Sunday Cinema | Genesis The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Live 1975

Nearly 40 years after its release Genesis’ ground-breaking 1974 concept album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was back in the news this week thanks to a RollingStone.com article in which Phish front man Trey Anastasio once again extended an invitation to Peter Gabriel in an attempt to entice the former Genesis’ lead singer to perform Lamb Lies Down with The Vermonters on Halloween. While the odds of the collaboration actually happening are small, we wanted to keep the spotlight on the legendary album for this week’s Sunday Cinema column.

Genesis performed The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in its entirety over 100 times between November of 1974 and May 22, 1975. The band, especially Gabriel, wanted to create a visual spectacle to match the ambitiousness of the music and employed masks, costumes, pyro and photo slides -among other elements -in their theatrical presentation of the material. Unfortunately none of the full concerts from Genesis’s The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway World Tour were professionally recorded. The closest document we have is this “reconstruction” of the concert that utilizes fan-shot video, a soundboard soundtrack, photos and the band’s slides from the tour to recreate the January 24, 1975 performance from The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

Let’s take a look at the best available footage of Genesis performing The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway live in concert: