete recording from January 24, 1975 in Los Angeles
- Live over Europe 2007 (2007): In the Cage (in medley with The Cinema Show and Duke's Travels ), Carpet Crawlers
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway and Back In NYC were played by Peter Gabriel as part of the tour for his debut album Peter Gabriel (Car) (1977). In later years he gave up performing Genesis titles.
Steve Hackett also used works on the album as a solo artist. Therefore, The Chamber of 32 Doors , Fly on a Windshield , Broadway Melody of 1974 , The Lamia and The Carpet Crawlers are featured on his live albums Genesis Revisited: Live at Hammersmith (2013) and Genesis Revisited: Live at The Royal Albert Hall (2014). included, as well as u. a. Hairless Heart are performed live.
Charts
- Album: (US # 41, GB # 10)
- Singles: Counting Out Time , The Carpet Crawlers
Re-releases
- In November 2008 the album was released as a remixed SACD / DVD disc set ( 5.1 and stereo).
- A full live performance of the concept album at a concert on January 24, 1975 in Los Angeles is included in the 1998 4-CD box Archive I - 1967–1975 .
reception
- The short-term session drummer of Genesis, Nick D'Virgilio , who mainly appeared with the band Spock's Beard , dared to reinterpret the complete double album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in 2008 in collaboration with producer Mark Hornsby . The work called Rewiring Genesis: A Tribute to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway was recorded by selected musicians from Nashville with strong jazz echoes.
- The cover band The Musical Box , which specializes in detailed replicas of the Genesis live performances from the 1970s , has initiated an exact reconstruction of the The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tour several times since 2000 , with the official licensing of the original artists have been given access to the Genesis archives with audio tapes and original slides of the show. Mike Rutherford called it "better than the original."
- The music magazine Rolling Stone voted the album at number 9 in June 2015 in The 50 Best Progressive Rock Albums of All Time .
literature
- Kevin Holm-Hudson: Genesis and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Aldershot and Burlington, 2008. ISBN 978-0-7546-6147-4 ( limited preview in Google book search)
- Adventure in the brain . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1975, p. 145 ( online ).
Web links
- The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway at Discogs (English)
- Reviews of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway on the Baby Blue Pages
- The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - English text with German translation
- Review of the album
swell
- ↑ eclipsed No. 164 (October 2014) from September 25, 2014
- ↑ on-design.de: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
- ^ Quote from Storm Thorgerson in hypergallery.blogspot.de, 2011
- ↑ a b c d e Klinkhardt, Martin: Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Imaginary figures captured on vinyl. Retrieved February 13, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: FAQ - questions and answers about the Genesis albums. Retrieved February 16, 2016 .
- ^ Fielder, Hugh: The Book of Genesis , Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, 1984, pp. 91-92.
- ↑ Gehrmann, ibid.
- ↑ inConcert. music live on stage: Genesis. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on February 16, 2016 ; accessed on February 16, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Genesis tour dates 'The Lamb lies Down ...' Accessed on February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Setlist of the Genesis tour 'The Lamb Lies Down…' Accessed on February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ spiegel.de: POPMUSIK: Adventure in the brain - DER SPIEGEL 12/1975. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Setlist of the Genesis tour 'Duke'. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Set list of the Genesis tour 'Abacab'. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Setlist of the Genesis tour 'We Can't Dance'. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ foxtrot.de: Set list of the Genesis tour 'Calling All Stations'. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ setlist.fm: Songs played by tour: Turn It On Again: The Tour. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ discographien.de: DISCOGRAPHY: ALL ALBUMS BY GENESIS. Retrieved February 15, 2016 .
- ↑ setlist.fm: Songs played by tour: Car. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ progarchives.com: STEVE HACKETT Genesis Revisited: Live at Hammersmith reviews and MP3. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ progarchives.com: STEVE HACKETT Genesis Revisited: Live at The Royal Albert Hall reviews and MP3. Retrieved February 14, 2016 .
- ↑ wochenblatt-reporter.de: The Musical Box performs Genesis
- ↑ mtc-frommelt.de: Genesis performed by The Musical Box
- ↑ Genesis, 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway' (1974) - 50 Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time - Rolling Stone. Retrieved February 18, 2016 .
