This album features one of the finest vocal performances of any album, from Peter Gabriel.
It is a concept album which was released 51 years ago this year, but still sounds as fresh as ever. It was Gabriel's final album with the band and he left following the tour of the album which featured even more costumes than usual.
I have played this regularly for well over 40 years and have various versions of the album in different formats.
Geographically, it starts in New York and features a Puerto Rican character called 'Rael': an anagram of Real. He is a former gang member and a graffiti artist.
He has a series of bizarre encounters during the narrative of the album.
This New Yorker piece refers to it as 'the Ulysses of concept albums' - referring to James Joyce's impenetrable novel, and "representing a culmination of the excesses of the progressive-rock era and also, in some ways, a fracturing of them".
The singer has said that “The Lamb” is “like a ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ on the streets of New York,” a reference to John Bunyan’s allegory of religious salvation, composed in a jail and published in 1678. Both works are the products of vibrant imaginations populated by monsters. They share an overriding sense of life-or-death desperation.
Gabriel apparently also worked with the film director Jodorowsky to work out a possible film linked with the concept - that would have been quite something. The same director worked out a 9 hour version of 'Dune' which was never made. Check out 'The Holy Mountain' to see his style...
Someone has put together a video which explores this collaboration and where it may have led...
Spoiler alert / advistory: some imagery and language NSFW.
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