Growing Up: A Tour of Peter Gabriel. Part 2 of ?

I like the touch and the smell of all the pretty dresses you wear.

Intruder
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel [3]
Geffen : 1980
[Listen] [Buy]

Not One of Us
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel [3]
Geffen : 1980
[Listen] [Buy]

Family Snapshot
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel [3]
Geffen : 1980
[Listen] [Buy]

Games Without Frontiers
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel [3]
Geffen : 1980
[Listen] [Buy]

The Rhythm of the Heat
Peter Gabriel
Security (Peter Gabriel [4])
Geffen : 1982
[Listen] [Buy]

San Jacinto
Peter Gabriel
Security (Peter Gabriel [4])
Geffen : 1982
[Listen] [Buy]

Shock the Monkey
Peter Gabriel
Security (Peter Gabriel [4])
Geffen : 1982
[Listen] [Buy]

The Family and the Fishing Net
Peter Gabriel
Security (Peter Gabriel [4])
Geffen : 1982
[Listen] [Buy]

We were all hanging out one evening, college students, socializing. Procrastinating. Avoiding life while waiting for something to happen. It must have been a radio show night for me, because I had my binder of mp3 discs. Now being the kind of a guy I am, when I burned my entire mp3 collection to CDs, I entered every folder onto a spreadsheet so that, at any time, I could find what disc any album was on or vice versa.

That spreadsheet somehow got passed around and I faced a good ribbing about my commitment to organization. The jokes stopped however when a young lady reading the list choked on an “oh my god”, as if she’d uncovered something forgotten but tremendous. Everyone was now focused on her as she said “oh my god, I loved that album”. Suddenly aware of everyone’s attention, she quickly shuffled the list, dismissively saying “nothing. It’s too embarrassing.”

No amount of prodding from the crowd would get her to reveal her secret. Later in the evening, well after other subjects had come and gone, she climbed up next to me on the couch, leaned in, and whispered: “Peter Gabriel’s Security was my absolute favorite album when I was a kid.”

It was the hottest thing anyone ever whispered in my ear.


Peter Gabriel’s third and fourth albums are my favorites from his catalog, containing some of his tightest, most compelling, and darkest tracks. I hope that right now you are listening to Intruder, which sets an incredibly stark tone from the instant you press play. Then, at the 42 second mark, you get a riff that sounds like it could go somewhere bright, somewhere good, pull you out of this world you unwittingly entered, but the progression turns, accentuated by a compressed yell. No, you’re not getting out that easily.

In case this is your first listen and you’re not the kind of person who can easily pull lyrics from a song, (because I’m not), let the first three lines leave no doubt that Peter’s here on serious business:

I know something about opening windows and doors
I know how to move quietly, creep across creaky wooden floors
I know where to find precious things in all your cupboards and drawers

When most of the kids in my 4th grade class were listening to Kriss Kross and Boyz II Men, I was digesting this. I’m not saying that as a judgment against those who enjoyed them, but at the time I certainly didn’t volunteer to bring my tapes in on “play your favorite music in art class” day. It’s a wonder I have relatively normalized social skills.

My other absolute favorite here comes from Security. The sounds of San Jacinto are merit enough to place the song on a pedestal, but I was always taken in by the imagery of it: the contrasts of steam and stone in sweat lodges with the suburban comforts of back yard pools and strip mall steak houses. In a live version, Peter explains the inspiration for the song:

Many years ago we were touring around America and we got to a place in the Midwest. It was late, we were having a drink, and there was a guy who had been working as a porter. We got chatting, and one of the things he said was that “my apartment is burning down.” This was a strange thing for somebody to say quite so casually. He said “I don’t have any means of getting there. I don’t care about my possessions. The only thing I care about is my cat.”

We gave him a lift to the apartment and managed to get his cat out alive. We were talking afterwards and it turns out he was an Apache Brave. He told me of the time when, at age 14, he’d been taken up to the top of the mountain with the old medicine man and, in his sack, there was something moving. It turned out to be a rattlesnake. As they got to the top of the mountain the old man pulled out the snake, bit the boy with it, and left him there for 14 days. If he came down back to the village, he was a brave.

The end of the song has always been one of my favorite moments. I wish there were a way to take the subjective experience of these sound waves and impart to you the power and significance they hold for me. To explain the way the background shifts thick from ear to ear, the way it manages to sound both of nature and artifice providing unsteady grounding in both worlds, belonging to neither, to underscore the simplest of affirmations neglected daily in our churning technologic civilization: we will walk / on the land / we will breathe / of the air / we will drink / from the stream / we will live / hold the line.

I don’t mean to take away from the other songs featured here by focusing mostly on these two. Not One of Us is a mostly straightforward rock tune with a breakdown at the end that hints at his direction in the next album. Family Snapshot is the most skillful and poetic way I could imagine executing a song written from the point of view of an alienated man and hopeful assassin. I listened to Games Without Frontiers for countless hours in my childhood, enchanted by the sound.

The Rhythm of the Heat is dark, moody, unrelenting, has a terrific climax, and is a great lead in to San Jacinto. Shock the Monkey wasn’t ever my favorite, but grew on me as I aged. One of Peter’s biggest hits before Sledgehammer and Big Time broke, it is an example of his ability to craft an easily digestible pop tune while retaining his odd imagery and sound. The Family and The Fishing Net was another childhood favorite. I was drawn in by the absolute oddity of it, even more so than I. Being at the end of side A meant it was easy to rewind back and listen repeatedly. I don’t know how many times I played this with headphones on, miming along, but I’m sure if you can manage to travel back to my bedroom in 1992 with a video camera, it would make great YouTube material. Oh yeah, and in case you couldn’t tell by the tone of the song, it’s about a wedding. Cheers!


Oh, the young lady? I didn’t pay it much mind since she had a boyfriend, who’s now her husband and father to her child. She did give me an idea though: a dating service for kids raised on Gabriel. They could call it The Fishing Net.