4, or Security
August 23, 2016 12:16 AM Subscribe
The South Bank Show, 1982, Peter Gabriel documents the recording of his fourth album. [49m]
The resulting album, titled simply Peter Gabriel in many regions, but Security in North America. Album personnel included Tony Levin, David Rhodes, Jerry Marotta, and Larry Fast. And also the Fairlight CMI.
The Rhythm Of The Heat
San Jacinto
I Have The Touch
The Family And The Fishing Net
Shock The Monkey
Lay Your Hands On Me
Wallflower
Kiss Of Life
The resulting album, titled simply Peter Gabriel in many regions, but Security in North America. Album personnel included Tony Levin, David Rhodes, Jerry Marotta, and Larry Fast. And also the Fairlight CMI.
The Rhythm Of The Heat
San Jacinto
I Have The Touch
The Family And The Fishing Net
Shock The Monkey
Lay Your Hands On Me
Wallflower
Kiss Of Life
That was amazing, hippybear. Great find!
posted by persona au gratin at 2:14 AM on August 23, 2016
posted by persona au gratin at 2:14 AM on August 23, 2016
titled simply Peter Gabriel in many regions, but Security in North America
As with his previous three albums, it had no title other than Gabriel's name. In the United States and Canada, his new label Geffen Records issued the album, with Gabriel's reluctance, with a Security sticker on top of the shrink-wrap to differentiate it from his previous releases, and this title was also printed on the labels. Whilst Gabriel provided the title himself, the album was officially known as Peter Gabriel in other territories. -via
posted by fairmettle at 2:55 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
As with his previous three albums, it had no title other than Gabriel's name. In the United States and Canada, his new label Geffen Records issued the album, with Gabriel's reluctance, with a Security sticker on top of the shrink-wrap to differentiate it from his previous releases, and this title was also printed on the labels. Whilst Gabriel provided the title himself, the album was officially known as Peter Gabriel in other territories. -via
posted by fairmettle at 2:55 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
I am in my early twenties, bombing down I-81 in rural southwestern Virginia at 3:00 AM with the windows down, overly humid late summer air blasting into the car and the subsequent roar mixing with "The Rhythm Of The Heat" battling its way out of the stereo speakers. I should be concentrating on navigating the steeply graded road but I am imaging myself in a distant, exotic place. I am an interloper, a foreigner, a not-entirely-welcome stranger. I am starting to make sense of this imagined experience when the air brakes of a passing tractor trailer explode with a cataclysmic sound outside the driver-side window. Badly startled, I turn the stereo down a few notches, grip the wheel with renewed force and focus on the twisted highway ahead. Still, I listen to that entire album in its entirety at least 3 times on the way home.
That song still spooks me a out a little bit.
posted by tehjoel at 6:43 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
That song still spooks me a out a little bit.
posted by tehjoel at 6:43 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
This was my favorite PG album growing up. Some great songwriting here. Gabriel was so post-punk on the melting face album before this, and this furthered that tone but also bent it out of shape even further. It also made me a fan of David Lord's production. One of his next albums after this was XTC's The Big Express, which I think is also a fantastic album.
Kiss Of Life is a banger. :)
posted by adamd1 at 6:47 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Kiss Of Life is a banger. :)
posted by adamd1 at 6:47 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
The contrast between dorking-out-in-the-studio PG and performing-a-song PG is stunning.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:07 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:07 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
My favorite Peter Gabriel album by far. It still makes me fall into a trance whenever I put it on, which isn't all that frequently because he's not got his music on Spotify (and, alas, that's mostly how I consume music these days). I can get chills just thinking of "I Have the Touch" or "San Jacinto" without even actually hearing them. Not much other music from that same time frame has that effect on me.
posted by blucevalo at 7:40 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by blucevalo at 7:40 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]
Wow.
I never heard of Peter Gabriel and one day I was watching MTV and there was Shock the Monkey.
It was like beaming into parallel universe and it was great.
This TV show is great. Thanks hippybear you made my morning.
posted by bukvich at 8:26 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
I never heard of Peter Gabriel and one day I was watching MTV and there was Shock the Monkey.
It was like beaming into parallel universe and it was great.
This TV show is great. Thanks hippybear you made my morning.
posted by bukvich at 8:26 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
It also made me a fan of David Lord's production.
Out of curiosity, how are you on Peter Blegvad's Knights Like This? It was the first thing by Blegvad I heard, and it turned me into a rabid fan, but Blegvad was very against it because of Lord's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-o-what-the-hell-put-in-all-the-kitchen-sinks style of production (as Partridge came to feel about his work with Lord, too). (It's on the Spotifies if you can do that sort of thing.)
Not something I normally get to ask, as Blegvad turns up infinitely fewer times than Gabriel.
When Peter Gabriel 4 came out it did seem like a come down after 3, but only because the latter was such a wake-up call - in some ways a lot of the more interesting parts of 80s music start with PG3, and I think I came to 4 expecting the same kind of quantum leap. And expectation is a terrible thing.
I taped this programme when it was broadcast, and watched it many times, partly because it was the first thing I'd ever seen about exactly how an album was made and I was fascinated (the whole process seemed like inexplicable magic to me at the time. I suppose it still does, even though I'm now very familiar with it).
posted by Grangousier at 8:32 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
Out of curiosity, how are you on Peter Blegvad's Knights Like This? It was the first thing by Blegvad I heard, and it turned me into a rabid fan, but Blegvad was very against it because of Lord's everything-including-the-kitchen-sink-o-what-the-hell-put-in-all-the-kitchen-sinks style of production (as Partridge came to feel about his work with Lord, too). (It's on the Spotifies if you can do that sort of thing.)
Not something I normally get to ask, as Blegvad turns up infinitely fewer times than Gabriel.
When Peter Gabriel 4 came out it did seem like a come down after 3, but only because the latter was such a wake-up call - in some ways a lot of the more interesting parts of 80s music start with PG3, and I think I came to 4 expecting the same kind of quantum leap. And expectation is a terrible thing.
I taped this programme when it was broadcast, and watched it many times, partly because it was the first thing I'd ever seen about exactly how an album was made and I was fascinated (the whole process seemed like inexplicable magic to me at the time. I suppose it still does, even though I'm now very familiar with it).
posted by Grangousier at 8:32 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
As with his previous three albums, it had no title other than Gabriel's name.
Peter Gabriel (classical philosophy) , Peter Gabriel (Hegelian philosophy), Peter Gabriel (logical positivism), Peter Gabriel (sheep dip)
Or: PG1, PG2, PG3, PG4
Or: Car, Scratch, Melt, Security
Or: Atco, Atlantic, Mercury, Geffen*
* PG5 (So) was the first PG album released on the same label as the previous one in the US.
posted by Herodios at 9:19 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
Peter Gabriel (classical philosophy) , Peter Gabriel (Hegelian philosophy), Peter Gabriel (logical positivism), Peter Gabriel (sheep dip)
Or: PG1, PG2, PG3, PG4
Or: Car, Scratch, Melt, Security
Or: Atco, Atlantic, Mercury, Geffen*
* PG5 (So) was the first PG album released on the same label as the previous one in the US.
posted by Herodios at 9:19 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
The South Bank Show, 1982, Peter Gabriel documents the recording of his fourth album . . . . personnel included Tony Levin . . .
Here's something you don't see often, Chauncy.
What's that, Edgar?
Tony Levin . . . without a mustache.
posted by Herodios at 9:45 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
Here's something you don't see often, Chauncy.
What's that, Edgar?
Tony Levin . . . without a mustache.
posted by Herodios at 9:45 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]
I remember a mid-80s UK magazine ad for his albums - or maybe a single, or something, with the albums listed at the bottom - that "named" them as Car Scratch Melt ? Live Birdy. This was before So, obviously. It's a shame almost none of his music is on Spotify because I would be listening to it a lot.
posted by YoungStencil at 10:27 AM on August 23, 2016
posted by YoungStencil at 10:27 AM on August 23, 2016
The stories behind 10 great album covers
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:37 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by a lungful of dragon at 10:37 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
This album was so huge for me, so many hours on so many marching band bus rides listening to this album. Extremely 8th grade/Freshman HS content. As a drummer I was fascinated by the "no cymbals" rule on 3/Melt, which I believe I found out about from a Jerry Marotta interview in Modern Drummer, and Security drew me in even further. I was an enthusiastic marching band member and had always threatened to arrange a percussion routine based on the end of The Rhythm of the Heat, and I've sampled the break from "I Have The Touch" within the past year.
This is also one of the last albums that I got into as received wisdom from my older brother (i.e. I taped his album), and for whatever reason I only ever liked PG, never Genesis. I finally saw him about 15 years ago on the "Up" tour and it was about what I thought it would be, which is "nothing like the 80s days, but still nice." Probably the 4th or 5th time I'd seen Tony Levin live, who is simply one of my favorite people in professional music.
Then So came out and it was all over.
Great post!
posted by rhizome at 10:45 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
This is also one of the last albums that I got into as received wisdom from my older brother (i.e. I taped his album), and for whatever reason I only ever liked PG, never Genesis. I finally saw him about 15 years ago on the "Up" tour and it was about what I thought it would be, which is "nothing like the 80s days, but still nice." Probably the 4th or 5th time I'd seen Tony Levin live, who is simply one of my favorite people in professional music.
Then So came out and it was all over.
Great post!
posted by rhizome at 10:45 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
What I remember Gabriel saying about the namelessness of his albums in interviews at the time (maybe it's in this programme, I can't remember) was that he wanted the albums to be like magazines, with a standard masthead and a shifting series of covers which have a consistent feel to them. They're certainly easier to tell apart than individual copies of Vogue, though. Telling that the whole thing got to be too complicated to explain and he shifted to monosyllables thereafter, though.
posted by Grangousier at 10:48 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 10:48 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was in my early twenties when Three and Four came out. The passion in the grooves was just undeniable. It had been a while since I played Gabriel but I went on a kick of revisiting the first five solo albums about a month ago. Still rocked me to the core.
posted by Ber at 11:39 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Ber at 11:39 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]
My first girlfriend made me a mixtape when I was in highschool, as was the way romance was done in 1984. It included Wallflower from this album, which obsessed me.
Years later, I was in a car with my mother and a Peter Gabriel song came on the radio. Is this Peter Gabriel? she asked. Yes, I said, impressed she knew of him.
His was our neighbor in England, she told me.
Turned out neighbor was a bit of an exaggeration. We lived in Swainswick, he in Woolly, where his wife ran an annual neighborhood festival. There was a hill between our houses -- Solsbury Hill, as it happens. But my mother was friends with his wife, and we had gone to church, for some reason, with his daughters. My mother once stopped by their house only to have his wife answer in a near total state of undress. They had been planning something, and Peter Gabriel's wife had to apologize, as they were doing a photoshoot. For Rolling Stone, she said, but I have never found the images.
Now, I had not known any of this, or, more properly, I had not known that the Gabriels were Peter Gabriel and his family. It's a bit like hearing, I don't know, Semisonic on the radio and having your mother say, oh, is that Dan Wilson? He used to be your babysitter.
Which she also did to me, and is also true.
posted by maxsparber at 1:20 PM on August 23, 2016 [11 favorites]
Years later, I was in a car with my mother and a Peter Gabriel song came on the radio. Is this Peter Gabriel? she asked. Yes, I said, impressed she knew of him.
His was our neighbor in England, she told me.
Turned out neighbor was a bit of an exaggeration. We lived in Swainswick, he in Woolly, where his wife ran an annual neighborhood festival. There was a hill between our houses -- Solsbury Hill, as it happens. But my mother was friends with his wife, and we had gone to church, for some reason, with his daughters. My mother once stopped by their house only to have his wife answer in a near total state of undress. They had been planning something, and Peter Gabriel's wife had to apologize, as they were doing a photoshoot. For Rolling Stone, she said, but I have never found the images.
Now, I had not known any of this, or, more properly, I had not known that the Gabriels were Peter Gabriel and his family. It's a bit like hearing, I don't know, Semisonic on the radio and having your mother say, oh, is that Dan Wilson? He used to be your babysitter.
Which she also did to me, and is also true.
posted by maxsparber at 1:20 PM on August 23, 2016 [11 favorites]
What a feast that doco is. Thanks, it'll be watched a few times.
A few stray thoughts:
Gabriel's interest in rhythm is a major focus here. The vocal overdub stuff at the end made me realise how "on" (and often how percussive) he is. Not that I've a problem with singers being a bit all over the beat, it's just interesting.
I'm old and remember that the marimba was an incredibly expensive and exotic instrument. Sampling killed that. Shakuhachi a later victim of Gabriel (and others).
I remember the Fairlight from the early 90s. Carrying all its bits up the stairs to a studio with someone saying "Why are you bringing _that_ shit in here?" It went from being an almost magical thing to retro _so_ quickly, but it is now thought of more fondly than many of its supposed better.
Tony Levin - This stick is a bass because I'm a bass player. So now I'm looking at some Elephant Talk live video where Bill Bruford looks like he's a scary massage therapist from Valeyard-era Doctor Who. [Not a complaint]
I guess the SthBank Show had access to actual signals for this, because some experimental, rehearsal and preliminary runs of stuff have awfully processed signals. I can believe a bit of reverb on vox, but some of what you hear from Gabriel and the early Mrotta stuff has the same complicated effects as the final stuff. Again, not a complaint.
The (positive) review snippet mentioning "honkie poseurs" and (obliviously more importantly) the general talk of "stealing" beats are things that might be done differently today. Partly that's about the IP part of music being mainly about melody I guess, and the recognition starting around this time that wasn't the real story. But partly not.
posted by hawthorne at 9:00 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
A few stray thoughts:
Gabriel's interest in rhythm is a major focus here. The vocal overdub stuff at the end made me realise how "on" (and often how percussive) he is. Not that I've a problem with singers being a bit all over the beat, it's just interesting.
I'm old and remember that the marimba was an incredibly expensive and exotic instrument. Sampling killed that. Shakuhachi a later victim of Gabriel (and others).
I remember the Fairlight from the early 90s. Carrying all its bits up the stairs to a studio with someone saying "Why are you bringing _that_ shit in here?" It went from being an almost magical thing to retro _so_ quickly, but it is now thought of more fondly than many of its supposed better.
Tony Levin - This stick is a bass because I'm a bass player. So now I'm looking at some Elephant Talk live video where Bill Bruford looks like he's a scary massage therapist from Valeyard-era Doctor Who. [Not a complaint]
I guess the SthBank Show had access to actual signals for this, because some experimental, rehearsal and preliminary runs of stuff have awfully processed signals. I can believe a bit of reverb on vox, but some of what you hear from Gabriel and the early Mrotta stuff has the same complicated effects as the final stuff. Again, not a complaint.
The (positive) review snippet mentioning "honkie poseurs" and (obliviously more importantly) the general talk of "stealing" beats are things that might be done differently today. Partly that's about the IP part of music being mainly about melody I guess, and the recognition starting around this time that wasn't the real story. But partly not.
posted by hawthorne at 9:00 AM on August 30, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by persona au gratin at 1:13 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]