Peter Gabriel Leaves Genesis

Creating the ambitious The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway album strained relations between band members, particularly Banks and Gabriel.

Gabriel was the lyricist, while the other band members wrote the music, with the exception of "Counting Out Time" and "The Carpet Crawlers". "The Light Dies Down on Broadway" was co-authored by Banks and Rutherford. The other-worldly, blurbling, sequenced synth sounds and shattering glass loops in the track "The Waiting Room", as well as the vocal effects in the track "The Grand Parade of Lifeless Packaging" coined "Enossifications", were produced by the ambient composer Brian Eno.

During the Lamb tour, Gabriel announced to his bandmates that he had decided to leave the band, citing estrangement from the other members, and the strains of his marriage and the difficult birth of his first child. Nonetheless, he saw his commitment through to the conclusion of the tour, which ended anti-climactically in a cancelled gig at Besançon in Eastern France. In a letter to fans, delivered through the music press at the end of the tour, entitled Out, Angels Out, Gabriel explained that the "...vehicle we had built as a co-op to serve our songwriting became our master and had cooped us up inside the success we had wanted. It affected the attitudes and the spirit of the whole band. The music had not dried up and I still respect the other musicians, but our roles had set in hard." Collins later remarked that the other members "...were not stunned by Peter's departure because we had known about it for quite a while." The band decided to carry on without Gabriel.

Gabriel's first solo album, Peter Gabriel 1977, features the hit single "Solsbury Hill", an allegory that refers to his departure from the band.