[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MUSIC PLAYING - PETER GABRIEL, "DOWNSIDE-UP"]
[APPLAUSE]
PETER GABRIEL: Hi there.
INTERVIEWER: Peter Gabriel, Google.
Google, Peter Gabriel.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
INTERVIEWER: So this is another Talks at Google event
from Mountain View, and we're very, very pleased to welcome
musician, artist, and activist Peter Gabriel here today.
We are going to have a great chance to ask some questions
about the current tour and the 25th anniversary of "So,"
which is going to be released, actually, at the end of
October, on October 22.
And we'll also some chance for the audience to ask some
questions as well.
So why don't we get started?
You're here on tour.
You're kind of in the middle of the tour.
And what was the story behind the tour?
How did it come to be?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, there were a number of things.
I mean, I've never really done a retro tour before and was
pretty resistant.
I know Robert Plant quite well, and we were sort of
chiding each other on who was going to succumb to the big
money first.
And anyway, I went to see the Beach Boys do "Pet Sounds,"
which I always used to love.
And that convinced me that to see one of the records that
you enjoy from start to finish was actually a good thing.
And that coincided with some nice offers, so that was an
easy decision.
And I'm actually going to take a sabbatical year this year
with my family.
We've got a teacher coming out with us.
And so it helps underwrite that sabbatical year as well.
So there were a number of reasons.
But I decided to bring back the band that originally
toured that record, and so that's been fun.
And we're actually having a great time.
We do the evening in three parts.
So the first part is based on the idea that the process is
often as interesting, if not more interesting, than the
final product.
So we start off with an unfinished song, and then we
do sort of rehearsal mode with the house lights on.
That's the starter.
Then the main course is a few songs, more electronic or
electric versions of things.
And then the last chunk, if you can get through all that,
you get your dessert, which is the "So" album.
So that's how it works.
INTERVIEWER: And specifically about the "So" album, so
you're playing--
the actual tour is called Back to Front.
And that seems to be some of the format you just discussed.
But playing "So," the track order that you have now, that
wasn't the original track order, correct?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, this is an interesting diversion about
technology.
Because although I'm a big fan of vinyl, I was also a great
fan of the digital world because suddenly, we could get
more dynamics in the music.
And there were restrictions in the vinyl world.
For example, the track "In Your Eyes," I always wanted to
go at the end of the record, but it has a
good bass line there.
To get a fat bass line on a full vinyl record, you can't
put it near the end.
You have to have it nearer the beginning, so it went on the
start of side two, just because there wasn't enough
room for the needle to vibrate as it got close to the center.
So then, when CDs came along, I was able to take that track
and put it back on the end where it
always should have been.
INTERVIEWER: And on this release that's coming up,
there's a couple variations, as I understand it.
There's the CD itself.
You're re-releasing and you've remastered that.
And that's a third time you've remastered that.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah, as long as people keep buying it,
we'll remaster it.
INTERVIEWER: And then there's actually going to be a
comprehensive box set that's got both CDs, some material
that hasn't been released yet, and also a DVD with some
concert footage.
Have you been just sitting on this?
This has been in the stores?
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
We'll throw any old shit in there.
INTERVIEWER: Hey, it was old, get it in?
PETER GABRIEL: No, but there were a couple of things that,
yeah, we were waiting for the right day.
And the right day, you know, you always get more interested
in the latest thing.
So we'd sort of forgotten about it.
But also, we'd shot the film--
filmed the show 25, 26 years ago.
And Scorsese had been producing, and he'd got this
wonderful cinematographer doing it.
And we hadn't realized quite what we had.
So we went back to the film--
I mean, tons of film cans that had to be carefully
resurrected.
And then we took all the data of the film and have a much
better resolution version of that concept than we had done
previously.
INTERVIEWER: And the actual production of "So," and then
also some of the videos and documenting that, over what
time period did that actually happen?
From when you thought about the album that you did
originally to actually getting it out the door?
PETER GABRIEL: Sorry, this latest thing?
Or the original one.
INTERVIEWER: The original one.
PETER GABRIEL: I think that just sort of happened as
things came up.
There wasn't really a brilliant master plan.
It was when we finish this, then what else
do we need to do?
And we try and film things.
I mean, again, if you have the opportunity to have two gigs
in the same place, then it makes filming a lot easier,
because you can do the set-up, and all the mistakes you make
on first day, you can try and sort out on the
second day of it.
And we did that in Greece as well.
INTERVIEWER: So when you're approaching songwriting, or
maybe at the time when you were approaching songwriting
with regards to "So," did you have a list of songs and then
say, OK, right, I'm going to select these musicians to
start working with?
Or were you writing and recording at the same time?
PETER GABRIEL: I'm always writing lyrics until the day
it's released, really.
But I'm slow with those.
But yeah, there was a few ideas.
In fact, I'd forgotten this, but Manu and Tony said that
"Sledgehammer" was an afterthought.
There was a taxi waiting to take Manu back to Paris and we
had an hour left, and I think I said, I've got this new idea
that maybe we could just put a demo down on.
And that was it.
I mean, we carried on working on it, because it felt great.
But it was quite an afterthought.
INTERVIEWER: And then "Sledgehammer" also took on a
life of its own when it came to the video, which you worked
with Aardman on, and others.
And my son, straightaway, he's like, the chickens.
That looks just like "Wallace and Gromit."
PETER GABRIEL: The chickens.
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: How did that come to be?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, actually, it was-- yeah, the man who did
the chickens was the man who created "Wallace and Gromit."
And I was working with this brilliant director, Stephen R.
Johnson, and he brought in the Quay brothers, who have
fantastic, sort of dark, East European-looking animation.
And I saw they've now got a big thing at MoMA in New York.
And I brought in Aardman Animation, who were from down
the road in Bristol.
Stephen and I had a couple of weeks just bashing through
ideas, and then we brought in the others.
And it was a really exciting, creative brainstorming.
And I mean, that's always been one of the things I most enjoy
about what I do, is working with people from different
backgrounds, often smarter than I am, and just cooking
something up.
So it was a great experience, but quite painful, too,
because we did everything in the old-fashioned
way, frame by frame.
So when you see a sky moving across my face, that is being
painted frame by frame, and the skin gets very raw.
And when you're under glass with a lot of raw fish on day
one, that's fine.
But day two, it's--
[LAUGHTER]
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
At least you put the blame on the fish.
INTERVIEWER: And that video, I think, is actually the
most-played video ever on MTV.
I mean, granted they don't play quite as many videos
these days.
But still--
[LAUGHTER]
PETER GABRIEL: Do they play any?
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER: That's a huge accomplishment, and I think
that it also--
I mean, having been relatively young at that age, it was so
different than most anything that was out there.
And it really set a standard for also an experience that
was getting you into the mind of the writer and the artist
in a different way, I think, of seeing an entertainment
value that wasn't just for the sake of entertainment but also
telling a story.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah, I think--
I mean, what was great about videos then was that there
were people that wanted to watch them, and there was a
budget, and there were no rules.
So you could do what the hell you wanted, and there was no
one there to say, no, this is the way we do it.
INTERVIEWER: And when you approach--
kind of back to songwriting, I want to just ask.
I think Mike Rutherford maybe made the comment once that
you're a frustrated drummer over time.
And you started as a drummer in school.
Do you think you think more rhythmically
originally about a song?
Or do you think more melodically?
PETER GABRIEL: I think both.
I mean, there are some things which are
just based on melody.
But groove is what drove me into music.
I thought drummers, they seem to be in command of this
really loud thing.
And it looks like a lot of fun.
And that's what I wanted to be.
I was very enthusiastic.
Not very good.
And it was fine in the early days of Genesis, because we
had guys who weren't--
they were good, solid drummers, but they weren't
that creative.
And then when we got Phil, unfortunately, he was a way
better drummer than I was.
But I used to still have some bits of my drum kit on stage,
and I would find my bass drum full of carpet.
And gradually, these things were getting reduced.
So there was a subtle way of saying that maybe I wasn't the
best timekeeper.
However, I worked also--
I mean, being a major drum fan, I worked with some of the
best drummers in the world, I think.
And one of those is Stewart Copeland, who is also a lousy
timekeeper.
But he's--
INTERVIEWER: Just don't tell that to Stewart Copeland.
PETER GABRIEL: No, I've told him.
He'll say it himself, because he races.
But by the energy he puts into his drumming and the attack on
it is fantastic.
And he does that brilliantly.
INTERVIEWER: And on the album, he played hi-hat on--
PETER GABRIEL: Well, this is the thing.
I had so many wonderful drummers I could cut out bits
and pieces and get a bit of hi-hat from Stewart, a kick
from Manu, and I mean, whatever it was, it was just--
but I'm a bit obsessive, as you might guess from this.
You know, the groove has to be right.
And I think we worked quite hard trying to find grooves
that aren't the regular ones you're hearing on the radio.
INTERVIEWER: And I think with having this band back on stage
together, is there some kind of moments where you look
around and it's deja vu?
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
And we all look exactly the same as we did 25 years ago.
Well actually, a couple of the guys do.
I wish I could say that.
But it's a bit like family get-togethers, because you end
up with the same bunch of folk doing exactly the same thing
that you always did, with all the pleasures and problems
that went along the first time.
So it feels very familiar.
But I'm enjoying it a lot.
INTERVIEWER: And as far as the way in which the songs of
evolve when you're on tour, do you try out--
there's that section that's defined as, let's play with
these more.
But you also come back and rearrange the
songs a little bit.
Are they the same songs that you start out at the beginning
of the tour when you wind up at the end?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, we try and get them right, you know?
So we are--
I mean, we're tweaking.
Every sound check, we try and find a few of the weaknesses
and nail them.
And we never used to play all those tracks together, partly
because two of them were a bitch to get right.
And we couldn't get them working.
So I think we're closing in on them, anyway.
But yeah, you do want to keep changing it.
However, I keep forgetting-- because we did start off
rehearsing some other stuff as well.
But now, once we've got things beginning to feel like a real
show and working properly, then when you do change the
numbers over, then it means also you've got to reprogram
the lights and all that stuff.
So I think we will be doing that and getting some
flexibility, but gently.
INTERVIEWER: And in a tour like this--
I know that you've always put a lot of energy and time to
make a concert just a full experience, not just, OK, now
here's some nice lights and here are the songs, hopefully
played the best they can be.
But also the experience of the songs, in a way.
How much time does go into actually prepping
for a tour like this?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, there's a fair bit.
I mean, I've got some very smart people.
And in fact, there was an idea, originally 25, 26 years
ago, when I was just doing videos, and I saw the cameras
on these booms that were being manually operated.
And I thought the way they moved was really cool.
So we replaced the cameras with lights.
And now we've got lights with little
cameras on them as well.
But they're still manually operated.
And I'm working on another show after this, which will be
more robotic, I think.
But this one, I'm really enjoying the sort of manual
element, which is, I think--
it feels quite futuristic and retro simultaneously.
INTERVIEWER: And speaking of robots, you've always been, I
guess what in Silicon Valley speak, would be an early
adopter of technology, and released some CD-ROMs, and
you've been using, back to drums, the first kind of
gated, or largely used gated drum sounds,
and things like that.
Have you just always had a fascination with technology?
Or how do you use it to stimulate creativity?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, my dad was an inventor, an electrical
engineer, and designed, with an Italian, a system--
it was a TV system called Dial-a-Program.
But in a way, it was home shopping, electronic
democracy, entertainment on demand, but it was 1971 and
accessed through the rotary dial of a telephone.
So he, I think, then tried to sell it, and it was
a little too early.
But I saw him passionate about what technology
could do for people.
And so I think that although I don't have his skills, I have
his enthusiasm.
So I still love to get involved with all sorts of
techie things.
INTERVIEWER: And I think I'll open up for questions in a
sec, if people want to line up.
But around selecting musicians, because you have
worked with so many, what's the process whereby you kind
of discover or like to collaborate?
Because spoiled for choice, you could bring in all these
different folks as you develop new music or go back
to visit old ones.
It's probably tough to select.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah, it's difficult.
I mean, I think I like to have a core, a family around me,
because there's a shorthand.
It's just more efficient.
And if you want to get ideas, and people know what it is you
like and what works and what doesn't work,
I think it's speed.
I think the great giants of the creative process that are
hardly ever acknowledged, which I'm sure applies in your
world, are boredom and fatigue.
And they hover over everything.
And as soon as you get tired or bored, the thing is dead.
So it's trying to keep things sparkly and crackling long
enough to support life on their own.
And that's, I think, best achieved in my case with some
home team and some new, exciting, inspiring guests.
INTERVIEWER: So as far as becoming more efficient and
creative, do you think you've managed that over time?
PETER GABRIEL: I'm not sure.
I'm still terrible at getting lyrics finished.
I feel I can come up with some musical ideas I'm happy with
fairly quickly.
But lyrics, I have to go off, isolate myself from my family.
And I have a theory, which probably-- a lot of smart
people here.
Someone could tell me if there's any substance in it.
But peripheral visual stimulation.
In other words, if I get on a train--
and I know a lot of other creative folk who get a lot
more ideas on a train than they do sitting at a desk.
And I think that when you're in a train or in a car, you've
got stuff coming past you.
And in the old days, when we were either chasing or being
chased, and there were a lot of important things dependent
on it, like whether we survived to tomorrow, the body
had some mechanism for accelerating and pumping
adrenaline around when you get this peripheral visual
acceleration or speed.
So that's what I do when I get stuck.
I get on a train.
And I've suggested that to quite a few other folk who've
had some success with it.
So anyway, that's my offering for today.
And we do have a sponsorship from a train company.
INTERVIEWER: I think Caltrain's about
to get a lot busier.
AUDIENCE: Can you hear me?
INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: So I was lucky enough to see your tour in
1986 when you did this album the first time.
Greatest tour of my ever life--
PETER GABRIEL: Oh, thank you.
AUDIENCE: Show of my life, I've ever seen.
Sorry, I'm a little nervous.
And I was really excited when you mentioned the lights on
the jib arm.
That's like a visual memory that stuck with me since then.
PETER GABRIEL: Great.
Well, we don't have--
I mean, we have one or two overhead lights, but the
normal sort of proscenium arch and so on, we've thrown away.
AUDIENCE: So I wanted to ask a couple of quick questions
about other things you might have considered bringing back
to use again.
The first-- and I'm probably going to say his name wrong,
but when I saw you, the opening act was Youssou
N'Dour, who sang on "In Your Eyes." And he, of course, came
out and sang with you.
Were you able to get him to come out and tour
with you this time?
PETER GABRIEL: Sadly, he was--
they actually created a new law in Senegal to stop him
becoming president.
And he's now minister of culture, because he's
like god out there.
And so he's not really doing much music at the moment.
Besides which, he's a great and celebrated artist in his
own right now, so the idea of back-up on my tour, I'm sure--
[LAUGHTER]
PETER GABRIEL: But you know, he's godfather to my son, and
I am to one of his, so we're still very good friends.
But he's an amazing artist.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
And the other is a little bit more on the technology side,
recreating the sounds.
For example, did you have to dig out your old Fairlight,
and do the floppy disks still work?
Or how do you do that to recreate all those old sounds.
PETER GABRIEL: I think actually archiving--
yeah.
Your history is your future.
Because we were talking with some of the Pixar folk, and
they were saying that they couldn't play back some of the
files from the original "Toy Story."
And it's a real issue, I think, that there's some
consciousness of how we can hold stuff in [INAUDIBLE].
I think they're taking digital stuff and putting it on film,
so it's all back to front.
And I mean, maybe some people here have solved this, but I
think it's an issue that needs careful thought.
We did take some of the sounds.
But yeah, some of the floppies weren't working, and we had
trouble looking for DAT players.
But yeah, there are one or two people who've been smart
enough to try and hold onto bits of historical technology
and try and keep it working so that desperate people like
myself can be rescued.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Mr. Gabriel.
I'm a lifelong fan.
And I hope you never stop making music, and I hope you
always sing "Wallflower" in every concert you do.
PETER GABRIEL: Oh, thank you.
I'm not playing it tonight, but.
AUDIENCE: Oh.
Had to try.
My question is a little bit weird.
In "Solsbury Hill," the last verse is very, you saying
you're going to go home, and that kind of closes the story
nicely and wraps up the song.
PETER GABRIEL: Sorry, which?
AUDIENCE: "Solsbury."
PETER GABRIEL: "Solsbury," right, yeah.
AUDIENCE: And so I'm wondering, I'm curious why
when you sing it live sometimes, oftentimes I've
heard you sing it, and the last verse, you tend to sing
the original first part of the verse, you know--
I'm just so nervous.
I'm going to forget it.
PETER GABRIEL: OK.
AUDIENCE: But I'm just wondering if it's--
PETER GABRIEL: Is this, I screw up the lyrics?
AUDIENCE: Exactly.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Why do you screw up the last verse of "Solsbury
Hill?"
PETER GABRIEL: OK.
It's because I screw up lyrics on a regular basis.
And I used to just read the lips of the front row.
[LAUGHTER]
PETER GABRIEL: Which was fine when they'd learned the
English version.
And now, of course, we have prompting screens which are
for those senior moments.
AUDIENCE: That was it.
Thank you very much.
PETER GABRIEL: Thank you.
Of course, you've got to be able to read them.
AUDIENCE: Hi, Peter, I'm a huge lifetime fan.
All throughout my college days, I had a huge poster of
you on my wall.
PETER GABRIEL: We were just good friends.
AUDIENCE: So it's nice to see you live.
I also attended the '86 concert and it was the best
concert of my life also.
And I remember you walking in that circular wheel.
PETER GABRIEL: The hamster cage, yeah.
AUDIENCE: And just wondering if there's going to be any
more things like that at today's concert.
PETER GABRIEL: It's pretty simple, and it's just really
these old lights on the booms.
This one was more about the music and less about the
production.
The next one I'm planning, it's the other way around.
But right now, that's the focus.
AUDIENCE: And the other question I had was a while
back, Salman Ahmad from Junoon, he was here at Google,
and he mentioned that you were going to be doing a recording
together and doing maybe some concerts.
Is that in the plans?
PETER GABRIEL: He sent me some stuff, which I'm still hoping
that we can work on with some Qawwali things.
Because he was doing a fantastic job singing with
some of the Qawwali stuff.
And so I'm still hoping something
will happen with that.
With our record company, because of the collapse of the
record business, we have to get a sign-in from various
partners before we can proceed, and we haven't had
that as yet.
But I'm still hoping that we may be able to get something
going there.
He's an interesting musician.
AUDIENCE: And the last question I have is, will you
be doing any more world music concerts and putting on--
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah, we still--
we have our world music festival, WOMAD.
And that has just had its 30th anniversary.
And it's done well, and we've had it in 80 countries now.
And we'd like to try bringing it back over here.
We were in--
I forget, I think '92--
Golden Gate Parkway, and then we had a sort of future zone
area, which was a techie thing.
Because I'm still in love with the idea of science and
technology and handmade and traditional culture.
And I hope we'll be able to reintroduce that part of it
into the WOMAD festival.
But it's still something that we're trying to evolve.
AUDIENCE: And I just wanted to let you know that one of my
favorite songs from you that puts shudders through me is a
that song called "Biko."
PETER GABRIEL: Oh, right, yeah.
Well, we'll be finishing tonight with it.
AUDIENCE: Mr. Gabriel, it is an honor to have you here.
PETER GABRIEL: Thank you very much.
AUDIENCE: So we wondered--
today that cell phones and cameras are everywhere.
We wondered if there has been any follow-up
on the WITNESS project?
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
And I think we've had some help from google.org, and also
with the YouTube folk, on getting a
human rights channel.
Because before, the problem was, I mean, we tried to do
our own human rights destination
thing called The Hub.
And the problem was that it was doing its job well, which
was basically to provide more security, anonymity, and
context around any bit of video, but we
didn't have the eyeballs.
And so YouTube clearly has lots of eyeballs, so along
with Storyful, we're now working on that.
And I think we're just beginning to see the
transformation that the mobile phone is going
to have in our world.
And it's absolutely huge.
I'm really excited.
I mean, you see what's happening in the Middle East
or any area of protest, that the young people protesting
don't feel isolated in a way that they did before.
National sovereignty, borders, were very effective in the
past whenever those in power wanted to shut down protest.
And it doesn't work in the same way.
I mean, clearly technology can be used for good or for bad.
And it's a cat-and-mouse game, and at the same time, in
providing for activism, for health care, for education.
And I mean, I got suckered into a thing--
we have this Elders project, which is former statesmen.
In fact, I'll just lay out the pitch.
Because the way I see it, if you have anything bad going on
in the world and then you can map it, in the way that
Ushahidi has done, for instance, that it will never
be forgotten.
And then you can go and sort of zoom into that and hear
personal stories and the voices of those affected.
So it's not being interpreted by the outside, but they're
telling their own stories.
And that's where YouTube Witness and various others,
Global Voices, all come in.
Then you have sort of campaign-building, and a
viral, is I think, probably the most effective at that.
If there are 15 million now, there could be 150 million, or
numbers that politicians can no longer ignore.
And then the Elders, where you can have high-level
interventions, so you go straight to parliament, or
presidents, or whoever it is, but connected to what's
happening on the ground.
Then you start to see this whole other infrastructure
forming that is based around the mobile phone that I really
think can transform the world.
And just from the health care side, we're seeing some of
these, like the Tricorder Prize, a where I think 20
parameters--
the tricorder, for those who didn't watch "Star Trek," was
the device that you could wave over someone and it would give
you everything that was good and bad about what was going
on in their body.
And we are going to be completely unable to provide
high-tech health care for the world,
except through the mobile.
And there are all these wonderful things coming along.
But as a scanner, I think the Tricorder Prize is going to go
within the next 18 months, two years, and that can read these
parameters better.
I mean, we have things that already--
I saw this scanner that went into the blood, looked at the
cartinoids, gave you reading.
So it could tell you, you know, two
doughnuts in, you're [WHISTLE].
Three days of healthy eating, and you're
back up to your level.
But suddenly, you've then got competitive feedback and group
psychology on keeping us well.
And anyway, I go on for a long time on this stuff because I
am so excited by it.
And I know all of you guys are working on these things.
And I think it's completely up to us, whether it's used
positively or negatively.
While I'm on one, data I think is going to be a huge area.
And I know this is potentially contentious, but I think we
have, or should have, legal right to own or co-own any
data that we generate in a digital world.
And that's something that I hope the Elders will be
campaigning for along with a lot of other people.
Because clearly, that has real commercial value.
But when we are allowed to touch and own or co-own that,
I think that will be a sort of self-regulating mechanism
which is fundamental to the evolution
of the digital world.
INTERVIEWER: And the Elders, just for context, is a group
of senior leaders and luminaries--
Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu--
PETER GABRIEL: Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, Ela Bhatt--
I mean, they're extraordinary people.
And it was the idea of just trying to get a group of--
there's 10 of them at the moment, but the idea is there
should be 12--
we got Mandela to found it originally.
And they can make interventions.
But I think our dream, or my dream--
I think some of the Elders' dream, too-- is that when that
then can be connected to these movements that grow up from
the ground, that can give voice to the voiceless, et
cetera, that it can be part of a new mechanism for balancing.
AUDIENCE: And I have a--
PETER GABRIEL: Sorry, yeah, you didn't
expect all that shit.
AUDIENCE: I have a message from a very good, dear friend
of mine who actually introduced me to your music,
that he misses the transparent bulls and feathers.
PETER GABRIEL: The feathers?
I don't remember the feathers.
But the transparent bulls--
well, I won't take my trousers off now.
AUDIENCE: Hello, Mr. Gabriel.
PETER GABRIEL: Hi.
AUDIENCE: This is the coolest thing ever, incidentally,
talking to you like this.
PETER GABRIEL: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Me my friends went to your '86 concert.
We're all going again tonight.
It'll be a lot of fun.
You talked earlier about revisiting old stuff.
Any chance we'll hear from Rael again?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, there was an illustrator I met in
Chicago who's sort of working on something-- and one or two
people ask about film stuff.
And I think if some serious steam got underway with "Lamb"
as a film project, then I think that might sort of
regurgitate some of the rest of it.
AUDIENCE: Because you have to know that that was totally
groundbreaking.
It's one of my favorite pieces of music of all time.
PETER GABRIEL: Thank you.
Thank you very much.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for doing this.
PETER GABRIEL: OK.
You're welcome.
AUDIENCE: I'm a big fan.
PETER GABRIEL: Great.
Thank you.
AUDIENCE: Particularly going back to Genesis, "Selling
England by the Pound," one of my favorite
albums of all time.
My question, many, many years ago, I guess maybe around the
time of "So," I had a friend who was writing music, and he
was a big fan of yours as well.
And he was all, Peter Gabriel's playing in town.
Think I'm going to go to the concert and see if I can catch
him afterwards and shoot him a tape, and maybe he'll hear it
and really like it.
And maybe we'll work together.
And I'm all, uh, yeah, I'm not sure that's going to happen.
But--
INTERVIEWER: We'll take the tape right now--
AUDIENCE: I wondered if--
I wondered, did you get the tape?
And if so, what did you think of it?
PETER GABRIEL: Well--
AUDIENCE: Seriously, though, I mean--
PETER GABRIEL: Well, the entire "So" album was actually
a ripoff of that tape.
AUDIENCE: But it's always made me very curious.
You must get inundated with this kind of stuff.
And I'm curious how much you get, what you do with it, how
you deal with it, and if anything interesting has ever
come out of these kind of things.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah, we still do get a lot of stuff.
I used to worry a lot about it, and I'm afraid I
don't so much now.
And there's a lot more than we could ever listen to, so we've
got our record company to.
So they do some listening.
And we have, I think Hukwe Zawose was--
has sadly passed, but he's an amazing singer.
I think that fell through the letterbox at one point.
So some things have just come in out of the blue, but it's
more often through personal contact.
INTERVIEWER: And I have to confess, Jerry Marotta, who
played on "So," drums as well, I met once--
I used to play in a band.
I was kind of a drummer, more of a controlled flailer.
But I actually gave him a tape.
PETER GABRIEL: Oh, you did?
INTERVIEWER: And so I'd also like to have some credit.
AUDIENCE: Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
Unfortunately, I wasn't alive for the '86 show.
[LAUGHTER]
PETER GABRIEL: I was going to say--
INTERVIEWER: We won't hold that against you.
PETER GABRIEL: I was going to say, that makes two of us.
AUDIENCE: Anyways, I really enjoy Real World Records and
the remix contest you did.
And your CD is obviously amazing.
I'm just curious what advice you'd give to young producers
and mixing engineers who are trying to make it in today's
world, where it seems like credits aren't really a thing
in the digital world.
Like you download an MP3, and you can't look at a liner
note, right?
PETER GABRIEL: Right.
AUDIENCE: So how do you feel about that?
And are you behind, like, the Grammy petition that's
currently going on to get these music services to
include liner notes, et cetera?
PETER GABRIEL: I didn't actually know about it, but I
think I would be, because I think people work their asses
off sometimes.
And there should be a way that you can drill down and find
out everything about anything.
So I would support that.
AUDIENCE: Cool.
Thanks.
AUDIENCE: Peter, thanks for coming to Google.
PETER GABRIEL: You're welcome.
AUDIENCE: You discovered a lot of raw talent, music talent,
like Nusrat, from the subcontinent.
I wanted to know how you got to discover all those things,
and are you doing any other projects with any of the
subcontinent singers or musicians?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, I would never call Nusrat raw.
He was a master, certainly, when we met him.
And for those of you who don't know him, he's like Pavarotti
from Pakistan, but in Qawwali.
And it was actually Pete Townsend from The Who that
told me about Qawwali.
I didn't really know much about it.
When we were, in 1980, trying to put WOMAD, this world music
festival, together, he said, you should check that out.
And the first group we had in was a group
called Sabri Brothers.
And they were great, but they introduced us to others.
And Nusrat was the most revered.
And we put him with Massive Attack.
There's one little byline here, but we had a thing where
we deliberately excluded the artists' own country or
geographical region from our record contract, because very
often, artists would survive selling their records with
their own cassette tapes.
When Massive Attack did "Mustt Mustt" with Nusrat, I think it
was the biggest single in India or the subcontinent.
And of course, we didn't benefit from that at all,
which did make us think, scratch our heads.
But he was such an amazing artist to work with, I think
probably the finest singer I've ever worked with, in that
he not only had this passionate voice,
but he could improvise.
And it was like composition on the spot in an extraordinarily
powerful way.
So yeah.
With WOMAD, we have a lot of artists from the subcontinent,
and I think we'll still continue doing that.
I'm not sure what there is right now.
INTERVIEWER: I think we've got time for one more question.
PETER GABRIEL: I'm happy to do two, as we've got two.
INTERVIEWER: OK.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
I guess my anecdote of superfanhood is my LPs in my
bag here that I retain, two of which are both your works.
Every other one I've gotten rid of.
And I've had them since I was a kid.
I was at your '86 show.
And I'm here to express my gratitude for your grace and
humanity with how you've used your celebrity status over the
years, and for the decades of positive introspection that
your poetry has helped me with.
So thank you for being here.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: It seems like after that question, we should
probably just close it.
But since you're here and you've been so gracious, I was
wondering if you could talk about "In Your Eyes" and what
that song means, and writing it.
It's one of my favorite songs, but I'd like to
hear more about it.
PETER GABRIEL: Well, I guess it was a love song.
But what I was interested in, too, was I had a place in
Senegal for a while, and I was fascinated that in Africa you
could have love songs that could be interpreted two ways.
So it could be human physical love, or it could be spiritual
love for God.
And in my world, the church thing and the physical,
romantic thing were miles apart.
So that was a starting point for trying to sort of
integrate some of the lyrical ideas.
And then I think it was immortalized when John Cusack
held up the boombox, which was later, I think, repeated with
"Shock the Monkey," playing on--
now here's, I'm going to--
"South Park," thank you.
If I can travel as a group, then we can
share bits of my memory.
AUDIENCE: Well, great, thank you very much.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
And I was going to talk about Youssou, too, because I think
he's this sort of divine intervention at the end.
Because his voice is just straight out of heaven.
AUDIENCE: So really, then, it's about both?
It's about love of a person and of God.
PETER GABRIEL: Yeah.
I think it's just--
yeah.
Just outpouring of love.
AUDIENCE: Great.
Well, thank you.
Thanks a lot for coming.
PETER GABRIEL: Sure.
Thank you.
INTERVIEWER: And I guess the final question is, you're
going to be taking, at the end of the concert tour, a year.
And then do you have anything that you can reveal, as far as
plans beyond that or what's next?
PETER GABRIEL: Well, there still is this quite a lot of
stuff in the writing can, and there are a few projects that
I think I'll get back to work in September.
So I guess we'll know more then.
We're trying to get--
there's a thing called Gabble, which is
sort of like a visual--
we're trying to do a visual language for the net where it
turns words into pictures.
And we're just starting with that.
And I'm sure I'll be hustling for help later
on, so don't worry.
INTERVIEWER: Have a wonderful show tonight.
Have a great rest of the tour and a great sabbatical.
And thanks so much for coming by Google.
PETER GABRIEL: Thanks.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]