GABRIEL GOES AFRICA

PETE OF THE JUNGLE SHOCKS THE MONKEY

GABRIEL GOES AFRICA

Don McLeese

A lot of us came late to Peter Gabriel. Or perhaps it’s just that Peter Gabriel came late to us.

By “us,” I mean anyone who has trouble mouthing the word “progressive” in a rock context without a trace of a sneer—anyone who believes that the “art-rock” that flourished in the early ’70s had about as much in common with rock’s true spirit as Art Linkletter does. Truth be told, most of that smug, grandiose twaddle had as little to do with art as it did with rock. What attempted to pass itself off as true creativity too often seemed like little more than musical masturbation.

While the version of Genesis that Gabriel fronted for years was by no means the worst of the lot, the group wallowed a little too often in the conceptual cutesy-pop of complekity-for-complexity’s sake. For those of us whose attention spans were shaped by blitzkrieg blasts of Raw Power, following the narrative threads of Genesis at its most self-indulgent seemed less like fun, more like work. I mean, four sides of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway! Who wants to listen to something that looks like it requires Cliff Notes to penetrate?

Since leaving Genesis, Gabriel’s music has been marked by more economy, humanity, generosity, and warmth than one might have thought possible. Of course, the very notion of art-rock has changed as well. Where pop and progressive were once considered never-the-twain-shallmeet polarities, artists from Roxy Music to Talking Heads to Peter Gabriel have since proven that the most vital music can be simultaneously concise and adventurous,

"Historically,

music is based on

theft."

innovative and accessible.

Any poet with a sense of craft realizes that it’s tougher to meet the’ formalistic challenge of a haiku than to simply spill your guts out, free-form, all over the page. Any rocker with a sense of proportion understands that it’s more challenging to shoot your inspirational sparks within a three-to-five minute structure than to indulge you own creativity, and your listener’s patience, as you noodle away into oblivion.

Where Gabriel once made aesthetic statements, he now writes songs. Very provocative ones. I may not know much about art. But, in words that Gabriel has heard a time or two before, I know what I like.

“My normal attitude is to try to make the music that most e'xcites me, and then put on the businessman’s hat and try to flog the hell out of it, rather than wear the businessman’s hat when I write the song.” So explained a very soft-spoken Peter Gabriel as we sat in his pre-concert dressingroom.

; “I used to think that it was just music and no business, and that’s a hypocritical attitude. You know, if you’re going for any form of mass exposure, and you want your music to reach a lot of people, then you have to be responsible for taking it into the marketplace. Artists who pretend not to be a part of that are only deceiving themselves.”

Gabriel, one senses, is the kind of person who gives considerations such as this—and maybe most other considerations as well—a lot of thought. On the ride from the hotel to the Indiana University auditorium, as we both tested the conversational waters prior to the interview proper, he seemed as comfortable asking questions as answering them. He came across as a shy man, but by no means an unfriendly one, and his curiosity appeared open and sincere, rather than pass-thetime small-talk that dominates so much of life on the road. He’s a thoughtful guy, in the broadest sense of the term. He thinks things through.

Take the old cultural-carpetbagger issue. Because much of his work has become so rhythmically oriented—with African inspirations assuming increasing importance—it is easy to accusjfe Gabriel of jumping on the Byrne/Eno, Bow Wow Wow “Back to Africa” bandwagon. How can a very proper 32-year-old Briton attempt to pass himself off as Pete of the Jungle?

“Some of the criticism that I get labeled against me is—hdw’s the NME got it?—this David Attenborough figure going out into the bush in my khaki shorts.

“Cultural imperialism,” he admitted.

“This is what bugs me, because I think sortietimes people see me parading as this sort of multi-cultural event. And I’m not. I’m a British rock writer, but I’m using what are to me the most exciting starting points, and just opening my ears to things that I wouldn’t have listened to before.

“I think genetics is a good example, because too much in-breeding produces a slightly depleted stock, and I think that’s what we have in rock.”

Gabriel’s alternative to the idiot bastard son that rock has become began evolving out of his experiments with a rhythm machine, prior to recording 1980’s Peter Gabriel album. While his earlier two solo efforts (both also entitled Peter Gabriel) were much more conventionally melodic, he began constructing his material from the rhythm tracks up with PG III. Although his previous record company considered the music unsaleable, “Games Without Frontiers” won him a larger audience than ever before.

“I began working with a rhythm machine,” he explained, “and I had to decide what rhythms 1 was going to put into the machine. Instead of putting in traditional rock rhythms, which I was beginning to find very depleted in a lot of areas—they were no longer exciting me, whether I was getting jaded or not—I started looking for patterns... There are definitely starting points which aren’t from mainstream AOR influences.”

Surprisingly enough, while his recent Security album represents Gabriel’s most challenging music to date, it’s also his most commercially successful in terms of the American charts. Despite mixed reviews, Gabriel considers it his best work as well.

“To me, the ideas are better crystallized,” he said. “The ideas that I was groping for on the third album—and I should say that the third and fourth I feel much happier with than the first and second—on four, 1 feel that I have a much better sense of direction, in terms of sound and arrangements in particular.

“It’s not minimal, in a way,” he continued, addressing the question of the album’s critical reception, “I mean, I’m still trying to do things with less—there’s silence and space on the record—but I’m working in layered arrangements, so I don’t think it sounds as hip as the last one. Myself, I’m sure the writing is as good.”

(A digression here on Gabriel’s decision to give the album a title, where the others had none: “It was supposed to be the world’s first disposable title. I thought it was just going to be on the shrinkwrap—this is what we agreed—so when you took off the shrinkwrap, the title disappeared. But it did permeate the inner parts of the record— which did feel a little like rape, I must admit.”)

As for the question of ripping off African culture....“Rhythm of the Heat,” the album’s lead track, is quite consciously African-inspired, and many of Security’s other seven tracks trade. heavily in rhythmic exotica—Gabriel argues that exchanges within the global music marketplace are neither so simple nor so one-sided:

“For anyone who looks a bit further, the influence goes in all directions. Like Michael Jackson, James Brown, and Stevie Wonder having a big impact on African music—Kenyan music in particular. Or, the reggae influence growing in Africa...

“Historically, music is based on theft.”

☆ ☆ ☆

To Gabriel’s credit, he at least attempts to repay his musical debts, putting his money—and his influence—where his mouth is. Last summer, he was the major mover behind England’s World of Music and Dance festival. WOMAD represented an ambitious musical interaction, bringing together international masters from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean—from calypso king the Mighty Sparrow to Nigeria’s celebrated Prince Nico Mbarga—to share billing with big-eared British rockers such as Gabriel and the (English) Beat. While attendance at the fest didn’t cover expenses, Gabriel considered the experience worth it in ways that money can’t measure.

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“The financial thing was a grueling headache,” he related, “but the thing itself. . .seeing like 50-year-old Chinese classical soloists getting standing ovations from the rock audience. Moments like this, they’re magical, and it was a real buzz to be involved in it...

“Say, most Western audiences didn’t know that the Bo Diddley rhythm is related directly to an African rhythm, which it is. It seemed that if people can find that exciting and attractive, that a percentage of them might be able to follow through on a stage further back.”

In order to pay off WOMAD's debts, Gabriel’s old mates in Genesis offered their services for a one-time reunion concert. “They were very friendly, and it was very generous of them to help us out with the festival,” said Gabriel, adding that there would be no film or record to further capitalize on the reunion. “I think that both they and I didn’t want it to be filmed or recorded so it wasn’t seen as a commercial or a career move, but mainly what it was, which was a benefit to raise money.”

He doesn’t see much likelihood of working with the band again. While he doesn’t reject ihe work he did with Genesis, he seems to treat the early-’70s era of misguided “progressivism” as a period from which he—and perhaps rock itself— has grown up and out.

“Some people who came in the same time that I did definitely suffer from identity problems—they want to disown their past,” he said. “To me, I would take a more healthy analyst’s view of it, to see it as a normal part of growing up. That’s how I look back on it. I can see a lot of flaws, a lot of weaknesses, a lot of places where I would cringe now.. .I’m trying to work with a lot less. You can criticize some of that stuff as being a bit pompous.

As part of the “Flog the hell out of it” phase in which he’s currently engaged, Gabriel says that he still has fun touring, just so long as it doesn’t overwhelm his other projects and interests.

“I think three months a year is a healthy balance,” he said. “What it is for me is that there are other projects that could be more interesting for time now than spending a lot of it on the road. I think you come into the business very eager to assert yourself, find your place, all the rest of that.

“I’m 32 now; I feel like I’ve done that at least once. So things like the festival I got involved in last summer and video experiments and things like this do seem very attractive, just for my own self-satisfaction.”

As for the future, Gabriel has his own vision of Fantasyland, which he’s planning to spring on an unsuspecting world.

‘I’ve been working for about 10 years now,” he revealed of his project, which is still in the dreaming stages. “It’d be sort of like Disneyland, but an interactive place, which has got rides, situations, whateverdesigned by psychologists, musicians, artists, painters...I think if it’s done like a Disneyland, and doesn’t have any of the pretenses of culture or art galleries—an-allcome-iswelcome idea, if you like—it’d be very refreshing.

“In rock or whatever, you’re restricted to part of the population. You’re not getting through to all the people who might get something out of it.”

So much for the future. And so much for Africa, for that matter. The time is now (more or less). The place is Bloomington, Indiana. And Peter Gabriel has a job to do.

Can a British rocker with pan-cultural influences find happiness in the heart of John Cougar country? Will an audience more accustomed to the militaristic precision of Bobby Knight’s Big Ten basketball perennials be able to “Shock the Monkey”?

. No problem.

From the opening of the concert—which found Gabriel and band parading from the back of the hall and beating drums, one and all, for the beginning of “Rhythm of the Heat”...the artist had his audience mesmerized. The band—including bassist Tony Levin, drummer Jerry Marotta, guitarist David Rhodes, and synth-whiz Larry “Synergy” Fast—combines technological flash and rhythm depth more effectively than any unit working today. As for Gabriel, he’s toned down his theatrics some, but he continues to use his hands and face for maximum expression. As with the development of his music, he makes less count for more.

“We love you, Peter,” shouted one enraptured fan during a brief lull in the proceedings.

“I thought we were trying to keep it a secret,” deadpanned Gabriel.

While synthesizers have long played an important part in the sound of Peter Gabriel, what made this particular performance so striking happened not because of technology, but in spite of it. There had been problems with the electricity in the hall throughout the early-evening soundcheck. By the end of the two-hour set, various power problems caused the banks of synthesizers to go out of tune and blow their memory banks.

Although the band had patched together arrangements the best it could, it finally became necessary to drop an extended chunk of material from the show. This is the point where most of the synth-saturated upstarts would find themselves either waiting for the electrician or packing up and going home.

Gabriel, however, came out for a final encore, without the band, and played the most stirring version of “Here Comes The Flood” you’d ever want to hear. Just that plaintive voice and some stark piano chords. I don’t know if it had been planned as part of the set (it wasn’t included in his Chicago concert a couple of weeks later), but it was easily one of the most moving musical moments I can remember.

After the show, still a little disturbed by the technical problems of the set, he had

backstage personnel sent home early while he went outside and signed autographs for over half an hour.

This may or may not be beside the point: Gabriel told me that if he’d had a second chance, he wouldn’t have titled his new album Security. He would have called it Contact.