Peter Gabriel, "Plays Live"
Mitch keeps running up that hill
I’ve never thought of myself as an “art guy”.
Sure, I’ve spent years traversing the globe in search of Jacques-Louis David originals (I just saw the “Portrait of the Sisters Zénaïde and Charlotte Bonaparte” - it was truly astounding,) but doesn’t everyone do that?
My artistic tastes are decidedly low-brow. I’d rather watch old men play golf than suffer through musical theater. I only like the symphony if they’re awkwardly backing up a jamband. I got about 70 pages through David Foster Wallace before retreating to my beloved Claremont-era X-Men comics.
I’ve tried so hard throughout my life to be more mature, sophisticated, and classy, but I guess the heart wants what the heart wants. I’m just not an art guy, no matter how much I want to be seen as an art guy.
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For not being an art guy, I have noticed a weird pattern in the records I’ve pitched over the years: I sure do love art rock albums. Father John Misty. Genesis. Tom Waits. The Flaming Lips. Jonathan Wilson. Talking Heads. I get bored by the basic blues and rock albums and always need something a little avant garde to hold my interest.
Maybe I am an art guy after all, but I don’t really want to be perceived by the world as such. Or maybe I’m not an art guy, but I desperately want to be seen as one. Or maybe I’ve just lost all ability to separate perception from reality.
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Peter Gabriel is definitely an art guy, but he’s perceived by different people in different ways. For some people he’s an MTV-era hitmaker. For other people he was the creative force behind early-Genesis, using an array of characters and costumes to tell outrageous musical short stories. But us real monkeyheads see him as the most innovative solo artist of the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, who released 4 untitled solo albums we affectionately call Car, Scratch, Melt, and Security.
Peter Gabriel Plays Live captures Gabriel’s early solo period and shows him pushing the boundaries of his artistic expression both musically and thematically. His embrace of world music shifted his emphasis from melody to rhythm, and the haunting drums dominate this performance from the pulsing opener “The Rhythm of the Heat” to the anthemic closer “Biko”. In between he alternates between spooky ballads like “San Jacinto”, disturbing portraits like “Family Snapshot”, and crowd-pleasing rockers like “D.I.Y.” and “On the Air”. He’s a magician at sequencing songs, pulling back when things are getting too dark or weird - finding a balance between the arty and the accessible - and challenging our perceptions about rock music itself.
Even more impressive than his musical evolution is his song writing. Gabriel always performed his Genesis songs in character. He created separation between the art and the artist by donning masks, and it was never clear where Gabriel ended and the character began.
By the time of Plays Live he had abandoned the costumes for face paint - his true self still hidden, yet slightly more accessible. But he never abandoned his love of perspective - his innate ability to empathetically become someone else, and to fully capture their lives and their perspective. Are these actually Gabriel’s words and ideas or is he just a vessel for someone else’s perspective? Does it even matter when the music and the lyrics are so intoxicating?
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You guys have a pretty bad track record when it comes to all things Genesis. It’s high time for you to change your existing perceptions and embrace the artistic side of rock music - or, so help me God, they’ll be a Mike & the Mechanics album in your future.
Ken’s Response:
There are very few safer takes than “Peter Gabriel is a genius.” The man basically invented the art-rock wizard archetype, and Plays Live is a graduate-level course in musical precision and on-stage artistry. And yet, here I sit, eyes glazed, mind meandering, wondering when “Shock the Monkey” will finally shock me into consciousness.
The band is so tight it would make Tuco Salamanca stutter for at least 5 seconds, the production is perfect, and Gabriel’s voice never misses an airy step. And yet, for all its sonic wizardry, I find myself wondering if this is what musical purgatory feels like; beautiful, cathartic, slightly exhausting, and lasting (seemingly) several lifetimes.
There's sort of an eerie sterile perfection to it all. But where’s the mess, the emotion dripping from each word or every note of the sobbing guitar.
Still, I tip my trucker hat to it. You don’t have to love the party to acknowledge the host’s supreme talent. With Gabriel’s haunting voice, he could read the yellow pages and make it sound like Keats. But if you ask me to listen to Plays Live again, you’ll get a less-than-enthusiastic response.
Peter Gabriel is a genius. This album is genius. I am not. But even the bored must bend the knee before greatness.
Pitch Successful (Whatever happened to Ione Skye?)
CJ’s Response:
I had dinner with my old friend and former creative partner Fred B. the other night. Fred and I were one of the copywriter/art director teams working on the Ocean Spray account at a Boston ad agency a hundred years ago. When we weren’t trying to figure out how to make a cranberry cocktail with 700 grams of sugar sound healthy, we were talking about music. That conversation continues to this day.
Fred grew up in the shadow of Yankee Stadium during the 1970s. And while he hated the Bronx Bombers, he loved the many opportunities the city gave him to enjoy live music. Fred saw Led Zeppelin at the Garden in ‘77. He was at the Sly and the family Stone show when Sly got married on stage. He saw the Ramones, the Cars and, perhaps his most memorable concert, Pink Floyd on the Animals Tour. When Fred told me about the light show that accompanied the opening number, “Sheep,” he described it like this:
Behind the twin walls of spotlights positioned on both sides of the stage there were these two billows of smoke and exploding white sparks. As the two backlit clouds of lights intensified, two small jet black “crafts” slowly rose until they hovered over the musicians, “shooting” alternating bands of colored spotlights on each of the band members as they played. The effect was simply spectacular even after the smoke and sparks of their “lift off” had long dissipated.
Even relating that to me all these years later, Fred’s face radiated the joy he felt at that show.
I don’t get that same joy from listening to Peter Gabriel. As Ken said, Gabriel is a genius. His voice is lush and singular. His songs are rich and complex. And all of it makes me want to lie face-down on the floor in a dark room and melt into the carpet.
I can’t be that sad for an entire show.
Like Fred, I need the joy.
Pitch Failed (I guess I’m not one of you.)
Don’s Response:
This EONS season is focused on live albums, so I’ve proposed records that capture the spark, spirit, and spectacle of live performances, warts and all.
Alas, my EONS mates have eschewed the unbridled intensity of Bob Dylan’s epic roller-coaster ride, The Rolling Thunder Review; as well as The Rolling Stones’ Get Yer Ya Ya’s Out! – which captured the precise moment the Glimmer Twins emerged from The Beatles’ shadow.
Instead, we’ve enshrined into the Exile On Newbury St. Collection Eric Clapton’s limp, painfully boring Unplugged album and – I’m sorry to remind you – Tesla’s colossally cheesy Five Man Acoustical Jam.
I pause for effect.
We go to concerts because they are edgy, exciting, and enthralling. We yearn to experience something even the best records can’t capture – the element of surprise, whether it’s an extended jam, an alternate arrangement, or in-the-moment musicianship that transcends studio perfection crafted through multiple takes.
I was hoping Peter Gabriel – an artist’s artist if there ever was one – would be bold enough to release a live album that lived up to these expectations.
Instead, Plays Live is a studio album in disguise.
The crowd noise is minimal, the mix is immaculate, and every note is polished. It’s a technically impressive recording, but as a live album, it falls flat.
While Gabriel’s vocals are strong, they rarely deviate from their studio counterparts. There are no extended jams, nor altered arrangements. Songs like “Solsbury Hill” and “Shock the Monkey” sound nearly identical to their studio versions, with little of the adrenaline or improvisation that make live renditions exciting.
Gabriel even cheekily acknowledges in the liner notes that the album includes “cheating” -- post-production overdubs that clean up or replace flawed parts. That admission cements the sense that Plays Live is more concerned with sounding perfect than capturing a moment. Unfortunately, it’s an album about playing live, not a document of it.
Mitch, CJ, and Ken dismissed the Dylan and Stones records because of the imperfections that I personally think make those albums - and concerts - wonderful. I’m killing this one because it’s too perfect.
Pitched Failed (It’s just So-So)
Mitch’s pitch was unsuccessful and Peter Gabriel Plays Live will be exiled from the Newbury St. collection, just like those Dylan and Stones albums Don keeps banging on about. What’s your take on Gabriel and this live album season at EONS? Please let us know in the comments.
Please join us next week as the circus comes to town when Ken pitches The Grateful Dead’s 1990 tribute to Brent Mydland, Without a Net.
Don brings up an interesting point about what he's looking for in a live album, but I think he's conflating two arguments. I agree that a live album should offer something different than a studio album - a new arrangement, different instrumentation, improvisation, etc. Otherwise you could just listen to the studio album. (I think the songs on Plays Live are performed quite differently, even if their arrangements are largely the same.) That's a very different argument than saying that live albums have to be imperfect or sloppy to be good. While I can tolerate sloppiness in the midst of experimentation or improvisation, that doesn't make it desirable. I'd much rather have a band playing tightly, firing on all engines, not flubbing the lyrics and a well recorded and produced album.
Tesla's 5 Man album is great and I'm sure I'll listen to it again this year by choice. Clapton's Unplugged is mixed, but I'll happily listen to Running on Faith or the other standout tracks. You'd have to literally Clockwork Orange me to get me to ever listen to Ya-Ya's or Hard Rain again. They are both deeply unpleasant listening experiences full of sloppy performances that are way worse than their studio counterparts. I'm glad Rolling Stone thinks they're legendary albums. I find them both unlistenable, and I truly love Dylan and the Stones, each of whom has no fewer than 47 albums that are better than Ya-Ya's or Hard Rain.
CJ, I think you know how I feel about Peter Gabriel. He makes me feel everything every time. To me, that is mastery. https://lgumbinner.substack.com/p/no-one-will-steal-music-from-me-again?