The Lamb

By 1974 Gabriel had decided to leave Genesis but before his departure the band had one more album to come. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the pinnacle of early Genesis and is the ultimate concept album. As mentioned earlier the whole album is one long story about a New York gang member who is taken on a mystical subterranean journey. This concept moves away from the bands quintessential English themes. Gabriel took control for much of the Lamb as he wrote the story entirely on his own. Like Suppers Ready the Lamb is an epic classic, however it is thought by some that the lyrical concept is hard to grasp and this may be the reason the live concerts initially had a poor turnout. The lamb is lyrically and musically quite incredible with such moving tracks as The Carpet Crawlers and the continuing themes from The Lamb Lies Down and the Lamia to the Light Dies Down on Broadway. The keyboard solos near to the end of the album are spectacular. Some fans and even band members believe that compared to their other albums the musical content in the Lamb is a bit empty. Some of Gabriel’s antics and costumes for this performance became a bit too much for the rest of the band. Tony Banks is quoted as saying that the costumes began to come before the music and Phil Collins felt that the costume of the Slipper-man was the last straw for himself and the rest of the band. It is believed by fans and academics alike that the Lamb stretched the band to breaking point and eventually Gabriel and Genesis went their separate ways.

Gabriel’s departure from Genesis is described in his track Solsbury Hill from his first solo album. Seeing how big other prog bands were becoming Gabriel is quoted as not wanting to turn into a stadium band like bands such as Jethro Tull or Emerson Lake and Palmer and this made it easier for him to leave. Macan states about stadium rock, “[…] the fact that the critics consistently refused to acknowledge any meaningful role that progressive rock may have played in the lives of its audience does not mean they were totally incorrect in their assessment of the style's more negative qualities,[….] the relationship of the major progressive rock bands with their fans (and, for that matter, the demographics of the progressive rock taste public) underwent a profound shift during the early 1970s, as the major bands made the move from clubs and smaller venues to stadiums and arenas (not to mention from Britain to the United States). There is no doubt that as these bands lost the opportunity to enjoy a symbiotic relationship with a distinct regional subculture, they increasingly called upon virtuosity, visual spectacle, and a certain sense of imperial remoteness to cement (and then hold) their large American fan base. To the degree that this is true, one could say progressive rock's love of spectacle was self-indulgent, its fondness for virtuosity and technical pyrotechnics exhibitionistic, and its penchant for fantasy a form of self-absorption. But were these qualities not a hallmark of the 1970s as a whole? This period was not, after all, labelled the "Me Generation" for nothing. One can see the same tendencies in such diverse seventies styles as heavy metal, glam-rock (here I would lump a whole spectrum of acts from David Bowie to Alice Cooper to Queen and Elton John), [….] ( Macan, 1997. p 176 - 177.)