Therapy. Some people take to the couch, the chair, go shopping, try jogging whilst others, like Peter Gabriel, shave their heads, experiment with the diceman philosophy, hang upside down from gravity boots, immerse themselves in Samadhi floatation tanks and spend the best part of 25 years exploring the elusive terrorscapes of their own fantastic imaginations through music. The greater burden of life is never that which goes into it – it’s that which comes out. And the same could be said of therapy. What you go in with isn’t always commensurate with what you come out with. And judging by the tracks on this album – all whopping thirty of them – Gabriel must have been repressing big-style for the first thirty years of his life – as these 30 tracks represent a bonkers-sized canon of dazzling genius and craftsmanship. And just one look at the running order of tracks on this album suggests that Gabba is aware of his own illustrious psyscho-narrative too: sometimes you score a ‘hit’ and just occasionally you suffer a ‘miss’.
Beginning with the joyful and confessional release of ‘Solisbury Hill’ Gabriel announces news of an anxious re-birth that isn’t to close until the plain and soothing strains of the redemptive ‘Washing Of The Water’ some quarter of a century later and – tellingly – the last track on this album. Brutal, harsh and destructive shock treatment next ensues with tracks ‘Shock The Monkey’ and ‘Sledgehammer’; encouragement and compassion enter in the form of ‘Don’t Give Up’ and the ugly underneath begins to get probed to the frankly disturbing riffs of ‘Games Without Frontiers’ (played by Robert Fripp). After confrontation there then comes resistance and denial in the form of the robust and ebullient ‘Big Time’ before Gabriel finally embraces the darker recesses of his childhood and imagination on ‘Growing Up’ and ‘Digging In The Dirt’ culminating in the unconditional pouring forth of pent-up guilt and frustration to the heaving pulse of ‘Red Rain’ and the swelling, mournful tenderness of ‘Here Come The Flood’. And side two? The primal therapy of rhythm – the heart of darkness: ‘San Jacinto’, ‘No Self Control’, ‘Cloudless’, ‘The Rhythm of The Heat’, ‘I Have The Touch’. And after a long wait for ignition, the signal to grieve, (‘I Grieve’) and to heal (‘Father, Son’, ‘Washing Of The Water’).
Why isn’t ‘In Your Eyes’ on the album? I’d be inclined to believe that the song simply didn’t fit the bill, offering as it does a sense of completion and an even greater false sense of security. Compared to the open heart surgery of ‘I Grieve’ and half a dozen other tracks on this album, ‘In Your Eyes’ seems almost vacuos.
So the running order is not as curious as some would have us believe, and it’s not be simply divided into those which were chart successes and those which were not. Like all things in Gabriel’s life there’s a swelling undercurrent of uncertainty beneath the visible and apparent. Behind the burlesque swagger and theatrical high jinx of stax-flavoured hits, ‘Sledgehammer’, ‘Steam’ and ‘Big Time’ and the stubborn, courageous heroism of ‘Biko’ there’s the sound of a weak and fragile heart beating from a whisper to a scream and back to a whisper again.
There’s no shortage of talent here too. Contributions range from Kate Bush, Phil Collins, Robert Fripp, Stewart Copeland, to Steve Lilywhite, Hugh Padgham, Robbie Roberton, Karl Wallinger and Daniel Lanois. And for those looking for rarities and something a ‘twist’ there’s alternate takes of ‘I Have The Touch’, ‘The Tower That Ate People’, ‘Blood Of Eden’, ‘Downside Up’ and ‘Here Comes The Flood’. And of course, there’s similarly no shortage of ideas, Gabriel being one of the first, if not THE first to bring both sampling, programming and world-music to the masses.
To the scores of unremarkable pretenders in the world of music today – we can only say one thing:
‘Drink Up, dreamers. You’re running dry’.
Factoids:
For the ‘Melt’ (Peter Gabriel 3) Gabriel chose Steve Lillywhite – producer of Siouxsie and the Banshees, XTC and Talking Heads.
On ‘Melt’ a basic rule was established: if it sounded normal, don’t use it. And a no “no cymbals“ policy for put in place for drummers Phil Collins and Jerry Marotta.
Gabriel was one of the first musicians to use programmable drum machines on a rock record.
Peter wanted to create a new sound for the 80s – building songs from the ground up -establishing a rhythm and then structuring chords and melody around it.
On the basis of what record executives heard on initial plays of Peter Gabriel 3, Atlantic in the US dropped Gabriel, only to offer him $750,000 to return two years later.
Despite common belief, ‘Sledgehammer’ was not Gabriel’s first solo success. The single, ‘Games Without Frontiers’, reached number four in the UK in 1980 and the album made its UK chart debut at number three, and earned the number one spot in the second week – some six years before the release of ‘So’
The classic Gabriel track ‘I Go Swimming’ has ever emerged only as a live track and an instrumental B-side.
The source music for the anti-apartheid song ‘Biko’ was based on traditional South African funeral music and it was used for the song’s prologue and epilogue.
In 1982 Peter and others created Womad, the World Of Music Arts and Dance, organised the first Womad festival at Shepton Mallet. In the wake of the financial wranglings, Gabriel received death-threats from dubious financiers.
In Britain and the US, Peter Gabriel 4 (featuring the African flavoured ‘San Jacinto’ and ‘The Rhythm of the Heat’) was criticised for it’s “cultural imperialism“. In the black press, however, it was very well received, one reviewer lamenting at the album’s poor reception with the “honky poseurs“.
‘So’ started life as a covers album (Peter’s teenage musical influences were primarily from the black music labels of the 1960s such as Stax and Motown).
Stewart Copeland’s high-hat can be heard at the opening of ‘Red Rain’.