In this issue

• MTV’s stop-motion glory days (before my time)

• Ancient/future/80s wizards

• Sunbursts, horsehairs, and butterfingers

• Two kinds of gold dust

• Preliminary comments on Christian charismatic spirituality

Songwriter Files 1: Peter Gabriel

By Jeremy Siegel and Paul

In 2005 and 2006, my friend Jeremy introduced me to his kind of music, which consisted of the 20-minute songs, fantasy-themed lyrics, avante garde theatrics and technical virtuosity of 1970s progressive rock, or prog rock. He gave me mix cds of early Genesis, Yes and Rush. I dropped in on him working at the music section of the late Circuit City to pick his musical mind. Jeremy bears some responsibility for putting me musically out of touch with my peers who listened to Postal Service and Jack Johnson and Kanye West and Green Day.

So who better to talk to about our mutual favourite, the English singer and songwriter and original Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel? What follows is an abbreviated version of our long discussion of Peter Gabriel’s songwriting and his post-Genesis discography.

How would you describe the magic of Peter Gabriel?

Jeremy: The magic of Peter Gabriel starts with his voice. It’s rough and raspy, but he uses it to accentuate emotions. From his earliest days with Genesis he sounds much older than he was at the time. He was 21 years old when Genesis recorded the song “Seven Stones,” but he sounds something like a 300-year-old English wizard: “The old man’s guide is chauwwwnce” (SIC, chance). Now at 73, his voice still retains that magic, like a 352-year-old English wizard.

Another ingredient in Peter Gabriel’s magic potion is his storytelling and embracing theatrical elements. Supposedly his onstage storytelling came of necessity, to fill time while his Genesis bandmates tuned-up numerous instruments, including multiple 12-string guitars. He began to take on the roles of characters within the songs while wearing bizarre costumes. When he became a solo artist, the costumes became more subtle but the emphasis on stage design and visual art came to the forefront. PG concerts have always been performance art events.

Paul:  You’re right, it’s the voice. And Peter Gabriel’s hushed vocals can be just as compelling as the soaring high notes (think “Mercy Street”). 

Other magical ingredients include his experimentation and his morphing sound, from ridiculous prog rock to 70s feel-good rock to dark 80s rhythmic trances to polished pop.

He has a penchant for surrounding himself with great musicians, including the bassist Tony Levin, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, the indomitable Kate Bush, Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and Sinead O’Conner to name a few. Gabriel is almost as much a curator as he is a singer and songwriter. This leads me to question 2. 

What kind of songwriter is Peter Gabriel?

Jeremy: Big themes, big emotions, “Big Time” (1986), and procrastination. Gabriel wrote the lyrics to Genesis’ 23-minute “Supper’s Ready” (1972). To match the ambitious length, the song’s lyrical theme is none other than the book of Revelation. The climactic final stanza reads:

There’s an angel standing in the sun
And he’s crying with a loud voice
”This is the supper of the Mighty One”
Lord of Lords, King of Kings
Has returned to lead his children home
To take them to the new Jerusalem

Two years later, Gabriel wrote the lyrics to a sprawling concept double album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. It doesn’t hold together as well as “Supper’s Ready,” but it’s a good example of Gabriel’s ambitious, peculiar, and pun-filled style. During his solo career Gabriel began to write songs inspired by his personal relationships, which not surprisingly produced his most commercially successful period. “In Your Eyes,” “Secret World,” “Come Talk to Me,” and “Love to be Loved” all have a deep emotional resonance. Supported by a blend of world-music and pop sensibilities, So (1986) and Us (1992) are by far his best solo albums in my opinion. There’s a fun anecdotal story from this era about producer Daniel Lanois hammering a studio door shut so that Gabriel would be forced to finish the lyrics before he could leave. Over the years Gabriel’s writing style changed from polished pre-written lyrics, to developing the melodic emotional core of the music and filling in the lyrics at the last minute. That might explain the long stretches of time between albums.

Paul: Hold your horses there, Jeremy. We’ll get to ranking Peter Gabriel’s albums yet. 

I’m interested in revisiting Peter Gabriel’s songwriting to re-evaluate the musical intuitions of my 19-year-old self, who became a real Peter Gabriel fan with your help. While hearing two music heads some years ago debating the merits of Paul McCartney versus Brian Wilson as pop songwriters, I interrupted and said, “Peter Gabriel!” Brian-Wilson-guy just scoffed and went back to lauding “Good Vibrations.” Was Brian-Wilson-guy right? And does Gabriel’s music stand up after years of listening to Leonard Cohen and Bill Mallonee and Tom Waits? Or his peers Kate Bush or Graceland-era Paul Simon or even his old band-mate Phil Collins?  

Lyrically, Gabriel is sometimes grandiose, sometimes psychological, sometimes personal, and (in his Genesis and early solo days) often weird. Sometimes his pop songs are delightfully succinct and evocative. But other times his observations can be general and “big” to the point of saying very little at all (“Stuff going out / stuff going in / I’m just a part of everything”). I get the feeling that Peter Gabriel thinks he’s much more profound and insightful than he is (“Did I dream this belief / or did I believe this dream?”) But when you have that voice!

A lot of Gabriel’s songs can be melodically minimal, but there’s something spine-tingling when his rich voice belts a high note at just the right tone to complete the tapestry. There are some exceptional melodies that can stand on their own, but mostly Peter Gabriel makes songs that could only work as full soundscapes. 

What are your thoughts on his critically-acclaimed album 3 (“Melt”)?

(Note: Gabriel’s first four albums had no titles, so they are named by number or by nicknames given to describe the cover art). 

J: Melt is a step forward in both musical content and sound quality, the latter thanks to Steve Lillywhite (producer) and Hugh Padgham (recording engineer). This album, released in 1980, introduced the world to the new 80s gated-reverb drum sound. (Aside: Phil Collins played drums on many of these tracks, and then he and Hugh Padgham expanded the sound on Collins’ first solo album, which included “In the Air Tonight.” [Bah-boom, bah-boom, bah-boom, bah-boom, Boom, Boom]). Anyway, Peter Gabriel’s writing on Melt is strong; anti-war and anti-apartheid themes are present, and his voice sounds great. Notable songs include “Games Without Frontiers,” “Biko,” “And Through The Wire,” and “I Don’t Remember.” 

P: Well put. On 3 (Melt), Peter Gabriel finds his solo sound and sets the stage for a lot of music to follow. The experimental musicianship on this album is excellent. Gabriel forbade the album's drummers from using cymbals, making for a more driving, creative, sometimes darker drum sound. The reverbous drums, weird processed vocals, intricate marimbas, Robert Fripp’s guitar work, and Kate Bush’s staccato background vocals provide an alternatingly eerie, upbeat and powerful backdrop to Gabriel’s songwriting. Lyrically, Gabriel explores the psychology of his characters, from creepy Cockney burglars to calm mental hospital inmates to would-be presidential assassins with childhood trauma to baffled amnesiacs. My album favourites in this psychological vein are the percussive “No Self Control,” the grandiose “Family Snapshot'' and the marimba-only “Lead a Normal Life.” The final track, “Biko,” marks Gabriel’s first foray into fusing “world music” sounds with human rights activism, leading to Gabriel forging connections with Nelson Mandela and global human rights advocates (Bono also credited the song with inspiring his own anti-Apartheid efforts). This is Peter Gabriel at his creative best.  

Let's talk about Peter Gabriel's 1986 hit album, So.

P: From the shimmering hi-hat and synth notes of the opening moments of the first track, it is clear that something tantalizingly different is coming. Then a huge crashing wall of sound and rhythm arrives with Gabriel’s rich voice: “Red rain is coming down.” Peter Gabriel is reborn as a so-much-larger-than-life pop star. 

The soul-inspired “Sledgehammer,” the biggest of several hits on the album, is driven by giant brass (by Wayne Jackson who played with Otis Redding), amazing bass (by Tony Levin) and Gabriel's ludicrous bravado and sexual innuendo. But the downtempo and mid-tempo songs do the real shining; “Mercy Street” and “In Your Eyes” (with Senegalese singer Youssou N'Dour) are perhaps among the best songs of the 80s. “Big Time” is ironically his closest thing to a sellout pop song while the lyrics satirize upwardly-mobile, egotistical yuppies. I find the song a little annoying (maybe from hearing it so often while I worked as a bank teller… it’s bank music), but the lyrics are great.

On “Don’t Give Up” a working class man bemoans Thatcher-era unemployment and dislocation until Kate Bush soothes him. (Peter Gabriel originally had Dolly Parton in mind for the duet!) Another duet–”This is the Picture” with Laurie Anderson–is one of Peter Gabriel's worst musically and lyrically; it is bafflingly weird, but in a bland way (“Falling snow / excellent snow / here it comes / watch it fall”). But the song is the last hint we have of the experimental Peter Gabriel for more than a decade. The pop star has displaced him.

And what an album it is. It's almost perfect. I doubt we have this conversation about Peter Gabriel without this mid-career left turn. 

J: Great summary, Paul. So was my introduction to Peter Gabriel, and is still my favorite album of his. It’s his best album and his most accessible. Factor in regular MTV airplay for the Sledgehammer music video and you have a recipe for pop stardom.

You covered the songs perfectly; I’ll just give some credit to Canadian producer Daniel Lanois. The recording quality of So cannot be overstated. It’s a thick 80s sound, yet the album sounds organic, not overly processed or digital. The recording of the drums/percussion (expertly played by Manu Katche, Jerry Marotta and others) captures the full dynamic range: from the subtlest ghosts-notes, to the most powerful fills. The percussion alone on “In Your Eyes” is enough to evoke emotion from me. Tony Levin’s bass also sounds great in the mix, and PG’s keyboards sound distinct and emotive, especially the electric piano. So (1986) is among an incredible run of albums that Lanois produced in the 80s and 90s, which also includes The Unforgettable Fire (U2, 1984); The Joshua Tree (U2, 1987), Oh Mercy (Bob Dylan, 1989); Achtung Baby (U2, 1991), and Us (Peter Gabriel, 1992). Basically the career peaks of U2 and Peter Gabriel. Good job Canada. 

Our definitive Peter Gabriel rankings

Do you have any final thoughts?

J:  If anyone’s interested, I recommend the So album as the place to start listening. A perfect 1980s album in my opinion. 

P: Agreed! If you're more into the rock and roll and experimental side of things, 1/Car and 3/Melt are other great ways into his catalog. Or try this personally-curated Peter Gabriel mix on Spotify or Apple Music. 

I've enjoyed returning to Peter Gabriel’s big sounds. He's great and singular, but obviously no Beatle. Or Beach Boy? I'll have to get back to you.

But there’s also something strained about a lot of his music. I liked parts of his first solo album from the 70s (1/Car) on this round of listening because it is fun, creative and not self-serious. His dark 80s experimentation and his soaring pop songwriting often seems forced after repeated listens. Vampire Weekend put words to it: “This feels so unnatural / Peter Gabriel too.”

Are you dying to know what we think about Peter Gabriel’s other music, including his recently released album i/O? Fear not! Here is a link to our longer, unabridged conversation about Peter Gabriel’s solo discography.

Thanks, Jeremy!

More songwriter, word-writer, thinker and artist files?

That could be up to you

I’m prematurely judging the Peter Gabriel discussion to be a success. Who doesn’t want to read two guys exhaustively dissecting the music of a pop star past his prime? Well, if you want in on the next discussion, let’s do it!

Some songwriters and musicians I’d love to discuss with interested readers:

• Anais Mitchell

• Lauryn Hill

• Brian Wilson/The Beach Boys

• The Cure

• Leonard Cohen

• Rich Mullins

• Tracy Chapman

• David Bazan/Pedro the Lion

• Talib Kweli

• Bill Mallonee/Vigilantes of Love

• Corb Lund

• Anoushka Shankar

• Sister Rosetta Tharpe

• Randy Newman

• Inti Illimani

• The Appleseed Cast

I’m not limited to music. You can expect future profiles of writers, thinkers, naturalists and artists. Do you want to talk about Heidegger or Salman Rushdie or Chagall or Alice Walker or Emily Dickinson or St. Gregory of Nyssa or Emily Carr or George Grant or John Muir? Let’s do it.

The case for liking lichens

In the waning hours of a winter day, when the birds were silent, I took a short walk. I had recently created an account on iNaturalist, a database of wildlife photos that incorporates community feedback for identification. On that cold day, I looked for what wildlife I could find in our snow-laden Interior Douglas Fir-heavy yard. I spooked a few of the perennially-present Mule Deer (I’m sure they outnumber squirrels here). And there were the fir trees with the odd Trembling Aspen and Lodgepole Pine. Everything else was under snow.

So I looked closely at the lichens on the fir bark. I was vaguely familiar with the white leafy stuff and the wispy green and brown hairy and bushy lichens that made perfect shrubs for my childhood model farm (my farm set came with American and Canadian flag stickers for the silos and I used only the Canadian ones). But I didn’t expect to find such a magical, tiny alien world.

On the Douglas Firs I found the white leafy Shield Lichens, wispy brown Pale-footed Horshair Lichens, aptly named greenish beard lichens, the almost neon wolf lichens, and innumerable tiny and ornate orange, green and white figures. A big rock behind the house had half a dozen or more different lichen species, most of them the grainy crustile lichens that look like powdery dust or bird scat splotches from afar. But closer in, I was impressed by the intricate mosaics, leafy growths and otherworldly disks (called apothecia).

Lichens are a symbiotic combination of fungi and algae or bacteria (and sometimes also yeast, as discovered by nearby lichenologist Trevor Goward). The fungi give the lichens their form, and they sort of farm the algae within. Different lichens have a fascinating a variety of spores, leafs, protuberances, spots and granules. With thousands of species and fewer handy resources, lichen identification can be a pretty advanced affair, but I’m trying to learn slowly.

I’m partial to some of the tiny rock crust Map Lichens. These little mosaics, which often do look like maps, thrive in high altitudes. Yellow Map Lichens are among the longest-living organisms, and some alpine lichens have been estimated to be over 10,000 years old. Their age is used to date ice age glacial retreat.

The innumerable varieties make for creative, descriptive nomenclature. Some favourites include Bare-bottomed Sunburst, Hoary Cobblestone, Lipstick Powderhorn, Warty Beard, Orange-footed Pixie Cup, Effervescent Tarpaper, Witch’s Hair, Brown-eyed Wolf, Tiny Button, Chocolate Chip, Lustrous Camouflage, Arctic Butterfingers, Golden Moonglow, Peppered Kidney, and—I kid not—Smoker’s Lung.

I’m fascinated by this new, little world. Here are a few recent selections.

Now that I’ve noticed lichens, it’s hard not to see them on every tree and rock. Or fence posts with tiny bursts of colours.

If you are a fan of the tiny novelty-coloured cauliflower aesthetic, like I am, lichen-looking (lichenry?) may be for you.

Charismatic Fires 1: what kind of person?

I spent several formative years in the world of independent charismatic Christianity. Simply put, this is the revivalist, miracle-focused, ecstatic arm of evangelical (and not only evangelical) Christianity. Charismatic spirituality emphasizes a person’s direct encounter with God, an encounter expected to be felt physically or emotionally or miraculously. Someone visiting such a church would encounter emotive worship music, people praying for healing and miracles, people sharing prophetic words with others, perhaps people shaking or falling over.

Since the 1950s and 1960s, this style of Christianity has spread beyond its recent Pentecostal roots to Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics and many others. Many of the world’s Christians hold to some form of Pentecostal or charismatic Christianity.

Needless to say, this has always been a controversial form of Christian practice. A lot of ink has been spilled about Pentecostals and charismatics: Christian cessationists who believe miracles stopped with the apostles, Reformed Protestants with theological gripes, skeptics seeking to evaluate or discredit miracle claims, conservative Christians anxious about the threat of New Age influences, academic sociological explorations of power and charisma (in the sociological sense of the word), and, recently, political exposés of the Christian nationalist ambitions of key leaders.

I have found most of these approaches wanting in their explanatory power. As I’ve done some digging into my own experiences, and some academic study of the movement, my search is increasingly guided by a different question. I want to know how charismatic practices and ideas form people, how they shape a person over time. What kind of person does charismatic spirituality make?  

I suppose you could say that this is a New Testament-inspired approach. “You will know them by their fruits,” Jesus said, specifically about evaluating whether someone was a false prophet. I’ve sought to understand what kind of fruit my own time as a charismatic produced, and the answer is anything but simple.

My preliminary thesis is that charismatic spirituality can be invigorating and transformative in the short term but destabilizing and often unsustainable over years.

My introduction to this world had a feeling of magic about it. It’s difficult to convey the huge emotions I felt praying and singing with people at small church that met in a living room near my college campus. I had the feeling that God was everywhere, that anything was possible, that I had discovered a great secret that I had before only known in theory. It felt like a dramatic before-and-after moment of my life.

But some problems followed shortly thereafter. The emphasis on surrendering my will to God and constantly listening for the Holy Spirit’s voice and direction became infantilizing, a move backwards in maturity and initiative. I developed some weird physical and emotional tics. I lost a great deal of interior peace to my new excitement and zeal. I did and said some regrettable, immature and impulsive things. And the addiction-like desire to recreate the most profound and emotional moments left me exhausted.

If it was unsustainable for me personally, I saw similar patterns play out around me. Others had dramatic transformations—genuine life changes for the better, with real hope and excitement. But some of the same problems I faced—immature emotionalism, passivity, difficulty coping—were regular features.

People respond to charismatic Christian practices differently, and I have admired those who can live in the charismatic world become better people for it. I was not so strong. There are a lot of pitfalls that risk damaging a person’s humanity and spiritual life. I think there are several real positives too, among them possibilities for emotional healing and tentatively promising contemplative prayer practices.

I intend to revisit some of these practices and themes in more detail in future newsletter issues. I am specifically interested in how charismatic spirituality is practiced in influential independent charismatic networks. I use the term “independent charismatic” to refer to charismatic churches and institutions with no ties to historic denominations. Independent ministries such as Bethel Church in Redding, California and Catch the Fire in Toronto seek widespread influence rather than denomination-building; their ideas, practices and music have an enormous reach. You can expect to read about charismatic worship music, spiritual warfare, inner healing prayer, “anointing” and leadership, “soaking prayer” and, maybe, gold dust in future issues. My main question in exploring these topics will be what kind of person these practices shape.

Toodles.

Stuff of the issue

• Onomatopoeia: Bam

• Bird insult: Plan Chachalaca

• Book: Jacques Ellul - Perspectives on our Age

• Highbrow takedown: “It is necessary for me to tell you that this learned naturalist and worthy man [Thomas Say] is a very bad correspondent; his own collection takes all his care & time & I doubt that you would ever obtain from him a single fly.” - Charles-Lucien Bonaparte, 1824

• Punctuation mark: :  

• Song: Feist with Timber Timbre - “Don’t Give Up” (Peter Gabriel cover)

• Birding hotspot: Iona Island Jetty, Richmond, BC

-Paul