Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel is an actor, born 1950.
Gabriel left Genesis at the height of it and spent the next decade making records that got progressively less interested in rock and more interested in rhythm from everywhere else. So made him a pop star almost by accident, and the videos he commissioned changed what the form could be. The consistent thread is a genuine curiosity about other people's music, backed by founding WOMAD and a label to release it, which is rarer than the phrase world music suggests.
Movies (1)
TV (2)
Books (1)
Music (17)
- So (1986)
- Peter Gabriel (1980)
- Peter Gabriel (1977)
- Us (1992)
- Peter Gabriel (1982)
- Peter Gabriel (1978)
- i/o (2023)
- Up (2002)
- New Blood (2011)
- Scratch My Back (2010)
- Secret World Live (1994)
- Plays Live (1983)
- Shaking the Tree: Sixteen Golden Greats (1990)
- Passion: Music for The Last Temptation of Christ (1989)
- Birdy: Music From the Film (1985)
- Hit (2003)
- OVO (2000)
Where to start with Peter Gabriel
So is the accessible one and deservedly enormous. Peter Gabriel is the strangest and most rhythmically adventurous of the numbered albums. Us is the divorce record, Up is the long-delayed dark one, and i/o is the recent return.
The numbered albums, where the sound is built
Four self-titled records that get progressively stranger and more rhythmic. The third is the one with the gated drums that changed how records sounded, and the fourth is the most adventurous thing he made before pop success arrived.
So, and the records after it
So made him a pop star almost by accident and the videos changed what the form could be. Us is the divorce record, Up is the long-delayed dark one, and i/o is the recent return after two decades of not finishing anything.
The live albums and the soundtrack work
The shows are elaborate and well documented, and Secret World Live is the best of them. Birdy is the film score, and New Blood is the orchestral rerecording that reveals how much of the writing survives without the production.