Peter Gabriel, as his fans will tell you, is more than just another musician. One of the most wildly theatrical and intensely charismatic performers in the history of rock, Gabriel is the former lead singer of Genesis, which he left in 1975 to pursue a solo career. In the several decades since, he has become a trend-setting, envelope-pushing multimedia artist, releasing a series of critically acclaimed albums, with hits including “Shock the Monkey,” “Sledgehammer” and “Steam,” and the soundtracks to two prominent films, Birdy and Last Temptation of Christ. His videos are widely recognized as among the most creative in the field. And his concert performances feature dazzling stage shows that combine elements of ritual and theater. Gabriel’s first CD ROM, Explora, was celebrated for its innovative design. Gabriel founded the Real World label in 1989, and has made it a home for talented musicians from the far reaches of the globe, including Pakistan’s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He has been active in Amnesty International and countless other charity and humanitarian projects, including Witness, which provides video cameras to document human rights abuses around the world.
A noted perfectionist, Gabriel often takes several years between releases; his last recording was 1994’s Secret World Live (Geffen). Eve, Gabriel’s second CD ROM has already received the Milia D’Or award at the Milia Multimedia Awards in Cannes for outstanding multimedia achievement. In Eve, players wander through meticulously created world, from Paradise to Mud to Industrial, trying to unite Adam (Gabriel) and Eve, who are separated at the beginning of the game, all to a soundtrack of remixable Gabriel tunes.
Gabriel was in New York recently to discuss Eve, his past and his future. He has a new look these days: shaved head with patches of gray stubble, in contrast to his dark, bushy eyebrows. He speaks slowly and thoughtfully, gazing at you intensely with hypnotic, sparkling blue eyes. The biggest surprise about Peter Gabriel, to those who take his music very seriously, is how casual, loose and funny he can be.
Q Now that you have helped bring world music into the mainstream, is there another musical area for you? Are you into things like electronica at all?
A I like some of the electronic stuff, and I think I’m still more drawn to organic sounding things, even if they’ve been electronically generated, so I think there may be an influence there, but I’ll take a different path. What is strange to me is that there are things that you could do with technology that you can’t now. The digital technology has enormous advantages and ranges of possibilities, but there are still things you can do with analog that you can’t do with digital stuff. With every wave of technology, you probably gain a lot, but lose a little.
Q You record with keyboards and other electronics, but then often go back, bringing in real instruments for more organic sounds.
A Sometimes. We’re right now involved in trying to create new samples that have, say, percussive fronts and different textural sustain elements. I liked [Last Temptation of Chris soundtrack] Passion and the fourth [solo] album from a textural point of view, because I think I’d put more of the energy into building textures into those records than on some of the others. I’d like to try and get to some of that again.
Q It’s funny to hear that because nobody has music as richly textured as yours.
A Part of who I am as a musician is the textures.
Q: Is there a reason for the shaved head? I know you’ve done it before.
A I used to do it in the past, but now there’s not so much left to shave. [laughs] I let it grow back a little. it’s very convenient. I love the snow -- snowboarding -- so it’s a bit cold, that’s the only downside. When there are holes appearing naturally in the ‘mental texture mapping,’ I think the shaving solution is a good one.
Q: Have you ever thought of playing solo and unplugged?
A: Oh yeah, I would like to do that. Laurie [Anderson] just asked me, she’s curating a thing in London called Meltdown with a lot of artists, and she wanted me to do a sort of unplugged thing there which I would have liked to have done, but just at the moment, I’m too behind with record stuff.
Q: So you’re not opposed to playing more or less naked.
A: No, no, I like that idea.
Q: You had a walk-on in New York Stories, and you appear in all your videos and both CD ROMs. Do you have a desire to act? I remember a lot of talk ...
A: About The Lamb [Lies Down On Broadway]. Yeah, I’d worked with [Polish director] Jadoworski on a script and, in fact, just recently had another look at it because some people are showing interest again. At the time, we couldn’t get the money to make it, so it was sort of forgotten about.
Q: So now, more than 20 years later, I’m assuming you wouldn’t play the role of Rael, an 18 year old Puerto Rican street kid in New York?
A: [laughs] On no, I definitely couldn’t play Rael. I was interested in film school for a while, and what happens behind the camera is much more interesting to me than what happens in front, although it’s quite a good place to learn occasionally, if you just watch what people are doing and feel it from both sides.
Q I understand you acted in a short film, Recon -- will it ever be released?
A I don’t know. A guy I met at the interactive awards in Los Angeles sort of persuaded me to give it a go, and I thought it could be fun. And Breck Eisner was the director.
Q Son of Michael?
A Yeah, although they did not say that to me at the time, and I didn’t find out until half way through. He’s trying to build something up without using his Dad or his dad’s name.
Q: First, the question all your fans have been asking for the last three years: when will your next CD be released?
A: I’m aiming at February next year. I have a lot of music written and I’m now trying to get a little solitude and get some lyrics sorted out which need to catch up. So there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t make that...but I’m notorious...
Q: Notorious for not making deadlines...
A: Notoriously slow. Deadlines are things that we pass through on the way to finishing.
Q: With a tour at some point after the release?
A: Yes.
Q: You invested a couple of years in the technology-intensive Eve. Do you think the CD ROM format -- whether it evolves into DVD or something else -- has the same lasting value as a straight musical recording? Or is it a different concept?
A: It may be different. People have written off CD ROMs as a dead medium and I would argue with that. If it is dead, there’s lot of interesting life forms crawling around the corpse. Obviously you’re restricted by the technology. But I really think it’s about content and not the carrier. So that if you get something that touches people, that means something to people, the chances are they will go back. And even on the games level, in the scene that’s retro games at the moment, like Pong, these are things that had some appeal to people and it didn’t matter how simple the technology was. And I think the same may apply here. More and more CD players are going out with the standard PC now -- it’s hard to buy one without -- so I think eventually people are going to start thinking well maybe I want to try something else [beyond the basics of encyclopedias], so whether it’s CD ROM or DVD isn’t important.
Q: The experience of playing Eve or Explora is very different from putting on one of your CDs, which can be a background or foreground experience. Do you personally find the CD ROM format interesting?
A: It is, yes, but it’s still, given an evening, I would still probably rather see a film or have dinner with friends, or go to a great concert. For me, it occupies a place in my life a little like some of the great books I have: they’re there as a great resource, and I will go and dip into them when the moment takes me. So it’s like what I would call secondary media rather than primary. It’s a platform, so if there’s stuff to be communicated, the specific medium is less important.
Q: One platform that seems to attract you is video. You’ve been unusually involved in the creation and design of your videos...
A: Yeah, I mean I work quite a lot with them, but for me a good video will probably take two to four weeks of my time. I know some artists, they just turn up on the day of the shoot...
Q: And you can see the difference...
A: Yeah. And the same with the CD ROMs. The other music titles haven’t done that well. But I don’t know that other artists -- maybe Todd Rungren would be an exception, and the Residents, but there aren’t many -- actually put themselves into the process, into the work. I think pretty much they’ve been delegated to people who’ve got access to the technology.
Q: Tony Levin, your longtime bass player, told me to ask you about the effect of ping pong on your music.
A: Ah, yes. Each period of music making has its own fad for us -- we’ve had bicycles, Scrabble and whisk -- and the current one is ping pong. What was wonderful about it when we were making the record is you get quirky in the studio, you get some tensions. You come out and play, and it’s real physical, you can get quite effusive and aggressive and not do any harm, and fifteen minutes later you’re sweating, you’re laughing and it’s been a great release.
Q: Are you good? Competitive?
A: [laughs] I’m competitive rather than good. I think I have, like many people striving for inner peace, great competitive angst that needs to come out.
Q: Along those lines, is there a dark side to Peter Gabriel?
A: Anger, sure. Murderous feelings. [Laughs] Definitely there’s a dark side there, but I’m trying to open it up, because monsters that grow in the dark often look like shrimps in daylight. So I think the more daylight you can bring to them, the better.
Q: And that’s what US was about, in part?
A: Yeah, I think that’s what a lot of what I do is about, in part. Clearing the monsters out and putting them outside.
Q: Any thoughts about death?
A: I always think it would be interesting to see your loved ones rot in the garden, you know, in the sense that the world, nature, would absorb the useful elements. You see that in some cultures, and it’s perhaps a useful way of facing -- ‘cause I generally believe that the body is a carrier, that there’s something else in there -- a useful reminder of the mortal coil.
Q: You left Genesis and returned to small clubs just as that group was approaching arena status. As your own venues expanded from clubs to arenas and even stadiums, how have you addressed the issues of intimacy and connection with your audience?
A: It’s an area that’s interested me a lot. Part of that thing was behind the falling backwards into the audience stuff. And that was probably from some of these ‘new games’ material, where one of the trust exercises was falling backwards...
Q: From group therapy?
A: Yeah, although I haven’t actually done it in that format. I had some friends who were interested in it, and I thought it was fascinating just to see how much you would trust people in falling backwards that they would catch you. So I was trying to do it on a larger scale. And when we first played in stadiums, I used to try to find the furthest seat from the stage and do some performance from there. I know when I’m going to shows if you just sit there and you feel that whether I make a loud noise or no noise, I’m not going to have any influence or impact on the stuff that’s coming out at me from the stage, I don’t like that, so it’s sort of good to be reminded that it’s still a goal worth pursuing. And on the last tour, we addressed it, with considerable effort and cost, putting two stages in. Originally, I wanted a train thing -- a little train set for a big boy, I guess -- that would drive through stadiums, but the health and safety people wouldn’t allow me to do that. So the central [second] stage and the conveyer belt seemed to be a good alternative.
Q: What’s going on with the Real World Experience Park -- a sort of intellectual, possibly virtual reality-based amusement park you were working on a few years back?
A: We’re still having conversations and interesting meetings with interesting people.
Q: Who’s involved these days?
A: Laurie [Anderson] and Brian [Eno] have been on board for a long time now, and they’re still on the periphery of it. We had written off Barcelona as being a dead duck. But the mayor sent over the city planner about three months ago, saying they’ve got what they think is a much better site for us, and would we like to make another proposal. We’re now doing that. and I think that the world is moving in that direction, you know more and more work is emerging, whether it’s on line or off, where people are looking for sort of immersive experiences. In life, you have key events and experiences that are the things from which you gain some knowledge and hopefully a little bit of wisdom. And we have the capacity now, with the technology, of putting people into these hopefully meaningful experiences and accelerating their process of learning. But it can be in a way that’s exciting, fun, entertaining; it doesn’t have to be serious education.
Q: Would these be rollercoasters of the mind?
A: In a sense, yes. I was with Bill Joy from Sun [Microsystems] last week, and they have various things which I think will very soon be able to supply virtual worlds that have the capacity to fill the eyes with information in real time. And that’s very close to happening. And at that point -- because at the moment, the experience of being in most virtual worlds is very clearly unsatisfying -- with that technology at the helm, suddenly things are going to open up and I think become a real focus of a lot of artists. There’s always excitement when you get interesting people from different disciplines throwing their minds and perspectives at a similar problem. So whether the park happens in a physical form, the process is one that I’m really enjoying, and I think as an artist, I’m still very attracted to trying to do art in that medium.
Q: You’ve been doing this now for quite a while. What effects has aging had on you? Is your music changing in response to your age, and is that good or bad? Or neither -- simply inevitable?
A: I think it’s just part of the process really, all part of growing up, or down, whichever it is.
Q: Are you less inclined to take risks?
A: I don’t think so. but I think they may be less theatrical, more internal risks. Perhaps more substantive, less surface, maybe. That’s how it feels from my position. But I think aging is interesting. I feel more comfortable now than I did perhaps when I was 30 or 35...
Q: On stage, or in your skin?
A: In my skin. I’m more comfortable with bald patches and wrinkles. So I think that I’m learning all the time and I feel I still go into the health food store and buy vitamins that beat free radicals or whatever, but I’m less preoccupied about trying to look young or trendy. I think the great advantage of growing old is you care less about what other people think. I used to have this idea of some sort of enlightened being as a goal of what I wanted to be when I’m an old man. And now I think maybe a sort of [cackles] crank old bugger who cusses the world is maybe a better model.
