AKRON, Ohio – It’s been more than 50 years since Genesis released “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”

One of the greatest releases of its genre, “Lamb” goes beyond the progressive-rock concept album format. It’s also a vivid soundtrack to a movie that was never made about a Puerto Rican street tough who falls into a surreal experience one day in New York.

As the double album leads the listener through the bizarre tale, moments of darkness, fear and confusion unfold like movie scenes before coming to  an ascendant transformation.

No other early-era Genesis album has the accessibility of “Lamb” or the song-to-song story flow. It’s a masterpiece of the British prog-rock days.

Steve Hackett, who was the band’s original guitarist, has long been keeping the beloved early music of Genesis alive.

He is continuing his “Lamb” 50th anniversary tour, which will come to Akron’s Goodyear Theater on Nov. 4. Accompanying Hackett will be Roger King (keyboards), Nad Sylvan (vocals), Jonas Reingold (bass, backing vocals), Rob Townsend (saxophone, flutes, additional keyboards) and Nick D’Virgilio (drums).

The show includes a large chunk of “Lamb” plus other early Genesis songs, along with material from his solo works. For tickets, click HERE.

In July, Hackett released “The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal Albert Hall,” an audio-visual document of a 2024 concert at the iconic London venue.

Part of the celebration of the album’s golden anniversary, it includes nine “Lamb” songs. The remaining 15 songs are other early Genesis classics and some solo material, including tunes from his most recent solo piece, “The Circus and the Nightwhale” (2024).

“The Lamb Stands Up” includes two CDs and an interview; the vinyl version offers four LPs plus a 12-page large-size booklet of photos from the concert.

Changing Times

While “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” was the global high point of Genesis’ initial stint, it also marked the beginning of the end for the original lineup. 

Peter Gabriel, singer and frontman for the band, would leave shortly after the “Lamb” tour to pursue a solo career. 

Genesis would continue to mine the prog vein for another three years before Hackett left to pursue his own solo career.

With Phil Collins becoming the singer at that point, the band took a commercial turn, cranking out Top 40 hits for another two decades and rising to even greater heights as a mainstream act with monster radio hits.

There’s a lot more to the Genesis story – enough to fill volumes – with each member eventually blazing solo careers. The total number of albums released by the band and its members approaches triple digits.

Hackett alone accounts for 33 solo albums, ranging from progressive rock to classical. But the guitarist has been the only member of Genesis to carry the torch for the band’s first six albums in his live shows.

He has included early Genesis material in his concerts for over a decade.

Interview

Hackett recently discussed his current tour and his days with Genesis in a phone interview from his home in England.

“My show is a mixture of new and old,” he said. The first half of the evening features his more recent solo stuff. “Then I do the Genesis stuff, which didn’t always set the charts alight at the time,” he said. “Ironically, of course, it’s regarded as a classic in hindsight.”

The music from early-era albums like “Nursery Cryme,” “Foxtrot” and “Selling England by the Pound” were dense and wondrous. But while they were popular in the U.K., they were little-known in the United States.

That all changed with “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.”

These days, Hackett seems bemused as he reflects on the “Lamb” era and the massive North American tour that followed its release.

“There was a credibility issue with the fact that an English band was singing about a Puerto Rican kid in New York,” he recalled. “But things go away after 50 years, and no one gives a damn. Either an album works or it doesn’t.”

The early ’70s were an interesting time for the band, a period when the cracks between its members were beginning to show. It was during a tour stop in Cleveland in 1974 that lead singer Gabriel told his band mates that he planned to leave the act after the tour ended. The public announcement came much later, as the band stayed mum and soldiered on through the tour.

Hackett revealed that the “Lamb” tour could have been much different, because Gabriel had quit the band before it was recorded.

“He was going to work with [film director] William Friedkin of ‘The Exorcist’ fame,” he recalled. “He was going to do a screenplay for him. But when Friedkin realized that Pete had left the band in order to do this, he was horrified that he’d been responsible in some way for breaking up the band. He freaked out, and Pete rejoined the band.”

The Friedkin screenplay project would eventually fall through. But by then, it was “fairly obvious” that he was going to rejoin the band on his own terms. “Peter wanted more autonomy, and I understand that, because it was a very competitive band and it was capable of making really great music,” Hackett said.

At that time, the band was not playing anything “that was remotely recognizable” for fans, Hackett said. “It was a very confrontational approach, which was led mainly by Peter Gabriel. It was almost as if the price of having him remain with the band meant that he was approaching it as if it was a solo album that the band played on.”

Every member of the band played a role in writing the songs, Hackett pointed out.

“We wrote the music together,” he said, “but he wanted to write the entire story and, understandably, he wanted to sing his own words.”

Nonetheless, Hackett is pleased that “The Lamb” has stood the test of time. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it No. 9 on its list of Greatest Prog Rock Albums of All Time.

But it’s not the only early Genesis material on Hackett’s set list.

The entirety of the “Supper’s Ready” suite from the band’s 1972 album “Foxtrot” has become a fan favorite, he said.

Hackett’s 2014 album, “Genesis Revisited: Live at the Royal Albert Hall,” which highlights early Genesis material, shot to the top of the rock charts in the U.K. that year. The guitarist is appreciative of that, even though he keeps his musical focus on the present.

“It’s nice to have something retrospective that’s been given such priority in the minds of fans,” he said. “But most of my time is spent thinking about new music.”

‘Selling England’

While “Lamb” is the Genesis album most revered by American audiences, Rolling Stone magazine ranks the band’s 1973 effort, “Selling England by the Pound,” above it – at No. 6 – on its list of Greatest Prog Rock Albums.

It was released a year before “Lamb,” and Hackett recalls those days as integral in turning Genesis into a global juggernaut.

“I heard it on the airwaves when I was in Brazil at the time, and I came back and said to the guys and our manager, ‘They’re playing us in Brazil. I think we could do a gig there.’ And we did. We were playing 20,000-seat venues twice a night.”

Airplay was scarce for Genesis in those days. Oddly, it first came in countries where they least expected it.

In addition to Brazil, Italy was another early adopter.

“Italy was really the first to respond in a big way to the band’s efforts,” Hackett said. “‘Foxtrot’ became a No. 1 album there in 1972, whereas in lots of the rest of the world, it was much harder work. It was much harder in Germany, much harder in America.”

Hackett can’t explain why non-English-speaking countries like Brazil and Italy were among the first to become enamored of Genesis from the outset. But he has a theory.

“Lots of people have said to me, it was the effect of The Beatles throughout the world,” he said. “People were learning English in order to be able to understand their lyrics and what they were singing about.”

Pictured at top: Steve Hackett on his current tour. (Photo by Lee Millward)