I saw the recent Classic Albums documentary recently about the 'So' album and have been on a youtube/spotify/we7 crawl..
Some amazing music amongst that lot...
I HATED Peter Gabriel. Like really bad. For decades. And then I developed a brief friendship in the mid 2000's with a fan who worshiped him. I resisted. Fan insisted. I HATE Peter Gabriel I said! I HATE f*ing 'Shock the Monkey' and 'Sledgehammer'. HATE HATE HATE Peter Gabriel! So he eventually just up and ordered three CDs from Amazon and had them shipped to my house from his Peter Gabriel love nest. Cheeky! Threw in Gilmour's 'On An Island' too, and I didn't even ever say I hated David Gilmour. They just showed up in my mailbox one day and made me laugh. Result: those CDs are among some of my best music. His mainstream stuff is almost unlistenable, except for Solisbury Hill. His albums as a whole are stunning. Lucky for me I had a stubborn friend becuase I would never have sought that music out in a hundred years.
brENsKi wrote:
and his genesis stuff is better than anything they produced from "and then there were three" onwards
which kinda says it all
I am a bit curious how that says it all...
If it was Peter that was making the music great, you would have expeced his genesis stuff to be better than anything from A Trick Of The Tail onwards.
I'm also a bit sceptical about the first album being better than any of the latter albums! :D
I would dare to say that Genesis was at it's best when it had any four persons from the Banks/Collins/Gabriel/Hackett/Rutherford group, ie. from Nursery Cryme to Wind And Wuthering.
i agree with your comment in the main, but what i was trying to say (badly perhaps) was
gabriel was the main creative driving force in the band (the lamb lies down...) and his lyrics in general gave the band something unique.
while hackett was still there they had some remnants of quality control - and quality song-writing
but from "attwt" things slide downhill, albums became one or two good tracks, as opposed to one or two filler previously
As a songwriter, he was clearly ahead of his time during his stint with Genesis. The Lamb is definitely proof of that.
Genesis became a different band after Peter left. They tried to keep the formula for the first 3 albums after, but eventually they realized they had to play to their strengths. The self titled Genesis and Duke albums are quitegood...
It's funny to hear GF's comments regarding Sledge and Monkey... those would probably be the two the most fans would put near the bottom of their list as well. PG usually does not sing both of these live... I believe he feels the same..
III was groundbreaking, in terms of the Cymbal thing. After hearing that, Michael Jackson did the same thing on some Thriller tracks.
The Passion soundtrack is probably my favorite in terms of a broad spectrum. Even a non fan would find it hard to argue this was one of the best soundtracks ever done.
brENsKi wrote:
i agree with your comment in the main, but what i was trying to say (badly perhaps) was
gabriel was the main creative driving force in the band (the lamb lies down...) and his lyrics in general gave the band something unique.
while hackett was still there they had some remnants of quality control - and quality song-writing
but from "attwt" things slide downhill, albums became one or two good tracks, as opposed to one or two filler previously
You didn't say it badly, I just didn't agree with it. :P
Gabriel was a unique lyricist all right, but it wasn't his lyrics that made the band or The Lamb. The music was special as well, and it wasn't ruined by Peter's leaving per se. It got worse because there were less and less people involved in the creative process.
brENsKi wrote:
i agree with your comment in the main, but what i was trying to say (badly perhaps) was
gabriel was the main creative driving force in the band (the lamb lies down...) and his lyrics in general gave the band something unique.
while hackett was still there they had some remnants of quality control - and quality song-writing
but from "attwt" things slide downhill, albums became one or two good tracks, as opposed to one or two filler previously
You didn't say it badly, I just didn't agree with it. :P
Gabriel was a unique lyricist all right, but it wasn't his lyrics that made the band or The Lamb. The music was special as well, and it wasn't ruined by Peter's leaving per se. It got worse because there were less and less people involved in the creative process.
Actually, it WAS his lyrics that made The Lamb. Gabriel did not write much of the music as he was dealing with Jill's troubled pregancy. What fueled the "split" was Rutherford's (mainly) objection to the re-writing of lyrics for the album... since he, Banks, and Collins wrote most of the music for it.
Most of the music was written by Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford, with some contribution from Steve Hackett and, at first, virtually none from Gabriel. Gabriel, for his part, insisted on writing the story and all the lyrics himself, which caused friction, in particular because Rutherford had originally suggested another project for the band – an album based on Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince. Banks and Rutherford did write the words for "The Light Dies Down on Broadway", as Gabriel could not come up with a linking piece between "Ravine" and "Riding the Scree". In addition, when Gabriel put lyrics to a piece of music written by one of the other band members (such as Banks' "The Lamia" and Hackett's "Here Comes the Supernatural Anaesthetist") the composer would often insist on adjusting the lyrics to better fit the music, an action Gabriel did not take kindly to.
Micrówave wrote:Actually, it WAS his lyrics that made The Lamb. Gabriel did not write much of the music as he was dealing with Jill's troubled pregancy. What fueled the "split" was Rutherford's (mainly) objection to the re-writing of lyrics for the album... since he, Banks, and Collins wrote most of the music for it.
He did write the lyrics, but the lyrics didn't make or break the album. Frustration (the earlier version of Anyway) is just as good a song as Anyway is with the Lamb lyrics.
Of course there's a certain audience who would be more drawn to a lyrical concept album than individual songs, but it doesn't really change the compositions.
All in all, I do think it was best for everyone for Peter to split from Genesis.
They were interested in musically different things, and they both seemed to reach a whole new level of (commercial) success afterwards.
I still wish Peter would have agreed to the reunion tour back in 2006...
brENsKi wrote:
and his genesis stuff is better than anything they produced from "and then there were three" onwards
which kinda says it all
while hackett was still there they had some remnants of quality control - and quality song-writing
but from "attwt" things slide downhill, albums became one or two good tracks, as opposed to one or two filler previously
Bingo. But I'd still say Duke is a great record. The bridge between prog and pop... the cut-off point for both halves of the fanbase. Very pop overall, but well-written songs.