Genesis
The lamb lies down on bvroadway

“Don’t cover my eyes. While I write, I want to be able to glance at the glass butterflies resting on the walls…” This is part of the introduction written by Peter Gabriel to present The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, immediately defined by the “foresighted” English critics of the time as a “white elephant.” Instead, The Lamb is probably the most convincing work of Genesis (some have called it Gabriel’s first solo...), an attempt, in Peter's own words, to bring Genesis fully into the seventies and project their music toward the future. We all know how it went, but decades later, it is now possible to calmly evaluate the importance of this double album (importance reaffirmed and strengthened by the splendid live execution present in the first Archive box set). Even the band members themselves had not fully assessed the significance of the new album: Gabriel was significantly behind in writing the lyrics and recording the vocals.
The attempt to modernize Genesis is evident in the particular use of the suite form; The Lamb is indeed more like a homogeneous group of songs (some written several years earlier) linked to the story of Rael, a kind of Puerto Rican punk. There are few mythological references (The Lamia, although this track seems more focused on themes of a sexual nature), and musically, there are more or less timid attempts to connect to a different sound (listen to the sung section of Fly on the Windshield, for example, or the citation of a famous rhythm 'n' blues song in the opening track). The use of the mellotron is less conventional (for instance, in the aforementioned Fly on the Windshield, a stunning piece, unsurprisingly born from improvisation). The band is decidedly more aggressive in In the Cage and especially in Back in NYC, a track that Gabriel would later reclaim live during his solo career. However, typically Genesis moments are not lacking in the first album: the splendid Cuckoo Cuckoon or Hairless Heart, a track that seemed very convincing even to Gabriel himself and that, after all these years, has lost none of its charm. The desire to open up (Gabriel's?) to other experiences shines through in the whimsical The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging with the contribution of the inevitable Brian Eno. The album is scattered with gems: Carpet Crawlers, Anyway; two older songs reworked for the occasion, tracks that have aged very well, so much so that in the virtual reunion of 1999, it was precisely Carpet Crawlers that was chosen. Hackett was not given much space (not as much as he would have liked), but his unmistakable sound emerges especially in Here Comes the Supernatural Anesthetist and in the magnificent final solo of The Lamia. In this track, the renowned Banks/Gabriel partnership reaches, in my opinion, one of the peaks of its production. It’s easy to understand all of Banks' efforts to dissuade Gabriel from his intention to leave the band. Often, it is Banks who is the driving force behind the compositions, the musician from whom the ideas for the tracks originate. Of course, however, it is Gabriel who plays the leading role, successfully and convincingly embodying all the characters of the intricate story—which can also be interpreted in various ways (someone said it is a sort of journey through Purgatory!).
When the album was released, I was struck primarily by one aspect: it was non-cerebral music, accessible, highly enjoyable; yet, this music and Rael's story had a depth of content that seems even today not yet fully explored. This wonderful balance between immediacy and depth of content would gradually be lost (I was about to say progressively) not only in Genesis's music but also in much of prog rock (not to mention other genres that were emerging).