When Peter Gabriel banned Phil Collins from using cymbals
Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins always seemed to have a solid working relationship. The pair were brothers in harmony during their shared time in Genesis, with Collins often providing backing vocals to Gabriel’s lead throughout the band’s catalogue. Gabriel was even responsible for Collins’ emergence as a lead singer, more-or-less forcing Collins to step up once he decided to leave the band following the recording of 1974’s The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
Collins and Gabriel were cordial enough to each other that Gabriel invited Collins to play drums on his 1980 self-titled album, known better as Melt. Together, the pair stumbled on the gated reverb sound that would become an iconic part of 1980s production styles. The constant experimentation that surrounded the sessions came at the expense of a key part of any drummer’s set-up: cymbals.
With a “rhythm-forward” focus, Gabriel combined the skills of himself, Collins, session drummers Jerry Marotta and Morris Pert, and a series of drum machines. Gabriel’s focus on drums did not extend to cymbals, which were largely phased out during the album’s recording sessions.
“Artists given complete freedom die a horrible death”, Gabriel explained to Mark Blake in 2011. “So, when you tell them what they can’t do, they get creative and say, ‘Oh yes I can,’ which is why I banned cymbals. Phil was cool about it. [Marotta] did object and it took him a while to settle in. It’s like being right-handed and having to learn to write with your left.”
“Peter didn’t want to use cymbals and I had been really experimenting with this ambience thing which actually started with Kenny Morris with the first [Siouxsie and the] Banshees’ album,” producer Steve Lilywhite explained to John Robb in 2022. “When you listen, you can hear elements of this gated room sound, big compressed room sound that I did on the Banshees”.
Once the gated reverb sound found on the album, and specifically on the song ‘Intruder’, became an essential part of 1980s production styles, each person involved in the song’s making would try to claim credit for the sound. Along with Gabriel and Collins, Lillywhite observed that engineer Hugh Padgham had named himself the inventor of the gated reverb sound.
“Hugh Padgham was my engineer when we did the Peter Gabriel album which is where it first really showed its head in that form but I had been pushing and experimenting before with that like the Psychedelic Furs,” Lillywhite claimed. “You listen to’”Sisters Europe’ by Psychedelic Furs […], all done before the Peter Gabriel album. […] At least, my claim has some roots from before it happened. Hugh Padgham was just staff engineer. He could have done it any time before he worked with me but he didn’t.”
“When Phil was playing the drums one day, I opened this microphone to speak to him to hear what he was saying while he was still playing the drums and out came the most unbelievable sound,” Padgham would claim about the birth of gated reverb. “Everyone went, ‘Oh my god, that sounds incredible’. So we go ‘OK, that was the compression on the [Listen Mic]’.
Check out ‘Intruder’ down below.
