Thursday
February 26, 2026
Since 2002
Category: Arts and Culture
Afternoon Art
More melancholy beauty from our man Bags.
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Jon Michaud still admires the classic Genesis concept album:
I’ve been listening to “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” for three decades now, and I haven’t tired of it—which is something I can’t honestly say about the rest of the Genesis catalogue. The record was a kind of looking glass for my youthful dreams, as crucial as the movies of Martin Scorsese and the novels of Paul Auster in fostering a long-distance fascination with New York that prompted my move to the city after college. Guided by Kevin Holm-Hudson’s critical history, “Genesis and ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’,” and several biographies of the band and its members, I’ve spent the past few weeks immersing myself once again in the mysteries of “The Lamb.” On the eve of Gabriel’s induction into the Hall, there remains no better place to look for the roots of his artistic transformation.
“The Lamb” was written and recorded during the summer of 1974. By that time, Genesis had been together for seven years and released five albums, establishing a reputation for long, intricately constructed songs featuring multiple mood changes and unconventional time signatures (“Apocalypse in 9/8” is the partial subheading of one of their longer numbers). After some early personnel shifts, the band had stabilized its lineup in 1970: founding members Gabriel (vocals and flute) and Tony Banks (keyboards) along with Mike Rutherford (bass and guitar), Steve Hackett (guitars), and Phil Collins (percussion). Intense touring—as many as two hundred shows a year—had helped them develop a strong following in the U.K. Their fifth album, “Selling England by the Pound” (1973), rose as high as No. 3 on the British charts. Though that LP made it only to No. 70 on the Billboard Hot 100, Genesis had supported the record with a long tour in the U.S. (their first), where an embryonic fan base had begun to grow. The exposure to America, and New York in particular, would inspire their next project.
The band operated as a coöperative, equally sharing all music-writing credits. The lyrics were also a collaboration, usually between Gabriel, Banks, and Rutherford. Yet, in performance the members of Genesis were anything but equals. In typical fashion for a progressive-rock act, the four instrumentalists sat or stood in a semicircle, rooted to their spots, intently playing. Front and center was Gabriel, who looked like he’d stormed in from a commedia dell’arte show in the theatre next door. With face paint, an overgrown monk’s haircut, and a tight-fitting black jumpsuit, he bounced around the stage telling stories, donning costumes and masks, and pantomiming. Holm-Hudson correctly argues that Gabriel’s performances are much more akin to early David Bowie than to those of other prog-rock singers like Jon Anderson, of Yes. The video below, of the song “I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe),” from 1973, is a representative example of his dynamic stage presence. It also gives the viewer an indication why the other members of Genesis might have begun to resent the growing impression that they were merely a backup group for their charismatic lead singer.
Morning Art
“Window in Uriage” by Pierre Bonnard (1918)
Million Dollar Movie
Howard Hawks is a great example of a director who was rescued by film critics.
SARRIS: Well, by the French!
Could you talk about how that happened? Hawks was successful as a director in Hollywood, but not really known.
SARRIS: He was successful, but he wasn’t prestigious.
HASKELL: Wasn’t taken seriously.
SARRIS: I think he was only nominated for one Oscar, for Sergeant York. And he never won an Oscar, of course. The first time I heard about him was when my friend Eugene Archer, went to Paris in the 1950s on a Fulbright. He wrote me a letter and said, “Who the hell is Howard Hawks?” He had signed a contract for a book that he was going to do about six directors: Elia Kazan, John Ford, George Stevens, and so on. The Cahiers people said, “Ugh! What about Howard Hawks and Hitchcock?”
And so he wrote me this letter; it’s the first time I heard anybody being so high on Hawks. I had seen a lot of Hawks’s movies in revival houses, so I was really up on him. But I couldn’t quite get him, because he had so many different genres. And that’s what the French loved about him, precisely. Because for instance, Hitchcock would never do a western or a musical. And then Dan Talbot ran a Hawks festival at the New Yorker Theater, and I wrote something about it. And I was writing for little publications.
And you were reading the French critics on Hawks?
SARRIS: Yeah, in Cahiers. Truffaut and Godard were just crazy about Hawks. And especially at that time, Rio Bravo had just come out, and that was, to them, huge. And here, people just thought it was another western.
And another thing, it was sort of an accident of film history. Robert Warshow wrote “The Gangster as Tragic Hero,” and he wrote about Little Caesar and The Public Enemy but he didn’t write about Scarface, because Scarface was not in general circulation for many years. It was a Howard Hawks picture, and the French had been on Scarface’s trail since ’32. So it was not just the Cahiers people. Even before Cahiers, Hawks was admired for Scarface. And all the other 1930s adventure films. But here in America, even Warshow didn’t know about Scarface. In fact, I hadn’t seen it when I was writing all these Hawks articles; it still wasn’t available. I only saw it very much later.
Taster’s Cherce
Food 52 shows us how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich.
Man, does this ever make me hungry.
[Photo Credit: Allison V. Smith via MPD]
The Allman Brothers Story
Here’s Cameron Crowe’s 1973 Rolling Stone cover story on the Allman Brothers.
This is the story that inspired Crowe’s movie, Almost Famous.
Million Dollar Movie
The entire movie.
Morning Art
“Untitled” by Robert Rauschenberg (1956)
"This ain't football. We do this every day."
--Earl Weaver
--Earl Weaver