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<\/p>\nIt\u2019s a good job Genesis don\u2019t need the money because \u2014 reunited for one afternoon only \u2014 they do a disarmingly patchy job of talking up the re-release of arguably their greatest album. <\/p>\n
\u201cI hadn\u2019t heard it for years,\u201d the bassist Mike Rutherford says of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the band\u2019s enduringly weird and wonderful 1974 double concept album. Still, he gave it a spin. \u201cAnd the first two sides were mind-blowing. It\u2019s just full of energy and madness. Over the years the story has been that it was a hard album to make, but I thought it was very strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 50th-anniversary edition includes a surround-sound remix overseen by Peter Gabriel (who left the band after the album was released) and the keyboardist Tony Banks \u2014 both of them Rutherford\u2019s former schoolmates at Charterhouse. It\u2019s telling that Rutherford praises only half the album and Banks has quibbles too. \u201cI think there\u2019s a great single album in there,\u201d Banks says. \u201cWe just disagree about which tracks. It\u2019s the iconic early Genesis album and I was particularly impressed by the vocals.\u201d <\/p>\n
He looks at Gabriel, sitting opposite him in a Soho sound studio, relaxed in his familiar uniform of collarless shirt and waistcoat. Banks says he enjoyed Gabriel\u2019s noisy performance on the song Back in NYC, which was later covered by Jeff Buckley. \u201cI mean, I\u2019d like to hear you sing like that now.\u201d This prompts laughs round the table. \u201cWould you?\u201d the grainy-voiced Gabriel says, raising an eyebrow. <\/p>\n
To Gabriel\u2019s left is the lead guitarist Steve Hackett, who left the band in 1977 just before it reached its commercial pomp with singles such as Follow You Follow Me, Mama and Invisible Touch. He is less veiled in his opinion of an album he struggled with at the time but now adores. Over the past decade Hackett\u2019s live shows have concentrated on Seventies Genesis material, played with great love and skill (although his former bandmates haven\u2019t been to see him). <\/p>\n
\u201cThings sound sweeter with the passage of time,\u201d says Hackett, an alternately sincere and sardonic presence. Gabriel, meanwhile, seems to operate in his own wry yet authoritative groove. The singer wrote almost all the words for the album while the rest of the band worked up the music in another room. (Royalties on this album, as for all Gabriel-era Genesis albums, were split equally five ways.) Gabriel says he considers it, alongside their earlier 23-minute song Supper\u2019s Ready, the band\u2019s zenith. <\/p>\n
Phil Collins was the drummer at the time, taking over as lead singer in 1975 before becoming one of the world\u2019s biggest solo stars. The remaster reminds you how astonishingly propulsive and imaginative his drumming could be. If the album peters out a bit, Collins never does. His health has also, alas, petered out a bit. Today he is at home in Switzerland recovering from knee surgery. \u201cHe\u2019s in good shape mentally,\u201d Rutherford says.<\/p>\n
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Hackett, Banks, Gabriel and Rutherford today<\/p>\n
WILL IRELAND<\/p>\n
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Rutherford and Collins on stage in 1975<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
In 1974, more than a decade before Genesis\u2019s Invisible Touch took over from Gabriel\u2019s Sledgehammer at the top of the American singles charts, the band were a cult success rather than a mainstream act. Looking for inspiration for his double album, Gabriel came up with the sprawling story of Rael, a young Puerto Rican New Yorker on a phantasmagorical odyssey. He even, at one point, loses his penis. Does he ever get reunited with it? \u201cDoes anybody?\u201d Hackett quips.<\/p>\n
Gabriel laughs heartily. \u201cWell, I\u2019ve just had my prostate removed, but that\u2019s a different thing. \u2018We hope so\u2019 would be the correct answer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lamb doesn\u2019t sound like anything the band did before or after, even if songs such as Carpet Crawlers stayed in its post-Gabriel live sets. \u201cWe needed to do something a bit different,\u201d Gabriel says. \u201cThe romantic thing \u2014 its season was at an end. We needed to find something with more edge to it.\u201d <\/p>\n
He took inspiration from El Topo (1970), an experimental film by the Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky \u2014 \u201csort of a spiritual spaghetti western. A man has to murder each of his gurus to find enlightenment.\u201d The others giggle and Gabriel joins in. \u201cWell, yeah, exactly. But it\u2019s about a kid who goes from not being able to do anything for anyone else to giving himself [up] for his brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Peter Gabriel: Taylor Swift\u2019s comments about my music were very kind<\/a><\/p>\n Gabriel has tried to turn The Lamb into a film, including with Jodorowsky. Now he is trying again with the Argentine writer Nicolas Giacobone (who co-wrote Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu\u2019s film Birdman). \u201cIt\u2019s exciting. When we have something it will be presented to these guys.\u201d <\/p>\n As to whether said guys have the same idea of what the famously opaque story adds up to \u2026 well, no, they admit, they don\u2019t. \u201cDoes it matter?\u201d Gabriel says easily. Anticipating confusion, he wrote the story out in the gatefold of the original LP. \u201cI look at it in horror now, but I was just trying to map out some of the ideas.\u201d <\/p>\n Why did Gabriel leave? He felt, as he would later put it in his first solo hit single, Solsbury Hill, \u201cpart of the machinery\u201d. They were all still only 24 when the album was released. Gabriel first quit the band while they were making the album to work on a film idea for William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist. Then he was persuaded back. But Gabriel\u2019s baby daughter Anna-Marie was ill at the time and he spent every spare hour driving up and down the M4 between her hospital in London and rural Wales where the band were recording. <\/p>\n Genesis in 1974<\/p>\n COURTESY OF RICHARD HAINES<\/p>\n \u201cPeter was the first to have children,\u201d Rutherford says. \u201cWe were selfish.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cWell, Phil actually beat me,\u201d Gabriel says, referring to Collins\u2019s adoptive daughter, Joely. <\/p>\n \u201cYeah, but he was the drummer,\u201d Rutherford jokes.<\/p>\n \u201cDrummers have kids!\u201d Gabriel retorts.Before Gabriel left again he was persuaded to do a tour. \u201cWe got along fine,\u201d Banks says, \u201cbut the tour petered out.\u201d <\/p>\n Their last show in Toulouse sold so poorly it was cancelled. \u201cIt was a depressing way to end things,\u201d Gabriel says. <\/p>\n The band have been mocked by non-believers as prog-rock dinosaurs and pop sell-outs. Banks is a Times reader, but won\u2019t be reading this article because he never reads anything about the band (\u201ca lot of it isn\u2019t very complimentary\u201d).<\/p>\n![\"Genesis](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/fe4f5f4f-8755-4924-bf7e-119a3650a10e.jpg\")
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