I: Introduction
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the sixth studio album by Genesis, released in 1974. It’s also the last Genesis album with original lead singer Peter Gabriel, who then quit after the tour promoting this album to pursue a solo career. So this is the last Genesis album with the classic prog quintet–Gabriel (vocals/flute), Tony Banks (keyboards), Mike Rutherford (bass/12-string guitar), Phil Collins (drums/vocals), and Steve Hackett (guitars)–which gave us Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot, their first live album, and Selling England by the Pound.
A rock opera, TLLDOB tells the story of Rael (played by Gabriel), a troubled youth from New York City who goes through a journey of self-discovery in a surreal Manhattan. The story is richly allegorical and metaphorical, drawing ideas from religion, mythology, literature, and psychology. It is by turns brilliant and yet of a frustrating “obscurantism,” to borrow a word from a critic in the Rolling Stone Album Guide (fourth edition, page 328).
Here is a link to all the song lyrics, here is a link to the entire album, illustrated and with the lyrics, and here is a link to Peter Gabriel’s liner notes from the inner gatefold of the album cover.
Since this album is so frustratingly obscurantist, there are probably as many different ways to interpret what it all means as there are people to interpret it. What follows below, therefore, is my own personal interpretation, for what that’s worth.
Gabriel’s narration in the liner notes mostly do more to make the story obscurantist, as do the black-and-white photos on the cover, than do his lyrics. Perhaps obscurantist is the whole idea, though, since as I see it, the story is about Rael going from his angry, rebellious, self-centered youth to reaching a high state of spiritual enlightenment, a mystical experience that cannot be adequately expressed in words, music, or images.
II: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
The song begins with Banks on the piano, playing wavelike phrases with his alternating right and left hands hitting intervals of fifths and fourths on every strong beat (the first, fifth, ninth, and thirteenth of the sixteenth notes in every bar of 4/4 time, the other groups of three sixteenth notes being intervals of thirds). We can hear in his playing the clear influence of classical music, a defining feature of prog.
Then the whole band comes in, with Gabriel singing the album and song title (Collins doing backup vocals and hitting cymbals), to a chord progression of B-flat, B suspended 4th, and resolving to E.
Now, what does “the lamb lies down on Broadway” mean? Note what Gabriel says in the liner notes: “This lamb has nothing whatsoever to do with Rael, or any other lamb–it just lies down on Broadway.”
Are we supposed to take Gabriel at his word here, or is he deliberately trying to keep us from the correct interpretation? I think it’s the latter. Why should we believe it’s just a lamb lying down on Broadway, meaning nothing else? What would be the significance of that, if that’s all there is to it?
Denial is a common defence mechanism used to keep us from confronting a painful truth. Here, at the beginning of the story, Rael hasn’t yet begun his spiritual journey. He’s full of anger, rebelliousness, and hatred of everyone around him. He has yet to understand that the hostility he sees in the world around him is just a projection of his own hate.
The lamb is another lamb: the Lamb of God as symbolic of someone going through a painful journey of self-discovery and enlightenment, who must learn to sacrifice himself for others. Therefore the lamb is Rael. Gabriel would deflect us, for the moment, from that conclusion so that we won’t figure out the meaning of the story too quickly or easily…or to make it obvious that his denials are b.s. I generally regard the liner notes narration as unreliable, so I won’t reference it again.
The lamb lies down-that is, dies, like the light that dies down towards the end of the story–like Christ on the Cross. This happens on Broadway, where theatrical and musical productions are done, for “all the world’s a stage.” Rael will make a sacrifice–saving his brother, John, from drowning–in the middle of the theatre of life.
Rael isn’t at that stage of his spiritual progress yet, of course (a progress somewhat like John Bunyan‘s Pilgrim’s Progress, one of Gabriel’s inspirations for Rael’s story, by the way). At this point, he is just angry at the world, part of his reason surely being its phoniness, like the theatre of a Broadway show.
He would have his identity and individuality known to the world, hence his can of spray paint and wish to put graffiti on the walls (“Rael, imperial aerosol kid. Exits into daylight, spray-gun hid.”). He’d have the world know he’s not one of their kind: “I’m Rael!” he shouts.
“Rael” is a pun on real. He’d have the world know he isn’t phony as they are, “all the men and women [who] are merely players,” as Jacques calls us in As You Like It. As I said above, though, everything Rael sees that’s wrong in the world is just a projection of what’s wrong in himself, and his spiritual journey will help him to understand that over time: no, Rael isn’t all that real, either. His journey will make him real.
So if the lamb is Rael, and is a symbol of crucified Christ, the Light that will die down on Broadway, then it makes sense that “the lamb seems right out of place,” for Rael is far from ready to be that salvific symbol, a selfless rescuer of his fellow man (personified in his brother, John).
Rael is trying to establish his identity and individuality, that is, his ego. The problem with doing this, though, is that–as the Buddhists and Lacan independently concluded–ego is an illusion. Our identity is interwoven with every other identity and with everything else around us. By the song, “It,” Rael will come to this understanding.
“Somehow [the lamb is] lying there/Brings a stillness to the air.” Two aspects of the lamb sit in contrast to those of the city: the lamb’s passivity and its representation of nature, as opposed to the aggressive hustle and bustle of New York City, and “the man-made light…the neons dim to the coat of white” (i.e., the white fur of the lamb). The light of the neon is nothing compared to the light of the white lamb.
The passivity of the lamb, its “lying there” and its “stillness,” means it not only has Christian symbolism, but also that of Taoism, which favors the passive, feminine yin over the aggressive, male yang. While ultimately, Taoist philosophy is about having a balance of yin and yang, in Rael’s case, he has too much of the yang in his anger, aggression and vandalism, so he must learn to emphasize the yin as symbolized in the lamb in order to restore a sense of balance in himself. Since the lamb also represents nature as contrasted against the urban reality of New York City, this love of nature is also how the lamb is Taoist in symbolism.
“Something inside [Rael] has just begun,” that is, his spiritual journey is beginning. He doesn’t know what he has done because, contrary to his loud declaration of his identity (“I’m Rael!”), he doesn’t know himself. As he goes on his journey, though, he will come to know himself.
The song ends with an ironic quote from the old Drifters song, “On Broadway” (also covered by George Benson, whose version was used in the All That Jazz soundtrack). The irony in the quote in the Genesis song is how the bright lights and the “magic in the air” are illusory, the fake theatricality of life.
III: Fly on a Windshield
Here is the inciting incident of the story, Rael’s call to adventure. A dark cloud is descending into Times Square. No one else notices it or seems to care.
There is soft guitar strumming as Gabriel softly sings. Banks’s organ is hovering in the background, too.
The cloud is like a “wall of death.” The wind blows dust into Rael’s eyes; where he thought he saw clearly before, now he realizes he cannot see. That same dust, settling on him and making a crust on his skin, has immobilized him. He is terrified and wanting to run to safety, like the hero rejecting the call to adventure, but of course he can’t, so he feels like a fly, about to die by smashing into a windshield.
There’s an instrumental outro in E minor in which the whole band joins in, with Collins bashing away on the drums and Hackett playing leads. It goes up to F-flat, then to B, segueing into the next track.
IV: Broadway Melody of 1974
Here’s where the surrealism of the story really takes off. Gabriel’s lyric is of a stream-of-consciousness style (some might call in self-indulgent writing).
We’re hit with a barrage of images from a variety of sources in popular culture, religion, myth, and politics: Lenny Bruce, Marshall McLuhan, Groucho Marx, “mythical Madonnas,” the Sirens, the Ku Klux Klan, Howard Hughes, the song “In the Mood,” and criminal Caryl Chessman. So we have people involved in performance, as is Broadway, though many have in some sense failed (Bruce got busted for obscenity, Groucho’s “punchline failing,” and media man McLuhan has his “head buried in the sand”), since Rael sees through the fakery of the theatre of life.
There’s a sense of a mix of good and evil throughout, for “Ku Klux Klan serve hot food,” “the cheerleader waves her cyanide wand” (we may find cheerleaders charming, but cyanide is usually extremely toxic), and a robber, kidnapper, and serial rapist “leads the parade.” Chessman “knows, in a scent”…a pun on innocent, from a man who was most certainly guilty. This mix of good and evil, a blurring of opposites making everything to seem a chaotic mess, implies that Rael has entered the realm of the Real, Lacan’s notion of an undifferentiated, traumatic world that cannot be described verbally…hence, Gabriel’s obscurantist lyric.
The song ends with some soft guitar strumming and Banks on the Mellotron (strings tapes).
V: Cuckoo Cocoon
Rael finds himself in some kind of cocoon-like cave. Like Jonah, who also refused his call (from God) and thus was caught in the belly of a great fish, so is Rael caught in this dark, enclosed space wherein he’ll undergo a spiritual transformation.
He is perhaps too early to be going through this transformation, though: “Cuckoo cocoon, have I come to, too soon for you?” He’ll need to experience a lot more before he’ll be ready to shed his ego and live for humanity, his brother (literally John, and metaphorically everyone).
Gabriel sings over soft 12-string guitars from Hackett and Rutherford. Gabriel also does flute solos in the middle of and at the end of the song.
VI: In the Cage
Where at first he felt “secure” and “good” in the “cuckoo cocoon,” now Rael is “drowning in a liquid fear,” and he wants to get “out of this cave.”
He’s felt like an embryo slumbering in the womb, but now he wants out. Rael is experiencing something comparable to Jesus’ harrowing of hell, or Jonah’s terror in the belly of the great fish. Rael’s “sleep in the deep” will feel like a nightmare.
We hear Tony Banks’s organ with a heartbeat pulse in 6/4, in B-flat minor. When Gabriel sings of keeping self-control and being safe in his soul, the key changes to E-flat major; but when Rael’s “cynic soon returns, and the lifeboat burns,” the key goes down to C-sharp minor, with an A-flat major for a dominant chord.
Stalactites and stalagmites shut Rael in and lock him tight. On the one hand, they could be seen as teeth about to bite and chew him up; on the other, they are like the bars of a cage. Now he wants to get “out of the cage.” He’s “dressed up in a white uniform,” like a straitjacket, since he’s obviously troubled and difficult for society to control: has he been put in an insane asylum, and the cave/cage is just a hallucination from his unstable mind?
He sees others trapped in cages like his, with the stalactite/stalagmite ‘bars’: “cages joined to form a star, each person can’t go very far.” This sight has the potential to give him the understanding that we’re all in the same predicament, caught in a trap of some kind. Rael also sees his brother, John, for the first time in the story. He calls out to John, hoping for help, but John leaves him there.
Gabriel then makes references to two old songs: “Runaway,” by Del Shannon, and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head,” sung by BJ Thomas, written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and heard in the soundtrack for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. John is Rael’s “little runaway,” leaving him in the lurch as the raindrops keep falling on his head, the raindrops of pain he wants to get out of. If he could be a liquid like those raindrops, he “could fill the cracks up in the rocks” and escape, but he is solid, his own bad luck.
Interestingly, though, when John disappears outside, Rael’s cage dissolves. This moment is a hint as to what he must do to be spiritually edified and enlightened. John is the key to Rael’s salvation. If he cares about John, he’ll be free of the cage of his own egoism. In this sense, his sojourn in the cave, or cocoon, like Jonah in the belly of the great fish (a moment in Joseph Campbell‘s Hero’s Journey, as are the call to adventure and the refusal of the call, as mentioned above), has been spiritually transformative for him.
VII: The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging
The song begins in A major, with Banks at a keyboard and Gabriel singing. The verses generally are in A major, with some shifts to C major in later verses; the refrain, in which Gabriel sings the title of the song, is in E major, and the song is more dissonant at the end. Collins’s drumming is rather like a marching beat, suggesting the regimented life of the scene Rael is about to see.
Rael is now in a factory, being given a tour by a women there. He sees people being processed like packages of dolls. Here we can see the source of Rael’s suffering, as well as that of everyone else in those cages: capitalism. People are being commodified, hence, “the grand parade of lifeless packaging.” This is the society that has produced Rael’s rage.
He recognizes some of the people in the production line, members of his New York City gang, it seems, with the same rage as he because of everybody’s commodification, “in labour bondage.” Indeed, the imagery of capitalism runs throughout the lyric: “Everyone’s a sales representative/wearing slogans…”, “I guess I’ll have to pay.”
Unlike the “free market” delusions of the market fundamentalists, a true understanding of capitalism recognizes that there’s “no sign of free will.” We live, work, buy, and sell under capitalism because we have no other options…and this lack of choice is among us leftists, too. Such is the hegemony of neoliberalism, which had only gotten worse after the 1974 release of TLLDOB.
We get a sense of worker alienation and the commodification of humanity in lines like “The hall runs like clockwork/Their hands mark out the time/Empty in their fullness/Like a frozen pantomime.” People feel like machines, operating with mechanical precision, yet they’re empty, frozen, and lifeless, bereft of humanity, even in the “fullness” of everything they’ve shopped for and bought.
It seems that the commodified people have all been fittingly given each a number, since John, among them, “is number nine.” Is this a reference to Lennon, with “Revolution 9”? This also seems fitting. If I’m right in that interpretation, and so much of the source of the suffering of Rael and everyone else–including John–is capitalism, then revolution is the solution. Lennon spoke of “Revolution 9” as an attempt to paint a picture of a revolution using sound. If John is the key to fixing what’s broken in Rael, then he’s his brother’s inspiration, like the nine Muses, to a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.
We just need to understand how such an overthrow is to be done successfully. First, we’ll examine how not to do it.
VIII: Back in NYC
The song begins in D major, and it’s mostly in seven. Banks’s synthesizer playing is prominent throughout the song.
Gabriel sings of Rael’s rough life as a kid in New York City, being in gangs, getting into fights, and being incarcerated in Pontiac Correctional Facility as a juvenile delinquent when he was 17 years old, and released then, too. He also sings of Rael’s use of Molotov cocktails, damaging property with them.
These are examples of young punks using violence to rebel against establishment systems like capitalism and the bourgeois state. They can be seen as forms of adventurism (a typical tactic of anarchists), which while being romantic and exciting, are ultimately bad for the working class because they provoke stronger waves of violence by the bourgeois state against the rebellious punk agitators (e.g., Rael being put in Pontiac). Such actions, thus, are how not to do revolution, as opposed to building a disciplined working-class movement and party, rooted in Marxist-Leninist theory, and engaging in revolution only when the time is ripe for it.
Rael, therefore, must learn to tame the wild man inside him. This is what shaving the hair off of his heart symbolizes. The hairy heart, in turn, is represented by a porcupine that Rael cuddles. He has no time for romantic escape (i.e., adventurism) when his fluffy heart is ready for rape (i.e., wishing to commit crimes in the name of revolution, when as Che Guevara observed, the heart of a revolutionary should be filled with love–that is, selflessness). The hairs, like a porcupine’s sharp spines, cut when you touch them; they hurt, like a raping phallus.
So Rael must learn to do revolution out of love for others, to help others, not just do violence for the sake of violence. He will eventually learn this virtue when he has to sacrifice his return to NYC by saving his brother from drowning. If he just goes back to New York City, as in the title of this song, he’ll just go back to his old violent, rebellious ways, and he’ll have learned nothing.
During the verses about cuddling the porcupine and “No time for romantic escape,” the key is D minor, and we hear groupings of four bars in 7/8, each followed by one bar in 6/8. During the “Off we go” part, there’s a grouping of two bars in 7/8, then a bar in 3/8, another two bars in 7/8, then a bar in 4/8, and the whole pattern repeats one time. This section is in A major.
The hair on the heart to be shaven off, like the spines on the porcupine, are phallic symbols, so shaving the heart, a taming of the wild man in Rael, is thematically connected with his and John’s emasculation later. It’s all about extinguishing desire–being “ready for rape”–to end Rael’s egoism.
IX: Hairless Heart
This is an instrumental, in D minor. There’s some soft guitar strumming with Banks’s organ arpeggios in the background. Hackett plays a lead using a volume pedal. Collins comes in later, playing the drums gently. The sedateness of this music suggests the beginning of the taming of Rael that the shaving of the heart represents.
This music segues into the next track.
X: Counting Out Time
This song, the one following it (“The Carpet Crawlers”), and the title track were the ones we heard on the radio, released as singles.
In this song, Rael has “found a girl [he] wanted to date,” and he wants to “get it straight” when he gets it on with her, so he has a book to teach him how exactly to stimulate her erogenous zones. This is all perfectly well-intended, of course, but ultimately wrong-headed, for to get his girl off properly, he has to listen to her, to know exactly how this girl in particular likes it.
Now, this is the surface meaning of the song. There’s also a deeper meaning that makes the surface, sexual meaning most ironic. Note how as Gabriel sings early on, he asks the Lord for guidance, noting how “the Day of Judgement’s come.”
The book he bought, which has all the advice that “the experts” give him, should be seen as symbolic of the Bible, “the experts” being the prophets. The girl he wants to date is actually God, whom Rael wants to please, the sexual ecstasy being symbolic of spiritual ecstasy.
Such an interpretation fits in the wider context of Rael’s ‘pilgrim’s progress,’ his spiritual journey. The body here is symbolic of the soul; his ‘knowing‘ her (in the Biblical sense [!]) representative of growing in spiritual knowledge and enlightenment, of knowing God deeply.
Consider The Song of Songs, a book of sensuous love poetry in which the groom professes his love of the bride. The book is traditionally allegorized by Jews as an expression of God’s love for the Israelites, and by Christians as an expression of God’s love for His Church. We can thus allegorize Rael’s sexual encounter with the girl as Rael’s attempt to love God; here, with the roles of bride (man) and groom (God), the sexes are reversed, with a female God.
So how does Rael try to reach God with his Bible, the Good Book of Great Sex? He’s “found the hotspots, figures one to nine,” which sound like nine of the Ten Commandments, or of the Mosaic Laws in general (he later mentions a “number eleven”). In other words, Rael has the superficial idea of reaching a state of spiritual enlightenment by merely following religious laws. Accordingly, he is doomed to fail, “for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” (2 Corinthians 3:6)
The song is in A major, the verses following a descending major scale progression of tonic (A), leading tone (G-sharp), submediant (F-sharp), dominant (E), subdominant (D), mediant (C-sharp), supertonic (B), and dominant again. The tune has a light, almost trivial quality, to the point of being comical, since Rael is being clumsy and overconfident in bed (allegorically, too trustful of the efficacy of following religious laws). Hackett’s guitar solo is fittingly spastic.
In the refrain where Gabriel sings of how Rael loves erogenous zones, we hear a progression of G major (subtonic), D major (subdominant), and tonic A major; then, when Rael wonders what a poor boy would do without the book’s guidance, we hear chords in C major (a natural mediant in the context of the key of A major), B, and a bar in 5/8 (subdominant resolving to tonic). Bars in 5/8 (representative of the Pentateuch) will alternate with bars in 4/4 in the verses.
The last time we hear the chorus about erogenous zones, there is significantly no use of the bars in 5/8, for at this point, Rael has grown disillusioned with the book, since its erotic tips have been of no use in helping him satisfy the girl sexually. As far as my allegory is concerned, this means that adherence to religious laws (i.e., the Pentateuch) isn’t working for Rael, so he has abandoned them–hence, no bars in 5/8 time.
During our hearing of “Back in NYC,” Hairless Heart,” and “Counting Out Time,” Rael experienced a flashback from which he has now come back, getting us ready for the next song. In other words, aspects of his spiritual journey had begun before this story even began…and perhaps he hadn’t even realized he was already on that journey.
XI: The Carpet Crawlers
This song is also about an attempt to attain spiritual enlightenment and salvation that ultimately fails, that in fact leaves one trapped in hell. Here, instead of there being false hope in following religious laws, as I saw as an allegory in “Counting Out Time,” there is false hope in following spiritual leaders (“callers”). One might think of people watching televangelists on their TVs, foolishly giving them money.
Rael feels lambswool under his feet, which is “soft and warm, giv[ing] off some kind of heat.” Since the lamb represents Christ, this lambswool carpet that feels so good is actually representative of that false Christian path that promises, but fails, to deliver salvation.
Rael sees examples of carpet crawlers going to their deaths, such as a salamander going “into flame to be destroyed,” “imaginary creatures…trapped in birth on celluloid,” and “the fleas cling to the Golden Fleece hoping they’ll find peace.” Note how the lambswool is, apart from representing the Lamb of God, also the Golden Fleece, religious fraudsters’ promise of heaven while enriching themselves with others’ money.
Later, Rael sees his “second sight of people,” the first having been those in “the grand parade of lifeless packaging,” while these new ones have “more lifeblood than before.” Nevertheless, they’re being no less exploited than the previous bunch, for they’re crawling like the insects “to a heavy wooden door/Where the needle eye is winking, closing on the poor.”
It’s the rich who aren’t supposed to be able to pass through the eye of a needle, not the poor. But in this Golden Fleece version of the Lamb of God, religion–the opium of the people–is being used to serve the rich.
Still, the masses mindlessly follow the voices of their corrupt religious leaders, crawling on the carpet like the self-destructing salamander and the fleas, all the little ones…the poor. The carpet crawlers are yet another grand parade of lifeless packaging; religion is used to serve the interests of capitalists.
While it is true that one can only get out of one’s problems by going through them, not avoiding them (“We’ve gotta get in to get out.”), in this case, the “callers” are drawing the carpet crawlers into a trap by chanting a mantra that, though true in itself, is being misused and applied in a way to lead the crawlers astray. The callers thus are false prophets, who twist true ideas out of context to deceive their followers by taking them in what only seems to be the right direction.
They’re being taken “to the ceiling where the chamber’s said to be.” Upwards to heaven, up into the light, which the trees crave. “Believing they are free,” the carpet crawlers mindlessly follow the voices of “their callers.”
Even the strongest of these people are lured to their destruction, for the meek here will not inherit the Earth (“Mild-mannered Supermen are held in Kryptonite.”). Gabriel’s lyric doesn’t seem to make a distinction between “the wise and foolish virgins,” the former of whom, according to the parable (Matthew 25:1-13), had enough light for their lamps when waiting to meet the bridegroom (God), while the latter didn’t prepare enough oil, and so they were excluded from the wedding banquet. Here, all carpet crawlers, strong and weak, wise and foolish, are led to ruin by their callers, not to heaven.
The chord progression of the chorus is, essentially, F-sharp minor, A major and G major twice, then D major, and C major leading out to the next verse.
XII: The Chamber of 32 Doors
Rael has gotten past the carpet crawlers, gone up a spiral staircase, and reached a chamber with 32 doors, There are people everywhere around him, “running around to all the doors.” They all want people to acknowledge them.
After all the religious chicanery of the callers tricking the carpet crawlers, as well as Rael’s failures with gang violence bringing about social change and with the book’s advice not pleasing the girl, Rael “need[s] someone to believe in, someone to trust.”
People in the country are more trustworthy than those in the city, for the former people’s eyes and smiles are more sincere. Someone who works with his hands, the proletariat, is more trustworthy. But Rael is down here, alone with his fear, alienated from everybody; every door he’s gone through brings him back to the beginning. He’s making no spiritual progress trying to follow the ways of others, so he must find his own way.
Everyone’s pointing where to go, even Rael’s mom and dad, “but nowhere feels quite right.” He still needs someone to believe in, someone to trust.
A man who doesn’t shout what he’s found is trustworthy. Such a man doesn’t need to sell his path to salvation, “he won’t take [Rael] for a ride.” The “chamber of so many doors” is thus just like the cage: Rael wants to get out–“take [him] away.”
XIII: Lilywhite Lilith
Just as he wants to get out of the chamber and away from all the people, so does a blind woman, “Lilywhite Lilith,” want help to get out. He guides her out of the crowd of people, and now that she can “feel the way the breezes blow,” she can show him where to go.
Rael is gaining an early insight as to how to find spiritual enlightenment and salvation. He will get the help he needs if he helps others and gives up his egoism.
She takes him “into a big, round cave,” and tells him not to be afraid. Just as she is blind, so is he in the darkness of the cave, sitting on a jade seat. Being in the darkness, in his fear, is like confronting his Jungian Shadow, in order to attain enlightenment.
The darkness is gone when two bright, golden globes float into the cave and hover above the ground.
XIV: The Waiting Room
This track is an instrumental. Tony Banks called it “the best jam [they] had in the rehearsal room,” and it was originally called “The Evil Jam.” The band apparently played in the dark, just making noises on their instruments, and this track resulted from their experimentation. It was quite frightening.
You really get a sense–from all of the spooky, eerie sounds the band is making that Rael is waiting in a dark, scary place, in the belly of the whale again, so to speak, confronting the Shadow.
XV: Anyway
The song begins with a sad piano motif in G minor. Banks develops the wave-like, arpeggiated motif by replacing its perfect fifth with ascending and descending minor sixths, major sixths, and minor sevenths. Gabriel comes in singing of Rael’s experience of impending death, trapped under a cave-in of rocks.
Gabriel’s lyric uses a number of metaphors to refer indirectly to death. It’s “time to meet the chef,” who I assume is supposed to be God. “It’s back to ash,” as in ‘ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ Rael has had his “flash,” the brief light of life. He’s heard that Death “comes on a pale horse” (Revelation 6:8), yet he’s sure he hears a train, which can be associated with death in dreams and poetry. He feels “the pull on the rope,” which is a hangman’s noose. He’ll “stretch for God’s elastic Acre,” which comes from the German Gottesacker, an ancient designation for a burial ground.
Rael imagines he’ll keep his deadline [!] with his Maker, that is, meet God in heaven. Anyway, he’s not really dying; he’s just going through that maddening confrontation with his Shadow, and so it feels like dying. Accordingly, the musical tension is heightened, with Banks playing those mournful piano arpeggios much faster, backed up by the band. Hackett adds some harmonized, overdubbed guitar leads.
XVI: Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist
We hear some 12-string guitar strumming in A major, then Gabriel comes in (with Collins’s backing vocals) singing about personified Death as “the Supernatural Anaesthetist.” He just puffs a toxic powder into your face, you breathe it in, and die. As “a fine dancer,” he’d be doing the danse macabre, I assume.
What comes after this one, four-line verse is an instrumental passage, also in A major, that is rather upbeat for something that’s supposed to be about Rael’s death. Indeed, Hackett plays a sweet lead of C-sharp, D, C-sharp, B, and C-sharp. the fact is that Rael is not really dying; the whole thing was just a hallucination, like a really bad drug trip.
XVII: The Lamia
Since there’s a dialectical relationship between Eros and Thanatos, or the life (sex) and death drives, then it seems fitting to juxtapose Rael’s near-death experience with a sexual encounter.
Out of the cave, Rael finds himself in a pool with three Lamia, the tops of whom are beautiful women, but instead of having legs, each has a snake’s tail. Rael makes love with them, after which they would consume him, but it is the three who die after drinking some of his blood. He eats their corpses and leaves.
The point behind his sexual encounter with and mutual eating of the Lamia is that these acts represent Rael’s giving into the animal side of himself, his bestial, sexual nature. This is the symbolism behind Gabriel’s choice of Lamia, half-woman, half-snake, for his story. Rael must learn from the mistake of giving in to sensual pleasure…and he will learn this the hard way.
XVIII: Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats
This track is another instrumental. Mostly keyboards, Hackett’s leads are put through a volume pedal, and Collins plays a little percussion. Very dreamy, melancholy music. The party of sensual pleasure is over for Rael, so like a drug addict who is coming down from the peak of his high, Rael is feeling the depression that inevitably comes when he realizes the pleasure he’s so attached to is impermanent.
XIX: The Colony of Slippermen
The instrumental intro of this track sounds like an imitation of Chinese or Japanese music–plucked guitar strings sound like those of a koto or zheng. Collins hits wood blocks, which again give an Asian effect. It’s a unique moment in the history of the musical style of Genesis. Why the band chose to play the intro like this I don’t know: are we meant to think that Rael has wandered into the Chinatown section of New York City?
After this intro, the music suddenly changes to a light, upbeat sound, with Banks playing the organ over a shuffle rhythm. I find it intriguing that Genesis chose such a happy theme given what we’re soon to learn what’s happened to Rael as a result of his sexual union with the Lamia. The upbeat theme seems to represent his blissful ignorance of something that will soon shock him.
Gabriel begins singing with a quote of the first line of the famous William Wordsworth poem about daffodils. Again, the association with the poem reinforces this odd sense of everything being positive…when all that Rael has to do to know he has nothing to be happy about is look in a mirror.
Indeed, instead of “all at once, [seeing] a crowd/A host of golden daffodils,” as in Wordsworth’s poem, Rael had “never seen a stranger crowd” of Slippermen, with skin “all covered in slimy lumps,” and “twisted limbs like rubber stumps.” Rael is told that they all made love with the Lamia, too, who made them look as grotesque as they do, and therefore, he now looks the same as they do.
Naturally, Rael is horrified to realize this, and the music changes, with some synthesizer playing, to reflect this shocking realization.
All of this section of the song has been Part I: the Arrival. Rael must join his brother John with Doktor Dyper in Part II: A Visit to the Doktor. What has happened to Rael and the Slippermen is essentially the catching of a sexually transmitted disease, for which the only cure, apparently, is…emasculation.
So, Doktor Dyper emasculates both Rael and John, and Rael looks normal again…except that both he and John have their penises in tubes that they wear as pendants around their necks. The point is that Rael’s desire and indulgence in pleasure (his union with the Lamia) have made him ugly (like the Slippermen). Emasculation represents a renunciation of physical pleasure so Rael can progress spiritually.
Part III: The Raven He still feels some attachment, naturally, if not physically, to his penis. This is when a raven appears and snatches his tube. Rael asks John for help, and not getting it, runs after the raven as it flies away, but he’s never able to retrieve the tube, for the raven–far off ahead–drops the tube in some water at the bottom of a ravine, and all Rael can do is helplessly watch the tube float away.
John’s indifference to Rael’s need for help is just like his indifference when Rael was in the cage. This cool reaction hurts Rael, but what he must learn is that it’s not about people caring about him: he has to learn how to care about others.
He also has to learn how to let go of his attachments and desires, as represented by what’s in the tube.
XX: Ravine
This track is another instrumental. It’s essentially Banks playing melancholy music on a synthesizer. One imagines Rael standing at the top of a ravine, looking down where his lost penis was dropped in the water. He’s staring down at the abyss. One may ask if he’ll ever be a man again, and one hears the raven’s answer: “Nevermore.”
XXI: The Light Dies Down on Broadway
Fittingly, much of the music for this track is thematically similar to that of the title track, for at this point in the story, Rael has come full circle. He sees a window in the rock of part of the ravine wall, and in this window he can see New York City: his home!
Once again, this is a temptation of his selfish instincts, for he’ll be left with a difficult choice: escape this hellish world and be free, or sacrifice the fleeting opportunity and help his brother in need. In this dilemma of his, we can see a link in meaning between “the lamb lies down” and “the light dies down”: Jesus as the Lamb of God and as the Light of the world gave His life for His friends (John 15:13). Rael as a Christ-figure must do the same for his brother, John, representative of all our brothers and sisters, all of humanity.
The lamb lies down, dead, and the light dies down, dead.
The surreal world Rael feels trapped in seems fake because of its fantastical qualities, yet it is the real world of his New York City home that is fake, the Broadway world of theatricality and phony performance, the stage that is the world.
XXII: Riding the Scree
Not only does Rael have to give up his chance to go through the window and back to New York City, but he also has to risk his life slipping down the loose rocks of the scree along the side of the ravine if he wants to get to drowning John in the water below.
Still, he chooses to be brave and go down to save his brother’s life. He imagines himself much braver than even Evel Knievel.
The music is largely in 9/8 time, the subdivisions of the beats being tricky and ambivalent in how they could be heard as 4+5 or 3+3+3. Banks does some flamboyant synthesizer soloing.
XXIII: In the Rapids
This is where Rael has to confront a turbulent, chaotic, unpredictable world, a kind of hell that is the only way that leads to heaven. For to save oneself, one must be willing to save others.
The turbulent hell of the rapids, where he must swim to rescue drowning John, is symbolic of the undifferentiated, non-verbalizable Chaos of what Lacan called The Real–a fitting place for a man named Rael to enter, since he will soon become one with this Void.
This climactic moment, of course, is also what is depicted in the photos on the front cover of the album: specifically, the left photo showing John being pulled by Rael out of the rapids. For the great climactic moment of the story, though, it’s odd that the music would begin with soft, gentle 12-string guitar playing.
The emotion and the volume build, of course, towards the end, where Rael has succeeded in pulling his brother out and back onto land. We realize at the end of all of this, though, that the real climax of the story is not Rael’s brave self-sacrifice and his defying of the danger in the water: it’s his realization, upon seeing John’s face on the land, that he’s seeing himself. It’s like looking in a mirror. In saving John, Rael has saved himself.
XXIV: It
Now with the polarized sides of himself fused, Rael–as a complete human being, complete with John as the complementary good half of him–can feel his Atman, “It,” linked with everybody and everything around him. Hence, the victorious, triumphant, rejoicing music.
“It” is described as being a host of diverse things: cold, warm, all around Rael, and most importantly, “It is here. It is now.” It is Brahman, the pantheistic oneness underlying everything. Rael has attained the nirvana of Brahman, absolute bliss and blessedness.
Other things that are part of “It,” include any food “cooking in your hometown,” “chicken,” “eggs,” and what’s “in between your legs,” that is, sexuality–even that can be a part of It.
“It” is inside spirit, too…literally, so it is in both the physical and spiritual realms, and as spirit, the essence that can be known to be manifested in so many different kinds of things, “It” is the divine spark of everything–Brahman.
That It is here and now also emphasizes the immanence of the divinity, to be understood as a pantheistic concept, not a monotheistic idea, a divinity separate from humanity. “It never stays in one place, but it’s not a passing phase.” It’s eternal, but always moving. As Heraclitus said, “Everything flows.”
A useful connection to be made with “It” that can make the meaning clearer is to compare the idea with a concept in a famous passage in the Chandogya Upanishad. “Tat Tvam Asi,” or “That thou art,” is a famous expression a Hindu spiritual teacher, Uddalaka, says of a number of things to his son, Śvetaketu, to get him to understand how “that” is in everything…even in his son. So we can say that “it” here is “that.”
This is significant when we hear Gabriel sing, “It is real. It is Rael.” “It” is real, in that it is the truth. It can also be compared to the Lacanian concept of the undifferentiated, ineffable Void mentioned above. It is also Rael, because his Atman is now at one with Brahman. Yes, Rael, that art thou!
As often happens throughout TLLDOB, Gabriel makes a reference to a popular song: in this case, “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It),” by the Rolling Stones; but Gabriel sings, “It’s only knock and know-all, but I like it.” “Knock” seems to refer to the pain of life, the school of hard knocks; “know-all” seems to mean Rael’s attainment of enlightenment, from having been absorbed into the oneness. It’s painful, but he likes it.
XXV: Conclusion
TLLDOB is a difficult album to understand conceptually, but an ultimately explicable one. As I said above, Gabriel’s obscurantism is valid because the story is about understanding the deeper mysteries of life.
Rael’s character arc is a voyage of self-discovery and enlightenment. He must learn that being angry and violent is no solution to his problems. Learning to see beyond himself and to help others is the solution.
The surrealism of the story is an expression of the non-rational, symbolic world of the unconscious mind. That Rael would become one with Brahman suggests a shift to the collective unconscious.
All of these things tell us that TLLDOB is a universal story with themes we can all relate to…despite Gabriel’s idiosyncratic way of telling it.
Infinite Ocean 
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