The power of a compelling narrative can propel and album into the realm of myth. The fractious and protracted recording of The Beatles’ White Album, the bloodshot debauchery of the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, the antagonism and power plays that fed into Pink Floyd’s The Wall – all of those records have gained an additional dimension because of how they were created.
So it is with The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. Had Genesis decided in 1974 that their forthcoming double LP should be Mike Rutherford’s suggestion of a musical adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, and had Peter Gabriel not been shown there was life outside his group, it could have all been so different.
