Why Genesis wouldn't chop up 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway''
Article from Circus Magazine No. 106; March 1975; pp 66 - 70

For years Genesis had dreamed of cooking up their most powerful of surreal visuals and mesmerizing music. Yet they feared their ambitious new double album might prove too intense for in-concert consumption.
by Ron Ross 

Peter Gabriel stared at himself in his dressing room mirror and methodically began to wipe off the layers of dusky make-up that only a few hours before had transformed him into a young Puerto Rican New Yorker named Rael. In the course of Genesis' startling two hour performance, Peter had further mutated from a leather-jacketed street punk to the hideously deformed Slipperman, finally becoming an eerie silhouette of Death Himself. But now, as he washed the last of the tan paint from his distinctively British features, Gabriel began to look once again very much like the private school student he was when Genesis was first formed - not at all like the all-powerful Watcher of the Skies whose bat-wings seemed smoky gray from hell-fire.

Dressed more like an unstylish fan than a rock star on the ascendant, Peter wrapped a plain wool muffler around his neck and stepped out the stage door into the chilly New Jersey night air. There a strange sight greeted him. Outside a corral of previously prepared police barricades were dozens of believers in the magic that is Genesis. At their first glimpse of Gabriel, the throng began to cry "Peter! Peter!" and strained toward their favorite fantasy-monger. As he hurried into the waiting limousine, the habitually reserved musical sorcerer began to smile broadly; the long black auto-coach pulled away from the crowd, and still the hands beat upon its roof and eager faces peered curiously in the windows for a look at what their hero was really like. Peter settled back, began to peel a refreshing orange, and sighed. Despite his well-hidden anxiety, Genesis' newest and most ambitious stage presentation had worked.

Blue denim deliquent: American rock audiences at first had been inclined to heckle Peter's subtly atmospheric monologues, chattering during the quieter mood-building instrumental passages. After three carefully planned tours, however, even the most skeptical concert-goers were entranced by Genesis' dramatic representation of "The Musical Box" and Peter's breath-taking flight through the air at the climax of "Supper's Ready." Now The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (on Atco) had replaced those old favorites, and even Peter's image had changed drastically. He had cropped his long locks and combed them over his bald streak. His sleak black jumpsuit had given way to sneakers and blue-jeans. Though the band had given their all to provide a totally entertaining re-enactment of some of their most imaginative songs ever, the insistent question remained. Aside from the success of their first few concerts with The Lamb , could Genesis convince the world's largest rock audience to take an extended trip into an unfamiliar fantasy world?

Back in his Manhattan hotel room, Peter admitted to Circus Magazine that Genesis had had their doubts about presenting the entirety of their recent double album as the basis for the most important tour of their career. "We were quite worried about introducing the whole of The Lamb to audiences all at once. This new show is very experimental for us," Gabriel acknowledged, biting into a banana. "In the past we've tried to introduce new material in twenty-five minute segments, phasing it in with the better known songs gradually. It's also been difficult achieving a balance between the musical performance and the triple-screen slide presentation that helps the listener to visualize Rael's story more easily. The slides are much stronger than ever before, and to a certain extent, they're an additional risk. They shift attention away from my performance somewhat, although now that I've worked with them onstage, I think they do provide an interest-point when the going gets a little heavier lyrically."

Vividly fantastic visuals: The almost eighty-minute long Lamb show with its 3000 slides arranged by artist Geoffrey Shaw is an important step towards one of Gabriel's most cherished goals for Genesis. Last year he told an interviewer, "I like to keep visuals in mind at the same time as lyrics and music. In the near future, I expect to see groups and artists work more closely together. I think the time is nearly ripe for the first visual artist to become a pop star. There will be situations in which the band itself becomes much less of an ego thing. If one can build the visual image stronger, one can make the fantasy situation more real and involve an audience more deeply."

But slide shows and the eventual film Peter hopes to make are expensive for a group not yet financially endowed by superstardom, so for their earlier theatrical offerings, Gabriel was forced to rely on his considerable assets as a story-teller and pantomimist. His now famous humorous monologues, of which the Lamb innersleeve story might be viewed as an extension, developed for purely functional reasons. "I didn't feel very at home on the stage to begin with," the mysterious multi-talent has allowed. "Audiences shocked us by not being very interested in the music at first. I started to wiggle about trying to personify the lyrics, and then we started to use the monolgues when we brought twelve-string guitars into the act. There were long embarrassed silences while the guitars were tuned. The monologues gave me another outlet by which to express the fantasy."

And all of Genesis' succeeding stage shows have been literally fantastic. When Genesis first came to America to perform such bizarre Victorian epics from Nursery Cryme as "The Return of the Giant Hogweed," Peter appeared in pure white satin with the pancake make-up of a mime. Although he looked like a mischevious young 19th century lad, the prominent streak of baldness down the center of his skull suggested he'd found a book of black magic in a dusty attic.

Foxy Head Trip: Then came the Foxtrot spectacle, during which Peter prattled even stranger prefaces dressed in a woman's ball gown topped by a fox's head. When he sang "Get 'Em Out By Friday," he changed personalities as easily as he doffed one hat and put on another. Come their Selling England By The Pound tour, Genesis had firmly established themselves as the most important new self-admittedly theatrical group since the Who. Peter's impersonations of a lawn-mower and the senile degenerate of "The Musical Box" were frightening and unforgettable. It was in this show that Genesis' use of slides, combined with their very sophisticated lighting, began to take them into areas no band had ever really fully explored. The slides, of course, paralleled the concept of Selling England but it was the sense of animation they conveyed that was strikingly unique.

Genesis has never been less than superb musically for all the lack of ostentation the musicians displayed. No one could deny that guitarist Steve Hackett, keyboardist Tony Banks, drummer/vocalist Phil Collins, and multi-instrumentalist Mike Rutherford were superior musical craftsmen. Yet with Selling England and its slide show, Genesis had achieved an aim close to Steve Hackett's heart. "I think eventually there will be more anonymity amongst musicians in a group, without so many people trying so desperately to find star images." Tony Banks set his sights even more specifically: "The most important thing to us is the songs, then the playing, and only then the presentation. We're not as concerned with flaunting musicianship; Yes and ELP are more dependent on solos. I'm not a soloist as such. I think of myself more as an accompanist who colors the sound."

Crutched-up music?: Shortly before launching the challenging Lamb tour, Gabriel was aware that with such an awesome visual exposition as Genesis was now prepared to project, they might have even more trouble being taken seriously as musicians. "There are people who believe that the costumes, props, and slides we use are crutches to hold up crippled music," Peter told an English interviewer objectively. "But if the visual images are conceived at the time of writing, and you don't use those visuals, then you're not allowing the audience to listen to the song in the full strength of which it was created. And that's what we're after, to give the listener as much in a song as we get from it. Visuals are only rubbish unless they are integrated with the continuity of the music," he emphasized without ambiguity.

Never has a rock theatrical presentation hypnotized an audience on so many sensory levels as The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Where groups from the Who to ELP impress their fans visually with walls of amplified thunder-machinery, Genesis' set is virtually bare of electric equipment. Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford's amps are so well hidden that their music often appears to emanate from the air itself. No mountains of synthesizer technology surround Tony Banks. Aside from the panoramic three-part slide screen and an odd little rock formation at the center of the stage, the most striking "prop" is Phil Collins' beautifully complete and well-ordered drum kit. It is almost a sculpture in itself, but, of course, its function is strictly musical.

Into the twilight zone: So there is nothing onstage to get in the way of the songs themselves, which are among the most moving Genesis has yet composed. For the first time, they link the band's phantasmagoric visions to today's urban street scene. While Genesis play through their most extended built-in jam ever on "Fly On A Windshield," Shaw's slides super-realistically smash a greatly magnified and grotesque insect against a stolid fifties Ford. The plot, the music, and the visuals become even more disturbingly surreal once Rael is sucked body and soul into Genesis' harrowing half-world. As the band plays "The Hairless Heart" Shaw's slides show a snowy white feathered heart nestled in crimson satin drapery. A rubber-gloved hand begins to shave the heart with cruel precision; the combined impact of the music and the visuals makes for one of the show's strongest emotional moments.

Peter's innersleeve story reads: "That night Rael pictured the removal of his hairy heart and to the accompaniment of very romantic music he watched it being shaved smooth by an anonymous stainless steel razor. The palpitating cherry-red organ was returned to its rightful place and began to beat faster as it led our hero, counting out time, through his first romantic encounter." That "romantic encounter" is described graphically in the song, "Counting Out Time," which Peter explained to Circus is a "light-hearted look at the insertion of male organs into female organs."

Wild in the streets: Although the slides, the lyrics, or the story would seem bewildering by themselves, together they have great imaginative coherency. "The album seems clearer in my head than a lot of what we've done before," Peter insists. "We look upon it as being comprised of much shorter units than before. I would like best to see The Lamb as a film, because that would clarify the imagery further than a performance or the record. A film is the easiest medium by which to build another reality." Yet Peter hopes audiences will be able to identify with Rael, as portrayed by Gabriel himself, following the story through his eyes, ears, and feelings. "The point of Rael being earthy and aggressive," according to Gabriel, "is that he provides an accessible response to these fantasy situations. Rael seemed a good starting point because he's surrounded by all this speed and aggression which New York has more of than any other city." Belonging to no real community save that of the streets, Rael is more susceptible to the changes Peter's plot puts him through.

Musically, Steve Hackett is pleased with the added room for improvisation that The Lamb has given the instrumentalists. "With this new stage show, we've left a lot of things looser than we ever have before. We're taking a chance that our spontaneous improvisations will create something we haven't had much of as yet. I think we're playing The Lamb even better live now than we did on record." Steve also takes issue with those critics who have felt that The Lamb is beyond the limit of tolerable obscurity. "There are, of course, some quite obscure parts," he concedes, "but I think that especially as regards New York City and America there are more direct statements than we've ever been willing to make before about a subject in the present time. Previously, we'd preferred to work with the past or the future."

"At any rate," as Mike Rutherford is fond of saying, audiences seem far more satisfied with The Lamb than Genesis could have anticipated. "I'm glad we took the risk; I think it's paid off," Peter was able to say after the first performances had garnered nothing but rave reviews. "Audiences have a way of voicing their confusion and complaints crudely during a concert, but I like the feeling of being close to a rowdy audience. I'd rather have an active audience than a stoned and passive one, even if that includes some hostility."

Genesis now seems poised on the brink of financial as well as artistic triumph. The hard core of their loyal fans is growing with each tour and every concert. Peter Gabriel feels fortunate that the band has never had to compromise for success. "Looking at the Who and Yes, it seems they weren't able to play easily entire works like Tommy or Topographic Oceans ," Peter pointed out, relaxing a little now as he gazed out his hotel room window at the twinkling skyline over New York's Central Park. "So far we've been very lucky; our audiences initially tolerated The Lamb and now are actually positive toward it. Tonight was one of the first gigs ever in America when I felt we'd really gotten across."