Now Available: Genesis, THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY

As we approach the holiday season, the new-release landscape tends to be filled with a flurry of new box sets – like, for instance, did we mention that we’ve just put out a 50^th anniversary edition of Jethro Tull’s THIS WAS? – but we’ve got a straight-up vinyl reissue to offer you today, too: the last studio album by Genesis to feature Peter Gabriel as the band’s lead singer.

If you aren’t familiar with THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY, you should be, particularly if you’re part of the population that enjoys a good old-fashioned concept album. It’s a story that focuses on Rael, a young Puerto-Rican lad who lives in the Big Apple, and according to Gabriel, who penned the lyrics, it was influenced by a wide variety of different works, including – but almost certainly not limited to – Alejandro Jodorowsky’s film El Topo, Pilgrim’s Progress, West Side Story, and the works of Carl Jung. Meanwhile, the other members of Genesis wrote the music for the album, and it’s worth noting at this point that this was not the usual methodology employed by the band for their songwriting. That’s not entirely what caused the split between Gabriel and the other members of Genesis, however: there were other matters in the mix, including the fact that Gabriel was away for a fair while, first because he was pursuing a possible collaboration with William Friedkin (which ultimately came to nothing, sadly), and then because his wife was giving birth to their first child, which didn’t go as smoothly as expect (although it worked out fine in the end).

But Gabriel’s departure from Genesis shouldn’t color your appreciation of THE LAMB LIES DOWN ON BROADWAY, nor should it prevent you from picking up a copy of this vinyl reissue, which is in stores now.