Peter Gabriel

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 19th of June 1971, Peter Gabriel took a running jump off a stage and expected the audience to catch him. They moved aside instead. He landed on the floor and broke his ankle, then performed the next several Genesis shows with a wheelchair and crutches. Gabriel was born in Chobham, Surrey, on the 13th of February 1950. He is an English singer, songwriter, musician and human rights activist. Over the following decades he fronted a rock band, walked away from it, and kept reinventing his working life. This documentary follows him through those reinventions. How does a boy who spent his singing-lesson money on a Beatles record end up co-founding a festival, a record label and a download service? Why did his first four solo albums all carry the same name? And what does he find in the full moon?

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• 2. Genesis Years

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  In 1965, while still at Charterhouse School, Gabriel formed a band called Garden Wall with schoolmates including Tony Banks on piano. At their final concert, Gabriel wore a kaftan and beads and showered the audience with petals he had picked from neighbouring gardens. Garden Wall ended in 1967. Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford, who had their own school band, then invited Gabriel and Banks to work on a demo tape. Their first co-written song was "She Is Beautiful". The tape reached Jonathan King, a Charterhouse alumnus, who was enthusiastic largely because of Gabriel's vocals. King proposed the name Gabriel's Angels. The others disliked it, so they took his other suggestion, Genesis.

  The debut album From Genesis to Revelation appeared in 1968 and failed commercially, so Gabriel went back to his studies. In September 1969, he, Banks, Rutherford and Phillips chose to make Genesis a full-time band. By Trespass in 1970, Gabriel was adding flute, accordion, tambourine and bass drum. He explained that he felt uncomfortable doing nothing during instrumental passages. He would have preferred keyboards, but he found Banks extraordinarily possessive of them. Trespass sold few copies, and Gabriel at one point secured a place at the London School of Film Technique because the band "seemed to be dying".

  During the Trespass tour, Gabriel began reciting stories to fill the silence while instruments were tuned or faults were fixed. All of them were improvised on the spot, and they changed as the tour went along. "The Musical Box", which opens Nursery Cryme in 1971, was the first song where he wove a story and characters into the lyrics. By then guitarist Steve Hackett and drummer Phil Collins had joined the group.

  In September 1972, at a show in Dublin, Gabriel vanished during the instrumental section of "The Musical Box". He returned wearing his wife's red dress and a fox's head, copying the cover of Foxtrot. Paul Conroy and Glen Colson, employees of the label Charisma Records, had suggested the costume. Accounts differ about what the band knew. Gabriel said he consulted them but tired of arguing. The others say nothing was mentioned, and they first mistook him for a fan invading the stage. Melody Maker put the incident on its front page, and the national exposure let the group double its performance fee.

  By late 1973, after Selling England by the Pound, a typical show had Gabriel in fluorescent make-up, a cape and bat wings for "Watcher of the Skies". He wore a helmet, chest plate and shield for "Dancing with the Moonlit Knight". "Supper's Ready" brought a crown of thorns and a flower mask, and "The Musical Box" an old man mask. His fight over keyboards never ended. After a lengthy argument with Banks, he was allowed a minor keyboard part on "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)", only for it to be left out of the mix. The song still became the band's first hit, reaching number 21 in the UK.

  The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, released in 1974, was Gabriel's last studio album with the group. He devised the story of Rael, a Puerto Rican youth living in New York City. He insisted on writing every lyric himself, whereas earlier albums had split the words among all the members. Tension grew when he left to pursue a film project with William Friedkin, then rejoined a week later. The difficult birth of his first daughter kept him away at times. Gabriel felt the band handled this family crisis unsympathetically, and Rutherford later admitted they had been overly fixated on their music.

  During a stop in Cleveland, Ohio, early in the tour, Gabriel told the band he would leave when it ended. Critics kept focusing on his theatrics and treated the music as secondary, which irritated the others. On the 15th of August 1975, he published a piece called "Out, Angels Out", explaining his disillusion with the business and his wish to spend time with his family. Collins reluctantly became the new lead singer after 400 other singers auditioned without success.

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• 3. Four Untitled Albums

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  By the end of 1975, Gabriel had demos in hand from writing around 20 songs with his friend Martin Hall. He called his break from the business his "learning period" and spent it taking piano and music lessons. When his solo debut arrived in 1977, it was recorded in Toronto with Bob Ezrin producing. Gabriel gave his first four albums no titles. Each was labelled Peter Gabriel, in the same typeface, with designs by Hipgnosis. In 1978 he compared the plan to a magazine that comes out once a year, with the same title and lettering and only the photo changing.

  The first album came out in February 1977 and reached number 7 in the UK. Its lead single, "Solsbury Hill", is an autobiographical song about a spiritual experience on top of Solsbury Hill in Somerset. Gabriel said it concerns being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get. "It's about letting go," he said. His 80-date tour ran from March to November 1977. Robert Fripp of King Crimson often played off stage and was introduced as "Dusty Rhodes".

  Fripp returned as producer for the second album, begun in the Netherlands in late 1977. Gabriel wrote "Mother of Violence" on it with his first wife, Jill. Released in June 1978, the record reached number 10 in the UK. On the tour from August to December 1978, Gabriel and his band shaved their heads.

  In England in 1979, Gabriel recorded the third album, which he later hailed as his artistic breakthrough. He had developed an interest in African music and drum machines. He banned cymbals so that keyboards and synths had more sonic space. That rule led to a distinctive gated reverb, discovered while recording drums on "Intruder" with Phil Collins. Collins used the effect on his debut solo single "In the Air Tonight", and it became a signature sound of the 1980s and beyond.

  Atlantic Records, Gabriel's US distributor for the first two albums, refused to release the third because it was not commercial enough. He signed with Mercury Records instead. The album came out in May 1980 and spent three weeks at number 1 in the UK. "Games Without Frontiers" reached number 4 and "Biko" number 36. On the 1980 tour, Gabriel fell backward into the crowd in a crucifix position for his first successful crowd surf. The stunt became a staple of his shows.

  For the fourth album, recorded across 1981 and 1982, Gabriel took on more of the production himself. A mobile studio sat parked at his home, Ashcombe House in Somerset, and he recorded solely on digital tape. He used a Fairlight CMI sampling synthesizer and mixed electronic instruments with sampled world percussion. Drum machines delighted him because a stored groove could carry on without him, shaped exactly as he wished rather than as a drummer thought fitting.

  Released in September 1982, the album reached number 6 in the UK and number 28 in the US. "Shock the Monkey" became his first US top 40 hit, at number 29. His American label, Geffen Records, titled the album Security to tell it apart from the first three, initially without Gabriel knowing. The 1982 tour lasted a year and was his first to make a profit. Recordings from it became his debut live release, Plays Live, in 1983. That same year he began work on the soundtrack for Alan Parker's film Birdy, co-produced with Daniel Lanois.

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• 4. So and Sledgehammer

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  So reached number 1 in the UK and number 2 in the US after its release in May 1986. It remains Gabriel's best-selling album, with over five million copies sold in the US alone. He recorded it in 1985, again with Lanois, after turning from the rhythm and texture of his recent work toward more straightforward songs.

  The record gave him "In Your Eyes", a signature song and concert staple, with a distinctive vocal appearance by Youssou N'Dour. It also produced three UK top 20 singles. They were "Sledgehammer", "Big Time" and "Don't Give Up", a duet with Kate Bush.

  On the US Billboard Hot 100, "Sledgehammer" went to number 1, the only Gabriel single ever to do so. It knocked "Invisible Touch" by Genesis out of the top spot, and that song was the only US number one for his old band. In the UK, "Sledgehammer" reached number 4.

  The lyrics of "Sledgehammer" deal with sex and relationships through innuendo. Its famed video was a collaboration between director Stephen R. Johnson, Aardman Animations and the Brothers Quay. It won a record nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987. In 1998, MTV named it the number one animated video of all time, and a 2011 Time report called it the most played music video ever on MTV.

  At the 1987 Brit Awards, So earned Gabriel Best British Male Solo Artist and Best British Video, the latter for "Sledgehammer". He received four Grammy nominations: Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, Song of the Year and Record of the Year for "Sledgehammer", and Album of the Year for So. In 1990, Rolling Stone ranked the album number 14 on its list of the top 100 albums of the eighties. The This Way Up Tour ran from November 1986 to October 1987. The follow-up album would take Gabriel from 1989 to 1992 to record.

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• 5. Us and Therapy

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  Us, recorded from 1989 to 1992, is one of Gabriel's most personal albums. It addresses his failed first marriage, his psychotherapy, and the growing distance between him and his eldest daughter. In 1971, at age 21, he had married Jill Moore, daughter of Baron Philip Moore. They had two daughters, Anna-Marie and Melanie, and both appear in the final sequence of the "Sledgehammer" video. The marriage became strained, and Moore had an affair with David Lord, co-producer of the fourth album. After the couple divorced in 1987, Gabriel fell into depression and attended therapy sessions for six years.

  The singles show the album's inward turn. The video for "Digging in the Dirt", directed by John Downer, has Gabriel covered in snails and foliage, and the song refers to his therapy. "Come Talk to Me", directed by Matt Mahurin, describes his struggle to get through to his daughter, with backing vocals by Sinéad O'Connor. She also sang on "Blood of Eden", the third single, which returns to Adam's rib for inspiration.

  Us reached number 2 on the album chart on both sides of the Atlantic, a lesser success than So. The singles made a modest chart impact, including the funkier "Steam", which recalled "Sledgehammer". For the Secret World Tour, touring keyboardist Joy Askew first sang O'Connor's part, and then O'Connor herself did for a few months. After she quit, Paula Cole took the role and appears on the recordings. These were a double album and a concert video, both called Secret World Live, released in 1994.

  In 2021, O'Connor said she had kept up an on-and-off relationship with Gabriel after his divorce. She ended it because she was frustrated with his lack of commitment, which inspired her single "Thank You for Hearing Me".

  Gabriel did not want the campaign for Us to feature only images of himself. He asked the artist filmmakers Nichola Bruce and Michael Coulson to coordinate a marketing campaign built on contemporary artists. Helen Chadwick, Rebecca Horn, Nils-Udo, Andy Goldsworthy, David Mach and Yayoi Kusama made original artworks for each song. Coulson and Bruce recorded the process on Hi-8 video. That footage became the basis for a promotional press kit, the long-form video All About Us and the interactive CD-ROM Xplora1: Peter Gabriel's Secret World.

  The videos earned him Grammy Awards. "Digging in the Dirt" won Best Short Form Music Video in 1993, and "Steam" won the same category in 1994. In 1996, the Secret World Live video won Best Long Form Music Video, naming director Francois Girard and producer Robert Warr.

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• 6. Worlds Beyond Rock

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  One morning, Gabriel was groping along the radio dial for a station he had lost on medium wave. He landed on a Dutch broadcast of the soundtrack to a film called Dingaka, with music he believed came from Ghana. One song on it, "Shosholoza", moved him so much that he later recorded it on the b-side of "Biko".

  The interest was already audible on his third solo album, and in 1982 he co-founded the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival, known as WOMAD. Writing in The Atlantic in 2019, Spencer Kornhaber argued that Gabriel did more than introduce Western pop to novel sounds. In his view, Gabriel also set a template for radio, majestic and flavoured with flourishes meant to sound exotic. Gabriel founded Real World Studios and a record label to help make and distribute such music. He worked to introduce Western listeners to artists such as Yungchen Lhamo, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and N'Dour. In 1990, he sang backing vocals on "Land of Anaka" by the Ugandan political exile Geoffrey Oryema, on Oryema's album Exile for the Real World label.

  Martin Scorsese first contacted Gabriel about scoring The Last Temptation of Christ in 1983. According to Gabriel, Scorsese wanted to show the struggle between the humanity and divinity of Christ in a powerful and original way. In 1988, Gabriel gathered musicians from WOMAD and drew inspiration from the National Sound Archive in London. The plan for ten weeks of recording shrank to three, so he kept working for four more months after the film was finished. The result, Passion, appeared in June 1989 and won a Grammy Award for Best New Age Performance.

  In the 1990s, working with Steve Nelson of Brilliant Media and director Michael Coulson, Gabriel developed multimedia CD-ROM projects. Xplora became the world's largest-selling music CD-ROM. EVE, a music and art adventure game co-produced with the Starwave Corporation in Seattle, won the Grand Prize at the Milia d'Or in Cannes in 1996.

  Gabriel also helped found on Demand Distribution, known as OD2, one of the first online music download services. Before it closed in 2009, its technology served over 100 download sites, including MSN Music UK and Wanadoo. Loudeye bought OD2 in June 2004, and Nokia bought it in October 2006 for $60 million. With Brian Eno, Gabriel co-founded a musicians union called Mudda, short for the magnificent union of digitally downloading artists.

  In 2001, Gabriel visited the Language Research Center at Georgia State University to hold keyboard jam sessions with bonobo apes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The experience inspired the song "Animal Nation", performed on his 2002 Growing Up tour. He also backed ApeNet, a project that aimed to link great apes through the internet for the first interspecies internet communication. In June 2005, he and the broadcast entrepreneur David Engelke bought Solid State Logic, a maker of mixing consoles, which was sold to the Audiotonix Group in 2017.

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• 7. Conscience and Causes

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  In 1986, Gabriel began a long association with Amnesty International, eventually taking part in all 28 of the Human Rights concerts the US Section staged between 1986 and 1998. He played the six-concert A Conspiracy of Hope tour in June 1986 and the twenty-concert Human Rights Now! world tour in 1988. Later came the Chile: Embrace of Hope Concert in 1990 and The Paris Concert for Amnesty International in 1998. At Amnesty's Secret Policeman's Ball benefit shows, alongside Lou Reed, David Gilmour and Youssou N'Dour, he closed with his anti-apartheid anthem "Biko".

  In 1992, Gabriel co-founded Witness, a human rights organisation that trains activists to use video and online technologies to expose abuses. In November 2007, Witness launched The Hub, a participatory media site for human rights. Amnesty International named him a recipient of its 2008 Ambassador of Conscience Award.

  In the late 1990s, Gabriel and the entrepreneur Richard Branson discussed an idea with Nelson Mandela. They imagined a small group of leaders who would work objectively, without personal interest, to solve hard global conflicts. On the 18th of July 2007, in Johannesburg, Mandela announced The Elders in a speech on his 89th birthday. Kofi Annan served as Chair and Gro Harlem Brundtland as deputy chair. Members include Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson and Graça Machel, and Desmond Tutu was an Honorary Elder. Donors including Branson and Gabriel fund the group independently.

  In November 2006, the Seventh World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Rome gave Gabriel its Man of Peace award. Mikhail Gorbachev and Walter Veltroni, the Mayor of Rome, presented it in the Giulio Cesare Hall of the Campidoglio. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. In March 2015, the University of South Australia awarded him an honorary doctorate for his commitment to creativity and its power to build peace.

  In December 2013, Gabriel posted a video tribute to the deceased Mandela. He called Mandela's willingness to build a Rainbow Nation after 27 years in jail "a unique and extraordinary example of courage and forgiveness".

  AllMusic has described Gabriel as one of rock's most political musicians. At the 1997 general election, he declared his support for the Labour Party under Tony Blair. By 1998, he was named among its biggest private donors. He later distanced himself from the Labour government because he strongly opposed Britain's involvement in the Iraq War. He said Labour was the only party he ever funded, and he did it to help remove the Tory government of the time. By 2013, he said he found online petitioning organisations more useful for effecting change than traditional party politics.

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• 8. Orchestras and the Moon

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  In 1997, Gabriel was invited to help direct and score the Millennium Dome Show, a live multimedia performance staged in London throughout 2000. He said the team had free rein, which contributed to problems such as a lack of proper budgeting. Management got the building finished on time, he felt, but missed the artistic side of the show. His soundtrack was released as OVO in June 2000. It reached vinyl for the first time as part of Record Store Day 2025.

  In 2002, Gabriel scored the Australian film Rabbit-Proof Fence with worldbeat music, and the album earned a Golden Globe nomination. Up followed in September 2002, his first full studio album in a decade. He had started it in 1995, paused three years later, and resumed in 2000 with 130 potential songs. Management at Virgin Records pushed him to finish it after almost two years. Up reached number 9 in the US and number 11 in the UK. His daughter Melanie sang backing vocals on the world tour.

  In 2008, Gabriel and Thomas Newman wrote "Down to Earth" for the Pixar film WALL-E. It won the Grammy Award for Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. Gabriel declined to perform at the Academy Awards telecast because producers limited his slot to 90 seconds, which he said was then cut to 65. John Legend and the Soweto Gospel Choir sang it instead.

  Gabriel recorded Scratch My Back in 2009, an album of covers of songs by David Bowie, Lou Reed, Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Regina Spektor and Neil Young. The plan was a swap, with each artist covering one of his songs in return for an album called I'll Scratch Yours. Several participants declined or delivered late, so the companion was put on hold and finally came out in September 2013. Gabriel avoided drums and guitar in favour of orchestral arrangements, working with John Metcalfe. He finished the vocals first and then built each song around them. Released in February 2010, the album reached number 12 in the UK.

  The New Blood Tour ran from March 2010 to July 2012 with a 54-piece orchestra. His daughter Melanie and the Norwegian singer-songwriter Ane Brun sang backing vocals. During that tour, Gabriel decided to re-record his own songs with an orchestra, and New Blood was released in October 2011. In September 2012, the Back to Front Tour began, with So performed in its entirety by the original musicians to mark its 25th anniversary. After the opening leg, he took a year off to travel the world with his children. In 2014, Chris Martin inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, and they performed "Washing of the Water" together. He had already entered it in 2010 as a member of Genesis.

  Gabriel had given the name I/O to his tenth studio album, and he began work on it as early as 1995. It was first meant to follow Up within 18 months, but touring pushed it far back. In 2005, he told Rolling Stone he had 150 songs in various stages. In 2019 he said on BBC Radio 6 that he had paused making music because his wife was ill, and he returned once she recovered. By 2021, he had recorded 17 new songs with Manu Katché, Tony Levin and David Rhodes.

  On the 6th of January 2023, Gabriel released "Panopticom", the first single from I/O. He then released a new piece on each full moon of 2023, and a different mix on each new moon, starting with the Dark Side Mix of "Panopticom". The third single, "Playing for Time", had opened shows on the Back to Front Tour as "Daddy Long Legs", with only Gabriel on piano and Levin on bass. Six more singles came out in the final six months, before I/O arrived on the 1st of December 2023. "Four Kinds of Horses" was a collaboration with Brian Eno and Richard Russell.

  The day before I/O came out, Gabriel told The New York Times that he did not expect the follow-up, which he called his "brain project", to take another 21 years. In February 2025, he told Mojo the next album would be called O/I, "that's I/O backwards". Its first song, "Been Undone", reached streaming platforms on the 3rd of January 2026, and more are following on days tied to the full moon. One title is already promised. Gabriel said in November 2023 that "What Lies Ahead", a song he performed several times that year, will be on the next record.

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