Genesis – The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway

Genesis took this out on the road before the album had been released and that also happened to us with Pornography! It wasn’t the best of ideas and we’re not going to be doing that with the new album!

I love The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. I had seen Genesis play with Peter Gabriel at The Melody Maker poll winners concert at the Oval cricket ground for about one pound. The bill included Argent, Focus, Emerson Lake & Palmer, and Wishbone Ash – all kinds of people for a pound. And I really liked Genesis, but then, when this album came out, to me, it was sort of like the punk version of Genesis. Because it was a double album, I took it home, and I hadn't heard any of it on anything, so I didn't know anything about it. And somehow in the pressing, there had been a malfunction. The track would jump to the next 10 seconds later, but it was so on time that didn't sound like a mistake. And I thought that's how the song was, until I went to a friend's house a few months later, and he put it on I'm like, ‘Wait, there's an extra bit there that I've never heard before!’

This is going to sound morbid, but it's very goth, if I think about it. I'm a man of a certain age, and I've started to make a playlist of songs that I would like to be played on my demise. In fact, that's what it's called: ‘Songs I Wanted You To Play On My Demise’. And so I started going through all my albums and things, you know, just very casually, and I dug that up and I thought, yeah, wow! I really still like this. Some of it is quasi-mystical with its Gabrielisms, but it still stands the test of time in lots of ways. And so that's why that's there. It's something I can put on and just enjoy without thinking about it too much.