Peter Gabriel: Peter Gabriel [III] – US – LP [1980]
- Intruder
- No Self Control
- Start
- I Don’t Remember
- Family Snapshot
- And Through The Wire
- Games Without Frontiers
- Not One Of us
- Lead A Normal Life
- Biko
When I moved from listening to Top 40 radio to FM Rock for a period in the 1978-1980 timeframe it brought more than just freedom from Disco Overload®. It still managed to expand my musical horizons, even under the insane restrictions and locking down of AOR from the salad days of freeform FM Rock that had begun earlier in the decade. Lee Abrahams was doing his level best to kill and monetize FM Rock with tight playlists and market research but still, there were revelations to be found even among the crushing payload of Stones/Who/Zeppelin every hour, on the hour.
MEETING PETER GABRIEL
One such new [to me] artist in 1978 was Peter Gabriel. The better of the two AOR stations in the Orlando market were adding cuts from his second, Robert Fripp produced album at just the time I was developing an interest in Fripp as a player/mover/shaker. That album had two cuts that were entrancing to my ears through airplay; “On The Air” and “D.I.Y.” Those songs made me a Peter Gabriel fan even though I had never been a big fan of Genesis. Between Fripp’s guitar playing/production and Larry Fast being responsible for the synth technology on the album, there was a lot of bait to make me bite the hook being dangled in front of me.
At the time, I didn’t know of the drama that was unfolding between Gabriel and his label, Atlantic Records. Atlantic had released the 1878 album by Gabriel, but little did I know at the time that A+R man John Kalodner and venerable label head Amhet Ertegun were having teeth-gnashing over what they were hearing come out of the Gabriel camp as the follow up to his second album which, by 1980, was a staple in every cut-0ut bin in town. Kalodner went as far as suggesting to Ertegun that Atlantic drop Gabriel from their roster, which they did. For his part, Ertegun wondered if Gabriel had suffered from a breakdown! This was obviously the place where businessmen couldn’t tell the difference from a breakdown and a breakthrough!
In the summer of 1980 I was still listening to FM Rock radio, though that only had a few more months before I would stop. Mostly due to the dumber of Orlando’s two stations in that format winning the war for ears and kick-starting the race to the bottom. Still, the better of the stations, WORJ-FM had a program called the Vinyl Hour where each week the station would play several deep cuts from new albums released that week. I can vividly recall that on that week particular I got to hear material from the new Roxy Music album, “Flesh + Blood” as well as the third Peter Gabriel album, which was called, like all of them then, simply “Peter Gabriel.”
Needless to say, I wasted no time in hitting stores and buying those two great albums which were easily in my top ten releases for 1980! Around this time, I was also hearing Gabriel’s single “Games Without Frontiers” being added to the playlist on the same station. I had to say that there was a vast qualitative gulf between the Ted Nugent tracks the station also played and that song! It was way closer to the vibe that was found on the 1979 TVLKING HEVDS album, “Fear Of Music” to these ears.
But that Gabriel album was offering new stimuli to my young ears with my first introduction to Chapman Stick at the hand of Tony Levin. It sounded like a bass. It sounded like a synth. But it didn’t sound like a bass synth! The otherness to be found on “Games Without Frontiers” was almost a sensory overload to me at the time. After all, this was also a track with a masterful Robert Fripp guitar performance. Little did I know that the seeds of next year’s King Crimson flowering were being sowed right here on this album that featured a disturbing portrait of Gabriel fluid and melting in the [very] distinctive cover by Hipgnosis. The stark confrontation it implied was a far cry from their sometimes camp hippie aesthetic heavy on the visual puns.
THE SOUNDS FROM ANOTHER PLACE
We heard the difference of the 80s right in the first second of the album. Gabriel had given instruction to his two drummers on the album, former bandmate Phil Collinsand Jerry Marotta, to refrain from using cymbals on the album. A restriction meant to spur new directions and creativity. Gabriel had also sought out Steve Lillywhite to produce the album, and Lillywhite had just done the honors on that year’s Psychedelic Furs and XTC albums. Tracks on those two albums, “Sister Europe” and “Travels In Nihilon,” respectively, each featured bold, blunt beats that came within a hair’s breadth of what the performing/producing unit arrived at in defining the infamous gated reverb sound. The latter in particular. Truly the sonic fingerprint of the first half of the 80s.
The first track, “Intruder,” threw the high contrast, bombastic beats into our faces with impunity. Where the decay of the reverb was brutally cut off at lower volumes, juxtaposing the maximum impact of each beat with jarring stillness. The sound of creaking metal suggestive of an unraveling of sorts, added only the texture of madness. Finally decadent, atonal piano further unbalanced the nearly psychotic vibe of the song. The backing vocal harmonies were tinny, distorted, and chorused; like distant sheep bleating. Then the desolation of the song was emphasized by tubular bell strikes.
An enervated and hostile environment was already a given by the vocabulary of sound employed here, and yet when Gabriel began singing after the rhythmic chanting that signaled the end of the minute long introduction, he managed to dramatically increase the threat level of the song with his disturbing lyric. Words that invited us into the head of an interloper who got his thrills breaking into homes. Homes which were not empty. All delivered in a dryly dispassionate voice.
After the first verse, an unhinged xylophone solo at the hands of Morris Pert [ex-Brand X] flitted back and forth between the left and right channels almost randomly as the pounding heartbeat of Phil Collins’ drum pattern thundered in our heads like blood rushing in our temples. The second verse then confirmed our worst fears as the pervert narrating the song reveled in his transgressive power. The drop in the climax brought more squeaking and creaking as Gabriel whistled an eerie melody and then barely restated the lyrical theme… “I am the intruder.”
Next: …Uncontrollable Urge
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Post-Punk Monk 
Simply, a tremendous album!
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For me this album is still a solid contender for the best album ever made. A local (San Jose) radio station had a long running weekly progressive rock show, and that DJ had gotten the UK single of “Games Without Frontiers”, which was out several months ahead of the album. I remember recording the song off of the radio and playing it almost non-stop, and then the import single finally showed up. This song was simply revelatory to me at the time, a truly great record which seemed a harbinger for the future of music (well, in some circles, anyway).
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Big Mark – No argument from this quarter! I can imagine that feeling of obsession that something as vibrant and novel as “Games Without Frontiers” would spark as it happen with me and the radio as well. Was I taping that night? Possibly. I do know I had never heard anything like that before. Plus, it was on the famous Charisma label in the UK!
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This album is one of the catalysts for my embarking upon a lifetime of hardcore Charisma colleting.
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Big Mark – Oh wow! So you were late to the Charisma game hunt, then?!’ The first Charisma album I saw in the late 70s might have been one of ChasInVictoria’s UK Monty Python albums! By 1980 the label’s story was really in the rear view mirror. I’m fascinated that you weren’t into the label by around 1975 or so.
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I got my first Charisma LP in ’73 (Monty Python). The first other artist was Genesis, whom I was just getting into in ’75 as PG left; at that time, the original Buddah/Charisma US releases of “Nursery Cryme” and “Foxtrot” filled the nation’s cutout bins. It wasn’t until ’78-’79 or so and a flurry of records by Van der Graaf Generator, Peter Hammill, Steve Hackett, Peter Hammill, Brand X, Lindisfarne etc. that I realized that a disproportionate share of my favorite records were on this quirky little British label. I began to buy things solely because they were on Charisma, and then it was another couple of years before I devoted my efforts to seeking everything, including releases on the B&C label which shared the CAS and CB catalog number series.
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Big Mark – I admire your chutzpah! The only label I could REALLY collect in full and enjoy, as well as do it for under $1000 would be The Compact Organization! In fact, I might be able to do it for as little as $500! That sounds like a future posting: How much wound it cost to buy the complete Compact organization discography?!
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Leftfield “pop” masterpiece, along with his equally brilliant “ethnic” fourth album (aka “Security”), and “So” being the mainstream pop masterpiece. Untouchable.
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brynstar – As much as I love so many other albums, I have to admit that when I listen to this album, it just grows in stature over time. Many is the time I hear it and think, this really was the best album of the 1980s! Though I felt the drop off in quality between “IV” and “So” was nearly cataclysmic. I’d still rate it better than similar drops like “Let’s Dance” or “Once Upon A Time.” “Red Rain” alone guaranteed that.
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True, there is a huge difference between the fourth album and “So”, less experimentation, much more conventional songwriting, but then I’m sure there was pressure from Geffen to produce something that had a broader demographic than his previous solo albums. To his credit I think PG did an amazing job at straddling the mainstream tropes and yet still bringing his distinct experimental touch, if only in subtle ways ie “We Do What We’re Told”. I loved “Sledgehammer” at the time, but I think it’s the weakest song on the album now.
Agreed, the third album has aged like a fine wine, some of the best songwriting of the entire decade, and the fourth album sounds like the most evocative soundtrack to some imaginary epic movie. I also love his soundtrack to “Birdy” and how he cleverly remixed existing songs from the fourth and third albums to create fresh and distinct cues, as well as creating new pieces. I also love the “Passion” album too, huge, epic. But I lost all interest in his music after that, and am not familiar with any of the albums he released post “Passion”.
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Definitely a breakthrough! Agreed. Thanks PPM, a masterpiece.
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My first single I bought as an 11 year old. I’d bought some JMJ and borrowed a few of my friends singles. It was that weird electronic percussion and the whistling synths of “Games Without Frontiers” that drew me in. I bought the album soon after and was converted.
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Jon Garrett – Wow! PGIII as fodder for eleven year old ears? Impressive!
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I’m late to the party as is often the case, but I must chime in with my own praise of this head-spinning album. I thought I knew Peter Gabriel from his Genesis days, costumes and makeup that would later be aped in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and his first solo album didn’t really distance him much, though there was a bit of a darker tone already starting to manifest (such as in “Here Comes the Flood”).
The second PG solo album went a bit further, and I enjoyed the darker tones and more introspection. But that third album — finally the music got married to the vision, and the dark side burst through fully. “Games Without Frontiers” seems positively jolly compared to “Intruder,” “No Self Control,” “I Don’t Remember,” “Not One of Us,” etc.
Quite a mind-blowing album for 1980, to put it mildly.
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ChasInVictoria – By gum, you aren’t as late to the party as I am late in hosting it!! This is a tumultuous period that’s been gnawing into any blogging time but I hope to be posting the provocative second part of this thread in a few hours! [crosses fingers]
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