What Phil Collins had to say about this production:
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Fans....
Well 30 years has whistled by and we find ourselves on a celebratory journey back to 1974 to rediscover that ancient work.... "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway". I remember it like it was yesterday, the writing sessions in the rat infested Headley Grange, near Guildford...Pete in one room with a grand piano with sheathes of blank paper waiting to be filled with lyrics, every now and then joining the rest of us as we thrashed through various jams and unfinished pieces of songs that were floating around. The incredible day we "wrote" what was to become "The Waiting Room"...then titled "Evil Jam", improvising wildly through our dictionary of nastiest noises we could find, and then, when suddenly our "mood" shifted so did the weather outside, from thunder and pouring rain to sunshine and rainbows.....I guess you had to be there, but it WAS very special !!! The recording at a Farm in somewhere in Wales. Us set up in a barn, with the Island Mobile parked by the pig sty.....John Burns ever ready with a roll up!!!
Having more material than the time to finish it, we ended up doing 24 hour sessions at Island Basing Street Studios, now Sarm West (home of Frankie goes to Hollywood and the Band Aid single to name but several). Racing to finish tracks so we could get it all wrapped up in time to go to America and play the entire double album before a bewildered public, who had not heard a note of it as it hadn't been released yet!!! Now that WAS interesting!!! It also leads me to why I'm writing this.
The Lamb was never filmed for posterity. There are some very short patchy videos, very scratchy quality, taken by fans from an audience P.O.V.... but otherwise nothing to jog your memory, until now that is. The Musical Box are a group of artists who have, over the years, painstakingly recreated various periods of the early Genesis years, with amazing accuracy and aplomb. In the early days, whenever we were invited to go to a bar to see a band playing some of our stuff, I was always amazed at how they actually played it BETTER than we did. Nowadays there are a few bands out there doing it, but right at the top of the pile are who you have come to see tonight....The Musical Box.
I've heard of them for ages, but never gotten around to ACTUALLY see them. Having done so, I have to say it's an eerie feeling because they have uncannily captured US BACK THEN in every way. Using the original back projection slides from our old show, they now have the advantage of technology unavailable to us back then. We probably only managed a handful of shows (at most) where everything worked as it should have done. Tonight, God willing, you'll see the show as it should and could have been back then if the projector hadn't caught fire, or if the operator hadn't pressed the wrong button by mistake and fast forwarded the slides to the next song !!! Hey, this was the 70's remember!!!
Anyway I doff my hat to the lads and their crew....they've picked up the baton and run with it, and it's there for all to see. Enjoy it.
Phil Collins (the singing drummer)
