Peter Gabriel’s favourite song by The Beatles
In 1967, 200 million people saw The Beatles play ‘All You Need is Love’ via a ground-breaking satellite link-up. At the time, that wasn’t far from one in 16 people on the entire planet receiving a message of unified peace in one fell swoop of sonic beauty. Capturing such an audience was an untold feat in human history, and amid tempestuous times, the Fab Four broke through clouds of uncertainty, dooming war and assassinations, with an assegai of hope and exultation. Peter Gabriel had only recently turned 17, and like many his age, he saw the band he had grown up with in a new light.
“It was an extraordinary felling,” he once proclaimed, “That suddenly, this group that we’d seen from very small beginnings were really holding the flame for the world.” For Gabriel, they were not only a beacon of hope in the broadest sense, but on a personal level, this also illuminated a potential future in the world of music.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that he has always held the band dear. And his favourite anthem goes right back to those humble beginnings. “The first record I bought when I saved up my pocket money was With The Beatles,” Gabriel told ABC regarding the group’s debut album when discussing his favourite songs of all time.
“‘Please, Please Me’ was coming over the radio. I would sit in the back of my parents’ car when we were on these long drives down to the coast,“ he said, crowning his favourite track by the band. “And what people forget, I think, is that at the time, it was really rebellious, rough, mischievous and full of life, and irresistible to any young person. The Beatles were a huge influence as I was growing up, and continued to be as there was all that revolution around their success.”
It was on the brink of The Beatles’ seismic broadcast that soon followed ‘Please, Please Me’ thanks to the whirlwind of Beatlemania, that Gabriel first formed Genesis with his boarding school buddies. He had been stirred to emulate their revolutionary ways in some fashion. Recalling their impact, he explained: “It was to my mind and my ears, far more of a breakthrough than, say, the Sex Pistols, which was more stylistic, I think, and not really about the music or revolution.”
With that in mind, he wanted to carry that sense of newness into the work he started crafting with his own little group of mates: Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Steve Hackett and Phil Collins. So, they set about combining an assortment of their influences. “I grew up listening to the blues and Bach, and I never thought that they would meet and create a third thing,” Steve Hackett says. “The two styles seemed to be at odds with each other.” Alas, the band successfully created a third thing and, as such, had their own walloping impact on music.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.