The Jimi Hendrix song that changed Peter Gabriel’s life: “My ear perked up”
For Peter Gabriel, music has always been a means to feel good, even in its most trivial simplicity. “Part of the creative process is to feel good about lowering your standards sometimes and just, you know, letting the energy rip,” he once said.
Much of this thinking often means coasting the line between enjoyment and intent – it’s the reason why some people hate Rick Rubin and some love him – because letting your emotion lead the way and decipher whether something’s worth enjoying or not is crucial to some but feels like artistic death to others. It’s the difference between the person who dabbles in chart music and the one who can’t stand to entertain such vanity.
It’s also the reason why people still love the ‘Sledgehammer’ music video, and why Gabriel remains proud of it to this day. Heavy MTV rotation aside, the main remit for the video was to be “inventive and funny”, tapping into a basic emotional appeal that would transcend the ages purely because it was, put simply, fun to watch. It took a lot of work, obviously, but it was a project that kept this essential appeal in mind, enough to endure the challenges all in the name of something people would never forget.
But achievements like these are always attainable for someone like Gabriel because he also understands the simplicity of such an act. Some musicians – especially those after artistic independence, but sometimes commercial singers too – get bogged down in the weeds of what they’re trying to say and how they’re trying to say it, and while this is an excellent way to define your own voice, it can often remove a big part of the fun aspect, the kind that Gabriel knows and understands well.
And this extends to his enjoyment of other music, too. If you were to ask Gabriel where he was when he first heard some of his favourite music, chances are he’d be able to tell you. For instance, Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ is one of his favourite songs of all time, and he remembers exactly where he was when he first heard it. “I can remember where I was when I first heard Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’, which was at school in a particular room upstairs and it was, in fact, in the next-door room,” he told ABC News.
“And my ear perked up and I went in and listened to it and just had to find out about who this artist was,” he added.
Discussing the ways certain songs feel like parts of his own story, he continued: “I think particularly when you’re growing up, songs are like memory stamps. I think people go through life and they have these intense experiences that are really beautiful. Or really horrible that just get locked into a certain song.”
He experienced similar situations with his favourite Otis Redding record, and the first record he ever bought, which was With The Beatles, feels like a special moment because it was also when he’d finally managed to save up enough pocket money at the same time ‘Please, Please Me’ was gaining traction with extensive play on the radio. But what made ‘Hey Joe’ stand out was that it was so different emotionally, introducing Gabriel to another side of music that attached itself to experiences and memories like it was tailored to his story to begin with.
