The 1974 Genesis double-LP, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, is one of the most ambitious—and, to some, inscrutable—concept albums in rock history, following a character named Rael along a cosmic journey through the shadowy New York City streets, elaborate chambers of 32 doors, surreal cages filled with stalactites and stalagmites, underground rivers, and caves with spooky creatures. It was like a proggy Pilgrim’s Progress as envisioned by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
When it came time to translate that vision to the concert stage, Genesis made a risky choice: debuting the entire 94-minute saga, front to back, with large chunks of the audience likely unfamiliar with the songs. (The first date of the tour, November 20, 1974 in Chicago, occurred two days before The Lamb hit stores.) The visual side of the project was as trippy as the lyrics, including scene-setting projections and a number of bizarre costumes for front man Peter Gabriel—like one particularly grotesque monstrosity, The Slipperman, that drummer Phil Collins later called an "inflatable dick." ("It was all very Spinal Tap," he said in an interview for the album’s 2007 reissue.)
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If you ever wanted to appear naked onstage, this was probably the perfect time to do it—and one of the band’s roadies pulled off that hilarious prank as the tour neared its end. The silliness was especially notable, given the brooding atmosphere within Genesis—Gabriel, feeling constrained by the band’s schedule and eager to stretch his wings, had already informed his bandmates that he planned to leave following the Lamb tour. Perhaps the roadie, whom the band recalls being Geoff Banks, was attempting to add some levity. What we do know is that he made his nude cameo during one of the final shows, building on the suspense from a visual trick.
"There was a point in The Lamb where Rael sort of splits, and we did that on stage," Gabriel told filmmaker John Edginton in a full-band documentary interview. "I would be in the Rael outfit, and there was a dummy on the other side in exactly the same outfit. There wasn’t a lot of lighting, so it would explode, and you wouldn’t know [which was which]…Of course, for the crew, as we approached for the end of things—first of all, [Rael's] jeans would have their flies undone with a banana hanging out. Gradually, they’d have more and more fun…"
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Keyboardist Tony Banks also talked about this infamous moment in a passage from the 2007 book Genesis: Chapter and Verse. "No one apart from the group, and the immediate circle of the group, knew that Pete was leaving and that this could well be our last tour ever," he said. "And the roadies always had to have some fun. There was this moment in the show where Pete would be on one side of the stage with a dummy on the other side, and the strobe lights would flash on them so you couldn’t tell which was which. And, of course, for one of the last shows, one of the roadies got up there naked on the other side and took up the pose in place of the dummy...There were people watching this, my wife, for instance, practically in tears because they thought that it might be all over for Genesis, and we had a naked roadie on stage[—]was this how it was all going to end?"
But all’s well that ends well, and Genesis managed to carry on after Gabriel’s departure by upgrading Collins to the dual role of drummer-singer. In a testament to their continued friendship, Genesis even reunited with their old singer in 1982 to help him escape mounting debts.
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