Sdatch, I saw them in the late Fall of 1974 in Boston at the Music Hall (now the Wang Center). I can remember the show like it was yesterday. No warm up band. The hall darkened and after a couple of minutes to let everyone's eyes adjust to the darkeness, a pair of bright blue eyes glowed appearing completely bodiless and suspended in the air at stage level. It was Gabriel who then announced that despite what we'd heard in the media, on the radio and such..."we're gonna play the whole thing."
He left and came back a couple of minutes. The stage lights came up and he was dressed as Rael. And Tony began to play.
And the Lamb began. And remember, no one had heard it in the States because the album had yet to be released here, much to the band's frustration (I think it was one of the straws that broke the camel's back). The screw up was with their label Atlantic (Atco). And then the three-screen slide show began perfectly synchronized to the music. And it was simply amazing and I know my two close friends and bandmates from high school and I watched and listened slack jawed for the next two hours. I remember the instrumental sections were longer than the studio release; they took more time in the ambient, wierd sections.
They encored with The Musical Box, Gabriel did his flashing light ending, humping the mike stand during the last notes and the death fall backwards just at the end punch and the lights killed.
And their live sound was better than any band I had heard before or have heard since.
You can bet I ran to the record store when it was released here in the winter of '75. And I listened and listened.
I get misty again thinking about that show and the amount of pure talent on that stage that night. I would again get to see them post-Gabriel for Trick of the Tale (over at the Aquarius), but it didn't compare.
Name me one other band that had so much creative talent in five guys. Very few qualify, then or since.
