Music IV

When Peter Gabriel left Genesis, he did so with the excuse of leaving to spend time with his family and tend his garden, not wishing to be “anchored to the footlights”. In reality, he was back in the studio within three months of finishing the Lamb Lies tour, laying down some demos (which recently surfaced, having been found in the burned out warehouse of a record company that ceased trading 30 years ago, on dusty tape under a lead sheet!). As a solo artist, Gabriel is a completely different animal to that of his Genesis days. Each of his albums is self–titled, the intention being to provide a ‘magazine’ style program of releases, in which the musical style changes along with Gabriel’s image and direction. The first album (‘Peter Gabriel I, known as ‘car’ due to the Storm Thorgeson/Hipgnosis designed cover) was intended to be a piano–driven Randy Newman take off, just Peter and his piano, a deliberate contrast to the theatricality and bombast of his Genesis days. This was Peter’s attempt to reinvent himself as the Hindenburg of prog started to crash and burn, as a pared down performer of heartfelt compositions. The introduction of producer Bob Ezrin, no stranger to the production of densely layered and highly symphonic albums (he did produce ‘The Wall’, after all) completely changed all that. Peter was encouraged to deepen his sound a little more, and as a result several session musicians joined the ranks – including long–time collaborators and members of his touring band – world famous bassist Tony Levin, drummer Jerry Marrotta and Mr. Synergy himself, Larry Fast on synthesizers. On guitar, none other than the legendary Robert Fripp, of King Crimson fame. Fripp’s inimitable brand of ‘Frippertronics’ (a relatively unique variety of sounds he could force out of his instrument) lend the album a canonical charm, but also a more familiar sound for those accustomed with progressive rock in general. With these elements in place, Peter’s more simplistic compositions were developed into more fully realized pieces, still much more basic than anything Genesis ever attempted, but had much more instrumentation than Peter originally envisioned. Out of this approach, the first track, ‘Moribund the Burgermeister’ was developed. This is one of the last evident traces of the Genesis writing style that garnered him so much press attention in the early 70s – a fanciful piece involving multiple characters, some comedic voice acting and touch of menace. It has always remained something of a mystery as to what Moribund is about precisely, but it is set in medieval Germany, concerns the master of the burg Moribund’s incredulity at being unable to handle a plague, a disease that is causing hallucinations for his village folk, sealing off the castle grounds to contain the spread. He has absolutely no idea, nor do any of his advisors, as to the nature of what is affecting his populace. It is this confusion and ascription of the plague’s cause to numerous supernatural factors, including attempts to deal with it in a variety of increasingly desperate spiritual means, that characterize the panic of having something you know little about, causing lots of damage to everything around you and what you hold dear, and trying to neutralize the threat with very little idea as to how. It is fearful ignorance, and ends with Moribund himself becoming affected by the plague, hallucinating, somehow invoking his mother in his chants of ‘I will find out’, perhaps indicating the roots of his control freakery, driven wild by seeing his neatly ordered plot of responsibility decimated. What the plague actually IS remains a mystery, although a likely candidate is the poisoning of the wheat crop (which should raise the eyebrows of any LSD users). The instrumentation on Moribund is heavily synthesized, and sounds the closest to anything Genesis did, being the most symphonic track present, although it completely lacks any of the meandering that characterized a typical PG–era Genesis track. The track that follows, ‘Solsbury Hill’, is perhaps PG’s most famous track apart from his ’86 output (and if you’ve seen ANY romantic comedy in the last 3 years it will invariably be on the soundtrack). Concerning his departure from Genesis, the track is a neat little acoustically charged ditty that revolves around an upbeat melody, the most conventional song PG has ever penned, although the lyrics are deliberate opaque as to avoid offence – concerning inspiration to move on rather than displeasure that made his position untenable. It did well in the charts upon release, finding favour with the British public. PG I contains two more tracks of note – the first, Humdrum, is perhaps my favourite song of his. About the birth of his daughter, it has the seemingly miraculous life changing event of witnessing the emergence of something as wonderful as a new born child juxtaposed against the banality of everyday existence. The opening couple of verses are supposed to illustrate the same sort of sentiment ‘Not Now John’ got close to – that of submerging yourself in middle–of–the–road ordinariness, one day to the next, never seeing anything in the context of something greater. The revelation arrives as the track takes off – a wonderful wave of synthesizers rises out of the polka rhythm and we’re riding high, suddenly everything seems bathed in a new light, a new significance. PG’s voice drops an octave and booms out his epiphany. The track ends with a pet name for his little miracle – “My little liebe schoen" – a touching sentiment.

The last track is ‘Here Comes the Flood’, a live staple that has remained in his set for the entirety of his solo career (as has Solsbury Hill). Concerning the breaking down of physical boundaries, the instrumentality of humanity joined in a single wave, joining in a brotherhood. Obviously not literally a tidal wave, it explores the notion of tearing down boundaries, real or otherwise, overcoming fear with trust, something that PG explores extensively in his ensuing albums. The instrumentation of this track PG was apparently most unhappy with, as he thought Ezrin’s inclusion of an orchestra (not to mention Fripp’s noodling at the start of the track) detracted from the simple power and charm of piano and voice – it felt a little disingenuous. There’s an absolutely amazing performance of this track from Kate Bush’s 1979 Christmas special available here; – played here exactly as it should have sounded on the album. It’s a remarkably powerful track, precisely because of the raw honesty with which it is performed. PG toured this album in a variety of small concert halls across America – some of the venues were so tiny the performances were given a uniquely personal quality. PG appeared in a grey tracksuit and trainers – not a trace of the outfits that characterized his stage persona of old. Here he was, behind a piano, with his tour group, entertaining in a much more restrained manner, playing no Genesis tracks (apart from the encore where PG would run on in his Rael leather jacket and jump and scream about for 5 minutes) and boosting his set with a few old rockers. The two tours of 1977 (one of which Fripp came along on under a pseudonym) have largely the same set list but also a couple of tracks that never ended up on vinyl – both of which (‘Why don’t we?’ and ‘A Song Without Words’) are much in line with his piano-and-voice persona. These were abandoned when he moved in his next direction for PG II (known as ‘Scratch’), which was a much more harder sounding affair, PG trying out some latent punk aggression. Fripp stayed on and so did the majority of his session (and now live group) musicians. Fripp produced – and he made a real pig’s ear of it. In order to capture some sort of excitement and electricity about the performance, Fripp wanted to use the first take of every vocal recording attempt. The results are scrappy and unrefined. The opener, ‘On The Air’, about the short wave radio loving ‘Mozo’ (a character who appeared on PG I albeit briefly and also appears later on a few other albums, although not name-checked specifically) who resides in a dump but lives a fantasy life over the bands at night, chatting away with his community of misfits, finding the acceptance he is refused on the street. It’s a lively rocker, much faster than anything on PG I. This album is largely ignored by PG nowadays as he doesn’t consider it his finest – there are however some real highlights here, the scrappy production taking the shine off most of the diamonds in the rough (something the recent re-mastering rectified to a certain extent); some of the best tracks of his career, in fact. Each track could have been so much more – ‘D.I.Y,’ is completely toothless without an electric arrangement, any attack it might have once possessed softened with an acoustic set (and seeing as how DIY was meant to be the single, such a choice makes you wonder whether it was meant to replicate the success of ‘Solsbury Hill’). ‘Mother of Violence’, a lullaby composed by Peter and his wife, set to lyrics examining the relationship between distrust and physically lashing out, is a chilling affair but only found its voice live – Peter would wail like a kid with a grazed knee over the song’s final passage, curled up in a ball, which doesn’t sound particularly impressive on paper, but in performance it is immediately enthralling (especially as it is one of the quieter numbers on the tour). On the vinyl, though, it is too static, and the protest rock of ‘Perspective’ and ‘Animal Magic’ are too hackneyed and clichéd to be seen as anything other than a failed experiment in trying to capture the punk zeitgeist. The highlights are the more instrumental affairs – ‘White Shadow’ (which I again suspect is about his daughter’s birth) is an electronic nightmare (Larry Fast finally taking a more decisive role in proceedings) and ‘Indigo’ is Peter’s ‘Old Man River’, a reverent and expectant ballad about a man on his deathbed, weighing up the pros and cons of his life and what he might expect when he makes the journey over the Indigo, the dark river. Never performed live (although ‘A Song Without Words’ was ‘Indigo’ in a prototype stage). The closer, ‘Home Sweet Home’, used to be a favourite of mine but now I can’t imagine why – it seems a little overwrought and PG’s vocal is a little too loose (probably a symptom of the ‘one take’ rule). The live show is completely different. One of PG’s most lively and physical shows, now sporting a shaved head to fit in with his punk persona, he and his band arrived on stage in fluorescent vests and protective gloves, and screamed through a set that combined the best of his current album and the highlights of PG I. PG roughened up his voice on this tour, screamed a lot his louder numbers, and ran around like a man posssessed. While not part of the main set, here’s a video of PG performing ‘Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’ as an encore from a 1978 German TV broadcast (Rockpalast, if that sounds familiar to you) and note the energy the man has. While certainly not the best rendition of the track available, it is simply amazing to see him inhabit the character of Rael to such an extent.

PG II was not very successful, perhaps as a result of its awkward mixture of punk sensibilities and the quieter more developed numbers typical of PG – the harder edge was not sitting right with the more reticent compositions. PG’s response was to marry his instrumentalism with something other than raw aggression. Instead, he developed a more rhythmic approach, composing tracks not around the piano and chord structures, but drum patterns (Peter having played the drums in his youth). The result was ‘the’ Peter Gabriel sound – Peter’s compositions from this point onwards bear the hallmark of this different approach. PG III (‘melt’) is, again, a different approach and a different Peter. From raw aggression we move to insular paranoia – this is an album of insecurity and astringency. The opener, ‘Intruder’, (utilizing the gated reverb drum technique long before Phil Collins used it on ‘In the Air Tonight’ – although ironically it IS Phil playing the drums on this track!) about a pervert breaking into the homes of women and revealing his presence to bask in their fear, sets the tone for an album whose subject matter is much more frightening than his other two productions. The nonchalance of the whistle at the end as the track closes out is an especially nice touch. Peter’s voice is also refreshingly dynamic here, from bellows, whispers to screams – something he would play with more on PG IV. There isn’t one bad track here, from the tactile use of marimbas to illustrate a fragile equilibrium of mental stability on ‘No Self Control’ (with some delightful backing by Kate Bush) to the clueless defence of ‘I Don’t Remember’ (which is expertly segued into from the instrumental preceding it, ‘Start’), which steams ahead at a panicked, rushed pace, each line an attack. Perhaps the best track is ‘Family Snapshot’, based on the diary of Arthur Bremner, a neglected child whose fascination with fame and adulation led him to take a potshot at a governor, timed to coincide with the evening news, in order to generate maximum coverage. Mixed with some images of Dallas, the track is a wonderfully expressive piece, once the shot is fired it becomes simply piano and voice, PG inhabits the world of a quiet and ignored child, pleading for some attention from his family. It is a little bit unsubtle in how it illustrates that childhood episodes can shape our adulthood (“Where’s my toy gun?” – something PG later apologized for as being too simplistic), but it remains stirring. PG charted well again with ‘Games Without Frontiers’, a song about how international leaders supposedly behave in a childish manner, evoking images of ‘It’s a Knockout’ like lunacy, but the success of the track is largely dependent on the hypnotic Kate Bush backing vocal and the largely electronic arrangement. Another highlight is the largely instrumental ‘Lead a Normal Life’, about the visitation of a relative (possibly) in a mental institution. We’re in the realm of ‘One Flew Over…’ here, as there’s a somewhat sinister calm to the whole affair, which gives way to the depths of insanity lying just beneath the bleached floor and starched sheet order. The last track, ‘Biko’, is PG’s protest song about the death of African civil rights leader Stephen Biko. A good lyric, and a good arrangement (including bagpipes!), make this song favourable, but it is what PG manages with his voice that sets this track apart. As with the following album, he became obsessed with using his voice as a more expressive instrument. ‘Biko’ features Peter’s now infamous wailing, a call to unite, an impassioned plea for justice. PG closes on a cautiously optimistic note, compared to the unhinged lunacy of ‘Intruder’ – but the tone is overwhelmingly one of menace.

The album was a success and the live show featured almost all of the tracks from it. There is also a German language version of this album that is well worth seeking out as evidently PG doesn’t speak German, but even if you can’t understand him you will get great enjoyment out of how he chooses to wrap his vocals around words from another language. If you CAN speak German (and the language on the album is relatively simplistic), it makes for some fantastic listening. Thankfully my fragile competence with the language allows me to understand about 80% of what he means (although I know the lyrics in English like the back of my hand anyway). Live, PG was this time dressed in black tracksuits, and the tour was named the ‘China 1984 tour’ (despite taking place in late 1980!) – so called because of the rush musicians engaged in to be the first to tour China in the early 80s. Peter thought he’d beat them all by doing it four years early in England. PG was again shaven headed, but added subtle black eye shadow, to make him appear pallid and lacking sleep – the perfect image for an introspective paranoiac. Playing with the band as support were a group called Random Hold, whose guitarist (David Rhodes) Peter was interested in poaching – so he invited them along. The wily bugger soon had David in the studio. The opening of the show, always ‘Intruder’, involved Peter coming through the back of the auditorium, tapping people on the shoulder and squeezing through to the stage, intruding his way through unexpectedly. Sometimes he would get caught in a net of fans and it would take him an extended period to reach the stage – ‘Intruder’ is a four minute track but there are some versions stretching to ten minutes as he struggled to breach the stage (and feature some very creative drumming by Jerry Marrotta). Footage of this tour is unbelievably scarce (I myself having only acquired it recently) and of staggeringly poor quality. But to see the show in motion is worth a thousand words. Peter doesn’t really make use of lighting trickery or special effects on tour (in contrast to nowadays), instead preferring to use his physicality as a spectacle, throwing himself around with abandon. It’s worth it just to ask yourself the question of how he sings when he surely must be struggling for breath. Plus this show marked the debut of ‘Milgram’s 37’ as a live track, something which I’ll explore later on when it appeared on vinyl in ’86. Suffice to say, Peter would occasionally perform the track, getting the audience to sing for him with no explanation as to what the song entailed, or provide long and detailed explanations (sometimes in the language of the country in which he was performing) about the nature of Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiment prior to his performance. On this tour, it is a joy to hear. Post tour, Peter retreated to his studio in Ashcombe house (‘Shabby Road’) to record some new material – an album which would become his defining moment as a solo artist.

Pairing up with Hammill collaborator David Lord to produce, PG IV (‘Security’ in the US as the record company pressured him for a title – he put a sticker on the cover with the words ‘security’, a joke at the expense of the execs as the sticker was nothing more than for their comfort!) is a concept album. In instrumentation, in lyrics, in approach. When I say instrumentation, I do not mean that the album somehow has continuous pieces that flow as one, but that the entire choice of which instruments to use and their marrying with electronic equipment is central to the kind of issues the tracks discuss. PG IV is largely about the contrast between the ideas of trust, communication and influence, coupled with their attachment to nature, enduring culture and ritual, and are explored in every one of the songs, the antagonism generated by the meeting of the two providing much of the album's power and insight. For example, the ‘Family and the Fishing Net’ explores the 'hidden' rituals performed within marriage ceremonies – a throwback to ancient rites, but retained, juxtaposed against modern convention. The theme is repeated in ‘San Jacinto’, where the titular mountain towers over the valley of golf courses, swimming pools and Frank Sinatras below, the mountain itself a symbol of the recession of Native American culture (it is the mountain the boy of the story has to get back down after being bitten by a snake in order to become a brave) being submerged in the mainstream Americana below. One of the over–arching themes of the album is that of the overtaking of the somewhat more naturalistic aspects of humanity (as Gabriel saw them) by other, more artificial and ironically man–made ideals – the album's first track is the most obvious juxtaposition of the two, detailing Jung's trip to Africa, ‘great white thinker’ who by being confronted with the impassioned dances of locals to hynoptic drumming, Jung unavoidably confronted his own nature, his own constitution as a man at its most base level – a look into his own soul – which profoundly disturbed him (and informed much of his writing on alchemy and the notion of a collective subconcious). The song's build–up and climax describe this encounter. I could go on but to do so would be overstating the case and may ruin some of the enjoyment a listener may get from seeing the connections in other songs! Yes, that is me on wikipedia. Peter made extensive use of some of the most cutting edge sampling technology, expensive pieces of equipment like the Fairlight CMI, and utilised some of the more recently developed studio techniques of the early 80s. In contrast to this, he based his songs around various third world drum patterns he had stolen (shamelessly!) from the radio or from documentaries he found. At the very heart of all the tracks is a drum beat of naturalistic intensity, driving the action, and at the surface all the modern day trickery and conventions associated with Western music–making at the time. It is this marrying of the two, the juxtaposition, that reflects the album’s overall concept. It is a fantastic achievement, PG actually achieving something genuinely groundbreaking by embracing such technology.

Again, there’s a German version of this album that is essential listening for any German speaking fan, and the live show of late ’82 and early ’83 (called ‘Playtime 1988’ – don’t ask) returned somewhat to the theatricality of Genesis. Peter clad himself in face paint once more (the iconic ‘Monkey Man’ getup) and a white jumpsuit (sometimes black) and produced yet more unbridled physicality while on stage. Interestingly, the rambling stories that accompanied his Genesis days returned – probably as a result of his involvement in setting up WOMAD, which led to a Genesis reunion (a one off). Before his album’s release, Peter premiered his album at a world music festival he had been putting together. The event was a failure (yet continues today!), and left him in a colossal amount of debt, so much so that threats on his life were made. He needed some easy money and recognised that many Genesis fans still hadn’t let go of the possiblity of him returning to his old bandmates, now enjoying great success of their own. Remaining friends, the old line up (apart from Steve Hackett) reconvened at Milton Keynes bowl for a one–off blast through the classics. All the old costumes reappeared, as did the stories and on stage antics. For one night, Gabriel–era Genesis lived again – even Hackett turned up at the last minute to play on the final track. It was probably this experience that led to Peter reclaiming many of his stage antics that he had long since abandoned for his solo tour – he even performed a stage dive during the climax of ‘Lay Your Hands on Me’, dropping back into the audience, arms outstretched, sumbitting himself to them (as the song is about (AGAIN!) trust and sacrifice) and emerging minutes later minus clothing and looking dishevelled – but exhilarated – becoming a part of the alchemy. This is my favourite period of Peter’s career, as this is just before his long hiatus from public performance, features his core band (who by now exhibit a tight and professional live sound) and also features a wide variety of material spanning his first four albums. There’s a live album of this tour from a number of shows in middle America, showcasing a fearlessness and passion that he would possess in only limited capacity afterwards. The ‘Humdrum’ (rarely performed on that tour) of this album is perhaps the best version available, Peter’s breathy “here we go…” before the track commences, a preparation for something spectacular. He really put everything into this extensive tour and while his vocals inevitably began to collapse by the end, his passion never dimmed and by all accounts, every show was memorable. Footage of this tour is only available illegally (as with all of PG’s tours prior to 1987) and all of relatively poor quality. The handicam video from the Liverpool Empire is fascinating, however. Peter commands the stage, prowling it with intensity, and you get a unique crowd’s–eye–view of his stage drop from ‘Lay Your Hands on Me’.

: 19 Jun 2006 17:00 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem