Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950) is an English singer, songwriter and human rights activist. He was the original lead singer of the progressive rock band Genesis. After leaving the band in 1975, he launched a solo career with "Solsbury Hill" as his first single. His fifth studio album, So (1986), is his best-selling release and is certified triple platinum in the UK and five times platinum in the US. The album's most successful single, "Sledgehammer", won a record nine MTV Awards at the 1987 MTV Video Music Awards and, according to a report in 2011, it was MTV's most played music video of all time.
Gabriel has been a champion of world music for much of his career. He co-founded the WOMAD festival in 1982. He has continued to focus on producing and promoting world music through his Real World Records label. He has pioneered digital distribution methods for music, co-founding OD2, one of the first online music download services. Gabriel has also been involved in numerous humanitarian efforts. In 1980, he released the anti-apartheid single "Biko". He has participated in several human-rights benefit concerts, including Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! tour in 1988, and co-founded the Witness human rights organisation in 1992. Gabriel developed The Elders with Richard Branson, which was launched by Nelson Mandela in 2007.
Gabriel has won three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male in 1987, six Grammy Awards, thirteen MTV Video Music Awards, the first Pioneer Award at the BT Digital Music Awards, the Q magazine Lifetime Achievement, the Ivor Novello Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the Polar Music Prize. He was made a BMI Icon at the 57th annual BMI London Awards for his "influence on generations of music makers". In recognition of his many years of human rights activism, he received the Man of Peace award from the Nobel Peace Prize laureates in 2006, and Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008. AllMusic described Gabriel as "one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians, as well as one of its most political". He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010, and as a solo artist in 2014. In March 2015, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of South Australia in recognition of his achievements in music.
from this album in RP library
albums by Peter Gabriel
A few years I ago I was asked to give the eulogy for a man who took his life with a gun leaving behind his widow and two daughters. He lost his professional job in the film industry and couldn't back on his feet again. Depression cam e in and did its thing.
Kate's "Because you have friends" lyric hits me hard because in his fall he alienated and badly treated his family causing a divide where and pretty much all of us friends sided with the family, not knowing of course where this was going. I'm sure it seemed to him at the end that he had no friends. I've successfully rationalized my way out of the "If onlys" and "I should haves" at this point but an emotional song like this can quickly bypass all that.
The best songs can be the most difficult to hear sometimes.
I broke up with my hot girlfriend of the time, in 1990, with this music and Say Anything among the wistful themes that I carried in head and heart for quite some time.
Now I'm back with this woman. She's hotter now, 25 years, half her life, later. I know she remembers this tune, and the effect of it, and quite soon I'm going to put it on a jukebox and dance with her to it. There won't be any uncomfortable conversations with her father... And maybe no more with her either.
I've bumped it to a 8.
A few years I ago I was asked to give the eulogy for a man who took his life with a gun leaving behind his widow and two daughters. He lost his professional job in the film industry and couldn't back on his feet again. Depression cam e in and did its thing.
Kate's "Because you have friends" lyric hits me hard because in his fall he alienated and badly treated his family causing a divide where and pretty much all of us friends sided with the family, not knowing of course where this was going. I'm sure it seemed to him at the end that he had no friends. I've successfully rationalized my way out of the "If onlys" and "I should haves" at this point but an emotional song like this can quickly bypass all that.
The best songs can be the most difficult to hear sometimes.
Thanks for sharing that. I hope that in the coming years people come to understand more about trauma, neuroscience and the nervous system. We are naturally avoidant of people in depression because it affects our state negatively. People in depression naturally drive people away not due to some character flaw, but because their bodies are in a state of collapse that affects their thinking. With some understanding of what's really going on, compassion can overtake judgment and we can learn how to be with people in pain.
For one thing, this isn't Radio You.
thanks bill
"Her play Mercy Street, starring Marian Seldes, was produced in 1969, after several years of revisions. Within twelve years of writing her first sonnet, she was one of the most honored poets in America: a Pulitzer Prize winner, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first female member of the Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa."
Good post...
this is on Wikipedia, too — 45 Mercy Street (1976; posthumous) — it is a poem she wrote...
and here is an interesting blog I just found that was posted back in November of last year that has a copy of the Anne Sexton poem — Anne Sexton’s Original Poem “45 Mercy Street”: The Genesis of Peter Gabriel’s “Mercy Street” — here's a quote from the blog—
this really is a brilliant song by Peter Gabriel... this whole album is incredible...
Words I didn't hear until quite late in life. Gets me every time I hear them. .
I don't understand why this comment got down-voted. Lanois was in fact a producer/co-producer (with Gabriel) on this album. Albums produced by Daniel Lanois, or Brian Eno (or better yet both!) are frequently my favorites from the artists with which they worked. In my view they have a gift for eliciting some of the best and most creative work from artists.
Of course if you don't like Gabriel in general, or this album in particular, or perhaps the production work of Daniel Lanois (gasp!) then I suppose you might lay some blame at Lanois' feet.
Still, I'm in the camp that thinks Lanois and Eno are some of the best to work as producers, so...
My 19 year-old self: 8. My 53 year-old self: 10.
33 very poor souls voted this song "1" (no kidding)!
Freedom of taste or the terror of idiocy?
It's either a good song or it isn't. This is a good song, IMO.