"Mercury Poisoning" - The Peter Gabriel Story Part Two. By Alan Hewitt. Photographsby Mike Ellison. Memorabilia: TWR Archive.

Apart from the couple of shows mentioned in the previous article. Peter spent most of 1979 at work on material for what was to be his third solo album. The character of Peter’s writing was changing with rhythm taking over from chords and melodies, a mode of writing which had been dominant on his former albums.

To help him, Peter enlisted the help of producer, Steve Lillywihite whose previous credits included Hong Kong Garden for Siouxsie & The Banshees and Making Plans For Nigel for XTC. Peter was already striving to break out of the constraints binding the writing of rock music and anything that sounded like a rock “standard” was avoided. In addition to Lillywhite, Gabriel also enlisted the help of Phil Collins on percussion and it was to be his sound, the now famous “gated reverb” which was to become one of the features of Gabriel’s new “sound”. Collins created the sound through a noise gate compressor unit, a device which both shut off sound and squashed it. Intruder was to be the first beneficiary of this new sound and Collins later used it to great effect on his first solo album; Face Value, a year later.

This new rhythmic approach gave Peter the opportunity to explore an idea that had been with him since 1977 when he had heard of the death of Steve Biko. At the time that he was writing Biko, Gabriel came across a soundtrack to Biko’s funeral and was intrigued by the rhythmic and uplifting quality of the music. Peter also used the marimba, an African instrument similar to a xylophone on the album as well as the vocal talents of Kate Bush.

Artistic freedom was one thing, but the adventurous nature of Peter’s new work was to prove too much for his American record company, Atlantic and their A& R head, John Kolodner, who upon first hearing the album described it as “commercial suicide”. The meeting with the heads of the record company was far from successful, they objected to Biko on the grounds that no one in the US was aware of what was happening in South Africa. They also thought that Family Snapshot (a song based on the thoughts of an assassin as he stalks his prey) was too controversial. Atlantic’s decision to drop Gabriel was referred to by the artists’ own words as “an example of the shirt-sighted bigoted attitude commonly found in the hierarchy of the American record industry. It will be ironic if this album turns out to be more successful.."

Peter Gabriel Gig Guide 1980

Once again the tour was a marvellous demonstration of Peter’s abilities as a performer with a set drawing on all of his albums. The set list was as follows: Intruder/Start/I Don’t Remember/Solsbury Hill/Family Snapshot/Milgrams’ 37/Modern Love/Not One Of Us/Lead A Normal Life/Moribund The Burgermeister/Mother of Violence/White Shadow/Bully For You/Games Without Frontiers/And Through The Wire/I Go Swimming/Biko/On The Air/Here Comes The Flood.

For the subsequent European leg of the tour in September/October, Peter also introduced several new performance of songs in the language of the country he was playing in at the time. These included German versions of Intruder (Eindringling), Family Snapshot (Schnapschuss - Ein Familienfoto), Not One Of Us (Du Bist Nicht Wie Wir), Lead A Normal Life (Ein Normales Leben), And Through The Wire (Und Durch Den Draht) and occasionally, Here Comes the Flood (Jetzt Kommt Die Flut). Games Without Frontiers was also translated into French (Jeux Sans Frontieres) and Italian (Giocci Senza Frontiere).

(These are the gig guides that appeared in #19. For further information refer to: Genesis Revisited).

Two other singles were released later in 1980. These were : No Self Control/Lead A Normal Life and Peter;s South African anthem, Biko which was backed by two non-album tracks: Shosholosa and Jetzt Kommt Die Flut from the German edition of the third album which had recently been released in Germany. None of these singles attained anything like the success of the first, but on the back of the European and UK tours, at least Peter was able to gain satisfaction from the album’s success in those territories - success that provoked Atlantic Records who had dropped him from the label prior to the album’s release, to attempt to buy him back with an advanced of $750,000 (they were however, unsuccessful with this and instead Peter chose to sign up with Geffen Records in the United States).

And so, with a successful album and tour under his belt, Peter felt confident enough to embark upon his quest for new sounds and ideas, a search which was to take him almost two years - but more of that next time.