{"id":5033,"date":"2012-02-29T01:02:44","date_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=5033"},"modified":"2012-02-29T01:02:44","modified_gmt":"2012-02-29T08:02:44","slug":"peter-gabriel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2012\/02\/peter-gabriel\/","title":{"rendered":"PETER GABRIEL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"PETER GABRIEL\u00a0<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Injecting new blood into familiar songs with his biggest band ever<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Peter Gabriel has been exploring rhythm for practically his entire life. He played drums in rock bands as a teen, before his legendary stint as lead singer for English progressive-rock band Genesis. Since his departure from that group, he has relentlessly incorporated rhythms from around the world and from the cutting edge of technology into his solo music\u2014be it the electronic percussion of \u201cGames Without Frontiers,\u201d the Stax groove of \u201cSledgehammer\u201d or the African percussion patterns of \u201cIn Your Eyes.\u201d So it\u2019s jarring to hear Gabriel\u2019s instantly recognizable voice backed only by a 46-piece orchestra on his New Blood<\/em> CD, live DVD and Blu-ray (the latter available in a 3D version). \u201cStripping away the rhythm section leaves a song to swim on its own,\u201d Gabriel observes. \u201cIt\u2019s like taking away the swimming aids. In a way, the rhythm section is a flotation device.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabriel has learned to swim without it quite nicely, thank you. His 2010 album of covers, Scratch My Back<\/em>, was his first experiment singing against a full orchestra. New Blood <\/em>finds Gabriel and arranger John Metcalfe extending the symphonic settings to his own material, including songs from his self-titled 1977 solo debut through his most recent set of original material, 2002\u2019s Up<\/em>. In addition to his newfound musical interests, in recent years Gabriel has turned much of his attention to his interest in developing new technology, his charity work\u2014in particular on behalf of human-rights groups\u2014and to raising his two preteen sons (he also has two adult daughters). We spoke with Gabriel, 61, from his home in London.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you adapt your use of rhythm for an orchestral setting?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started as a drummer, and grooves are still one of the things that really turn me on. On some of these numbers it was quite hard to get the orchestra to sit in a groove. \u201cDigging in the Dirt,\u201d for example, we nearly abandoned because it didn\u2019t seem to be happening, and then we found a way through. For \u201cRhythm of the Heat,\u201d I asked John if he could try to take the rhythmic patterns of the African drum group at the end of the song and put them on the orchestral instruments. So we retained some of the energy, drive and interwoven patterns of the rhythm, but transformed them into these other sounds. That is my favorite moment on the album. So there were some difficulties that we had with the \u00a0rhythmic element.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Did you sing differently?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You milk different things out of the songs. Like \u201cSan Jacinto,\u201d \u201cWashing of the Water\u201d\u2014those felt different in this format. There\u2019s a lot of silence in the way we arrange these, so you feel very exposed. You\u2019re very conscious that both the melodies and words are really being heard. People get the weight of each syllable. When you\u2019ve got a rock band steaming away, the vocalist is sometimes just an accompanying color\u2014the core of the energy is in the rhythm section and guitars. Here the orchestra, even though it\u2019s a much bigger instrument, is supporting what\u2019s going on in words and melody.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do you think of it as one instrument?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In some ways. It\u2019s a pretty amazing instrument, mind you, but it is a whole. Part of what the conductor [Ben Foster] does is stick it all together. He provides the skin that houses this large creature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How did you go about developing the new arrangements?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

John and I talked through composers we liked, and found references for some of the songs. For example, for \u201cIntruder\u201d: We\u2019re both big Alfred Hitchcock fans, so Bernard Herrmann\u2019s name came up. As the arrangements were done, they would often go two or three times between John and me. John is a good player himself, so he can make demos with orchestral synths and samplers. He gives pretty good demo. (laughs<\/em>) We\u2019d start playing around with those and batting them over the net between us. That was a fun process. We didn\u2019t have quite as much time to do that with my own material, which explains why those arrangements are less radical [than the covers] in some places\u2014although \u201cRhythm of the Heat\u201d and \u201cIntruder\u201d are more on the radical end of things.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do your fans behave differently with the orchestra present?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

If they come they\u2019re probably going to like it\u2014that was our experience. Not all of them come. But people who were at the gigs were incredibly enthusiastic, and I think they got it. You could see that some\u2014what I would call the \u201cGabriel-lite\u201d fans, who like \u201cIn Your Eyes,\u201d \u201cSledgehammer\u201d and \u201cSolsbury Hill\u201d and that\u2019s about it\u2014may not be interested, because it was quite a difficult and demanding evening. On the other hand, we had people who have disliked everything I\u2019ve ever done in my career but who liked these two orchestral records. (laughs<\/em>) So you win some, you lose some. And for that reason I didn\u2019t feel obliged to do \u201cSledgehammer.\u201d I felt like I could leave out \u201cBig Time,\u201d \u201cGames\u201d or \u201cShock the Monkey\u201d and still have something that was interesting. I try to make it work for everyone, and then hope that they will have a way into the music.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After all this time, are you self-conscious about being filmed?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m certainly conscious of that at the beginning with all the cameras around, but once I get going I find that I\u2019m thinking about the job at hand. I tried wearing a camera rig at one point, which was pretty heavy, and that was clearly something I was very aware of. But we only did that\u00a0in the soundcheck.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Why shoot in 3D?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

We were born with two ears, so stereo\u2014or multitrack, if you like\u2014is a natural state. The fact that we have two eyes would suggest that 3D is the norm, because that\u2019s how we see most things in life. Wearing 3D glasses is still a little uncomfortable for the viewer, but I think eventually they\u2019ll find good ways of improving that\u2014they\u2019re beginning to already.<\/p>\n

What are you working on, tech-wise?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the moment we\u2019re working on an app store for things that could be useful for people in difficult situations around the world. On the tech side there\u2019s a thing called Gabble, which is a text-to-video-clip and animation converter\u2014a new visual language. It\u2019s been a lot of fun trying to design that. I enjoy brainstorming stuff around that. There are always projects you\u2019d like to see through.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

How about a new album?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have got a lot of stuff in the can. It\u2019s not finished, and I\u2019m always slow at finishing stuff up and doing lyrics. I still love writing and can\u2019t wait to get back in there in January and fire it up again. But I have small kids again, so I don\u2019t want to spend weekends and a lot of time in the studio. It\u2019s much more like a normal working day. Yet I still have two other main activities, which are technology and benefit projects\u2014so the amount of physical hours that I put into music are inevitably reduced. But I don\u2019t feel the muse has deserted me. It\u2019s just that I always wanted an interesting life, and now I have one.<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PETER GABRIEL\u00a0 Injecting new blood into familiar songs with his biggest band ever Peter Gabriel has been exploring rhythm for practically his entire life. He played drums in rock bands as a teen, before his legendary stint as lead singer for English progressive-rock band Genesis. Since his departure from that group, he has relentlessly incorporated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[2864,292,970],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5035,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions\/5035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}