Amusements Never End
Peter Gabriel talks about new LP i/o, absence, mind-reading, Genesis, and “raising the middle finger to death.”
PETER GABRIEL is used to rejection. In fact, he welcomes it. “Sometimes failure is a better teacher than success,” he tells MOJO, talking from a New York hotel suite the day after performing at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo. Besides touring the US, the solo artist, soundtrack composer, human rights activist and ex-Genesis frontman is poised to release i/o, his first set of new material in more than two decades.
The album has been trailered by several singles accompanied by images from contemporar y artists, including Anthony Micallef and Henr y Hudson. “But not everyone I wanted to work with wanted to work with me,” Gabriel admits. “Sometimes you have to take the road that requires fear and courage. Going out into the art world, I was facing rejection. But it brings out the hustler in me.”
On Gabriel’s wish list was the Chinese documentarian and activist Ai Weiwei. “He didn’t have a clue who I was, and it was really hard work. Firstly, I drove up to Cambridge to see him. Then I met him again in London and he finally signed on.”
Weiwei sent Gabriel three designs which used his trademark motif: a middle finger raised against authority. It suited Road To Joy, a song which, like much of this new work, is about what Gabriel describes as “raising the middle finger to death.”
i/o (which stands for ‘input/output’ but is also the name of Jupiter’s third largest moon) has been gestating for some time. Since 2010, Gabriel has released a covers LP, Scratch My Back, and an orchestral reboot of old works, New Blood. But his last new studio album was Up in 2002.
“I think you can oversaturate people and they get bored with you,” he explains. “One of the reasons I am still able to make a living doing this is that there are long periods of absence.”
During his time away, technology and streaming services have revolutionised the way artists make music and how their audience consumes it. Gabriel’s approach is an intriguing mix of old school and very new school.
i/o will be released as a physical entity in December but he’s giving most of it away, with nine singles so far issued on the date of each full moon. “I’m 73 now, at an age when I might as well just play around and have fun. There’s not a huge income from the streaming services. Some of the themes in this music are about connecting with nature, so it felt appropriate to do something on every new moon, as our ancestors used to.
“We’re stor ytellers and we love stories. And there’s more of a stor y on an album than there is on a single track, though,” he adds. “But the world is moving in the direction of shorter, faster, and when the tide goes one way it’s attractive to go in the opposite direction. The slower, longer thing has its place, and I’m notoriously slow.”
i/o includes contributions from Gabriel’s daughter, vocalist Melanie Gabriel, the Soweto Gospel Choir and tracks co-produced by fellow musical polymath Brian Eno. “In the ’80s, Brian, Laurie Anderson and I were tr ying to put together a virtual reality experience park in Barcelona,” recalls Gabriel fondly. “It involved a lot of dinners, good wine and brainstorming. I like working with Brian. He came in, critiqued it all and did his thing on a few tracks.”
There will also be three mixes of i/o: Mark ‘Spike’ Stent’s ‘Bright Side mix’, Tchad Blake’s ‘Dark Side mix’ and Hans-Martin Buff ’s ‘Atmos mix’. “Just to confuse things,” says Gabriel. “I liked what Spike and Tchad both did so I thought, Why don’t we just have both, so the nerds can have long discussions about the merits of each. “Most Atmos mixes at the moment are for people with expensive headphones, but car manufacturers are realising they can sell more cars by putting in a good sound system. In a few years’ time, anyone driving a car is probably going to have an immersive audio system.”
Gabriel has described himself as “addicted to new ideas” and his current obsessions have informed the ➢
“Ai Weiwei didn’t have a clue who I was.” PETER GABRIEL