The album tells the surreal story of a half Puerto Rican juvenile delinquent named Rael living in New York City, who is swept underground to face bizarre creatures and nightmarish dangers to rescue his brother John. Several of the story's occurrences and places were derived from Peter Gabriel's dreams, and the protagonist's name is a play on his surname (Rael=Gabriel). In reference to the live performance of "it" (where Gabriel appears onstage with an identically dressed mannequin), Phil Collins remarked that the entire concept was about split personality. In this context, Rael would believe he is looking for John but is actually looking for a missing part of himself. The individual songs also make satirical allusions to mythology, the sexual revolution, advertising, and consumerism. The title track, "The Carpet Crawlers", and "In the Cage" were live favourites for the band. Both "In the Cage" and "The Carpet Crawlers" were included in 2007's Turn It On Again: The Tour, with "The Carpet Crawlers" performed as the closing number.
Background
Following their Selling England by the Pound tour, the band went on retreat to Headley Grange to write and develop their next album. Used previously by Bad Company and Led Zeppelin, this was where the band hoped living together away from other distractions would help inspire creativity and develop unity between the members. The house, however, was in poor condition and infested by rats. Several band members had difficulty sleeping, believing the house was haunted.Peter Gabriel was absent from the album's writing and rehearsal sessions due to personal problems – his first wife was having difficulties with her first pregnancy. For this reason, most of the music was written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford, with some contribution from Steve Hackett. Gabriel, for his part, insisted on writing the story and all the lyrics himself, which caused friction, in particular because Rutherford had originally suggested another project for the band, an album based on Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince. Banks and Rutherford composed lyrics for "The Light Dies Down on Broadway", as Gabriel could not come up with a linking piece between "Ravine" and "Riding the Scree". In addition, when Gabriel put lyrics to a piece of music written by one of the other band members (such as Banks' "The Lamia" and Hackett's "Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist") the composer would often insist on adjusting the lyrics to better fit the music, an action Gabriel did not take kindly to.
"Fly on a Windshield" originally came about through a band improvisation, sparked by an idea from Mike Rutherford. Keyboardist Tony Banks said, "We used a lot of moods (on the album), at times things were little more than improvisations on an idea. For instance, Mike would say, 'Pharaohs going down the Nile', and he would just play two chords and instantly the rest of us would conjure up that particular mood. That one ended up on the album as 'Fly on a Windshield'." Gabriel's then-wife Jill noted that he wrote the main melody for "The Carpet Crawlers", of which he is especially proud. Tracks like "Anyway" and "Lilywhite Lilith" were developed from earlier unused 1969 compositions ("Frustration" and "The Light" respectively) which were likely to have been group efforts.
During pre-production, Gabriel was contacted by filmmaker William Friedkin (at the time enjoying success with The Exorcist), about a possible film project after Friedkin read Gabriel's short story on the sleeve of the Genesis Live album. Despite his bandmates' disapproval, Gabriel left them to work on some early script drafts. However, the project came to nothing (Friedkin instead working with Tangerine Dream to score his next film, Sorcerer), and Gabriel returned to the band. One of the influences Peter Gabriel had was the movie El Topo ("The Mole") by Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky. This film, which depicts a spiritual journey, maintains a cult following.
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