Peter Gabriel

My second post on this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees is on someone I actually like, and have been listening to reverently for almost thirty years. He is Peter Gabriel, who is already in the Hall for being a member of Genesis, and is now being inducted as a solo artist.

I have already written about Security, which I think is his best album. This was his fourth solo album. The first two, both called simply Peter Gabriel, really aren't that noteworthy, except for the song "Solsbury Hill," which has become ubiquitous in its use in films. It is about his leaving Genesis, which was a difficult period in his life.

His solo career really blossomed with his third album, still just called Peter Gabriel, but which fans refer to as "Melt," do to the image of his melting face on the cover. It is a masterpiece of sorts, with many of the songs in a darker mode, taking the points of view of society's marginal characters. We get "Intruder," about a burglar, "Family Snapshot," about a presidential assassin, and "Lead a Normal Life," about someone in an insane asylum. It also shows off his furthering interest in African music, with innovative use of percussion, and one of the best crafted rock songs of the era, "Games Without Frontiers." It closes with a song of political awareness--"Biko," about the murdered South African activist Steven Biko:

"You can blow out a candle
but you can't blow out a fire
once the flame begins to catch
the wind just blows it higher."

Security saw a growth in his popularity, with the hit "Shock the Monkey" and even more use of Afro-Caribbean influences. But his biggest smash was the following album, So, from 1986. It contained his biggest hit single, "Sledgehammer," a departure for him in that's it's basically just a fun pop song with numerous sexual double entendres. The innovative video has the distinction of being the most often played on MTV. Also on that album are the hauntingly beautiful "Mercy Street," about poet Anne Sexton; "In Your Eyes," a great love song that got extra traction by being used in the film Say Anything (think of John Cusack holding up that boom box) and "Big Time," another funny song, this time about mindless ambition:

"I've had enough, I'm getting out
To the city, the big big city
I'll be a big noise with all the big boys
There's so much stuff I will own
And I will pray to a big god
As I kneel in the big church"

His next album was Us, which wasn't quite as good as So, and is really his last album of standard rock music until Up (which I have not heard). It tried to cash in on the "Sledgehammer" roll with "Steam," but the best cuts were "Digging in the Dirt" and the eerily beautiful "Blood of Eden," which I think is about the losing of virginity. This song had additional vocals by Sinead O'Connor.

Gabriel has spent most of his time since then in a variety of projects, many involving world music. In 1989 he did the soundtrack for Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, and has also done music for Rabbit-Proof Fence and Wall-E. His latest project is You Scratch My Back/And I'll Scratch Yours, in which he covers artist he admires and they cover his songs. I picked up the latter disc, interested to hear how others do his songs, and it's pretty interesting. David Byrne does "I Don't Remember" in a falsetto, Regina Spektor "The Blood of Eden," Arcade Fire "Games Without Frontiers," and Lou Reed takes "Solsbury Hill" and transforms into something completely different, giving it the Velvet Underground-style drone.

Gabriel is to be admired for never resting on his laurels, despite commercial success or lack of it. Even when he went for the top of the charts he did it with style, as "Sledgehammer" is about as much fun as one can have listening to a song. His flamboyant days as front man for Genesis, when he shaved his head in a bizarre style and wore flower costumes, gave way to a more sedate presentation. Now he's a man almost 64, bald and goateed, looking like your hip uncle, but he's still working on the edge of discovery.