Peter Gabriel’s madcap album that was too “off the rails” to succeed
There are some artists who might always appear to be a little unbothered by how testing the projects they work on can be for their audience, but even the most barmy performers like Peter Gabriel have their concerns from time to time.
For large portions of their career, Genesis weren’t exactly worried about alienating listeners or coming up with the most bonkers premises for their albums and live performances, and this was especially true when Gabriel was fronting the band in the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s.
Frequently playing dress-up with a combination of face paints, sequined capes and crowns of varying extravagance, it was especially evident from the band’s live performances that Gabriel wanted Genesis to be an equally terrifying yet theatrically captivating project that pushed both musical boundaries and employed striking visual elements. For the most part, it worked in his favour to operate in this fashion, but by 1975, he felt he’d done absolutely everything he could to push the group as far as he could.
When he went solo, many would have expected him to dial up these aspects of his craft, given how he no longer had to appease the other members of the band and was in full control of his activity. The mere concept of a Peter Gabriel solo show would have been a daunting one for onlookers, who may well have thought that a lack of restraint would have obfuscated his musical aptitude, but he would evidently prove his naysayers wrong.
It was more a case of wild studio experimentation that he wanted to explore rather than the over-the-top theatrical elements, and his first four studio albums, all titled Peter Gabriel, were a shining example of how much he wished to push himself towards making bizarre pop music.
On his debut album, frequently known by its subtitle, Car, he worked alongside countless noted musicians such as King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, their future bassist, Tony Levin, and producer Bob Ezrin, all of whom helped him take his creativity to new heights.
However, despite being flanked by incredibly talented personnel who would have helped him in his quest to cement himself as a solo performer, he did concede that he may have taken things too far during a 2004 interview with Classic Rock.
“Then there were the sessions for ‘Here Comes The Flood’,” he recalled, speaking about the closing track from the album, adding, “I wasn’t sure about the drum part, so I wanted it isolated so I could erase it if necessary.”
He concluded, “But when I listened back, the drums had been mixed in with the orchestra, and there was no way I could get rid of it – there were several moments like that, but we found a way through, and I think there are bits of that album that are really good and focused… There’s just a few bits where it goes off the rails.”
While the album may be wildly experimental in its approach even by today’s standards, this didn’t stand in the way of it being a success for Gabriel, and it did produce the single ‘Solsbury Hill’, one of the most complex hit songs ever released. If his main concerns were flirting with the idea of merging prog rock and pop music successfully, he evidently had nothing to worry about, as this bold venture would essentially lead to him becoming a pioneer in the genre.
