I Can't Dance The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Genesis

I Can't Dance Album: We Can't Dance (1991)
The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway Album: The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway (1974)
by Genesis

Not unlike the Right Said Fred hit "I'm Too Sexy," I Can't Dance is a send-up of male models. "It's not about being unable to dance," Phil Collins told Rolling Stone. "It's about guys that look good but can't string a sentence together. Each verse is a piss-take at the scenario of a jeans commercial. It was good fun, but the audience thought, 'What does he mean that he can't dance?' They didn't see the humor, and it killed the fun."

Genesis wrote I Can't Dance in the studio in one session. "Once we started we kept going 'til we finished it," Phil Collins said in the documentary Genesis: Sum of the Parts. "It didn't take a ridiculous time to write."

The lyrics of I Can't Dance are made up of bits that Phil Collins improvised in the studio. When they started working on it, they decided to just write spontaneously to keep from over-thinking it. This explains the rather disjointed story about a guy who can't dance and is "just standing here selling."

In the Way We Walk DVD, Tony Banks told the story of how I Can't Dance came together. "Mike had this basic riff which he played, and we worked it into a 16-bar riff. Then we started doing it heavy, which it immediately demanded, so Phil was playing heavy drums and I was adding big chords and sounds. It was one of those bits we felt would go nowhere - it sounded fun but it wasn't really special. But there was one time when Mike was playing it, and Phil was at the microphone so he wasn't playing drums. I started playing drums on this thing (his sampler), and that gave it a completely different feel. It suddenly had an edge of humor in it, and Phil started singing in this kind of high voice, giving it instant character. We knew if we worked on it, we would ruin it, so we didn't even give it a middle eight or anything. When we actually put the song down, we put some more chords in but left it really simple. We put it down in a few hours. It shows a certain direction we could go in for certain songs, which is totally opposite what Genesis used to do in the past, which was to overblow a thing - take one idea and make it massive. This was taking an idea and leaving it really small and making it work."

Helmed by their go-to director Jim Yukich, the video for I Can't Dance created a lasting image thanks to the "silly walk" the three band members did. This walk was something Phil Collins did from time to time - he got the idea for it when he attended drama school and noticed that the worst dancers would always lead with the hand and foot on the same side. There is a twist ending in the video when at the end, Phil Collins does some Michael Jackson dance moves and an impressive little tap routine.

In our interview with Tony Banks, he explained that having a lead singer who was comfortable in front of the camera made the music videos much easier to create. "It gave us a chance to explore some quite fun ideas," he said. "When the lyric had an obvious way to go - with something like "I Can't Dance" or "No Son of Mine" - you could do it and express it quite well."
The outlandish vocal inflections were inspired by the strange but captivating singing of Roland Gift, frontman for Fine Young Cannibals. Around the time Genesis was writing this song, FYC was on the charts with "She Drives Me Crazy" and "Good Thing."

The We Can't Dance album was the group's last with Phil Collins, who left after recording his 1993 solo album Both Sides. Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford did one more album without him, Calling All Stations (1997), with Ray Wilson on vocals.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway tells the story of Rael, a poor Puerto Rican boy from The Bronx. As "The Lamb," Rael goes on an adventure in New York City. Peter Gabriel explained to The Daily Telegraph September 30, 2014 that the album "was intended to be an intense story of a young rebellious Puerto Rican in New York who would face challenges with family, authority, sex, love and self-sacrifice to learn a little more about himself. I wanted to mix his dreams with his reality, in a kind of urban rebel Pilgrim's Progress."

The full story is in the liner notes of the album.

This was the basis for an elaborate stage production Genesis performed at concerts. It was on this tour that Peter Gabriel decided to leave the band.

There are references to classic songs throughout the album, and this track recalls "On Broadway," which was a hit for The Drifters in 1963.

Genesis keyboard player Tony Banks used a cross-handed technique to create the jaunty rhythm. He described it in an interview: "the two hands are playing almost percussively, alternatively. So, you appear to be playing faster than you are. I really like the effect. It's very rhythmic. I just find it's an exciting way to play."

On their 1974 tour, Genesis played the album The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway from start to finish. Gabriel wore several costumes throughout the show, including a grotesque mask during "The Colony Of Slippermen."

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was the first song and title track to the double album which was the last Peter Gabriel contribution to Genesis.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway was a song-cycle whose hero Rael shared a name with "Rael (1 and 2)," a track on The Who's 1967 album, The Who Sell Out. Mojo April 2010 asked Peter Gabriel if it was a conscious tribute to The Who's Pete Townshend. He replied: "It was a subconscious tribute because I certainly wasn't aware of it at the time. I spent a long time thinking of that name, like Ra the Sun God. But I was a big Who fan, so it may have got in there. Obviously Townshend created much of the musical environment and delivered the angst with an intelligence and passion and extraordinary musicality. But to this day, as a drummer, I think Keith Moon was the unacknowledged genius. He was like Jimi Hendrix: when he was on - and he wasn't always - it flowed out of him in a free way that was inspiring, driving, magnificent."

Peter Gabriel's insistence on writing the story and all the lyrics himself for The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway created friction amongst his bandmates. Tony Banks recalled in Uncut magazine October 2008: "Having done 'Supper's Ready' (the 23-minute song on Foxtrot)) we decided we wanted to go for a concept album, and make a double album. We agreed the concept, which Peter came up with. Then he said that he really wanted to write all the lyrics, which was difficult for us because we'd always split all the lyrics among us all."