Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett once found a parallel with famous filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock that lined up well with his own work. “I sympathize with Hitchcock’s need to remake a classic film,” he said.
More than a decade later, it’s a philosophy that continues to develop and spread as he revisits moments and at times, full albums from his time with Genesis. In the past year, he’s been presenting a selection of material from the band’s classic 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in the concerts that he performs with his solo band. Fans can get a preview of upcoming U.S. dates set for this fall, thanks to a new live album. The humorously titled The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded at the heritage venue in October of 2024, will be released July 11.
The current tour celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Lamb, mixing a selection of Hackett’s favorites from the album with other songs from the band’s catalog and his own solo work. The guitarist was joined for the performance by guests including Marillion’s Steve Rothery and former Genesis vocalist Ray Wilson.
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“I think old material sounds sweeter with the passing of time. I think you forgive. its imperfections and try and change those things when you go to it again,” he explains on the UCR Podcast. “So things that might have been recorded in haste with aspects of timing and tuning, there’s no excuse for that these days. If you’re going to do a revisit, you might as well straighten out those things. When we were young players all piling in, there was one set of priorities. Now, of course, it’ll be well to polish these things. [Live], it’s not as if you’re doing a medley, I tend to do the full thing. If I’m going to do something, I’ll usually [play] the full tune and possibly extend with other things. The end of “Supper’s Ready,” I tend to go off on a guitar feature right at the end of it, just because I’m moved to do so. I haven’t got to worry about anyone going, ‘Hey, that’s my moment, you can’t do that. Well, I can, because I sweated blood to put this stuff together back in the early days.”
The Birth of ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’
It’s now one of their most beloved albums, with a deluxe box set due for release. But as you might imagine, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway had a very complex path to completion. “The Lamb was fraught with complication. By then, many of us were married with families or about to become fathers. We were still trying to employ the philosophy of going away, isolating and coming up with stuff,” he remembers. “It’s a bit like you’re temporarily married to the team. But what was so difficult about The Lamb was the fact that we were recording — or trying to — in a in a former workhouse that was arguably haunted and was frankly dangerous and unsanitary.”
“We moved on once that timed out, because [Led] Zeppelin had recorded their famous drum sound from the stairwell at Headley Grange. [So] we moved on to Glaspant Manor in Wales, which was a house that was being built. We went from a place where the ceilings were giving way to a place where there were no ceilings. It was this idea of, are we growing up or are we just coming out against brick walls with this? It was the most difficult time imaginable.”
Listen to Steve Hackett on the ‘UCR Podcast’
Watch Steve Hackett Perform ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’
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As personnel came and went over the decades, Genesis shape-shifted through prog, folk and (more than once) pop.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso