The Lamia. Totes Awsum. Agree with 'most poetic' (sounds like Shelley to me). And another awsum Hackett solo ... side 3 is chockers with Hackett goodness. --Geoff
Totally agree with you. And no wonder it's one of the album highlights. The Lamia stands out for its intimacy feel conveyed by such a heartfelt melody lines which curiously are rather enhanced by the beautiful introspective atmosphere that permeates the track, the kind of melodies that one never forgets. This is my favourite live rendition of The Lamia, Steve Rothery makes an absolutely killing guitar duo performance with Hackett, in this but great, memorable "double Steve" live version: .
Allow me to self-correct. I meant innocence in the broad term of "I still don't know that". Obviously, as a selfish, violent, enraged and criminal punk pariah, Rael is far from being "innocent". That's maybe why he has to experience with snake women what normal people do with average girls (and he has to eat their cadavers as well) (And I'm done with the subject, I swear)
The Lamia and Carpet Crawlers vie for top position in my ranking of songs from this album. When that line comes I cannot prevent myself from singing along with the fairest.
I would agree with the AIDS metaphor approach if it weren’t for the fact that AIDS wasn’t discovered until 1981.
Revisionism, my friend ;P Like "Who needs illusion [...] with your mainline connection" can work as a social media reference today.
Very true. Fantastic how Gabriel had the cultural prescience to predict numerous social predicaments today.
"The Lamia" is easily the standout on the back half of the The Lamb. How I wish this had been played live beyond the original tour, but I guess the guys (Tony?) felt it was too closely associated with the album storyline to stand alone.
Maybe Phil didn't feel much at ease as well, singing such "obscure" lyrics Plus they had strong new songs and lots of fan favorites to fill the setlist with already. I don't think Lamia was among those, back then.
I love side three the most. The brightly paced LL, with its perfectly tagged 1974 reprise. The scary Waiting Room, where a band that never truly "jams" on record sure makes a hell of a beautiful racket, complete with Phil's metric modulation at the end. The epic Anyway, with its tense chordal build up & aggressive bridge release. The delightfully quirky SA, where Steve maps out a jagged yet extremely melodic anti-guitar-like solo. It's interesting that he gets three solos in a row (all quite different). Then The Lamia: Tony is truly inspired here. There's a whole new level of appreciation if you learn this on piano & see what he does to weave a twisted melody into an endlessly falling chord sequence. Constant inverted voicings on the verse create a mood unlike any other song so far. A strange & instant key change dives into the chorus, which becomes the main secondary theme of the album. Finally, the payoff features a long string of retrogressive tension chords that move away further & further each time until coming to rest like a spinning top all spun out. Not enough? Have an eerie interlude that dreams up the best of Debussy & Ravel. Still not enough? Have the guitarist end it with a sharp but beautiful snake-tongue solo. Note Peter's wordplay even on the title: "Lamia" as if some female opposite version of "Lamb", or the idea that the monster finally overtakes the innocent. Plus it's where the second main theme begins. They must have studied Joseph Campbell's hero cycles & Carl Jung's anima writings. Perhaps it is a slight letdown that this is buried deep in the longest album, so the casual fan never hears it or writes it off among the density of everything around it. But this is art.
Lamia - not one of my favorite songs on the album. After the wonderful and catchy 'Anyway' and 'Supernatural...' the melody of Lamia is too sing-songy and obvious, IMO. The lyrics are a bit stilted and not great overall, but of course it is very important for the advancement of the story, so it's an integral part of the album. I'm a much bigger fan of the mournful instrumental that follows, though.
You mean "Silent Sorrow"? I can't help thinking it was conceived just to give Gabriel time for his costume changes.
I've been thinking about The Lamia today and wonder if the snakes fail to kill Rael because, when he went through his transformation on side 2 of the album, he's transfigured into a Christ figure. He was a rebel in his previous incantation but after going through the changes, he's now pure goodness. I dunno. Just a though.
Not sure he transformed into a Christ-like figure - being intimate with and then eating the kinky serpent sister triplets
Perhaps disc one is his life, and disc two his afterlife ... noting that i haven't looked at the coming lyrics yet.
I don't have time right now, but the Lamia are from mythology - Greek i think - so I suggest someone should look them up and read what the actual myth says.
In my understanding of it, all of the Slippermen have all gone through the same scenario with the Lamia that Rael has. Indeed, at the end of the song when the lyrics suddenly go from 3rd person to 1st person: Looking behind me, the water turns icy blue, The lights are dimmed and once again the stage is set for you. The stage is set for the next guy who will go through the same scene with the Lamia, and also turn into a Slipperman. Anyway (love that song), The Lamia has an incredibly beautiful melody and the lyrics are top notch, too. And Hackett's guitar at the end is sublime.
