10 Strangest Concept Albums

Back in 1974, Genesis were quite a different outfit to their later pop-orientated iteration. At that point they were still fronted by the mercurial Peter Gabriel, and heavily skewed towards ambitious prog rock. This, after all, is a band which took its name from a musical project undertaken while they were still pupils at Charterhouse School – an audio re-telling of the opening chapter of the bible.

The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, their sixth studio album, was recorded at Headley Grange, the same historic building which played host to Led Zeppelin, among others. The story which runs through the record and was devised by Gabriel concerns Rael, a Puerto Rican youth from New York City, and the bizarre situations and characters he encounters on a journey of self-discovery. Along the way, Rael becomes absorbed into a movie screen, gets trapped in a cage, tours a factory where people are 'processed like packages,' has his 'hairy' heart shaved, befriends a blind woman, has sex with snake-people and gets castrated.

Gabriel stated: "I wanted to mix his dreams with his reality, in a kind of urban rebel Pilgrim's Progress." Genesis took the album on tour, constructing an elaborate stage show to accompany the music. It was during this tour, ironically, that Gabriel decided to leave the band.