Experiencing Peter Gabriel Book

Summary and Writing Sample

Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listeners Companion will be published by Rowman
& Littlefield by September of 2016.
Summary

Introduction

Peter Gabriel is an innovative, British singer-songwriter, musician, and humanitarian activist

(b. 13 February 1950), who has also worked extensively with other musicians and others and
in various areas of music-related technology. In his early career, he was the lead singer of the
progressive rock band Genesis, with which he made six studio albums, a live album, and
concert tours (1969-75). His solo career then spanned a further nine studio albums (1977-
2011), plus four film/media scores, movie songs, music videos, major tours, live albums,
concert films, and other projects. His work ranges from quite experimental to relatively
mainstream.

Chapter 1: Tell Me My Life is about to Begin

1950-1971 and early Genesis

Gabriel and some of his classmates from the UKs Charterhouse School emerged as the rock
band Genesis in 1967. After a pop/R&B direction on its first album, From Genesis to
Revelation (1969), the group pursued a complex, progressive rock style
onTrespass and Nursery Cryme (1970 and 1971). Songs include: The Knife, The Musical
Box, and The Fountain of Salmacis. As the bands lead singer, Gabriel wrote many of its
fanciful lyrics, but he also sometimes contributed to its music on flute and became known for
his live show costume changes for characters within certain songs.
Chapter 2: The Chamber was in Confusion
1972-1975 and the Exodus from Genesis

Gabriels last three studio albums with Genesis were Foxtrot (1972), Selling England by the
Pound (1973, and followed by a live album), and the double, concept album The Lamb Lies
Down on Broadway (1974). Songs include: Watcher of the Skies, Suppers Ready, I Know
What I Like (In Your Wardrobe), Carpet Crawlers, and Lilywhite Lilith. The latter album
was, in some ways, lyrically a separate Gabriel project even more than the bands earlier
music had been. Also, the other band members resented the medias attention on Gabriel as
its leader. He left the band in late 1975, having announced his planned departure to the
rest of the group (but not to the public) early during its 1974-75 tour. Phil Collins replaced
Gabriel as its lead singer in 1975 (having joined Genesis as its drummer in 1970), and
Gabriel began to prepare for a career as a solo artist.
Chapter 3: Theyve Come to Take Me Home
1976-1978 and 1 (Car) and 2 (Scratch)
Gabriels first two solo albums are stylistically-eccentric experiments into different genres
(1977 and 1978). Some songs include progressive-like, chamber rock elements slightly
reminiscent of his work with Genesis, but others have ornate, orchestral arrangements or
even explore soft rock, folk, country, barbershop, and music hall styles. Gabriel named his
first several solo albums Peter Gabriel and let the visual differences in the covers
differentiate between them. They are, however, usually referred to either by their position in
the series or by the main feature of their covers. 1 (Car) includes his first well-known solo
songs, Solsbury Hill (a progressive folk-rock song lyrically inspired by Gabriel leaving
Genesis) and the apocalyptic Here Comes the Flood. 2 (Scratch) is more experimental
and was produced by King Crimsons Robert Fripp. It includes the songs On the Air and
D.I.Y.
Chapter 4: If Looks Could Kill, They Probably Will
1979-1980 and 3 (Melt)
On his third album, Gabriel emerged as a leading artistic figure of the late 20 thcentury (1980).
His work began to include creative applications of studio technology and electronic
instruments (a sparse drum sound without cymbals, innovative uses of synthesizers, etc.),
experimental musical structures, more focused (and sometimes political) lyrics, world music
influences, and support from artistically-sympathetic colleagues (e.g., Kate Bush). The songs
include Intruder (from the point of view of a cat burglar), Games without Frontiers (a
catchy combination of unusual sounds with multicultural- and nature-influenced lyrics), and
Biko (about the death of a South African activist).
Chapter 5: Cover Me, When I Run
1981-1984 and 4 (Security)
Gabriels fourth album includes his extensive use of the very expensive Fairlight CMI
sampling and sequencing computer music instrument (1982). Shock the Monkey is the
albums best-known song (U.S. No. 29), and it is built around a repeated synthesizer hook
and lyrically concerns the release of ones jealousy instincts. However, other songs give a
better sense of the emotional range Gabriel was able to achieve by including world beat
percussion, unusual instrumentations, intense build-ups, extreme vocal ranges, and/or
disturbing lyrics. Those songs include San Jacinto, The Family and the Fishing Net, and
Wallflower. His double-live albumPlays Live and soundtrack for Alan Parkers
film Birdy followed in 1983-84. The latter consists largely of alternate, instrumental versions
of some of Gabriels recent music. In addition, he founded the WOMAD (World of Music, Arts,
and Dance) festivals in 1980, and its first event was held in 1982.
Chapter 6: This is the New Stuff
1985-1989 and So
So is Gabriels best-selling and most accessible work, selling over four million copies in the
U.S. (1986). It includes the R&B-inspired hit Sledgehammer (U.S. No. 1, plus numerous
awards for its video), but also the dream-inspired Red Rain, the celebrity-identity song Big
Time, the soft-rock ballad Dont Give Up, the love song In Your Eyes, and This is the
Picture (Excellent Birds). His main collaborators on the latter three were British musician
Kate Bush, African singer Youssou NDour, and American performance artist Laurie Anderson.
His soundtrack for Martin Scorseses controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ followed
in 1988. Released as Passionand winning a Grammy award, it includes collaborations with
African, Middle Eastern, and other musicians. In addition, Passion: Sources was the first
release on Real World Records, which he founded in 1989. He also performed for Amnesty
International human rights awareness tours in 1986 and 1988.
Chapter 7: I Reach through the Border Fence
1990-1999 and Us
Us is Gabriels most personal work, with a number of quite serious songs having to do with
his personal relationships and recent experiences of psychotherapy (1992). Such songs
include Come Talk to Me, Blood of Eden, Digging in the Dirt (including the 1993
Grammy-winning music video), and Secret World. The sexual-desire-themed Steam
(1994 video Grammy) recalls the R&B inspirations of Sledgehammer. Irish musician Sinad
OConnor provides guest vocals on several songs. The concert tour was released in 1994
as Secret World Live, and it won the 1996 long-form video Grammy. In addition, the related,
interactive, CD-ROM computer game Xplora1 was released in several versions between 1992
and 1994. He also continued his humanitarian work.
Chapter 8: In Transition Once Again
2000-2015 and Up
Up is one of Gabriels most self-consciously experimental studio albums, entirely self-
produced and using updated music technology and electronic, orchestral, vocal-effect, and
dance-oriented percussion sounds and loops (2002). Most of the songs are lengthy, around
six to eight minutes, including: Darkness, Growing Up, Sky Blue, and Signal to Noise.
Gabriel frequently collaborated with other musicians and always respected the work of
others. Thus, his album Scratch My Back includes orchestral-accompanied cover versions of
songs by other artists (2010). New Blood similarly uses orchestral accompaniments, but for
some of Gabriels own, earlier songs (2011). Gabriel was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame twice, as a founding member of Genesis in 2010 and as a solo artist in 2014.
Conclusion

Peter Gabriel is one of the most innovative popular music artists of the late-20 th and early-
21st centuries. He established his early credentials with a highly-respected progressive rock
band: Genesis. After leaving that group, he then created an array of both experimental and
mainstream solo music.
Writing Sample (from Chapter 1):
The British rock band Genesis created its earliest music in the period from 1967 to 1975.
With Peter Gabriel as its lead singer, the group made some of the most self-consciously
complex popular music ever released. Music by early Genesis includes a number of lengthy
compositions, such as 1972s Suppers Ready, a continuous, 23-minute, agnostic re-
imagining of the Book of Revelation from the album Foxtrot. The 27 Genesis songs from
1970-1973 average 6:53 in duration. Four songs last from 10:29 to 22:50, fourteen from 4:47
to 9:38, only six have relatively normal pop song durations of 2:57 to 4:17, and three last
from 1:36 to 1:47. The bands final music with Gabriel comprised 1974s The Lamb
Lies Down on Broadway, a 90-minute, urban-decay, concept album. Music writers often
dismiss progressive rock for having done nothing more than appropriated classical music. In
fact, the music features a great deal of complexity and variety on its own terms, and it
provides a classical-music substitute for many fans.
The music of early Genesis inscribes a vast array of fanciful/mythical lyrics, elaborate
melodies, strange harmonies and rhythms, unusual time signatures, varied moods, and
unexpected changes in instrumentation, texture, and dynamics. Much of that was provided
by the contributions of various musicians: guitarist Anthony Phillips until some of the
material on the bands 1971 album Nursery Cryme, guitarist Steve Hackett starting in 1971,
bassist-guitarist Mike Rutherford, keyboardist-guitarist Tony Banks, drummer-singer Phil
Collins starting in late 1970, and others. Gabriel co-composed about two-thirds of the bands
music, and as its lead singer contributed a prominent role in establishing the lyrics of many
of its songs. However, even when he wasnt involved in composing a song, his vocals ranged
from powerful, emotional, post-R&B rock singing in a tenor range to theatrical
characterizations sometimes in a high, eccentric countertenor style to gentle, vulnerable,
often baritone moments. He frequently sang in all three styles within the same song. He also
became well-known for the elaborate, often-bizarre costumes and makeup he wore to inhabit
certain characters during the bands live performances. In addition, he contributed flute
parts to a number of songs and sometimes played tambourine, bass drum, or accordion.

In the autumn of 2014, a colleague of mine posted a link on Facebook to the music video of
the much later, late-Cold-War era, mainstream Genesis rock song Land of Confusion from
the 1986 album Invisible Touch. He had no issues at all in categorizing that song as
progressive rock. However, there are increasingly-substantial differences from the music
released by early, Gabriel-era Genesis of 1968-1974 through the periods 1976-1981 and
especially 1983-1986, with Collins as lead singer. Rutherford said in the late 1980s that the
shorter songs of the bands early career, such as 1971s three-minute song Harold the
Barrel from Nursery Cryme, were meant as pop songs. In reality, though, even that song is
highly eccentric and arty as compared to, say, the bands similar-length 1986 dance-pop
song Invisible Touch. Apparently, some members of the band no longer wished to
remember or identify what had made their earliest music so unusual. On the other hand,
even the writers of The Simpsons had ten-year-old Bart acknowledge in a late 2014 episode
that post-Gabriel music by Genesis was more popular, but not as good.
The ten-and-a-half minute 1971 Genesis song The Musical Box from Nursery Cryme was
initially called F# (F-sharp) and originated in 1969 as instrumental music composed by
Phillips. In the same year, the band re-worked the material as the just-under-four-minute
piece Manipulation, which was part of the score for a never-aired television documentary.
The band did not release the piece initially, but it appears as a bonus track on the Genesis
1970-1975 boxed set that was released in 2008. The eventual, studio version of the song
wasnt recorded until more than a year after Phillips had left the group. It begins with a
simple, slow, folk-like, major-key, two-chord accompanied melody heard on Rutherfords 12-
string guitar (0:00-0:13). The songs opening thus somewhat evokes the object of the songs
title. Presumably, however, that segment of music existed well before the lyrics came to
associate it with that particular object and with a particularly-British nursery rhyme. Shortly
thereafter, Gabriel begins to sing an expanded context for the nursery rhyme Old King
Cole: such as, play me my song, but with the hearts of others now seeming far from me,
which hardly seems to matter now (0:13-0:42). Banks plays twelve-string guitar for harp-
like, arpeggiated gestures, as Rutherford changes over to electric bass, and Hackett adds
steel-guitar-like, pedal-effected interjections to the still-gentle accompaniment. In particular,
the protagonist warns that the nurse will tell you lies of a kingdom beyond the skies, but he
is also lost in a half-world, which also hardly seems to matter now. He asks for his song
once again (0:42-1:26).

The songs texture then increases slightly, with Rutherfords more prominent bass sound
oscillating modally among three, very close pitches and Gabriel playing related, gentle, folk-
like, flute lines (1:26-1:43). Then, he sings words about wanting just a little bit more time
left to live out my life, surrounded by playful, la-la vocal syllables, and returns to playing
flute (1:43-2:22). Next, something like the just-aborted instrumental style resumes with a
similar texture and rhythmically contrasting, somewhat-static interwoven patterns. The
music initially again features Gabriels flute, the continuing electric guitar, 12-string guitar,
bass, and percussion mainly consisting of hi-hats, with the section sometimes centering on a
chord just slightly above the works supposed tonal area (2:22-2:59). Collins at first delays
the use of drums, but then switches mainly to them for a more rhythmically-aligned section
that sometimes expands to include yet another, slightly-higher tonal area (2:59-3:16). The
texture thins again as the protagonist once more repeats his request for my song (3:16-
3:38). The songs style then changes quite dramatically. First, though, you need a bit more
context!
The album title transforms Nursery Rhyme to Nursery Cryme, and the album cover uses
Paul Whiteheads disturbing, related image of severed heads being batted about in a
perverse game of croquet. The albums liner notes provide a bizarre, pseudo-Victorian back
story of a nine-year-old girl named Cynthia, who is depicted on the album cover, decapitating
her eight-year-old friend Henry with a croquet mallet. Two weeks later she comes across his
Old King Cole musical box in the nursery of his familys home. As she open the box, Henry
emerges from it as a spirit. He begins to age rapidly, grows a beard, and develops sexual
desires for his former playmate, while still remaining mentally a child. His nursemaid hears
the noise of his attempted sexual congress, enters the room, and smashes the musical box
into the ghostly man-child, destroying both him and it.

In the first third of The Musical Box, Henry keeps asking for someone to open the object so
he can emerge from his ghostly half-world and try to live out at least some part of the
adult life that Cynthia denied him by killing him: i.e., join with you. In the songs opening
phrase, he asks for it to: Play me Old King Cole. However, it also sounds like: Play me, Old
King Cole, and Henry indeed becomes a disturbing variation of that nursery rhyme
character. Similar to the album liner-notes for the song, in live performances Gabriel
introduced at least some of the bands songs with expanded, spoken narratives. In addition,
for this song he often wore an old man mask during its final verse, and costume and
lighting effects were also used to make him look depraved and unnatural.

The last two-thirds of the song parallels Henrys transformation, sometimes in a loud, active,
progressive rock style. In particular, Hackett starts playing heavier and distorted chords,
beginning with a descending slide gesture. Banks concurrently switches to a prominent organ
sound from among his keyboards (3:38-4:08). The chords change from the earlier major and
modal areas to the works parallel-minor tonal area, with flat 7 chords also important and
Banks at those two pitch levels playing a bouncy, two-chord pattern that solidifies the
transformation. Meanwhile, Hackett provides more-conventionally-melodic, vaguely
classical guitar solo passages. The section eventually includes Hacketts three in the time
of two triplets that float above Banks rhythmically-insistent keyboards and Collins busy,
flailing drums and percussion (4:08-4:49).

The volume eases back to prepare for the next vocal section, with Gabriel singing the
familiar words of the actual nursery rhyme itself: Old King Cole as a merry old soul calling
for his pipe and bowl and his fiddlers three (4:49-5:46). However, despite the temporary
return to the musics earlier, calmer texture, Henry has reached his tipping point, and the
tick tock of the clock on the mantelpiece reminds him that his accelerated aging means
that he wont have a lot of time to get in a full life. His sexual desire begins, and the
preceding, louder, transitional style resumes, including the vigorous drumming and
percussion. Banks, though, now sometimes plays a guitar-like solo melody on his Hohner
Pianet electro-mechanical piano, amplified through the distortions of a fuzz box. It sounds
something like a guitar (though the gestures arent always quite right for one) and alternates
with Hacketts resumed, heavy, triplet-focused style, sometimes joining it in unison or in
parallel, melodic thirds. The renewed hard-rock section also lasts about twice as long as the
one from before the interruption (5:46-7:38).

The reason for Banks approximating an electric guitar on a keyboard is that for the making of
parts of the album, Genesis was between guitarists, and Rutherford thus mostly had to play
bass or else additional guitar plus bass pedals. In a related matter, some song-segments with
two or more guitar parts feature Rutherford on guitar while he is also playing a bass part on a
Dewton Mister Bassman electronic bass pedal unit. On Genesis Live (1973), you can hear
him test the unit just before the band plays The Musical Box, and Gabriel makes a little
joke about his band mates unaccompanied bass pedal solo. Also, the songs guitar solo
material was composed by the bands interim, post-Phillips/pre-Hackett lead guitarist, Mick
Barnard.

The volume eases back once again for the next vocal section and a turn, for the first time
since the songs opening, musical box gestureto the works purported tonal area: F# major
(7:38-9:02). Gabriels characterization of Henry creepily refers to getting to know Cynthias
face and her flesh. He recounts the waiting and time passed of his rapid aging and how it
hardly seems to matter now. The music builds again, though, to approach the songs
ending (9:02-9:14). Henry gets angry, as Cynthia stands there with a fixed expression and
casting doubt about his intentions. He gets very insistent, asking: Why dont you touch
me now, now, now, now, now? The guitar and drumming elements become increasingly
active (9:14-9:53). The closing instrumental music remains in that very tonal, major-key
idiom, with especially-crisp chord-changes (9:53-10:29). The entire song gives the sense that
contexts such as religion and nursery rhymes are often used by people to distract
themselves and their children from the realities of such things as anger, violence, sexual
awareness, and desire. As a final thought as to the importance of this song, a well-known,
Montreal-based, early Genesis tribute band named itself after it, and the group has officially
licensed various musical, visual, and spoken materials from Genesis.

Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975 and became a major artistic figure of the late 20th and
early 21st centuries. He explored various genres, creatively used studio technology and
electronic instruments (synthesizers, etc.), experimented with unusual musical structures,
fused Western and non-Western ideas and sounds, sometimes addressed highly personal or
otherwise disturbing issues, composed film and media scores, and also worked as an
impresario, activist, and philanthropist.

Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listeners Companion will be published by Rowman

& Littlefield by September of 2016.
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