The Peter Gabriel masterpiece that divided critics and record labels

Peter Gabriel : Intruder

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On May 30, 1980 Peter Gabriel released his third self-titled album. The NME's Nick Kent wrote of the album known as Melt by fans, "I don't expect to hear a better record all year". 

“I think that the third album was quite important for me in terms of really having a defining sound and the band coming through,"Gabriel says on his website. " It was the first record where I was clearly doing something different from what other people were doing."

Among the contributors: Peter Weller, Kate Bush, David Rhodes and drummers Jerry Marotta and Phil Collins who were prohibited from using cymbals. Listen to the huge reverb sound of the opening track "Intruder" that Collins and engineer Hugh Padgham worked out.

"I was certain it was a landmark drum sound," Gabriel told Mojo. "Now I get annoyed when people say I have copied Phil's sound."

He explains further on his website:

It was a very big and aggressive sound. So I then thought I’d build a track around it, which was the track Intruder. Phil Collins who I got in for that, then went on to take Hugh and work on his own record using a lot of those sounds, but there was a real sense of discovery when that first arrived.

The album wasn't released in America until months later on a new label Mercury Records. Gabriel tells writer Mark Blake Atlantic Records didn't believe the album was commercial.

"Ahmet Ertegun said, 'What do people in America care about this guy in South Africa?' and 'Has Peter been in a mental hospital?' because there was this very weird track called 'Lead a Normal Life'. They thought I'd had a breakdown and recorded a piece of crap ... I thought I'd really found myself on that record, and then someone just squashes it. I went through some primordial rejection issues. 

Robert Christgau gave the album a grade of B-, writing 

Either he doesn't know his own strengths or he underestimates his audience--or both.

And although he gave the album a 4 star review, Rolling Stone's Dave Marsh dismissed both "Games Without Frontiers" and "Biko"

His tribute to poet and black nationalist Steven Biko, who was apparently murdered by South African police, is a muddle. The melody and dynamics of “Biko” are irresistible, yet what Gabriel has to say is mainly sentimental.

UK critics were bigger fans. Ian Birch of Melody Maker called Melt " an album that will grow and resonate with every spin."

This review is from Smash Hits:

Here's Peter Gabriel on the anti-apartheid anthem ‘Biko’, which Gabriel hoped would have been a hit.

"Biko"became a very important song for me. I’d not written an overtly political song before and was wondering if it would be accepted… I had various doubts and Tom Robinson, who I’d got to know at the time, who was championing various causes, but the gay cause is what he was most identified with at the time, was really telling me that I should just steam ahead and do it anyway and put it out and that it didn’t matter really what people thought of my motives; if it got attention and money in the right direction. That, I think, put my mind at rest and later on I think it lead me towards some of the human rights stuff, which I’m still very much involved with today. So it was as much a thing that helped shape me as the other way round.

The great American composer who inspired a UK Top 40 hit by Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel : No Self Control

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On May 11, 1980 Peter Gabriel's new single "No Self Control" entered the UK charts at #58. The song, released weeks before Gabriel's third album Melt, would peak at UK#33. Inspired by the sounds of Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, and recorded with Robert Fripp, Phil Collins and Kate Bush, the song has been described as "a compelling construct of synths and riffs, of hooks and descent, echoes and loops, beautifully structured and subtly aggressive," by Quietus writer Chris Roberts 

As for the Reich influence, Gabriel cops to it on his website:

One of the other influences at that time was some of the ‘Systems Music’ that was beginning to evolve. Steve Reich had done this wonderful record called ‘Music for Eighteen Musicians’, which involved marimbas and I think, of all the ‘systems’ composers, his work had a lot of textures and colours and grooves to them that I really responded to. So I tried to involve elements of that in the work. I also worked with a wonderful percussionist Morris Pert and ‘No Self Control’ would be one track, which integrated some of those things and a band sound as well.

1980's most anxious songs about nuclear war

U.K. Subs : Warhead

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On March 2, 1980 the English punk band UK Subs entered the UK charts at #42 with "Warhead", one of the year's most anxious nuclear war songs. In the midst of the Cold War, we were all living with the possibility that a nuclear war could break out at any moment.  The evening news reported escalating tensions between Russia and the United States, especially after Russian invaded Afghanistan. There were new countries with nuclear capabilities.  The weapons were more powerful than ever.  With its lyrics "Bye bye planet let alone your nation", "Warhead" would peak at UK#30, but it is far from the only song of the year to deal with nukes.

Top 10 Anxious Nuclear War Songs of 1980

1. UK Subs  "Warhead"

While the heads of state are having their fun Are they ready?
We're looking at the world through a barrel of a gun Are we ready?
You stand there beating on your little war drum Are you ready?
And it won't be long before your time has come Are you ready?

2. The Sound "Missiles"

Missiles cause damage
And make an eerie sound
Missiles leave carnage
Where there once was a town
Who the hell makes those missiles?

3. Peter Gabriel Games Without Frontiers

If looks could kill, they probably will
In games without frontiers, war without tears

4. The Police : When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around
Plug in my M.C.I
To exercise my brain
Make records on my own
Can't go out in the rain...
When the world is running down
You make the best of what's still around

5. The Clash : Ivan Meets G.I. Joe
He wiped the Earth clean as a plate
What does it take to make a Ruskie break?
But the crowd are bored and off they go
Over the road to watch China blow

6. XTC : Living Thru Another Cuba

Russia and America are at each other's throats
But don't you cry
Just on your knees and pray, and while you're
Down there, kiss your arse goodbye

7. Kate Bush : Breathing
We've lost our chance
We're the first and the last, ooh
After the blast Chips of plutonium
Are twinkling in every lung

8. The Specials : Man at C + A
Warning, warning, nuclear attack
Atomic sounds designed to blow your mind
World war three - nuclear attack
Rocking atomically - this third world war - atomic sounds

9. OMD : Enola Gay

These games you play, they're gonna end in more than tears someday
Uh huh Enola Gay, it shouldn't ever have to end this way

10. Data Fallout 

You'd better run for shelter, and put yourself in a Fallout suit
You'd better get yourself used to, just living in a Fallout suit
A satellite clockwork information, is going to give you
The duration Of the fallout

Peter Gabriel's goes dark on his first UK Top 10 hit

Peter Gabriel : Games Without Frontiers

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On February 6, 1980 Peter Gabriel's new single "Games Without Frontier" was enjoying its first week in the UK charts at #48. It would peak at UK#4 but despite heavy radio play never get beyond #48 in the United States. I remember the first time I heard the song with its shimmering synthesizers and synthesized bass, wondering whether it was the new Gary Numan single. 

The title of the song is inspired by a French game show called Jeux Sans Frontières, which is the phrase Kate Bush is singing at the beginning of the song ( not "She's So Popular" as I've thought for nearly 40 years). The show pitted neighborhood against neighborhood and was duplicated in Great Britain on a show called It's A Knockout ( another phrase Gabriel sings).

The song begins innocently enough with a list of children playing each other, but the names of the children start to sound uncomfortably familiar: "Adolf builds a bonfire/ Enrico plays with it". There's menace throughout , culminating with the chorus “If looks could kill, they probably will/In games without frontiers/War without tears.”

Around the time of its release Gabriel said:

 It seemed to have several layers to it. I just began playing in a somewhat light-hearted fashion – ‘Hans and Lottie…’ – so it looked, on the surface, as just kids. The names themselves are meaningless, but they do have certain associations with them. So it’s almost like a little kids’ activity room. Underneath that, you have the TV program [and the] sort of nationalism, territorialism, competitiveness that underlies all that assembly of jolly people.

The single was released three months before Gabriel's third album, known by fans as Melt.The track features Jerry Marotta on drums and percussion, David Rhodes on guitar, Peter Gabriel and Larry Fast on synth and synth bass and Kate Bush on backing vocals. Whistles come courtesy of Steve Lillywhite, Hugh Padgham and Peter.

Storm Thorgerson explains how he got the Melt effect on the cover of the single:

We used ordinary Polaroids (after Les Krims) and if one pushes around the developing picture sandwiched between two bits of plastic with a blunt instrument like the end of a pencil the image is then smeared as it develops. Since this procedure is dead easy we did it loads of times along with Peter Gabriel in disfiguring himself by manipulating Polaroids as they ‘developed’. Peter impressed us greatly with his ability to appear in an unflattering way, preferring the theatrical or artistic to the cosmetic. Because we couldn’t decide on a favourite, for they were all great fun, we used lots”

The Aim Without Suffering

Robert Fripp : Exposure

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In June of 1979 Robert Fripp released Exposure, his debut solo album. Though he was hardly solo, with musical contributions from Brian Eno, Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, Peter Hamill, Terre Roche and, perhaps most surprisingly, Daryl Hall.

Fripp dissolved King Crimson following the release of 1974's Red and eventually moved to New York City in 1977 where he checked in on the punk rock scene. He plays guitar on Blondie's "Fade Away and Radiate" and produced albums by The Roches Peter Gabriel and an as yet unreleased record by Daryl Hall. 1977 is also the year he played those twin guitar solos on David Bowie's "Heroes".

Fripp was obsessed with the year 1981. At one point he was convinced the world would that year so in 1979 he established a campaign he called "The Drive to 1981", three years of very hard and very public hustling.

Exposure is exhibit A.

"'Exposure' deals with tweaking the vocabulary of, for want of a better word, 'rock' music," he told Melody Maker's Allan Jones. " It investigates the vocabulary and, hopefully, expands the possibilities of expression and introduces a more sophisticated emotional dynamic than one would normally find within 'rock.'"

Exposure was originally supposed to be part of a trilogy along with Peter Gabriel's second album and Hall's Sacred Songs. First RCA rejected the Hall album. Then they asked that Hall's vocals be removed from all but two tracks on Exposure. (You Burn Me Up" and "North Star")

Fripp flew  Peter Hammill of Van der Graff Generator to New York .

"He came into the studio dressed in a rather svelte and smooth fashion, took off his nice cloths and got into a smelly dressing-gown, poured himself a liberal dose from the bottle of cognac he'd brought with him, and went in there and started delivering the goods. Great man. Very nice man. He said that when he began singing he wanted to be the vocal equivalent of Hendrix. Conceptually, he was right on the beam. And he delivers, I think."

Though it may not have been the album he originally envisioned, Fripp was very pleased with Exposure.

"As a whole it's so good. So good. I think probably, in terms of the genre, it's conceivably the best record in the past five years, perhaps longer. I don't think of it as a 'progressive' rock album. I think in a sense it rises above ALL categories. In a sense it's a compendium, none of the components are in themselves innovatory, but nothing is dated."

Many of the lyrics are written by Fripp's girlfriend, an American therapist named Joanna Walton. As he explained to Canadian college radio DJ Dick Tooley 

She's in fact a native New Yorker, and one level Exposure has to do with the kind of way a man and woman relate to each other in a contemporary situation, trying to be free of all the archetypes and so on. And how difficult that might be. So You Burn Me Up, I'm A Cigarette is my love song to Joanna. I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me, But I've Had Enough Of You, Chicago and North Star are her love songs to me.

Exposure received a rare 5 star review in one of the Rolling Stone Record Guides and a B+ from Robert Christgau who wrote 

Fripp has always been a bit of a jerk, but over the years he's figured out what to do with the talent that goes along with his affliction. This concept album earns its conceit, orchestrating bits and pieces of art-rock wisdom--from punk to Frippertronics, from King Crimson to singer-songwriter--into a fluent whole. Maybe soon he'll get smart enough to forget about J.G. Bennett. "It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering" isn't exactly big news, and old Crimson fans will swallow side two without the caveat 

    In 1985 when I was a program director at my college radio station I chose this six year old album for one of our Classic Album hours and was actually stopped on the street and thanked for the choice.

Putting The Aerial Up

Peter Gabriel : On the Air

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On September 15, 1978 the legendary German rock television show Rockpalast recorded Peter Gabriel's concert at Grugahalle, Essen.  Most of the tunes are taken from his two solo albums though Gabriel also performs a new tune, "I Don't Remember", and one from his Genesis days, "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway". Among his bandmates on the show, the bald bassist Tony Levin, a mainstay on Gabriel album and tours and a future member of King Crimson.

2:44 On The Air (from Scratch)

7:05 Moribund the Burgermeister (from Car) 12:29 Perspective (from Scratch) 16:39 Here Comes the Flood (from Car) 20:30 White Shadow (from Scratch) 25:23 Waiting for the Big One (from Car) 33:10 Humdrum (from Car) 37:10 I Don't Remember (from 1980's forthcoming Melt) 42:35 Solsbury Hill (from Car) 47:46 Modern Love (from Scratch) 53:30 The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

The No-Go Zone

Peter Gabriel : D.I.Y.

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On June 1, 1978 Peter Gabriel released his second solo album, known by many fans as "Scratch" for its Hipgnosis cover. Produced by Robert Fripp, who plays guitar with future King Crimson bandmate Tony Levin on bass and the E Street's Roy Bittan on keyboards, the album has a monochromatic feel. Front loaded with the best songs (including "D.I.Y.", which may be a recognition of punk rock's influences)  the album loses its energy on the second side. The best was yet to come.

Dave Marsh wrote the Rolling Stone magazine review:

Peter Gabriel's first solo album promised some sort of reconciliation between art rock and the rock mainstream: it had the sense of a breakthrough in negotiations between warring factions. Its two most direct hard-rock songs, "Modern Love" and "Solsbury Hill," were among 1977's most underrated. 

Gabriel's second solo LP (which has the same title, or lack of one, as his debut) makes similar gestures to the mainstream, yet focuses more often on the progressivism he helped pioneer as a founding member of Genesis. There are still some good rock numbers — "On the Air" and "D.I.Y." most notably, as well as the kinky reggae song, "A Wonderful Day in a One-Way World" — but Gabriel, aided by producer Robert Fripp's banks of crashing guitar chords and various electronics, has discarded most of the gloss of the first record for a personal vision that is darker, more frightening and not quite as accessible.

As a lyricist, Gabriel is forever given to indirection and opacity: an underlying theme parallels the war between the sexes and man's war with the environment — or at least I think it does, since nothing is straightforward enough for certainty. As a composer, Gabriel displays similar meandering tendencies, and Fripp emphasizes these aspects. Given different arrangements, the melodies of almost any of these songs might easily be transferred into a pop context. 

 Clearly, I don't find this Peter Gabriel as enticing as last year's, but I certainly can't dismiss it. If the prettiest moments are more difficult to listen to, the most difficult passages are easier to grasp. On the road to détente between progressive rock and whatever it is most of us care for, the new album seems an acceptable way station — encouraging enough to make tuning in for the next installment worthwhile, yet obtuse enough to make plain the difficulty of traveling this road.

Robert Christgau gav e the album a B- grade, writing:

 One of those records that is diminished by the printed lyrics that are its reason for being. Musically, Gabriel combines with producer Robert Fripp for alert art-rock that gets down around atonality rather than jumping into the astral-noodle soup, with Roy Bittan's romantic flourishes as welcome as "D.I.Y.," a hard-rock landmark in a hard-rock year. B`ut even though it makes you sit up when it comes on the radio, it's basically program music, designed to support words as elitist (and programmatic) as the social commentary Gabriel used to essay in his Genesis days. Remember the immortal words of Chuck Berry: beware of middlebrows bearing electric guitars.

Telescopic Umbrella

Peter Gabriel : Modern Love 

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On February 25, 1977 Peter Gabriel released his self-titled debut, an album that marks the beginning of one of rock's most impressive solo careers. The opening track , "Moribund the Burgermeister", suggests Gabriel's break from Genesis isn't complete. It could be an outtake from Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. More interesting is the single "Solsbury Hill", a joyous tune some fans believe reveals the reasons Gabriel left Genesis.

So I went from day to day 

Though my life was in a rut 

Till I thought of what I'd say 

And which connection I should cut

 I was feeling part of the scenery 

I walked right out of the machinery

As I dive into the depths of the debut, I find myself most looking forward to hearing "Modern Love" if only because of Gabriel's own exuberance and the way it foreshadows "And Through the Wire". I would like to recreate this video but since 911 no airport would let me.

What may trouble some fans is how many Peter Gabriels we hear on this album. "Excuse Me" sounds almost like a vaudeville act ( complete with slide whistle). Gabriel would remain one of the most interesting, multi-faceted artists in the coming decades.

Robert Christgau gave the album a B+, suggesting the album required some work from its listener: 

Even when he was Genesis, Gabriel seemed smarter than your average art-rocker. Though the music was mannered, there was substance beneath its intricacy; however received the lyrical ideas, they were easier to test empirically than evocations of spaceships on Atlantis. This solo album seems a lot smarter than that. But every time I delve beneath its challenging textures to decipher a line or two I come up a little short. 

For NME Nick Kent wrote in 1978 :

A fine record with at least one 24-carat irresistible classic in "Solsbury Hill" and a strong supporting cast of material that, all in all, in a year besmeared with great albums was, in retrospect, sorely underrated. 

40 Year Itch: Gabriel Leaves Genesis

     In August 1975 Peter Gabriel wrote the following bizarre letter announcing his departure from Genesis. He delivered it personally to the English press:


   I had a dream, eye’s dream. Then I had another dream with the body and soul of a rock star. When it didn’t feel good I packed it in. Looking back for the musical and non-musical reasons, this is what I came up with:

    OUT, ANGELS OUT – an investigation.

    The vehicle we had built as a co-op to serve our songwriting became our master and had cooped us up inside the success we had wanted. It affected the attitudes and the spirit of the whole band.  The music had not dried up and I still respect the other musicians, but our roles had set in hard. To get an idea through “Genesis the Big” meant shifting a lot more concrete than before. For any band, transferring the heart from idealistic enthusiasm to professionalism is a difficult operation.

    I believe the use of sound and visual images can be developed to do much more than we have done. But on a large scale it needs one clear and coherent direction, which our pseudo-democratic committee system could not provide. As an artist, I need to absorb a wide variety of experiences. It is difficult to respond to intuition and impulse within the long-term planning that the band needed. I felt I should look at/learn about/develop myself, my creative bits and pieces and pick up on a lot of work going on outside music. Even the hidden delights of vegetable growing and community living are beginning to reveal their secrets. I could not expect the band to tie in their schedules with my bondage to cabbages. The increase in money and power, if I had stayed, would have anchored me to the spotlights. It was important to me to give space to my family, which I wanted to hold together, and to liberate the daddy in me.

    Although I have seen and learnt a great deal in the last seven years, I found I had begun to look at things as the famous Gabriel, despite hiding my occupation whenever possible, hitching lifts, etc. I had begun to think in business terms; very useful for an often bitten once shy musician, but treating records and audiences as money was taking me away from them. When performing, there were less shivers up and down the spine.

   I believe the world has soon to go through a difficult period of changes. I’m excited by some of the areas coming through to the surface which seem to have been hidden away in people’s minds. I want to explore and be prepared to be open and flexible enough to respond, not tied in to the old hierarchy.

  Much of my psyche’s ambitions as “Gabriel archetypal rock star” have been fulfilled – a lot of the ego-gratification and the need to attract young ladies, perhaps the result of frequent rejection as “Gabriel acne-struck public school boy”. However, I can still get off playing the star game once in a while.

    My future within music, if it exists, will be in as many situations as possible. It’s good to see a growing number of artists breaking down the pigeonholes. This is the difference between the profitable, compartmentalized, battery chicken and the free-range. Why did the chicken cross the road anyway?

    There is no animosity between myself and the band or management. The decision had been made some time ago and we have talked about our new direction. The reason why my leaving was not announced earlier was because I had been asked to delay until they had found a replacement to plug up the hole. It is not impossible that some of them might work with me on other projects.

    The following guesswork has little in common with truth:

 Gabriel left Genesis

 1) To work in theatre.

 2) To make more money as a solo artist.

 3) To do a “Bowie”.

 4) To do a “Ferry”.

 5) To do a “Furry Boa round my neck and hang myself with it”.

 6) To go see an institution.

 7) To go senile in the sticks.

 I do not express myself adequately in interviews and I felt I owed it to the people who have put a lot of love and energy supporting the band to give an accurate picture of my reasons. So I ask that you print all or none of this.

  This may have all been breaking news to the rock press, but the rest of Genesis knew Gabriel was leaving a year earlier.

  "In fact," Phil Collins tells NME," Peter first said he was going to be leaving about a year ago, just after Lamb Lies Down. I don't to go into his reasons too much--he did that himself in the Press last week--but for several reasons he decided to stay on until now."

 The other members of the band has already what would be A Trick of the Tail which would become a UK #3 and US #31 hit. Genesis would be fine even now that they were three.

40 Year Itch : Rael Imperial Aerosol Kid

   On November 18, 1974 Genesis released the four-sided concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, the band's last album with Peter Gabriel.

    The band had moved to rat-infested Headley Grange in rural Wales to write and rehearse the new material. Gabriel wasn't around for much of it. After the difficult birth of his first daughter, Anna-Marie, Gabriel decided to stay at home. 

     When Gabriel did show up he insisted on writing all the lyrics. Gabriel cites the bizarre Alejandro Jodorosky film , El Topo, as a source of inspiration:

      

  This was a rough, visceral, cowboy spiritual film and it was unique at the time. It had a really strong cult following and that was the blend that I was trying to put together in a way that would allow more people to try to travel with me.

       The album follows the adventures of a Puerto Rican punk named Rael who encounters God knows what in an effort to rescue his brother John. People are still pondering the plot lines and deep inner meaning of the lyrics. This recent article in The Quietus features one of the best attempts I've read. There's also this New Yorker effort which dubs Lamb the "Ulysses" of concept albums

    Musically, the tunes are mostly memorable and more concise. No side long epics here. The crowd pleaser "In the Cage" is one of two songs that exceed the 8-minute mark. Highlights for me are "Cuckoo Cocoon", "Carpet Crawlers" and "Counting Out Time", but readers know I'm a pop guy. I can't imagine ever knowing this album the way I know the White Album and Quadrophenia, but it would be far more enjoyable than plowing through the double and triple albums of contemporaries like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer. Again, I'm a pop guy.

     Genesis played the entire album 102 times on the subsequent tour which made them stars in the US. Early on, Gabriel let the rest of the band know he'd be leaving Genesis at the end of the tour. Sadly, there's practically no film of the tour which involved lavish costumes like the Slipperman, a naked monster with inflatable genitalia and covered in lumps.

40 years later, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway remains one of the highlights of the progressive rock era. It's made all kind of Top 10 Lists including a Rolling Stone Readers Poll asking What's Your Favorite Prog Rock Album of all Time. The list:

1. Dream Theater Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory ( the band put the poll on their website) 

2. Rush 2112

3. Yes Close to the Edge

4. Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon

5. Genesis The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway

All Time Top 10 : Peter Gabriel

To help promote his recently released fourth album, best known as Security, Peter Gabriel made this Top 10 List for Smash Hits Magazine. NPR All Music Considered host Bob Boilen must have seen this list before he recently asked Peter Gabriel to guest DJ because the first two songs got played..This comes to 1001Songs courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened