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The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway: 50th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition (reissue, 1974) RHINO
Prog’s most glorious absurdity.
By John Lewis
“I got sunshine in my stomach/Like I just rocked my baby to sleep”
APUERTO Rican gang member from New York called Rael emerges from a subway station, sees a vision of a lamb lying on Times Square and tumbles into some kind of nightmarish phantasmogorical realm. Locked in a supernatural dungeon, Rael realises he must save the life of his brother (who may or may not be a figment of his imagination). There is an orgy where Rael has sex with, and then eats, three mythical snakes; there is a dream in which his heart is ripped out, and an operation where his genitals are removed by a medic called Doktor Dyper. Tolkien-ish characters such as the Slippermen, the Slubberdegullions and the Lamia sit alongside Evel Knievel, Howard Hughes and Bing Crosby.
Across 90 minutes and 25 tracks, there are nods to Marx, Jung and Freud, and allusions to West Side Story, A Pilgrim’s Progress and Jodorowsky’s “acid western” El Topo. Unsurprisingly perhaps, just what The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway is actually about has long been a topic of discussion for prog fans.
REISSUE OF THE MONTH 9/10