"MY NAME IS PETER GABRIEL
AND PRIMARILY I MAKE NOISES - AND IDEAS"

 

A biography is always an attempt at characterization, too. When Peter Gabriel was asked in a TV show to pick from a list of 20 5 expressions that described him best, he chose “wicked”, “open”, “creative”, “humorous” and “kind”. Let us see if we can find more facets of him in the following paragraphs…

Peter Brian Gabriel was born on Febuary 13, 1950 in Surrey, a county that was to become rich in places important for Genesis. The other birth date of May 13, 1950 that one often finds in relevant publications is simply wrong. Peter’s dad who has a degree in electronics was well-known for his stunning inventions (he invented an interactive cable tv network back in the sixties). Peter’s mother was very musical, she had the perfect pitch on the piano. The family was upper middle class and owned a place in the country with an adjacent farm. This gave Peter much freedom during his childhood. His (unabated) fascination for the elements of fire and water goes back to that time. Apart from that, Peter remembers “there were many little girls on the farm. Up to the age of ten, I had a very relaxed sexual life. From then onwards, things went into a dramatic decline. There was this girl who would always come around with nettles and holly branches…”
Careless life ended at age 13 when Peter was sent to Charterhouse boarding school, a prep school for elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge. Charterhouse provided a sophisticated and thorough classical education as well as class consciousness and a certain stuck-up-ness along with the (then) typical British “stiff upper lip”. It seems obvious that a bright if somewhat shy lad like Peter Gabriel tried to escape this strictly authoritarian, caning atmosphere that did not endorse emotions. The music was to be his means of escape. After a brief career as a hippie hat maker he became the drummer in several bands at school. At the school piano he began to turn his re-kindled interest in The Beatles and soul music into his own songs with Tony Banks. It is worthwhile mentioning that Peter loved the English hymns in the numerous services at school, and they may well have been an influence for the early style of Genesis. Three years before his graduation, in 1966, a couple of school bands played a concert for which they needed additional musicians. Peter (in a caftan, throwing rose petals into the crowd), Tony and Chris Stewart played in one band, while Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford played in the other. Scant months later, in January 1967, these five joined forces and formed a new band – Genesis.

To cut a long story short – a couple of years, record deals, line-up shuffles and explorations of new styles Genesis had become a cult band, albeit with “low sales potential” – the number of record sold was not exactly stellar, but the live shows became ever more brilliant and attractive to the press. “Art rock” was their style, and one trademark of it were ten minute epics composed by the whole band which told surreal stories of fairytales, fables, classical myths, plain eccentricities and quotes from fine literature peopled with quaint characters. Take for example little Cynthia who beheads her friend Henry in a game of croquet, or Harold the self-mutilating restaurant owner. Even social criticism (addressing rack rents) was clad in a science fiction story called Get ‘Em Out By Friday. The music was literally unheard-of before, a mixture of acoustic and electric instruments for which a German presenter coined the term “Elektrolore” (electric folklore). Long instrumental sections resembled classical pieces in the intricate sophistication. In the live shows, Peter Gabriel had learned to overcome his shyness. He began to play the peculiar heroes of the songs, and he would also tell self-invented introductory stories that had little to to with the songs at all. Apart from singing Peter played the flute, the oboe, the tambourine and a foot drum, though he adapted the rhythm of the latter instrument less to the beat than to the emotional intensity. For that reason, his colleagues would sabotage the drum and muffle it as much as possible. Enter also theatrics, masks and costumes.
It was a kind of shock therapy for the audience when Peter shaved a wedge-shaped gap into his long, almost feminine hair. It is the first occurrence of the noteworthy circumstance that whenever there was a crisis or a new turn in Peter’s career or private life, he changed his hair-do, which led to some extraordinary results. His share in Genesis’ compositions grew, sometimes by means of surprises. For the Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album the band permitted him to write the whole story as well as all the lyrics for this concept album on his own. There remained, however, tensions in the band which led to the notorious split-up in 1975.

That period lasted for “only” eight out of 38 years of musical career, but, surprisingly enough, it is still given probably more attention than is its due. One reason may be the unique and creative style of Genesis. Another would be the “production” – six studio records and one live LP in eight years squeezed in between tours and performances in countless places. The Peter Gabriel of today can only dream of productivity like that. Even today Peter is often termed the “former Genesis vocalist” and people still want to know the reasons for his departure. Well, there were several reasons:

a) Tensions in the band amounted to a constant battle for power, a battle about who could put how many of his ideas into the band’s songs. It was particularly the experience of writing all the lyrics for an album himself that made Peter want to do his own thing.

b) Peter’s first child was very sick and it was not at all clear whether she would survive. The band, however, were not prepared to give him enough time for his family.

c) The band were not prepared either, to tolerate side projects such as an entry to the film industy (as a creative head for science fiction movies).

d) The style both of Genesis and their concerts became a stereotype; Peter decided that a change in musical directions was required.

Peter completely turned his back to the music business. For a year he occupied himself just with “growing cabbage and babies”. A couple of collaborations with lyricist Martin Hall saved him from his hermit’s life and his doubts about himself. They released a single which was sung by comedian Charlie Drake. It flopped without leaving a trace, but it awakened Peter’s appetite for solo projects. Interestingly enough, there is a demo tape from December 1975 which features Here Comes The Flood.

In 1977, Peter Gabriel released his first solo record. Like the next three albums, it was untitled, but fans dubbed it Car because the cover showed an almost undiscernible Peter sitting in a car that was wet with rain. Musically, it was as far away from that Genesis style as possible. The songs sounded quite different, and some of them became his first solo successes, e.g. Solsbury Hill, Peter’s “declaration of independence”, and the apocalyptical Here Comes The Flood. Since Peter lacked experience as a producer, he decided to go with whatever song-oriented American producer Bob Ezrin suggested. As a result, many arrangements sound hopelessly crowded to Peter these days. For the Modern Love promo single, Peter was photographed stark naked in the pose of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch of man. Said Peter: “The idea was that when you put the single onto the record player, the pin in the middle would make me appear, uh, quite well-equipped. I liked the idea very much at the time, but it was not much appreciated.” For the ensuing solo tours, Peter took the brave step of disposing of all the roles and masks that had been prepared beforehand in favour of a simple performance in a track suit. Only occasionally a Genesis song would pop up in the encore.
Just a year later Peter’s next untitled record appeared. Since the cover consisted of Peter scratching his photographed face (and therefore the cover), it was unofficially titled Scratch. Its producer Robert Fripp went in the opposite direction from Bob Ezrin. He was interested in sound and atmosphere, and the arrangements ended up sounding bare and rough. Despite gems like Mother Of Violence (the tune of which was written by Peter’s then wife), White Shadow and Indigo, this is the album Peter has admitted of feeling least happy with. It was also the first album to explicitly feature a character called Mozo. Conceived of for a rock musical that would never be written, the character of the “mercurial stranger” haunts albums past, present and future with songs like Here Comes The Flood, Down The Dolce Vita, On The Air, Exposure, Red Rain and That Voice Again. Mozo is a mysterious outsider who collects trash at the fringe of a fishermen’s village and, like an alchemist, turns it into useful things. Says Peter: “Mozo is someone who appears in various places in many disguises. I even sketched a film script around his character. I read Jung and all this alchemy stuff, and they make gold from crap, from the junk, from the stuff people want to get rid of. In my new studio we try to combine hand-made, cheap, disposed-of elements with the best technology available. It is easy to get enthusiastic about this high-tech, reasonable, modern world and losing the gut feeling of being down to earth, the grunt factor, I like to call it, that comes from failures, mistakes, funny incidents and thrown-away elements.” This mixture of Hand-Made & High-Tech was to mark Peter’s style for the next decades. Concerts also features experimental cover versions of classics such as All Day And All Of The Night, I Heard It Through The Grapevine or Ain’t That Peculiar. Then there were unfinished songs, e.g. White Shadow with a completely different melody, I Don’t Remember without words or the unreleased song Why Don’t We. The idea was to give the audience an opportunity “to watch us fuck up”, as Peter put it.
Slowly, the core of Gabriel’s band formed: There were musicians like Tony Levin (bass), Larry Fast (Synthesizer), Jerry Marotta (drums) and, later, David Rhodes (guitar). Gabriel himself would play the flute, occasionally some percussion and every now and then even the keyboards. When success, record sales and top ten hits failed to appear, Peter took an unusual step in 1978 to “spiritually and practically improve myself”. He shaved his head completely bald before letting his hair grow back teddy-bear style – which of course went well with his rendition of the children’s song Me And My Teddy-Bear. During concerts Peter would wear his “road worker’s outfit”, i.e. reflecting vest and heavy-duty gloves.
A decisive change in Peter’s music occurred when Melt was released in 1980 (Peter’s face on the cover seemed to melt). It was the first album he based not on melody but on rhythms. The first of Peter’s “three instruments of liberation” (his words) were self-produced rhythms from the cheap Paia Drumboy. The second was the brand new Fairlight sampler which enabled him to process every recorded sound (e.g. the bursting of a t.v. screen), to change and shape into melodies. Finally there was world music he heard on his shortwave radio and used for Biko and Lead A Normal Life. The album had its very own sound, a bubbling, brooding atmosphere. Peter wanted to try and not use any high percussion sounds such as high-hats. His old pal Phil Collins, who, like Kate Bush, appeared as a guest musician, had his own problems with the non-existant high-hats: He would hit the thin air where he was used to have the cymbals until he simpled installed another drum in their place.
During the recording sessions, Phil, Peter and the studio technicians developed the “gated reverb” drum effect (trademark song: In The Air Tonight). Where previously he was uncertain, Peter Gabriel this time firmly believed in the quality of his work. And he was proved right: While his American record label had dumped him because they considered this album “commercial suicide”, the Games Without Frontiers single made it into the Top Ten. The album was similarly well-received.
A German director by the name of Horst Königstein not only translated but also provided ideas for the lyrics of the German versions of Peter Gabriel III and IV as well as the 1977 song Here Comes The Flood. Some songs were completely rearranged and the images used in the lyrics had to be adapted to German, and these things precisely are what makes the two Deutsche Alben artistic achievements in their own right instead of mere clones with different main vocals.
A fourth untitled album in 1982 marked the peak of Peters concept of rhythm, fairlight and world music. The record company for the United States, however, insisted on a ‘proper’ title, and so the record became known there as Security. Not even the fans could find a nickname for the video still that made up the cover. Later advertisements simply listed it as “?”. Songs like Wallflower and San Jacinto (as well as Biko, of course) showed Peter’s political engagement. The 1982 album also featured the Gabriel’s first song that became a favourite both with DJs and in discos: Shock The Monkey. The tour brought on two innovations, viz. the “monkey” make-up and Peter doing some “bodysurfing” (a completely new idea at the time!) for Lay Your Hands On Me. Crossing the distance between artist and audience was what prompted Peter to dive into the crowd. Said he: “I always liked tickling. Perhaps I jump into the crowd to get some of the tickling back.” His 1983 tour provided the material for the double live album Plays Live. As usual with Peter, the tracks were “perfected” in the studio.

Peter’s interest in world music led to the inauguration of a world music festival called WoMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance). It was the first of its kind in Europe and it offered an incredible musical experience for all those who were there. Unfortunately, exterior circumstances (among them a railroad strike) caused it to be a financial disaster. Luckily, Peter’s former band colleagues of Genesis – including Steve Hackett – agreed to cover the debt by playing a unique one-off Genesis reunion concert in October 1982.

1985 and 1985 witnessed Peter collaborating on a large number of other people’s records (Laurie Anderson and Phil Collins, to name but a few). These years also recorded Peter’s entry into the world of movie scores. He wrote or adapted a number of songs for films like Against All Odds and Gremlins, but he also wrote  a complete album to accompany the film Birdy. These were merely the first in a long series of films Peter provided music for – and the list is far too long to mention them all…

In 1986, Peter finally achieved the absolute breakthrough: So was Peter’s fifth solo album. It was less experimental than its successors; the music resembled early idols of soul music like Otis Redding, but despite that (or because of it) Peter finally reached and surpassed the level of success his former colleagues from Genesis enjoyed with singles like Sledgehammer. Success was also due to the brilliant videos and their innovative stop-motion technique. Says Peter: “I had not even known before that I had all those parts of my body that began to sting and hurt after a while. The fruit smelled okay, but the fish really began to stink after a couple of hours under the studio lights.

This time the producer was Daniel Lanois, a French Canadian who had previously brought out the best of U2 and the Neville Brothers. Some of the songs on So, however, only reached their final, perfect form in concert. One of those is In Your Eyes and its “special mix”. For the So tour French drummer Manu Katché became a regular member of Gabriel’s band. He brought an important impulse with his fine drumming and his humour. The 1987 This Way Up tour was documented in the P.O.V. video, which was not a straightforward concert video, but aimed much deeper. This was because it was directed by Michael Chapman (a disciple of Martin Scorcese), a fine cutting technique, unusual points of view, the use of private amateur film and bits that could have come from the News At Night.

Before he kicked off the So tour in 1986, Peter had embarked on a political tour for Amnesty International which would find a repeat in 1988’s Human Rights Now! world tour with Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour. On the latter tour concerts took place in the strangest locations. With these tours and assorted appearances at political or charity concerts (e.g. the concerts for Mandela or the Simple Truth gig for the Kurds) he had become the leading actor in the charity-circus.

Various activities took place between 1986 and 1992. The surprisingly large financial gains of the So album were invested in building up Peter Gabriel’s own Real World studios, a terrific high-tech place in a former water-mill.

A true masterpiece was released in 1989: Passion was more than a wordless soundtrack for Martin Scorcese’s Last Temptation Of Christ film. Up to this very day, Passion probably offers the very best of world music soundscapes and vocal improvisations Peter Gabriel has ever recorded or produced. The album is characterized by a peculiar atmosphere of intense oriental rhythms. TV reporters today still like to use music from Passion to accompany their images.

In those years Peter himself became the boss of a record company, viz. his newly founded RealWorld world music label. It would not be an exaggeration to say that RealWorld did a whole lot for making known and spreading the idea of world music. Peter provided studio time as well as a means of publishing to unknown musicians. A famous event are the RealWorld Recording Weeks: Every two to three years well-known European musicians and unknown musicians from all over the world meet and work together on improvisations – often with surprising results! The smallish numbers of records printed on the RealWorld label would usually be just sufficient to break even, but there were the odd commercial successes like the Afro Celt Sound System records. WoMAD, however, which has close links to RealWorld, occasionally needed an infusion from Peter’s purse to survive.

1992 – finally a new solo album by the master. Us is an album about relationships. It is the first album in which Peter “talks about himself”. In it, he comes to terms with the divorce from his wife and the split-up with his long-term partner Rosanna Arquette. Peter even admitted to having the “bastard in me” in songs like Digging In The Dirt. The second Gabriel album to be produced by Daniel Lanois not only offered reflections, but also a commercially successful uptempo number called Steam. The press liked to call it a Sledgehammer clone. Then there is Kiss That Frog, the video for which was almost completely computer-generated (except, of course, for the main actors), and which was accompanied by a “ride on a movement simulator”). Washing Of The Water is a balladesque spiritual once more showcasing Peter’s special relationship with the liquid elements. Blood Of Eden is a beautiful duet with Sinéad O’Connor, while 14 Black Paintings is the sequel to that social commentary, We Do What We’re Told (from So).
Musically, the sound of Us was, as expected, a mixture between So and Passion. The stage show for the Secret World tour was memorable both for an unusual stage that extended into the audience and for a large number of surprising props such as hotel room furniture, a phone booth, a bamboo raft and a tree. The show, which was jointly developed by Peter and French Canadian director Robert Lepage, also featured a “keyhole camera” on a headset that filmed Peter (and his dental fillings) from extremely close-up. The Secret World Tour became the first theatrical tour since Gabriel’s time in Genesis. It was also the first tour for which Peter had backing vocalists (one doubling as keyboard player, others merely as backing vocalists or duet partners). The Secret World Tour was documented extensively by the Secret World Live video, an EP and the double live album, all of which had been, of course, “improved” in the studio. Since the material for all these released was recorded in November 1993, they all lack Lovetown. This song was a staple for the tour so its non-appearance is a real flaw.
In the middle of the tour, keyboarder Jean-Claude Naimro joined Gabriel’s band. His later appearance at the ’98 Paris Amnesty concert seemed to indicate that he would be there for a longer term. Apart from the Secret World Tour, a special WoMAD tour with Peter Gabriel as the main act introduced world music to American audiences in 1993. The year after there was a festival tour with no special stage or stage props which climaxed in Peter’s performance at the concert celebrating the 25th anniversary of Woodstock.
The ensuing silence from the Gabriel camp was only interrupted by Peter’s entry into CD-ROM business by means of his new company RealWorld Multimedia (which would also produce non-Gabriel CD-Roms in due course). In December 1993, Peter released his CD-ROM Xplora1 (there are, at present, no indications that there will ever be Xplora2 or any other sequels). The release took place in a probably unique wave of musicians such as David Bowie, The Residents or Herbert Gronemeyer releasing CD-Roms but critics found that Xplora1 surpassed all others.  Xplora1 is a kind of game where you have to collect things, and it gave a good impression of what Peter Gabriel is into – not only as far as his work is concerned, but also about his private life and interests. The virtual environment of Xplora followed a similar design as the RealWorld records in that there is lots of nature imagery and patterns that are naturally grown. Players work their way through it in an organic way, led by images, graphics and games rather than text. The game featured “behind the scenes” impressions of the Us album, promo videos, the RealWorld studios, rehearsals taking place there, a lot of music and material from RealWorld and the WoMAD organization, Amnesty International, and Witness (an organization Peter Gabriel founded; it provides human rights activists with video cameras and other technology), Peter’s solo records and a photo album of the Gabriel family including private photos and amateur films. In the studio, for example, the player could remix Digging In The Dirt by means of a simple mixing board. All in all, Xplora1 was another attempt of Peter’s to tear down the barrier between the artist and his audience, to involve the audience in the creative process.
Gabriel’s 1996 CD-ROM Eve went even further down that road. While this time it was not all about Peter Gabriel but about reuniting the sexes represented by Adam and Eve, about the relationship between people, art and environment, there still was much of Gabriel’s philosophy in it. There also is an opportunity to remix four of Gabriel’s songs, and it is much more sophisticated than on Xplora1. The environment of the CD was even more atypical, because instead of a fully virtually designed environment collages from real landscapes were used to make up the four worlds of Eve. Xplora1 was less a game than a magazine you could thumb through. Eve, however, was a real game, albeit a game enriched with many creative ideas, animated sequences, music and unusual designs. Still, one has collect points to get on in the game and to come closer to the goal of the game which is to find the missing Eve.
Unfortunately, the CD-ROM proved not too attractive to buyers because you had to discover the rules yourself and because you could not progress very quickly. Commercially, it was a flop.
In 1995, Peter went into the studio to re-record old Genesis songs for the Archive project (such as the complete Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album and parts of Supper’s Ready from the time he was the singer with Genesis). This was also the time when Peter recorded the vocal track that was used for the Carpet Crawlers 1999 single.
This one-off collaboration and the fact that all members of Genesis past and present got together in 1998 for the release of Genesis Archive vol.1 sparked rumours about a reunion and upcoming concerts together. These rumours are, alas, untrue. Said Peter: “I was more interested in looking over the [old] songs again than in reactivating anything with the band.”
The post-Us era was marked by sparse (if one considers the interval of time) contributions to film scores, tribute records and charity concerts. The most important bits are a collaboration with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (deceased 1997), Signal To Noise, which will quite definitely be included on Gabriel’s next album, Up, a song called In The Sun by Joseph Arthur and I Grieve which appeared on the City Of Angels soundtrack. The release date for Up has been moved several times and the album is currently to appear in 2001. However, as far as release dates for a Peter Gabriel album are concerned, it is best to stick to the information given in Q magazine. They once described an upcoming Gabriel record as “almost finished. It should be ready for release before Christmas – or after Christmas.”

Peter’s involvement with the Millennium Dome show called Ovo played an important role in the delay of Up. Says Peter: “The Ovo show was supposed to be half a year of work. In the end, it took us two years.” Peter provided the music and central ideas for the story for the show. The fourty minute performance of some 200 artistes that resembled the Cirque Du Soleil could only be seen on visiting the Millennium Dome Experiences in London in 2000. Curiously enough, the topic of both Ovo show and music resembles the very first Genesis album From Genesis To Revelation: Both are concept albums with the lofty goal of telling the story of mankind in a couple of songs. Peter: “I like records that take you on a journey. For me, the concept is that of an old prog rock album, so right now this is probably the most dated idea possible.” Peter employed the neat trick of talking about the three ages of mankind in a story about the generations in a family: Living with nature, industrialization and a future in which nature and technology are reconciled. A love story is intertwined with this ambitious plot. According to Peter, the music is as varied: “With this music I am doing something I have never done before. I look back at a broad range of folk references, and I look forward into the future where I introduce industrial elements. I set out from my own point of view and dash off into areas I have not explored before, and I enjoy that very much.”
The songs are relatively short on lyrics, but nevertheless they are sung by a number of people – Iarla O’Lionaird, Elisabeth Fraser, Paul Buchanan, Richie Havens and Peter Gabriel himself. The soundtrack proper was expanded by Neneh Cherry rapping out the story of Ovo.

Ovo would not be the only project to distract Peter from completing his new studio album. News soon spread that he was working on a complete score for the film Rabbit-Proof Fence. This soundtrack, called Long Walk Home, appeared in 2002, while there was no trace of Up. However, there was another live show to enjoy. Peter played the WoMAD festival in Seattle on July 29, 2001, where, incidentally, Melanie Gabriel had her debut as a backing vocalist. On September 27, 2001, Peter’s partner Meabh Flynn gave birth to his son Isaac.

When Long Walk Home – Music From The Rabbit-Proof Fence was released in spring 2002, it became increasingly likely that Up would soon be released. First Tony Levin mentioned that Peter was planning a tour, then Peter’s homepage opened the Moon Club and the Up countdown with snippets from his new songs that were released every full moon. In this time, or precisely on June 09, 2002, Peter Gabriel married Meabh Flynn, who had been sound engineer at RealWorld Studios. With the album not yet released on August 31, 2002, Peter embarked on a world tour that would span 140 shows and two years. At that time, however, that was not yet evident. His live comeback at the Königsplatz in Munich, Germany, was slightly nervous. The indoor tour that followed it was simply spectacular. After two full tours of Europe and one in America with the circle stage and another end stage tour in America and a festival tour in Europe he played his currently last gig on Kaiserslautern on July 25, 2004. Despite all hopes, he had not managed to release another album in less than 18 months after Up. In between, Peter found time to write songs for soundtracks or engage in sociopolitical activities. At the 46664 concert in Kapstadt he presented his über-anthem Biko for the first time in South Africa. The tour brought a pleasant innovation for the fans: All the shows of the 2004 tour and of the North American tour of 2003 were officially released in the Encore series. Immediately after the tour, however, he ticked off fans because he vetoed a release of the 5.1 mix of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway until some “finishing touches” had been put on. On the other hand, he gave the okay for The Musical Box to tour Europe with the Lamb show. Til mid 2005 three more DVDs were released: Secret World Live featured his 1993/94 tour, Growing Up Live, recorded in Milan in 2003 and a video collection called Play. He also released another Greatest Hits album called Hit.

In 2005, Peter began offering early demoes of a number of songs as free downloads from the Moon Club. He also appeared at another 46664 concert in Norway. In setting up the Eden Project, his own Live8 concert, as it were, he also left his mark on the Live8 concerts. The successor for Up, however, will not be released in 2005. Instead Peter will put out another Live DVD of the 2004 festival tour, Still Growing Up…

Let’s turn from the future of mankind to Peter Gabriel’s own future. What can we expect in years to come. Back in 1981, Peter explained in an interview with the Melody Maker: “I will always have the urge to play and write music, regardless of whether I have a career and people who listen to me or not. I will definitely always have a piano around. In ten years, I don’t want to still do regular tours and stuff like that… I can see a whole lot of other things that might interest me.”

by Karin Woywod ( - 2000), updated by Christian Gerhardts (2000 - July 2005)
translated by Martin Klinkhardt