Rewiring Genesis
A Tribute To The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway
The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
Counting Out Time
Riding The Scree
Who re-records The Lamb?
Well…crazy guys like myself and Mark Hornsby. Like the liner notes say it really was his idea to begin with. But I like different things in music. I make my living in this art and sometimes it just gets monotonous. Like having to play "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Margaritaville" 10 million times. I wish I would have written either one of those songs because my bank account would be very full and don’t get me wrong those are both fine songs that a lot of people in the world just love and playing anything a million times over can get boring. My reason for saying all of this is because I had grown up listening to The Lamb. I knew every note I could make out and these past years (before re-recording it) I had not really listened to it at all. I performed a version of it with Kevin Gilbert back in 1994 at PROGFEST. There was a version of "Back in NYC" on another tribute CD. Spock’s Beard played "Counting Out Time" on a tour not to long ago. Between growing up with the record and the other things I have done involving those songs you would think I would have done enough with this music. But apparently not.
Mark suggested, jokingly I think, that we record "Slippermen" in a bluegrass or country kind of style. I was going out to Nashville for a session with Mark and he said if there was time we should try it just because we could. Sometime between that conversation and when I got out there he and John Hinchey had written charts for THE WHOLE RECORD!!! Every song. Now that’s crazy and a lot of work. Mark called all the musicians and they all showed up ready for a jam. And jam we did! It was a total blast. Don the guitar player knew the music from being a fan over the years. Dave the bassist didn’t know it and Jeff the keyboardist didn’t know it. They read the chart down and listened to the Genesis version a few times before laying to tape. Or I should say hard disk. That is what made it so special to me. These are fantastic extremely talented musicians and they, along with myself, gave that tune a new feeling and life. Not that we changed it very much. Just the way it was interpreted. A little while later Mark and with John recorded the horns and that song turned into a beast of FUN. The middle shuffle section with the horn lines John wrote are just great. I don’t want this to be that long for you the reader but after that song was mixed I think Mark and I knew deep down that we were going to try and do the whole thing.
There were a lot of hard songs to record and some easy ones. Cuckoo Cocoon was pretty easy. Just acoustic guitar, vocals and flute. The Cage was a very different story. I don’t know how Genesis did this song back in the day but I imagine it was without a click track. It would have been a lot easier if we had done it that way. But we needed a click track for the horns and strings. At least that is what Mark wanted, and it made editing a lot easier. If you notice, the song starts out at one tempo and by the time the first main verse starts with the whole band in the tempo is much faster. I bet that was done on purpose when Genesis recorded the song because is makes for good energy and when the main 1st verse starts it sounds less hectic at the slower tempo. We had to write all of the tempo changes into pro tools before we recorded a note.
The string and horn players on this recording are just amazing. All pros at their instruments, but if I remember correctly most if not all of them had never recorded this kind of music before. It’s a little crazy. Listen to "Riding The Scree" and you’ll know what I mean, but these players completely nailed the parts. I guess clarinet players don’t usually get written out solos in 9/8 very often. I also want you all to know that there are NO string or horn samples anywhere on this record. They played all the parts.
There are no Synthesizers on the recording. At least as far as I know. Really, there is electric Guitar and Bass, Drums, Acoustic piano, Wurlitzer and Rhodes, Accordion, Strings and Horns, Percussion and Voices. All of the synth parts from the original are played by acoustic instruments like the strings and horns and that is what really makes the big difference to me. Those parts written by the guys in Genesis are really really good and it comes across on the strings and horns so well. It also helps to have an amazing arranger like John.
As far as the drum parts are concerned I played mostly what I already knew from growing up with this record. When we got to the actual recordings few things changed like the middle of "Slippermen" but that is because it naturally went in that direction. It was that magical thing that happens when musicians get together and do their thing. It is a language without words and it can go different places by just changing a single note or drum beat. That is what I love about music. I tried very hard to keep all of the what I call the "signature drum fills and beats" true to form. As in the song "Fly on a Windshield" there are a few very simple drum fills from the original that if I didn’t play them the song would have felt wrong. In the song "Carpet Crawlers" I changed the main drum beat just a little and it really worked well. Instead of doing 16th notes on the Hi-Hat (drum speak, I know) all the way through the song I simplified it to a more 8th note based groove and it worked.
I like the way this whole thing turned out but I do have some highlights:
Broadway Melody of 1974- Singing this song is so fun to do. This was Peter Gabriel at his best. Such attitude and balls in his singing. That is what I tried to give it.
Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging- Only percussion and voice on this one. I thought this would be a perfect song for that kind of thing. I just sat with the song and learned the guitar and keyboard parts (as well as I could hear them-it is very full sounding on the original and sometimes hard to make out exactly what is playing what part) and sang them. Along with the most wonderful Kat singing with me and a bit of Bongo, shakers, Udu, Snare drum, and other things that song came out like it did. Love it!
Hairless Heart- Just a beautiful written melody on this instrumental song. We all played it very simply with as much "FEEL" as we could muster and it really gives me a great big smile when I hear it. When the strings and the vocal "ooh’s" on the B section come in I get chills.
Counting Out Time-I have always loved this song. It has such a great vocal and lyric. This was another one of those in the studio that just grew into what it is on the CD. Dave suggested that the middle section was ripe for Dixieland band. Man, was he right on the money. At that point in the lyric of the song Rael is about to unzip zip zip-a-zip-a-zip the pants off of the girl. That’s party time right?! I remember when I recorded the vocal I totally had that in mind. Plus a few beers 
Chamber of 32 Doors-One of my favorite songs form the record. Just the vibe and the way it feels to sing this one is fantastic.
Waiting Room-We tried not to let anything go by on this recording. We did every musical segue, plus we tried to redo the sound effect-y parts. One of Mark’s good friends went through the whole first bit and wrote down every sound effect and when it came in and that is how we tried to re-create it. Plus, when the band part comes in I just love the drum part. This is another where I tried my best to keep the drum part true to form. The way Phil Collins plays around the beat and then completely changes it towards the end is just great in my opinion, and I needed to be close as possible to the original.
Here Comes the Supernatural Anesthetist- Don’s guitar just rules! Check out the bit where it sounds like Brian May from Queen for just a second. Great!
The Colony of Slippermen- Like I said above this was the first song we ever recorded for this project and it turned out just great. The middle section with the accordion solo is classic!
Riding The Scree- A very difficult song to play and the one I was most worried about, but the horn players made that worry just go away by how they played their parts. I forgot how much I like the Clarinet until I heard this recording.
An honorable mention definitely need to go to the song Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats. Mark was determined to make the parts done by a Mellotron on the original out of only real voices. Yes I know Mellotrons have real voices sampled on their tapes but you still play the instrument like a keyboard. Mark tried very very very hard to map out the parts on a song where the parts seem very random.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like the way every song turned out. Yes, there are a few things that I would have maybe changed, but those are small. The songs above are just some of the highlights to me.
Thank you to everybody for taking the time to read this. I hope you do like the way we re-created a classic record. Click on the link to ProgRock Records below to buy it and keep on coming back. I love to see you here.
All the best, NDV