Event 2001: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway – Report

This year's club meeting in Eichenzell/Welkers on 2/3 June took place in a slightly different form – as in 1996, Serge Morissette from the Canadian cover band The Musical Box (TMB) was invited. Back then, he had presented the band's faithful Selling England show on video, so it was only logical that this time we were treated to the follow-up Lamb show, with which the band toured Quebec and Ontario in autumn 2000 and spring 2001. Due to high demand and the limited capacity of the available venue, the presentation simply took place twice, with an identical programme on both days.

The concrete planning and preparation for TMB's Lamb tour had already begun in 1998, but it proved not to be quite so easy to obtain the necessary permission from Genesis themselves. Initially, permission was even refused on the grounds that Genesis themselves still had plans for the Lamb show! Serge found this so implausible that he persisted and finally got the go-ahead in 2000, partly after Peter Gabriel had seen a video of TMB's Selling England show. However, this licence was limited to Ontario and Quebec and only for one year. Serge believed that it should not be a problem to extend this in terms of time and geography, but unfortunately the organisational requirements for this are not yet in place. In addition, the band is now slowly preparing for a new edition of their Selling England show.

The most fascinating thing about their Lamb show was probably the fact that they had managed to get hold of the original slides from the 1974/75 Lamb show! These were only rediscovered at Fisherlane Farm after Serge made an enquiry, and were made available to TMB on three conditions: all of the original slides (over 1,000) had to remain in England. Serge had to make copies himself and leave all the slides in chronological order, as some of them were inadequately labelled and stored in complete disorder! We can consider ourselves very lucky that the containers weren't accidentally thrown away at some point in the past.

In reconstructing the original sequence of slides, Robert Ellissehr's more than 1,000 photos, which he had taken at several Lamb shows at the time, were particularly helpful. Incidentally, this was in response to Genesis telling him that they had no intention of having the whole thing professionally filmed. In addition, of course, there were the various 8mm home movies from that time, which Serge had collected over the years. This enabled TMB to perform a Lamb show with the complete original slide sequences and all the costumes faithfully recreated.

What we saw at Pentecost in the Eichenzell community centre was a professionally made video recording with multiple cameras of a complete TMB Lamb show from Quebec City a few weeks earlier, including the two encores Musical Box and Watcher Of The Skies. It became clear that it is part of the band's concept to play the music as it is heard on the studio album and not as it was performed live by Genesis themselves – TMB omits the live-typical transitions between some pieces and The Waiting Room is only 5 to 6 minutes long and not up to 10 minutes, as Genesis sometimes offered towards the end of the tour. Apart from that, however, there is really nothing to complain about in the TMB version of the Lamb show!

However, what I found even more fascinating was the other major item on the event programme, namely a 90-minute video by Serge that presented the original show in as much detail as possible, using a sequence of countless photos from back then, with all the slides inserted at the appropriate points so that you could follow the entire slide show very easily.

Added to this was the soundtrack from the soundboard recordings from Lakeland and Wembley, and all available 8mm film clips were inserted at exactly the right place – and that was the truly incredible thing about it: in all the scenes where you could at least guess Gabriel's mouth movements or even just see certain gestures, the music and lyrics matched perfectly! This meant that, for the first time, you could watch the more or less familiar clips from L.A., Grand Rapids, Hamburg and Liverpool and really know what they were all about! Serge spent five months on this extremely complex synchronisation work!

For many in attendance, the biggest surprise was undoubtedly the previously unknown costume Gabriel wore at the beginning of Waiting Room, which can be seen briefly in the Liverpool film (and, of course, in full length at every Lamb show on TMB): it is a kind of Dracula costume, all in black and with grotesquely long fingers, which Gabriel waved wildly around at the back of the stage, allowing himself to be illuminated in such a way that he could only be seen as a shadow on the stage backdrop.

In addition, Serge showed a 15-minute documentary about the making of the Lamb album and the stage production, as well as a few individual slides with more original photos, including a black-and-white picture of the huge explosion in Oslo that caused the band to stop playing in shock, and a few pictures from Hamburg before the show started, where you could see the stage from above at an angle with the hall lights on.

Afterwards, Serge was available to answer our questions, which were of course numerous and sometimes very detailed (among other things, there was a heated discussion about how long it takes to inflate the two balloons in the middle of the body when wearing the Slipperman costume…). There was also spontaneous applause for Serge, and some participants thanked him individually and expressly for his achievements.

There were also some guests from abroad, especially from Italy, and a few from the USA and Switzerland. I already knew some of them from the English fan conventions G99 and G2, and it was of course an added attraction of this event to be able to chat at length with such super-geeks again.

Incidentally, there was once again an impressive exhibition of various memorabilia, all of which were related to The Lamb, including numerous original concert posters, original tickets, and concert reviews from music magazines of the time. Several record dealers also brought along a large selection of rare CDs and LPs.

Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely that the videos shown and produced by Serge will ever be distributed or sold in any way. He himself attributes this to the complicated copyright issues surrounding the music, text, slides and other stage production elements. As a result, there was a strict ban on any audio or video recordings during the presentation.

This made it all the more important and right not to miss this unique event – and for that, my heartfelt thanks go not only to Serge Morissette, but just as much to our tireless heroes Helmut, Peter and Bernd!

Author: Volker Warncke
Photos: Peter Schütz, Helmut Janisch, Karin Woywod, Mino Profumo

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