One of the strangest, boldest, and most brilliant concept albums ever made is about to turn fifty. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway—the final Genesis album fronted by Peter Gabriel—was released in November 1974, and remains a fever dream of sound and story. It’s a record where 1970s New York City collides with mythology, surrealism, and psychosexual weirdness. There are cages, doll factories, allusions to John Lennon, sex with snakes, and even a raven that steals the protagonist’s penis. It’s all gloriously deranged.
It’s got everything… 1970s New York, surly teens in cages, doll factories, allusions to John Lennon, sex with snakes, and getting your penis stolen by a raven. 10/10
The album was the work of a lineup that can only be described as untouchable: Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford, Tony Banks, and Phil Collins. Yet its creation was anything but harmonious. Gabriel was drifting toward his own mythic visions, the band toward tighter musicianship, and the result was a double album that feels like a dream sequence inside a subway tunnel—part rock opera, part surrealist diary.
Adding to the alchemy, Brian Eno—fresh off Here Come the Warm Jets and Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)—contributed “Enossification” to a few tracks: experimental treatments that stretched Genesis’s sound into otherworldly territory. The favor was repaid when Phil Collins drummed on Eno’s haunting track “Mother Whale Eyeless” from Tiger Mountain.
Visually, The Lamb was no less iconic. The album art came courtesy of George Hardie (whose credits include Led Zeppelin I and Pink Floyd’s Animals), with design by the legendary Hipgnosis collective. These were the visual architects of 1970s rock mythology—responsible for the surreal, photo-collaged dreamscapes of everyone from Pink Floyd to Def Leppard, T. Rex, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, Paul McCartney & Wings, and even The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Their stark monochrome imagery for The Lamb perfectly captured its eerie, fragmented narrative.
Clocking in at a generous 94 minutes, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is not background music. It demands to be experienced, preferably in a dark room with your eyes closed. It’s progressive rock at its most cinematic—a strange, sprawling descent into identity, transformation, and absurdity.
Fifty+ years later, it still sounds ahead of its time. 10/10, without hesitation.
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