Genesis- Lamb Lies Down on Broadway 50th- Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks 11-18

Fifty years ago rock music’s live conventions simply were not equipped technically to pull off the multi-media visions of Pete Townshend’s Quadrophenia or Peter Gabriel’s concept opus for Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. When the technology to realize some of these fantastic concert effects were later invented and implemented initially on Pink Floyd’s The Wall tour at the dawn of the Eighties, the special effects were so expensive, and concert ticket pricing so baked in then, that the tour was a financial disaster and had to be terminated early.

Some longtime Genesis fans of the original band retain mixed emotions regarding The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: at least creatively, Peter Gabriel may have out-kicked his coverage much in the same way that some Styx fans and critics would feel about Dennis DeYoung’s ahead-of-its-time Kilroy Was Here ten years later. But in the case of Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway‘s creative peak turned out to be Peter Gabriel’s swan song, as the brilliant front man announced that he would be exiting the progressive rockers at the conclusion of the tour, leaving the future of the Charterhouse boys very much in doubt then. Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Phil Collins are my guests In the Studio for the fiftieth anniversary of one of the pillars of Progressive Rock, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, as Genesis loose livestock on The Great White Way the week of November 18. -Redbeard