Prog Overload: The Genesis album Steve Hackett doesn’t like playing live
Not every song an artist makes is meant for the stage. It may go down like a charm when working in the studio, but what works within the walls of a recording studio doesn’t always translate when you’re sitting in an arena full of people. While a lot of prog rock bands have actually been able to translate their epics pretty effectively onstage, Steve Hackett would rather play any other Genesis project live than The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Then again, most Genesis songs feel like they would be a workout to play in one go. Since they had their pop turn in the 1980s, how was one supposed to go through hits like ‘That’s All’ and ‘Invisible Touch’ and then expect the audience to sit through all 20 minutes of a song like ‘Supper’s Ready’ without batting an eye?
If Genesis had their way, chances are they would be playing the more challenging stuff. Playing the same songs often gets boring, but when the time signature keeps changing and musical keys practically become irrelevant, it’s more fun to stay on your toes to know what the hell is coming next.
Even by prog standards, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is a bit much to take in all at once. Being the first major double album the band made, Peter Gabriel’s intense story about a dystopian lifestyle feels like trying to read a college essay while also trying to tap your foot to an odd time signature.
Sure, the title track is fairly enjoyable, and songs like ‘Counting Out Time’ were the first time that the band started to flirt with more pop-friendly chords, but it’s hard to defend it when it broke up the group. During the tour, Gabriel eventually said that he would be leaving the band, citing wanting to spend more time with his family rather than having to commit to another hundred-date tour.
As far as Hackett was concerned, not having to play the album every night was fine by him, saying, “I think that I would probably leave it to others to do live. I know that other people have done it live. I took it around the world myself the first time out, and for me, there are some guitar moments on it which are lovely, but I feel in the main, its predecessor and successors had more room for the guitar to move”.
You can’t really fault Hackett for wanting to take a break from the material, either. Since the entire album lives and dies on Gabriel’s words, and now he wasn’t even there anymore, why would he keep playing the songs that featured him doing the bare minimum whenever he played live?
The good side was the band had more room to stretch on albums like A Trick of the Tail, but that wasn’t enough for Hackett, eventually departing a few albums later and leaving the band down to a trio. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway may, in truth, be one of the peaks of everything Genesis can do, but it’s kinda like looking into the sun. It’s much too powerful for any human to focus on it for too long.
