My Life In the Cutout Bins: Peter Gabriel/Peter Gabriel II (Scratch)

It's not like other Peter Gabriel albums

I was raised to believe that Genesis died with the exit of Peter Gabriel, and that's not really so far from the truth. I know that the circumstances of Genesis’ implosion were very different, but continuing under the same name in the manner they did was like Joy Division hitting the synths and drum machines and never putting out the New Order shingle. I mean, Collins and the boys eked out a couple of good records and an awesome live one (Seconds Out) but soon after, the band relegated proggy songs like 'Dance on a  Volcano' and "Watcher of the Skies' to a mid-set medley, and a tour or two after that they were gone from the set list entirely. 

Peter Gabriel was always in the right place, where something new and interesting was happening in rock and pop music, but he is never properly identified as belonging to this or that movement. Genesis famously helped create prog rock, but Gabriel's lyrics, vocals, and stagey performance style were somewhat at odds with the performances of prog's other British frontmen, such as Jon Anderson or Greg Lake.

Gabriel's second solo record, 1978's Peter Gabriel (Scratch, as it generally known, describing the Hipgnosis cover art) put him in New York City at the time of the city's new wave/punk/no wave/experimental music explosion. Gabriel hired King Crimson founder and guitarist Robert Fripp, who had transplanted himself to New York to place himself in the middle of the energy, and who had grand designs for the next few years and the upcoming new decade, as  his producer. The record was recorded in the winter of 1977-78 in the Netherlands, and then Fripp and Gabriel decamped to New York to put the album together.

Fripp had begun an intended permanent sabbatical from his musical career in 1975, immersing himself in the teachings of Gurdjieff. He was coaxed from retirement to play on Gabriel's first solo outing in 1976, also touring with Gabriel but not appearing onstage, as Bowie did during Iggy Pop's tour in the same year. It therefore seemed natural for Gabriel to ask Fripp to produce his second record.

Fripp was in the process of writing and recording his own solo project, Exposure, and Gabriel was involved with some sessions for that project, and a version of the title track ended up on Gabriel II. Gabriel was apparently undeterred by the fact that Darryl Hall's label had refused to release his album Sacred Songs, another Fripp production, for fear it would damage his career with Hall & Oates. 

Perhaps predictably, Gabriel II was less successful than its predecessor, which owed a lot of  its success to "Solsbury Hill," which was apparently the sweet spot for Gabriel's Genesis fans. I've read a few pieces that suggest that a lack of focus and the diverse array of musical styles represented were responsible for the second album's lack of success. I can't agree with that POV, because if you look at the first album, it too ran the gamut from prog to orchestral to barbershop quartet to folk rock, etc. Nor is the quality of songs to blame--you can argue the merits of "Have a Wonderful Day in a One Way World (I happen to like it), but "On the Air," "DIY," "White Shadow," and "Mother of Violence" are absolute bangers. 

Another thing that makes the second Peter Gabriel album a fantastic record is that he is backed by a fantastic group of musicians, all of them doing their thing in stellar fashion. Besides Gabriel and Fripp, there is Tony Levin, who would be part of Gabriel's recording and touring band for years, fierce session drummer Jerry Marotta, and pianist Roy Bittan of the E Street Band.

Many of these musicians were holdovers from the first album and its subsequent tour, as was Larry Fast, a synthesist who was hired to create electronic parts for many of the songs. Fast played on Gabriel's albums, toured with him and was part of the production team from 1976-1986. He recorded a series of records under the moniker Synergy, releasing records from 1975 through 1987, the first being Electronic Realizations for Rock Orchestra, which spent 18 weeks on the Billboard 200, reaching #66. 

Like other electronic musicians, Fast was starting to work with sequencers, which vastly changed the playing field for synthesizers in a live performance environment. While Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, among others, were working with sequencers at this time, their music is quite different than that of Larry Fast. Synergy is heavily oriented towards polyphonic orchestral harmonies and effects that are both live (involving the instrument itself or the way it is recorded) and post-production (involving manipulation of the tape or other recording medium as well as effects like compression or phasing). 

On the Synergy album Games, released in 1979, Fast recorded the "Soundcheck: Delta 3" suite of tracks (4-9) while on tour with Gabriel in 1978. The stuff he was doing here was cutting edge, and the Synergy records provide a checklist of sounds and techniques for today's digital producers and musicians to be familiar with. 

Indeed, the first sound we hear on the record is the fading in of Fast's electric arpeggios before the band kicks in with the kind of new wave-y "On the Air." Right away Gabriel is creating one of his characters, a tramp living by the river's edge: "Built in the belly of junk by the river my cabin stands/Made from the trash I dug out 'the heap, with my own fair hands." He sounds a bit like the gardener narrator of "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)" except that he's putting up an antenna after dark and transmitting--what? Pirate radio of some kind, but it's not clear whether he's broadcasting punk rock or maybe some kind of political screed. There's also the Gabriel fascination with the streets of the city before dawn or just after dusk: "Every morning I'm out at dawn with the dwarfs and the tramps/For a silent communion lit from above by the sodium lamps," and the song's energy does recall Raoul and the opening gambit of "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway." 

On tour Gabriel and the band dressed in fluorescent yellow vests of the type typically worn by utility workers and they sported the same kind of nervous energy seen in performances by so-called new wave bands of the time. Older tunes from his first solo record as well as "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" were performed with a more aggressive edge, and given the arc of his entire career, it just seems like the kind of stylistic changeup that a theatrical performer like Gabriel will go through from time to time. 

In fact, Side One, is damn near unassailable. It has everything: energy, bit of a message, some passion, singer/songwriter vibes, modern art, and it flows by extremely well, going down like a frothy milkshake. After the aforementioned caffeine kick of "On the Air" we get the post punk (at least in spirit) "D.I.Y." Britain's DIY scene lasted from 1977 to about 1985, but it left its mark both in the music business and the culture in general. Punk was somewhat unique in that it sought to operate in a closed state where a band and its entourage either did everything themselves, including booking, recording, playing live, distributing fanzines, artwork, etc., or they worked in concert with other DIY punks to obtain the services they needed to put their music out and play in front of people. Gabriel was clearly inspired, in part, by this idea in the creation of his WOMAD world music festival and Real World record label. The song also features one of my favorite Gabriel couplets:

'When things get so big,

I don't trust them at all.

If you want some control, you've got to keep it small...'

Next up is something different, something you won't hear again for awhile, and that is Peter Gabriel singer/songwriter, with his song "Mother of Violence" featuring only a vulnerable vocal, a folksy acoustic guitar, and some gentle but unbridled piano. It's incredibly effective, as Gabriel discovered when he re-recorded his song "Here Comes the Flood" for Fripp's Exposure album, beating the orchestral nightmare that his first solo effort. The credits list Jill Gabriel as co-writer. This would be Peter's first wife, who he married in 1971 an would divorce in 1985 after she had an affair with his producer.

"Have a Beautiful Day in a One Way World" used to seem like a weird, awkward song that interrupted the sequence, but hearing it now it seems strangely prescient in the era of cashless/staffless stores, self driving cars, and A.I.: "there's only one rule that I observe/Time is money and money I serve." Maybe a suspect rhyme scheme there, but still catchy.

"White Shadow" sounds to me like an outtake from The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Gabriel is verbose here, and the synth washes are gorgeous with a kind of fake medieval horn in the background. It's a bit like Nursery Crimes meets 'Kashmir.' But this seems like a track that would be welcomed by Gabriel's Genesis fans, plus there's a strong Robert Fripp electric guitar solo worthy of the Crimson King's reputation, played over a wash of synth and his very own Frippertronics loops! Concluding side one, the original vinyl release has an infinity groove at the end of the side, intimating perhaps that it is complete unto itself.

Side Two is probably more difficult for some of Gabriel's fans to swallow, since it comes across as something of a lesser David Bowie album. Honestly, though, if Bowie had tucked something like "Animal Magic" safely onto Aladdain Sane, it would have passed muster, and somewhere  there'd be someone singing its praises. In addition the track reveals Gabriel's love of soul and R&B music, which will eventually result in his blockbuster hit records "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time."

Gabriel opens Side Two with another rare confessional, "Indigo," on which he is cast again as the singer/songwriter, though this time he is joined by additional instrumentation, including slide guitar. It's an emotional lyric about mortality with a good joke or two, so the song is a winner even if it doesn't feel like normal Gabriel. Then comes "Animal Magic" and then the version of Fripp's "Exposure" that is more rousing than the one Fripp eventually released on his own record. "Floatsam and Jetsom" is the first track that sounds like an outtake from his first solo record, as though he is kind of hedging his bets.

"Perspective" is an R&B stomper that works up some real sparks, though maybe it's a little overdone in parts. Gabriel concludes with the ballad "Home Sweet Home," again featuring the steel guitar. It's a real downer, about a man whose wife jumps out a window with their baby. The man takes the insurance money he receives, goes to  and a casino, and bets it all on the roulette wheel. He wins and buys  himself a new house. It's a rather sad and incomplete story that may have been inspired by a news story Jill showed Peter. It's a strange ending to a record that is both beautiful and seriously flawed, but which reveals more of Gabriel than some of his later records seem to.

It's fair to say that the record flags a bit in the second half, and I think that Gabriel would have likely worked on some of these songs quite a bit more, both in the writing and in the performing/recording phase, but Fripp nudged him along, encouraging him to write and record more quickly than his normal process allowed:

'Robert Fripp was very keen to try speeding up my recording process, as many people have been since and failed, but he got closest to it. Although I can do things fast and spontaneously and get something that has a good performance energy in it, I generally do my best work the other way. It’s a bit of an ordeal for anyone who’s working with me to stick on the team for that long, but I think we do get the best results that I’m capable of that way.'

https://petergabriel.com/release/peter-gabriel-2/

Clearly this isn't one of Peter Gabriel's favorite works, and that is echoed by the majority of his fans. It's an unfocused record, but if one accepts that, it operates on its own logic--again, I really don't feel that the first album is any better focused. I think that it's more that it presents Gabriel in a light in which he has rarely been presented again. His records going forward became bigger and sleeker sounding, more full of technology and, don't forget that it was the eighties by the time he returned to the scene with his third solo album. But it does maybe raise a question: does living in the cutout bins change your perception of music or the artists that you love? Do you develop a taste for the outliers in an artist's catalog and deliberately defend certain records as amongst their lost classics, or records deserving of reappraisal?

Sometimes these records from the cutout bins come to us like divine interventions. They are answers to prayers that we weren't even aware that we were sending out there. And we fall in love with them, because they are beautiful and they are perfect in their own way, or they are an unchangeable mess, and we will defend them against all comers. Because music enters our lives at a specific time and place and its meaning derives largely from this fact. The thoughts we turn, the fantasies we spin when the music plays, when its Friday night and the lights are low, they are part of us, and to attack them is to attack our very selves.

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