A midsummer night’s dream - Peter Gabriel at the O2 Arena

Picture: York Tillyer

It’s been 21 years since Peter Gabriel last delivered a full album of net-new material. Children have been born and graduated in that time. I’m now three years older than Gabriel was when he last put out an entire collection of properly original songs. Not that he’s been a recluse: there have been contributions to soundtracks here, collaborations with other artists there, and a couple of cover version projects. But that aside, nothing box-fresh. We have, though, had six tours, of which I’ve seen five, only missing out on his ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ double-header with Sting.

However, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon. In principle, the 73-year-old has been working on a new album for most of those 21 years, but it was only photographs this time last year of Gabriel and long-term cohorts Tony Levin, David Rhodes and Manu Katché at work at his Real World Studios near Bath that confirmed a tenth solo studio album was “on”. But, being Gabriel, and with the middle of 2023 now reached, the semi-mythical new record is still months away. 

This might be, simply, Gabriel’s customary glacial rate of progress: interests and causes constantly throw him off schedule. Or equally, he’s simply teasing. Maybe it’s the latter. There have, in fact, been new releases since the beginning of the year. Six songs, to be precise, each introduced in typically Gabrielesque manner to coincide with the lunar cycle. “I’m an awkward sod,” he told Uncut’s Michael Bonner in March. “I like doing things differently, if I can. I’m 73. At this point, it doesn’t matter what other people say. I listen, still, to people who I think are wise and smart and have good taste. Generally, though, I’ll end up doing what I think will be either fun or interesting.”

He has earned that right, and not always with the recognition his notoriously sporadic output has deserved. While never regarded with the same chameleonic awe as David Bowie, across nine solo studio albums so far, four soundtrack projects and myriad one-offs, produced a body of work as intriguing, compelling and as invariably confounding as anyone I can think of. I’m somewhat biased, of course. Having been first introduced to Gabriel via his seven-year tenure as lead singer and figurehead of proto-prog era Genesis, his solo albums (the first four simply titled Peter Gabriel to encourage the cover art to make each record stand out...although I suspect some wry record label trolling was also at play) have been nothing short of eclectic. Classic rock, soul, funk, gospel, Afro-beat, Indian themes, Aboriginal influences, electronica, barbershop jazz - you name it, they’ve all featured.

Surprisingly, there’s been more commercialism in that array than some might recognise, what with hits like Solsbury Hill, Games Without Frontiers, Shock The Monkey, and then the pop phenomenon that was the So album, with Sledgehammer, Don’t Give Up and In Your Eyes. But as the period between albums has stretched out - the first four made over five years, then gaps of four, six and ten respectively, before the two-decade elapse since 2002’s Up - Gabriel has also found plenty to with which to dilly and dally.

Peter Gabriel plays live - by yours truly in Smash Hits, 14 July 1987

At the O2 Arena last night - the seventh time I’ve seen Gabriel play live since 1987 - the 46-year expanse of Gabriel’s solo career was condensed into almost three hours, separated by an interval, and given fresh impetus. As with any well-established act, there are the expected staples: the now-customary finale of In Your Eyes followed by Biko (in 1980, one of the first mainstream rock songs to address apartheid), the feelgood Stax energy of So’s Sledgehammer (oddly sequenced at the end of the first set before the interval) and Big Time, the intimate optimism of Don’t Give Up (backing vocalist Ayanna Witter-Johnson stamping her own signature to mesmerising effect on Kate Bush’s duet role in the original). These are what many, if not most, of the punters have come to hear. 

This, though, raises questions about the back-to-front commercial wisdom of the 22-song set including a whopping 11 new pieces drawn from the forthcoming album i/o. It’s easy to assume that this is peak contrarian Gabriel - especially as the i/o Tour is not actually in support of the near-mythical new release, the date for which is still not confirmed. In the end, it was a masterstroke. This was, essentially, a preview of the new album on a grand, arena-sized scale. Gabriel has used tours in the past to preview works in progress, but here in North Greenwich, the new material was brought spectacularly to life. 

Even the six new songs released so far, were given bigger and bolder expression in the O2’s expanse. Lead-off single Panopticom, Four Kinds Of Horses and the i/o title track (named after the computing acronym for “input/output”) bounce expressively, their instantly singalongable choruses underpinned by stalwarts Levin, Rhodes and Katché’s combined rhythms. Along with The Court, Playing For Time and Road To Joy, the new songs bloomed into dimensions that seemed familiar and new in equal measure. Those we hadn’t heard before also seemed to fit effortlessly into the programme: Olive Tree, for example, seemed like it had come from a 1980s soundtrack album without sounding out of place in a trio of new songs that included the aforementioned Playing For Time (featuring the studio recording’s Tom Cawley on piano) and the warm reflection on domesticity, This Is Home. 

The one misfire of the entire evening was another new piece, And Still, inspired by the loss of  Gabriel’s mother. Not that it won’t have its place on the new album, but coming after the searing brilliance of Red Rain, it seemed downbeat and out of kilter with the general upbeat mood of the evening (much the result of the ensemble Gabriel has placed around him on this tour - which also includes guitarist Richard Evans, Witter-Johnson on vocals and cello, Marina Moore on vocals and violin, Josh Shpak on brass, along with the very funky keyboardist Don E).

“There’s always a trade-off,” Gabriel explained in one of his monthly Full Moon Club newsletters. “People generally want to hear what they know and the artist generally wants to play the new stuff. So, I think there’s a sort of barter thing where you have to suffer enough new numbers to get to hear the old ones. It’s always been a bit like that with me, but I think this is a strong batch of songs. They’re not all up-tempo, but I feel they’re certainly being played with a lot of heart.” 

Levin, Gabriel and Rhodes - not a comb between them
Picture: York Tillyer

In the early days of Genesis, Gabriel wore masks and costumes to ‘act out’ the invariably complex narratives of their lengthy fantastical songs. He would also tell ponderous, meandering stories between songs, largely to allow Mike Rutherford and Steve Hackett time to retune their twelve-string guitars. Some of this was a front, mere armour to shield his shyness, but also - in his own words - to “command an audience”. Five decades on, he’s still giving ponderous introductions, largely to explain what his songs are about. While mostly worthy, they are also sincere, and delivered with a wry sense of self-depreciation. And while the costumes and greasepaint have long been abandoned for stage clothing redolent of his world music interests, the singer who once bunked out of Charterhouse to see Otis Redding play the RamJam Club in Brixton is still prone to dad-dancing routines to accompany his livelier songs, like Solsbury Hill and In Your Eyes. Rather than being embarrassing, it’s endearing. By the evening’s end, and a somnolent, cavernous drum beat heralds the traditional ending of Biko, the crowd knows the score, clenched fists punching the air in solidarity to the “Heh! Heh! Heh! The man is dead, the man is dead” township refrain.

When the new album i/o eventually arrives, and lyric sheets and press releases can be pored over, the disparate, encyclopedic themes that Gabriel has always pursued will be explored in more depth than via, for most people, their first listen live. It’s part of my fascination with the multiple dimensions he brings to bear with his work, especially with a penchant for eccentric wordplay. When he officially left Genesis in 1975, he released a statement to Sounds newspaper which concluded:

“The following guesswork has little in common with truth: Gabriel left Genesis.
1) To work in theatre.
2) To make more money as solo artist.
3) To do a ‘Bowie’.

4) To do a ‘Ferry’.

5) To do a ‘Furry Boa round my neck and hang myself with it’.
6) To go see an institution.
7) To go senile in the sticks.
I do not express myself adequately in interviews and I felt I owed it to the people who have put a lot of love and energy supporting the band to give an accurate picture of my reasons.”

Such witticism (which found its way into songs like Games Without Frontiers and Sledgehammer) is there on the new songs, but used to cover pet topics such as utopianism (Panopticom), dystopia (The Court) and environmentalism. But, if their unfamiliarity to new ears might be unsettling, audience engagement is undimmed. “Now we’re going to do something new” is usually the cue for a bar stampede, which suggests that devoting half the set list to songs from i/o  would seem instinctively risky at best. But it’s here that you realise that Gabriel - even if never the first name on people’s lips when you invite them to name a rock legend - has earned that respect over 56 years as both a frontman and originator of, in his words “awkward”, yet utterly inventive pop music.

Absence does make the heart grow fonder, but there have been times when it has felt like Gabriel’s almost fan-trolling ponderousness in the studio might have tested that allegiance. “It’s been a while since I’ve been touring, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. We’ve had lovely audiences and I think it is a really extraordinary band, so I am delighted with that,” he wrote in his latest Full Moon Club update. 

For all the human rights causes, obscure artistic rabbit holes and other tangents that will have understandably drawn irate cries of “Just get on and make a new record, will you?!” from his fanbase, his emergence, on this tour and with the prospect to come of i/o, reawakened my belief that Gabriel is one of the most compelling artists in the business.