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Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:29,350 --> 00:00:33,350 www.titlovi.com 2 00:00:36,350 --> 00:00:39,251 I knew it was good. I think we all knew it was good. 3 00:00:39,353 --> 00:00:44,723 But it was only when we started getting hits, which is sort of a rare thing in my life, 4 00:00:44,791 --> 00:00:49,558 that you start thinking, "Maybe we're gonna sell something here." 5 00:00:49,763 --> 00:00:54,791 Peter Gabriel was the classic definition of a cult artist before 'So'. 6 00:00:55,502 --> 00:00:58,869 He was well-known, he was well-respected, 7 00:00:59,206 --> 00:01:03,905 but he was not in that league where we talk about The Beatles, 8 00:01:03,977 --> 00:01:09,916 The Stones, Bob Dylan, Fleetwood Mac. But 'So' changed that in an enormous way. 9 00:01:20,994 --> 00:01:25,124 I guess it was May, '85. Came home from New York, 10 00:01:25,198 --> 00:01:26,631 we got picked up at Heathrow 11 00:01:26,700 --> 00:01:28,998 by David Stallbaumer, who was Peter's assistant. 12 00:01:29,536 --> 00:01:32,528 And as we were driving down the motorway, he had asked me 13 00:01:32,606 --> 00:01:36,440 how long did Peter and Dan indicate I was gonna be out to Ashcombe House for? 14 00:01:36,943 --> 00:01:39,969 And I said, "Anywhere from two weeks to six weeks." 15 00:01:40,680 --> 00:01:42,875 And he kind of mused for a moment, then he looked over and he said, 16 00:01:42,949 --> 00:01:44,814 "You're gonna be here until next March." 17 00:01:44,885 --> 00:01:47,217 And that was ten months later and he was spot on. 18 00:01:48,188 --> 00:01:51,282 It took us a year to finish 'So', almost to the day. 19 00:01:51,925 --> 00:01:55,793 And I wasn't aware of this but I was told after the fact 20 00:01:55,862 --> 00:01:58,524 that that's the fastest record that Peter ever made. 21 00:02:12,746 --> 00:02:17,649 I knew that he was a person who thought about music in a different way. 22 00:02:18,018 --> 00:02:22,478 "How can music enter the culture in a different way other than just records, 23 00:02:22,556 --> 00:02:26,492 product, songs, you buy them and take them home?" 24 00:02:26,560 --> 00:02:28,050 "But how else could you experience music?" 25 00:02:28,261 --> 00:02:32,721 Could all of those things meld at one moment in time to make a record 26 00:02:32,799 --> 00:02:37,202 that could not necessarily fit into the masses, 27 00:02:37,270 --> 00:02:40,762 but actually find a way for the mass to come to him? 28 00:02:40,941 --> 00:02:45,435 I shook hands with Peter. I said, "Listen, I think this couId be really great for you 29 00:02:45,645 --> 00:02:49,843 and let's not let up until we're satisfied that it could touch a lot of hearts." 30 00:03:07,467 --> 00:03:11,563 I think the songs were just amazing and great songs, 31 00:03:11,738 --> 00:03:14,206 a great producer. Just magical. 32 00:03:24,684 --> 00:03:29,144 Imagine if somebody drops off a big lump of granite on your front lawn, 33 00:03:29,222 --> 00:03:33,352 and it's your job to make a nice skinny sculpture out of it by spring. 34 00:03:34,261 --> 00:03:35,353 That was kind of our job. 35 00:03:36,096 --> 00:03:40,692 I think one of the reasons I've been able to have a career over all this time 36 00:03:41,268 --> 00:03:46,604 is that I followed my heart and my nose. 37 00:03:47,140 --> 00:03:50,803 You sniff around and you find something interesting, and you chase it. 38 00:03:52,279 --> 00:03:54,839 And that is what makes life interesting. 39 00:03:58,818 --> 00:04:02,276 I'd had a dream that was a bit like the parting of the Red Sea, 40 00:04:02,422 --> 00:04:06,586 with these two walls and these glass bottles 41 00:04:06,693 --> 00:04:11,460 that would fill up with blood. 42 00:04:12,666 --> 00:04:14,759 That would enable them to walk to the other side, 43 00:04:14,834 --> 00:04:18,565 screw onto the other wall and empty the blood out. 44 00:04:20,507 --> 00:04:24,443 That was, I guess, a little version of life and death. 45 00:04:24,644 --> 00:04:30,207 There is a sense of danger, loss. 46 00:04:30,283 --> 00:04:33,810 This notion of Red Rain, it's not specifically blood. 47 00:04:34,187 --> 00:04:37,350 But it's hard not to think of that as an image of blood, 48 00:04:37,424 --> 00:04:39,085 of people drowning, of people helpless. 49 00:05:00,113 --> 00:05:03,241 I always wanted it to crash open at the front 50 00:05:03,850 --> 00:05:06,444 and for it to feel really driven. 51 00:05:15,629 --> 00:05:20,066 I spent a lot of time, and Dan, too, on trying to get the sequence right. 52 00:05:20,300 --> 00:05:22,234 And what we used to do 53 00:05:22,302 --> 00:05:26,068 is put the beginnings and endings of all the songs on little cassettes, 54 00:05:26,773 --> 00:05:29,333 so you can try all the different permutations. 55 00:05:35,582 --> 00:05:40,849 And I think with Red Rain, fairly early on, that was gonna be an opener. 56 00:05:42,122 --> 00:05:47,150 We put a lot of work into those drums. This was before digital technology. 57 00:05:48,094 --> 00:05:52,326 And so Jerry Marotta must've played the drums, 58 00:05:53,767 --> 00:05:56,429 I think, about eight takes. 59 00:05:56,536 --> 00:06:00,768 The idea was it was always to try to do something different, 60 00:06:00,974 --> 00:06:04,967 do things, be a little unconventional, or a lot unconventional. 61 00:06:05,879 --> 00:06:06,937 I love that about Peter. 62 00:06:07,280 --> 00:06:09,145 He's really a master of low-end. 63 00:06:09,482 --> 00:06:13,851 He can really shape the bottom of a song the way no one else can. 64 00:06:14,020 --> 00:06:17,512 And then it was my job, after Jerry left, to go through everything, 65 00:06:17,824 --> 00:06:22,284 and make sure that I had included Jerry's best playing, bar at a time. 66 00:06:22,362 --> 00:06:26,662 It's getting in there and trying things and trying things in a little different way, 67 00:06:27,133 --> 00:06:28,122 being unusual. 68 00:06:28,668 --> 00:06:29,760 But I think it was worth it. 69 00:06:29,836 --> 00:06:33,738 You hear all the idiosyncratic details of Jerry's performance 70 00:06:34,140 --> 00:06:36,768 and it's got a lot of power. 71 00:06:37,043 --> 00:06:42,640 Got a very deep, philosophical thing performance-wise. 72 00:06:43,016 --> 00:06:46,247 It wasn't like the pop songs. 73 00:06:46,319 --> 00:06:48,753 It was dark, much darker. 74 00:07:03,570 --> 00:07:04,867 As the ex-drummer that I am, 75 00:07:04,938 --> 00:07:07,998 I have to get the drums right before anything else can happen. 76 00:07:08,141 --> 00:07:11,975 You have to remember, one of his big influences as a kid was Otis Redding, 77 00:07:12,278 --> 00:07:15,145 and he was a drummer before he was a singer. 78 00:07:15,448 --> 00:07:20,579 The past records, as Jerry Marotta will remind us all of, 79 00:07:20,720 --> 00:07:24,622 were not allowed to have any cymbals. No cymbals and no hi-hat 80 00:07:24,824 --> 00:07:29,386 because Peter didn't want a whole bunch of splashing around, noisy things 81 00:07:29,462 --> 00:07:32,920 to take up any room in the mix. 82 00:07:33,032 --> 00:07:37,264 One of the worst things you can ever do to an artist is give him complete freedom, 83 00:07:38,404 --> 00:07:43,364 "cause I just sit there, thinking, "What the hell am I gonna do?" 84 00:07:43,977 --> 00:07:49,142 But I think creative people are devious and if you tell them what they can't do, 85 00:07:49,916 --> 00:07:54,979 they'll find a way around it. So I thought, "Okay, 86 00:07:55,121 --> 00:08:00,559 well, maybe, I know I'm devious, too, so I'll create my own set of rules 87 00:08:00,627 --> 00:08:07,294 of things that I can or can't do. And that'll force me to think of alternatives." 88 00:08:07,367 --> 00:08:09,494 So, no cymbals. 89 00:08:09,869 --> 00:08:11,894 I love hi-hat. And I said to Peter, 90 00:08:11,971 --> 00:08:15,498 "Let's make this record a nice hi-hat record. Why not?" 91 00:08:16,142 --> 00:08:22,809 He's fascinating, Dan, 'cause he's a mixture of, I think, quite a rough and tough dad, 92 00:08:22,882 --> 00:08:28,184 on one hand, and a very soft and tender mum, 93 00:08:28,855 --> 00:08:31,585 and he can be both things. 94 00:08:31,825 --> 00:08:36,455 And he decided to follow my instinct 95 00:08:36,529 --> 00:08:40,124 and so we allowed cymbals and hi-hats into the project. 96 00:08:40,200 --> 00:08:42,259 And that was quite a change for him. 97 00:08:42,402 --> 00:08:45,894 One of the things that I asked Stewart Copeland to do, 98 00:08:45,972 --> 00:08:49,169 'cause he's a virtuoso hi-hat player, 99 00:08:50,043 --> 00:08:55,174 was focus in on the hi-hat. So this is where we started 100 00:08:55,248 --> 00:08:58,308 with the hi-hat on the drum program. 101 00:08:58,418 --> 00:09:01,785 It does a job that motors along but doesn't have any personality. 102 00:09:02,222 --> 00:09:04,816 So, here's Stewart. 103 00:09:13,266 --> 00:09:18,135 Of what we put on the record, I'd say Red Rain probably took the most out of me. 104 00:09:18,905 --> 00:09:23,740 It's the one that... It was very flat, 105 00:09:23,810 --> 00:09:29,715 and it was my job to make it so that it evolved sonically and emotionally. 106 00:09:53,673 --> 00:09:56,938 I wanted his emotions to come to the forefront. 107 00:09:57,443 --> 00:09:59,434 To wear no mask and no veil, 108 00:09:59,512 --> 00:10:04,575 and to have no mirrored contact lenses, 109 00:10:04,651 --> 00:10:07,677 and no trickery. Just take everything off 110 00:10:08,755 --> 00:10:13,886 and let the songs be heard. And I think that was a good call. 111 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:17,691 I think it was sort of a nice segue into the next chapter for Peter. 112 00:10:18,131 --> 00:10:22,591 So consequently, I think these songs are more revealing, they're more naked, 113 00:10:22,969 --> 00:10:28,908 they've taken risks, and listeners feel that when a man takes a risk. 114 00:10:35,648 --> 00:10:38,981 I've always been slow, so I worked out early on 115 00:10:39,052 --> 00:10:41,714 that it was gonna be a lot cheaper if I tried to buy the equipment 116 00:10:42,488 --> 00:10:46,618 and set up a little studio, rather than rent a studio. 117 00:10:46,759 --> 00:10:49,421 So I was looking basically for a place that I could afford, 118 00:10:49,529 --> 00:10:52,020 so we rented this old farmhouse. 119 00:10:52,098 --> 00:10:54,794 And we started putting some equipment in there. 120 00:10:55,268 --> 00:10:57,896 But it was away from everything. 121 00:10:57,971 --> 00:11:00,769 The cows would come and lick the windows occasionally. 122 00:11:01,441 --> 00:11:02,703 And I loved it. 123 00:11:06,212 --> 00:11:09,613 I first got an invitation to work with Peter Gabriel 124 00:11:10,416 --> 00:11:15,183 when I was living in Hamilton in Ontario in Canada, that's near Toronto. 125 00:11:15,755 --> 00:11:17,586 And it was an invitation to come in 126 00:11:17,657 --> 00:11:20,558 and help him with a soundtrack for a film called Birdie. 127 00:11:21,561 --> 00:11:23,825 I jumped on the plane the next day 128 00:11:23,896 --> 00:11:25,386 and we carried on with that work 129 00:11:25,465 --> 00:11:27,990 and Peter gave me access to his entire library. 130 00:11:28,067 --> 00:11:31,127 He said, "Whatever you find in here, do what you like with it, 131 00:11:31,304 --> 00:11:34,102 what I expect in the end is some nice surprises." 132 00:11:34,240 --> 00:11:37,368 I knew I didn't have time to generate a whole new score 133 00:11:37,443 --> 00:11:42,847 so I wanted to use part of the score using existing material 134 00:11:42,915 --> 00:11:47,443 and sort of remixes and extrapolate mood 135 00:11:47,687 --> 00:11:49,655 from some of the readymade material. 136 00:11:49,989 --> 00:11:53,288 And I did provide him a lot of surprises, sonic surprises. 137 00:11:53,893 --> 00:11:58,728 And he invited me to stay on to work on his now new singing record 138 00:11:58,798 --> 00:12:01,699 which was to become So. 139 00:12:02,001 --> 00:12:05,061 You saw the two together, they still had hair, 140 00:12:07,407 --> 00:12:09,773 and the two together, they were one. 141 00:12:10,076 --> 00:12:13,045 When I first met Dan, I remember now, 142 00:12:13,112 --> 00:12:17,048 in the studio, I looked at him and he was the perfect complement to Peter. 143 00:12:17,150 --> 00:12:18,583 He understood Peter. 144 00:12:21,354 --> 00:12:23,822 As I walked down the lane with my bag, 145 00:12:24,557 --> 00:12:27,219 Peter came out of Ashcombe House, 146 00:12:27,293 --> 00:12:30,490 something jumped on me. I felt that I had known him before. 147 00:12:30,563 --> 00:12:34,966 I just felt something genetically connected with him, 148 00:12:35,034 --> 00:12:36,797 if not by birth. 149 00:12:37,370 --> 00:12:40,601 And I knew right at that moment that I should work with him. 150 00:12:43,142 --> 00:12:46,043 Ashcombe was made of two main buildings, 151 00:12:46,212 --> 00:12:50,546 the house, a beautiful garden, and then the cow barn. 152 00:12:50,650 --> 00:12:54,643 I think it had been used as a functioning cow barn, 153 00:12:54,720 --> 00:12:58,747 I don't know how long back, but the cows are still around in the fields. 154 00:12:59,192 --> 00:13:04,129 It felt and behaved like a proper studio but it was all done very inexpensively. 155 00:13:04,564 --> 00:13:06,862 Peter walked in and said, "Great. Let's get started." 156 00:13:07,633 --> 00:13:11,797 "We're gonna start making a record." And that was when we started the... 157 00:13:12,205 --> 00:13:15,368 That was the initial birth process for 'So'. 158 00:13:15,441 --> 00:13:17,466 We were both surrounded by a brand new studio 159 00:13:17,543 --> 00:13:21,445 with a bunch of equipment that neither of us knew really how to operate. 160 00:13:23,783 --> 00:13:26,877 They turned the barn into a studio. It was perfect for Peter. 161 00:13:28,020 --> 00:13:31,046 It was great 'cause it was kind of like that thing 162 00:13:31,124 --> 00:13:34,252 where we're at home, we're in our own environment. 163 00:13:34,727 --> 00:13:37,662 So that was it. He'd go in the back to work on lyrics 164 00:13:37,730 --> 00:13:40,528 and pop the tracks and sing out loud 165 00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:44,036 while I worked in the smaller room in the front tidying things up 166 00:13:44,103 --> 00:13:48,039 and getting the room ready for the next level of work. 167 00:13:50,877 --> 00:13:54,904 And we had a good work ethic and we treated it like a construction site. 168 00:13:55,314 --> 00:13:58,943 In fact, we even had the construction site hard hats. 169 00:13:59,552 --> 00:14:03,613 And we just had a policy where we'd put on the hard hat before starting work. 170 00:14:04,357 --> 00:14:06,951 I listened to his solo records and I liked them. 171 00:14:07,660 --> 00:14:10,823 And I thought that he had been very adventurous and brave 172 00:14:11,931 --> 00:14:15,731 with his sonics and with his songs. 173 00:14:15,935 --> 00:14:19,769 All four records before that were titled "Peter Gabriel". 174 00:14:20,339 --> 00:14:24,537 I used to remember all the different albums, not from titles, 175 00:14:24,610 --> 00:14:27,977 but from the pictures, from the artwork. 176 00:14:29,015 --> 00:14:31,950 Then you had big vinyl artwork. 177 00:14:32,251 --> 00:14:36,688 It was a whole ritual to getting an album, opening it, smelling it, 178 00:14:36,989 --> 00:14:39,856 and I also thought that when you had good artwork, 179 00:14:40,259 --> 00:14:42,955 why did you have to have all this text all over the top of it 180 00:14:43,029 --> 00:14:44,894 and make it look like a piece of advertising? 181 00:14:45,898 --> 00:14:50,426 You go from the first record with Here Comes The Flood, 182 00:14:50,503 --> 00:14:55,600 Solsbury Hill, the second album, which is more eccentric, darker, 183 00:14:55,675 --> 00:14:59,338 produced by Robert Fripp. Games Without Frontiers. 184 00:15:29,108 --> 00:15:34,307 That's when you have Biko. You get this sense 185 00:15:34,380 --> 00:15:40,285 that he's working his way forward. And by calling each record, "Peter Gabriel," 186 00:15:40,419 --> 00:15:45,482 the point was, "These are not separate, discreet statements, 187 00:15:45,658 --> 00:15:50,857 "this is part of my continuing body of work." 188 00:15:50,997 --> 00:15:54,956 It was sort of cult-sy and occasional flashes. 189 00:15:55,034 --> 00:15:58,902 So, Games Without Frontiers, Shock the Monkey, 190 00:16:00,206 --> 00:16:04,438 Solsbury Hill had sort of broken through to a wider audience. 191 00:16:33,939 --> 00:16:39,468 And then I'd sort of retreat back into the bushes 192 00:16:39,545 --> 00:16:42,070 with my normal crowd. 193 00:16:42,815 --> 00:16:46,615 So there's occasional moments in the daylight. 194 00:16:47,320 --> 00:16:51,689 Those songs had been said already and we were entering a new body of work. 195 00:17:01,967 --> 00:17:06,370 Sledgehammer, actually, that crashed the door down 196 00:17:06,739 --> 00:17:10,470 for such a wide audience that everything else that was on the record, 197 00:17:10,576 --> 00:17:14,239 that was important, that was convincing, 198 00:17:14,313 --> 00:17:17,248 that was committed, that all came through as well. 199 00:17:32,365 --> 00:17:36,131 I remember that Sledgehammer we did very last, in fact we were packing up. 200 00:17:36,569 --> 00:17:42,132 And Peter, in typical Peter fashion, said, "I have this idea for the next album 201 00:17:42,208 --> 00:17:44,540 of a piece. Would you mind just doing a run-through of it?" 202 00:17:44,610 --> 00:17:47,272 One of the many things I love about Peter 203 00:17:47,346 --> 00:17:52,045 is in his mind, he's only a couple months away from doing his next album, 204 00:17:52,118 --> 00:17:53,983 even when he's finishing an album, 205 00:17:54,053 --> 00:17:56,351 and the rest of us know we're gonna have to wait years 206 00:17:56,422 --> 00:17:58,219 maybe even for this one to come out. 207 00:17:58,824 --> 00:18:01,657 So we just reassembled the stuff 208 00:18:01,727 --> 00:18:05,322 and did a quick version or two of Sledgehammer 209 00:18:05,664 --> 00:18:09,191 and then we packed up and went home thinking, "No one'll ever hear that track." 210 00:18:09,568 --> 00:18:12,628 Everyone thinks, "Sledgehammer, he must've been trying to write a hit." 211 00:18:13,639 --> 00:18:20,568 It wasn't Iike that. I loved R&B, soul music, 212 00:18:20,679 --> 00:18:26,140 and so in a way, this was a little bit of homage to that. 213 00:18:26,318 --> 00:18:29,481 I had made these jazz records, jazz fusion, 214 00:18:29,555 --> 00:18:32,183 which was totally not Peter's bag. 215 00:18:33,325 --> 00:18:39,525 But I had also recorded a song as a tribute to the island where I was born. 216 00:18:40,299 --> 00:18:45,498 In that piece of music, there was a drummer which was Manu Katche. 217 00:18:46,071 --> 00:18:49,199 I got a phone call in my room. So of course, I answered the phone. 218 00:18:49,341 --> 00:18:54,643 And someone on the phone says, "Hello, is this Manu? It's Peter Gabriel." 219 00:18:54,713 --> 00:18:56,203 I said, "Yeah, okay." 220 00:18:56,282 --> 00:18:59,376 So I thought it was my friend doing a joke. I said, "Yeah, okay, Camille." 221 00:18:59,552 --> 00:19:02,419 Peter was calling him. He was not returning Peter's calls. 222 00:19:02,855 --> 00:19:04,948 Five minutes later, the phone rings again. 223 00:19:05,524 --> 00:19:08,960 "Hello, Manu, this is Peter Gabriel." I said, "Camille, okay, stop it." 224 00:19:09,094 --> 00:19:10,823 Peter called me in New York and said, 225 00:19:10,896 --> 00:19:13,262 "I don't know what's going on with this drummer, 226 00:19:13,732 --> 00:19:14,824 he's not returning the call." 227 00:19:14,900 --> 00:19:18,495 So I remember I called him with Peter on the line and we said, 228 00:19:19,638 --> 00:19:21,128 I said to Manu, "Manu, what's going on?" 229 00:19:21,407 --> 00:19:25,275 And he said, "I would love to have you on my next project." 230 00:19:25,444 --> 00:19:28,072 So I said to George, "Are you sure this guy can shuffle?" 231 00:19:28,447 --> 00:19:31,109 "We have to have a man who understands the shuffle." 232 00:19:31,517 --> 00:19:32,984 "It's not enough to just go... 233 00:19:35,488 --> 00:19:38,855 ...any more. We want... 234 00:19:39,191 --> 00:19:43,651 ...some kind of motion to it. Will Manu be able to do that?" 235 00:19:43,729 --> 00:19:46,698 And he said, "Well, he's the best in Paris. Trust me, I think you'll love him." 236 00:19:46,832 --> 00:19:49,062 Somebody like Manu coming to the table 237 00:19:49,134 --> 00:19:52,535 was so unlike anything that had yet happened 238 00:19:54,173 --> 00:20:00,976 in the entire recording process because he's a straight session guy. 239 00:20:01,213 --> 00:20:05,377 There's a big garden in front of this and we'd just go out for a little bit of time 240 00:20:05,451 --> 00:20:07,749 and then having tea in the kitchen and then coming back. 241 00:20:08,354 --> 00:20:11,084 It has nothing to do like being in a professional studio 242 00:20:11,156 --> 00:20:15,525 where you have to sign in when you get in and sign out when you leave the place 243 00:20:15,594 --> 00:20:17,755 and then you have like two or three studios around 244 00:20:17,830 --> 00:20:20,196 when people are working on different projects. 245 00:20:20,266 --> 00:20:22,700 So the feeling was very, very different. 246 00:20:22,935 --> 00:20:26,234 And plus, it's in the countryside, I mean, in the middle of the countryside, 247 00:20:26,305 --> 00:20:29,103 which means there's nothing around like in a city. 248 00:20:32,177 --> 00:20:36,477 He sat down and listened to the track once, maybe twice, with Peter in the control room, 249 00:20:36,549 --> 00:20:37,777 not even in a room with him, and he just said, 250 00:20:37,850 --> 00:20:39,909 "Okay, play what you think. Play what you think." 251 00:20:40,352 --> 00:20:41,444 Manu did one take. 252 00:20:41,587 --> 00:20:44,055 And I go back into the studio, I said, "We'll listen to it." 253 00:20:44,189 --> 00:20:45,417 And I see Peter moving 254 00:20:45,491 --> 00:20:49,894 and really having this great and nice smile on his face. 255 00:20:50,963 --> 00:20:53,295 And I said, "You like it?" He said, "Yeah." 256 00:20:53,699 --> 00:20:57,658 And Peter said, "Great, let's do it again." And Manu's response was, "Why? 257 00:20:58,804 --> 00:20:59,793 "I've already done it." 258 00:21:00,339 --> 00:21:01,738 Peter always likes another take 259 00:21:01,807 --> 00:21:04,605 or a third take or a tenth take just to cover himself. 260 00:21:05,044 --> 00:21:08,946 It was an American producer, I think it was Jerry Wexler... 261 00:21:09,181 --> 00:21:10,978 No, it wasn't, Arif Mardin. 262 00:21:12,851 --> 00:21:17,618 And one of his quotes was, "Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous." 263 00:21:17,756 --> 00:21:18,745 "Now, do it again." 264 00:21:19,491 --> 00:21:20,651 He was used to just doing things 265 00:21:20,726 --> 00:21:22,591 hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. 266 00:21:23,062 --> 00:21:27,055 And Manu's point was, "I've already interpreted this as best I can." 267 00:21:27,399 --> 00:21:30,664 As soon as I heard that track, I had the idea of what I wanted to play, 268 00:21:31,170 --> 00:21:34,765 instantly remembered the groove and the bass, it was phenomenal. 269 00:21:34,907 --> 00:21:37,933 Manu was following where the music seemed to be taking us. 270 00:21:38,410 --> 00:21:43,279 And Manu was very good at just following that direction but doing it with his own style. 271 00:21:43,616 --> 00:21:46,949 So it always sounds like him. And that's what I try to do on bass. 272 00:22:01,467 --> 00:22:04,868 Sledgehammer is part of that classical, rhythm & blues, soul 273 00:22:04,937 --> 00:22:08,429 that people understand instantly. 274 00:22:08,507 --> 00:22:13,843 So once again, it fits. I would love to think 275 00:22:13,912 --> 00:22:18,178 it's because when we recorded it, we recorded it with heart and soul. 276 00:22:18,450 --> 00:22:23,615 The drums have that thing I was talking about, have a lovely kind of swing to them. 277 00:22:24,390 --> 00:22:26,984 And then if we put in Tony's bass... 278 00:22:32,131 --> 00:22:34,258 And I chose fretless bass. 279 00:22:36,035 --> 00:22:39,061 I put an octave on it, and a little unusual to use a pick. 280 00:22:39,672 --> 00:22:42,505 And I thought we came up with a good sound. 281 00:22:59,692 --> 00:23:04,061 When I heard the track, I would say the song was about 50 or 60% completed 282 00:23:04,129 --> 00:23:05,426 but there were no lyrics on it whatsoever. 283 00:23:05,497 --> 00:23:07,988 So the backtrack was in, drums, bass, guitars. 284 00:23:10,069 --> 00:23:12,902 It had some keyboards on it but it didn't have all the keyboards on it. 285 00:23:13,338 --> 00:23:16,535 No vocals whatsoever, no background vocals, no lead vocal. 286 00:23:16,909 --> 00:23:21,073 And Dan kept mentioning, "Well, it would be great to have horns on this, 287 00:23:21,146 --> 00:23:22,670 'cause it had a soul feel." 288 00:23:23,048 --> 00:23:25,516 So we went to the Power Station in New York 289 00:23:25,584 --> 00:23:28,314 and had a couple of fellows come up from Memphis. 290 00:23:28,620 --> 00:23:31,316 I was going up to play with some strange people 291 00:23:32,257 --> 00:23:34,452 and I didn't know how it worked, but I'm good with folks. 292 00:23:35,127 --> 00:23:38,585 I'm good with strangers so I figured I could make it work. 293 00:23:38,831 --> 00:23:39,923 And I did. 294 00:23:40,165 --> 00:23:44,192 Wayne Jackson with The Memphis Horns 295 00:23:44,436 --> 00:23:49,840 was playing at the gig in Brixton when I saw Otis in 1967. 296 00:23:50,609 --> 00:23:56,673 So it was a great thing for me to be able to work with them and work with him 297 00:23:56,849 --> 00:24:01,843 and hear a lot of the stories firsthand about Otis. 298 00:24:02,020 --> 00:24:03,885 The song had a certain sense of humour to it 299 00:24:03,956 --> 00:24:06,322 and they felt like the horns would kind of highlight that humour. 300 00:24:17,903 --> 00:24:18,927 There they are. 301 00:24:19,638 --> 00:24:23,199 I liked the song and I loved the track. It felt good. 302 00:24:24,009 --> 00:24:27,638 That's all. R&B feels good. And this felt good, too. 303 00:24:28,013 --> 00:24:31,779 And I could see why he wanted something original sounding 304 00:24:32,217 --> 00:24:36,711 to lean his music more towards soul rather than pop. 305 00:24:38,490 --> 00:24:40,082 And I gave him that. 306 00:24:40,192 --> 00:24:41,853 When they came back after being here for a week 307 00:24:41,927 --> 00:24:43,588 and I heard them for the first time, 308 00:24:43,662 --> 00:24:45,186 there was this big smile on my face 309 00:24:45,264 --> 00:24:47,357 'cause it really helped pull the whole track together. 310 00:24:47,666 --> 00:24:53,571 We were all very happy. Daniel and Peter just jumped up and ran around the studio, 311 00:24:53,672 --> 00:24:57,073 just jumping up just like fairies. 312 00:25:00,078 --> 00:25:03,241 They were so happy with the way it was coming off. 313 00:25:03,415 --> 00:25:06,213 The thing about Sledgehammer is that it had that video. 314 00:25:06,885 --> 00:25:10,787 And the video had such a charm, such a sense of humour, 315 00:25:10,856 --> 00:25:13,916 which was something that people didn't realise about him. 316 00:25:37,216 --> 00:25:41,084 I'd taken a risk and spent quite a lot of money on this video, 317 00:25:41,253 --> 00:25:44,279 which was really unusual at the time. 318 00:25:44,356 --> 00:25:46,449 People hadn't really done something like that. 319 00:25:53,332 --> 00:25:56,267 I was introduced to this wonderful director, Stephen R. Johnson, 320 00:25:57,202 --> 00:26:00,000 and he introduced me to the Quay Brothers, 321 00:26:00,072 --> 00:26:03,235 and I introduced him to Aardman Animations, 322 00:26:03,308 --> 00:26:05,139 all of whom worked together. 323 00:26:05,944 --> 00:26:08,742 In those days, you more or less had to do it all in camera. 324 00:26:08,847 --> 00:26:10,940 In other words, what you shot was what you got. 325 00:26:11,016 --> 00:26:13,041 And you couldn't layer stuff in. 326 00:26:13,118 --> 00:26:15,348 So basically, you were shooting everything frame by frame, 327 00:26:15,420 --> 00:26:18,753 in camera. So Peter Gabriel's sitting in a chair, 328 00:26:18,957 --> 00:26:23,360 we made a wig, we've got bumper cars, they are simply model cars 329 00:26:23,428 --> 00:26:25,328 which are animated frame by frame. 330 00:26:25,397 --> 00:26:28,594 And he would be directed to enunciate 331 00:26:28,667 --> 00:26:30,464 the part of the word that he's meant to be singing. 332 00:26:30,535 --> 00:26:34,403 You would direct his eyes to look right or look left on a frame by frame basis. 333 00:26:34,473 --> 00:26:37,442 You were using Peter Gabriel effectively as an animated model. 334 00:26:41,980 --> 00:26:46,815 Two weeks of sort of creative work in a very slow and painful process, 335 00:26:47,452 --> 00:26:52,355 filming it old-style animation. So as clouds moved across my face, 336 00:26:52,424 --> 00:26:55,325 they actually had to be painted frame by frame. 337 00:26:56,728 --> 00:27:01,495 And then Nick Park was asked to animate these chickens. 338 00:27:01,600 --> 00:27:03,534 So they'd already been out of the fridge for quite a while 339 00:27:03,602 --> 00:27:05,092 while they had wire put in them 340 00:27:05,304 --> 00:27:07,898 and then they were underneath the studio lights 341 00:27:07,973 --> 00:27:11,807 and Nick is to be seen wearing protective clothing, 342 00:27:11,877 --> 00:27:13,708 rubber gloves with a mask and stuff like that 343 00:27:13,779 --> 00:27:17,875 because he was rightly anxious about salmonella. 344 00:27:29,094 --> 00:27:32,757 After the Sledgehammer video was popular in America, 345 00:27:33,432 --> 00:27:36,993 I noticed and had a laugh that there were more women in the audience. 346 00:27:37,469 --> 00:27:39,630 Exactly. There were women in the audience, 347 00:27:39,705 --> 00:27:42,674 which for the musicians was a wonderful thing. 348 00:27:43,608 --> 00:27:47,009 So that was a change that changed for good 349 00:27:47,079 --> 00:27:52,142 and we all kind of smiled about it on stage and took it for what it was. 350 00:27:52,551 --> 00:27:54,109 And that was one change after So. 351 00:27:55,587 --> 00:28:01,253 A song about a man and a woman faced with a problem of losing a job. 352 00:28:01,460 --> 00:28:03,553 It's called Don't Give Up. 353 00:28:15,407 --> 00:28:19,810 Don't Give Up started out as a rhythm-box pattern 354 00:28:19,878 --> 00:28:24,008 that Peter had been fiddling around with on his LinnDrum 355 00:28:24,449 --> 00:28:26,349 and had little tuned tom-toms. 356 00:28:27,352 --> 00:28:29,115 And I always liked something about it. 357 00:28:30,622 --> 00:28:34,922 And so this entire song was built around that little tom-tom pattern. 358 00:28:36,561 --> 00:28:42,693 And I'd pitched the toms quite deliberately, 359 00:28:42,801 --> 00:28:47,204 and then asked Tony if he could build on that. 360 00:28:48,306 --> 00:28:49,773 And when Tony Levin came in, 361 00:28:49,841 --> 00:28:53,937 then he mimicked the phrasing of the tom-tom pattern the best he could, 362 00:28:54,046 --> 00:28:57,641 and he invented this beautiful part that floats on top. 363 00:28:57,916 --> 00:29:01,716 And I thought that'd be a good bass part if I put notes to it. 364 00:29:01,787 --> 00:29:03,755 So, I started... 365 00:29:06,792 --> 00:29:10,057 And then I added harmony. 366 00:29:13,031 --> 00:29:15,124 A little beatbox part here. 367 00:29:26,078 --> 00:29:27,375 It's quite Jamaican, isn't it? 368 00:29:27,446 --> 00:29:30,381 Then we can put some keys in for the chords. 369 00:29:37,155 --> 00:29:38,315 Little faster. 370 00:29:41,159 --> 00:29:45,152 We talked about Don't Give Up being a duet 371 00:29:45,230 --> 00:29:48,825 and he was hoping to find... 372 00:29:51,236 --> 00:29:52,828 Somebody who could sing a country song. 373 00:29:52,904 --> 00:29:56,067 I'd seen these extraordinary black and white pictures 374 00:29:56,141 --> 00:29:59,042 of the American Depression by Dorothea Lange. 375 00:29:59,111 --> 00:30:03,605 And they were haunting, so that was sort of a trigger point, 376 00:30:03,682 --> 00:30:07,209 but then there was quite a lot of unemployment going on, so... 377 00:30:07,285 --> 00:30:10,083 I thought I would try and roll that in, 378 00:30:10,155 --> 00:30:13,784 and in a way the Don't Give Up message felt like 379 00:30:13,859 --> 00:30:17,488 sort of an emotional focal point for the lyric. 380 00:30:17,562 --> 00:30:23,296 And originally, because of the American Depression starting point, 381 00:30:23,368 --> 00:30:26,804 I'd actually thought of Dolly Parton, who I'm a big fan of. 382 00:30:26,905 --> 00:30:30,432 And he wanted to try and get Dolly Parton, which I thought was inspired. 383 00:30:31,076 --> 00:30:32,509 And she wasn't interested. 384 00:30:32,777 --> 00:30:37,476 And I believe that when they called Dolly's manager, 385 00:30:37,549 --> 00:30:40,746 I don't think any of them knew who Peter Gabriel was. 386 00:30:41,386 --> 00:30:44,150 It's interesting that he did write it with Dolly Parton in mind, 387 00:30:44,222 --> 00:30:48,056 because I can't imagine that voice in that setting. 388 00:30:48,560 --> 00:30:51,051 From the point at which he mentioned Dolly Parton 389 00:30:51,129 --> 00:30:52,653 he also mentioned Kate. 390 00:30:52,731 --> 00:30:56,565 When Kate Bush walked in, it was a completely different energy, again. 391 00:30:56,635 --> 00:30:59,934 What was a piece in development 392 00:31:00,005 --> 00:31:05,944 turned into such a complete song, almost instantaneously. 393 00:31:06,011 --> 00:31:08,275 So something that we've just been working on, 394 00:31:08,346 --> 00:31:10,473 and working on, and working on for months, 395 00:31:10,549 --> 00:31:16,385 and not really getting to any kind of finality 396 00:31:16,454 --> 00:31:17,819 instantly changed. 397 00:31:18,356 --> 00:31:20,381 Of course, we were all happy to be in her presence. 398 00:31:20,458 --> 00:31:23,188 She was royalty pretty much, so... 399 00:31:23,895 --> 00:31:26,159 She was literally standing right beside me here, 400 00:31:26,231 --> 00:31:28,096 we're all working on headphones. 401 00:31:28,166 --> 00:31:31,135 And we had the speakers turned down, so we're working on headphones, 402 00:31:31,203 --> 00:31:34,639 and you could just hear the emotion just dripping out of her performance. 403 00:31:34,706 --> 00:31:37,300 And literally every hair on my body was just standing up. 404 00:31:54,092 --> 00:32:01,055 It needs to be really underplayed and intimate. 405 00:32:01,433 --> 00:32:05,893 Don't Give Up is actually a really nice way 406 00:32:05,971 --> 00:32:09,168 to come out of Red Rain and Sledgehammer 407 00:32:09,274 --> 00:32:12,641 into something very soothing and very pointed. 408 00:32:12,744 --> 00:32:17,204 And it's interesting that he gives that key line to Kate Bush, 409 00:32:17,282 --> 00:32:18,977 he doesn't sing it himself. 410 00:32:19,084 --> 00:32:25,546 He gives it to this beautiful female voice that has a lover's quality, maternal quality. 411 00:32:26,091 --> 00:32:28,889 I think, and it's my impression, again, 412 00:32:28,960 --> 00:32:33,590 that it's a homage to these songs, these duets, 413 00:32:33,665 --> 00:32:36,532 that used to happen in the world of rhythm and blues, 414 00:32:36,601 --> 00:32:40,037 when Otis Redding sang with Aretha Franklin. 415 00:32:40,171 --> 00:32:44,403 He was paying a tribute, his respect to the music that he loves. 416 00:32:53,251 --> 00:32:56,880 She was essentially brought in as an actor, really. 417 00:32:56,955 --> 00:33:02,018 To play a role and to represent that part of the song. 418 00:33:03,495 --> 00:33:07,693 And I can't imagine it being any better than it is. 419 00:33:07,766 --> 00:33:10,200 She was like an angel and did it fantastically. 420 00:33:28,086 --> 00:33:33,718 So, this is the wonderful Richard Tee on piano, 421 00:33:33,792 --> 00:33:40,755 which is much more of a soul, gospel piano, which he does really well. 422 00:33:41,833 --> 00:33:45,200 And then Peter... Where is Peter? 423 00:33:55,013 --> 00:33:56,412 Falsetto comin' up. 424 00:34:00,318 --> 00:34:01,580 Beautiful, huh? 425 00:34:17,902 --> 00:34:22,134 There's a big difference on the record in the sound in the second half of the piece. 426 00:34:22,207 --> 00:34:25,973 And I looked around the studio for some dampening material, 427 00:34:26,044 --> 00:34:27,602 some foam rubber or something. 428 00:34:27,679 --> 00:34:30,011 And my eyes fell on... 429 00:34:30,081 --> 00:34:31,776 My bass case was full of diapers. 430 00:34:31,850 --> 00:34:37,015 I had... Again, my two-month-old daughter was with me. 431 00:34:37,088 --> 00:34:40,387 And somehow, I thought there might not be diapers in England, 432 00:34:40,458 --> 00:34:42,824 I don't know what I was thinking, but... 433 00:34:42,927 --> 00:34:46,055 I had packed everything full of diapers, every free space. 434 00:34:46,131 --> 00:34:51,000 So, I put a diaper under the bass strings, which dampened the heck out of 'em. 435 00:34:51,069 --> 00:34:55,096 And later Peter and Dan called that the "Super Wonder Nappy Bass Sound". 436 00:35:13,825 --> 00:35:15,759 I am obsessive 437 00:35:15,827 --> 00:35:21,288 about getting the right feel, the right performance. 438 00:35:21,800 --> 00:35:25,099 And Tony's absolutely brilliant with... 439 00:35:25,170 --> 00:35:28,071 One of the most amazing musicians I've ever worked with, 440 00:35:28,139 --> 00:35:33,543 but occasionally he'll do something that doesn't fit the picture, 441 00:35:33,611 --> 00:35:35,977 and I've got something else in my head. 442 00:35:36,247 --> 00:35:41,879 I was working at a studio called the Wool Hall in Beckington, near Bath. 443 00:35:42,187 --> 00:35:46,089 And I was over there for quite some time working on this record, 444 00:35:46,157 --> 00:35:51,527 and also concurrently, I was just getting ready to start a new record 445 00:35:51,596 --> 00:35:54,588 with Joni Mitchell, who was my wife at the time. 446 00:35:55,867 --> 00:35:58,529 There was quite a vital music scene 447 00:35:58,603 --> 00:36:01,470 around Bath and the surrounding area in Somerset. 448 00:36:01,539 --> 00:36:06,203 There were a lot of groups doing work, Tears for Fears were up there. 449 00:36:06,277 --> 00:36:10,213 Peter Hammill was a guy who was working nearby, 450 00:36:10,315 --> 00:36:13,978 and so, there was a lot of studio hopping that went on, 451 00:36:14,052 --> 00:36:18,751 within a half hour drive, people would just drop in to someone else's session, 452 00:36:18,823 --> 00:36:23,624 and there was a number of different groups that were working on different things. 453 00:36:23,728 --> 00:36:29,428 And so, Joni and I just became a part of that little scene there, 454 00:36:29,501 --> 00:36:32,493 and when Peter called me, which I think it just turned out 455 00:36:32,570 --> 00:36:36,939 that he had some things that were unfinished. 456 00:36:37,008 --> 00:36:40,205 And he probably found out 457 00:36:40,278 --> 00:36:44,977 from one of the circuit of people there that I was in town. 458 00:36:45,116 --> 00:36:50,748 Some of the ideas for Mercy Street came relatively easily. 459 00:36:50,822 --> 00:36:54,383 I mean, with Mercy Street I'd found by chance 460 00:36:54,459 --> 00:36:57,758 these wonderful books of a poet called Anne Sexton, 461 00:36:57,829 --> 00:37:00,093 and she became the focus. 462 00:37:00,331 --> 00:37:07,294 I am a big fan of Anne Sexton's poetry and was since I was 14-15 years old. 463 00:37:07,872 --> 00:37:12,809 And so, when I listened to the song, I knew what he had written about, 464 00:37:12,877 --> 00:37:15,812 and sort of what the centre of the song was about. 465 00:37:15,880 --> 00:37:18,474 And it was just incredibly moving to me. 466 00:37:38,836 --> 00:37:40,394 The first thing that I did was... 467 00:37:46,244 --> 00:37:52,410 And then the other part was a fretless bass part, but using tenths. 468 00:38:05,396 --> 00:38:06,624 A lot of these songs changed. 469 00:38:06,698 --> 00:38:11,726 Like, Mercy Street became the song it became by accident. 470 00:38:11,803 --> 00:38:14,203 It actually was originally a song called Furrow, 471 00:38:14,272 --> 00:38:16,467 that Peter had recorded down in Brazil, a couple of years before, 472 00:38:16,541 --> 00:38:18,907 and he had recorded all the percussion elements. 473 00:38:19,377 --> 00:38:22,904 In my percussion research, 474 00:38:22,981 --> 00:38:26,109 the most interesting things were coming out of Africa and Brazil. 475 00:38:26,351 --> 00:38:29,252 So, I went down to Brazil and to... 476 00:38:31,923 --> 00:38:34,483 Wanted to record with some percussionists there. 477 00:38:34,926 --> 00:38:36,985 On day, we were working on one song 478 00:38:37,061 --> 00:38:39,655 and I just had the vary speed of the machine engaged. 479 00:38:39,797 --> 00:38:42,891 So, the machine was actually running at its slowest potential speed. 480 00:38:43,001 --> 00:38:44,992 And the next song on the reel was Furrow. 481 00:38:45,236 --> 00:38:46,760 It started to play 482 00:38:46,838 --> 00:38:49,705 and Dan and Peter and I all looked at one another and immediately went, 483 00:38:49,774 --> 00:38:51,036 "What is that sound?" 484 00:38:51,109 --> 00:38:53,976 Because it was running ten percent slower than it should be running. 485 00:38:54,045 --> 00:38:57,981 There was something about the percussion and the graininess of the percussion. 486 00:38:58,049 --> 00:39:01,177 We slowed down guitars and I think we slowed down the cymbals, as well, 487 00:39:01,252 --> 00:39:03,982 'cause again, that sinking... 488 00:39:04,055 --> 00:39:08,253 Giving the mixture weight and power. 489 00:39:23,174 --> 00:39:29,409 We didn't use headphones for Peter singing. He had a little blaster at his piano. 490 00:39:29,580 --> 00:39:33,516 I don't like headphones. They're like condoms for the ears in a way. 491 00:39:33,584 --> 00:39:36,781 You don't feel you're really connected. 492 00:39:36,854 --> 00:39:42,258 And the extraordinary thing is that you can get exactly the same musical information, 493 00:39:42,326 --> 00:39:45,853 and sing really out of tune with headphones, 494 00:39:45,930 --> 00:39:49,991 and be very precise as soon as you are singing to the speakers. 495 00:39:50,268 --> 00:39:52,793 His monitor was really this little blaster, 496 00:39:52,870 --> 00:39:56,931 and that's all he ever used and we just found a sweet spot. 497 00:39:57,008 --> 00:40:01,843 Clearly, the blaster's at the back of the mike, so there was some separation, 498 00:40:01,913 --> 00:40:05,076 and then tried to keep Peter as close to the mike as possible. 499 00:40:07,652 --> 00:40:14,148 So, the vocals were really important in this, and I don't do a lot of vocal harmony work, 500 00:40:14,225 --> 00:40:19,060 but here it felt really important. It was sort of 501 00:40:19,130 --> 00:40:24,693 this sensual, dreamlike environment for Anne Sexton's world. 502 00:40:24,869 --> 00:40:28,828 So, in the verse, one of the ideas to try and build the mystery 503 00:40:28,906 --> 00:40:34,105 was to put a shadow vocal in. So, an octave below the main vocal, 504 00:40:34,178 --> 00:40:38,706 there's this low voice. If you solo that. 505 00:40:44,455 --> 00:40:46,685 With the lead voice as well. 506 00:40:56,267 --> 00:40:58,064 The one part that we couldn't execute at the time 507 00:40:58,136 --> 00:41:01,162 was the lowest voice, the low octave voice, 508 00:41:01,239 --> 00:41:05,733 'cause that's just in a part of Peter's range that is beautiful-sounding, 509 00:41:05,810 --> 00:41:07,937 but once he's up and about during the day and talking, 510 00:41:08,045 --> 00:41:10,206 that part usually kind of disappears. 511 00:41:10,381 --> 00:41:13,316 I had trouble doing that low voice. 512 00:41:13,384 --> 00:41:16,285 And apparently... 513 00:41:16,354 --> 00:41:20,791 Well, I do remember that in the morning, you have morning voice, you know? 514 00:41:20,858 --> 00:41:24,658 I think a lot of people are familiar with that pre-coffee voice. 515 00:41:25,096 --> 00:41:27,929 So, there was one evening we were discussing 516 00:41:27,999 --> 00:41:31,457 how to go about executing that low harmony performance. 517 00:41:31,536 --> 00:41:35,563 And I just suggested that perhaps, he would spend the night at the studio, 518 00:41:35,640 --> 00:41:38,973 and I would prep the studio so that he could come in first thing the next morning, 519 00:41:39,343 --> 00:41:42,642 and without talking to anybody, just put on the headphones and just start singing. 520 00:41:42,713 --> 00:41:45,204 We started at 7:00 in the morning 521 00:41:45,283 --> 00:41:49,686 in order to get this voice before it had risen up to its normal level. 522 00:41:49,987 --> 00:41:52,683 And within an hour, we had a low harmony part on the track. 523 00:41:52,757 --> 00:41:55,885 And that kind of helps pin the rest of the vocal, 524 00:41:55,960 --> 00:42:00,260 that kind of gives you the base layer from which all the other voices elevate. 525 00:42:00,765 --> 00:42:04,394 It's actually an effect that I liked a lot. 526 00:42:18,115 --> 00:42:19,582 I've been very lucky musically, 527 00:42:19,617 --> 00:42:22,484 I never have any trouble generating new ideas, 528 00:42:22,553 --> 00:42:27,547 but lyrically, getting something that I think is okay, 529 00:42:27,625 --> 00:42:32,062 and as I get older I think I get more critical. That is hard work. 530 00:42:32,163 --> 00:42:36,395 He would not want to finish working on the lyrics, 531 00:42:36,467 --> 00:42:40,460 and Dan, understandably, would want him to finish working on the lyrics. 532 00:42:40,671 --> 00:42:44,505 I'm a master of distraction when I have a deadline. 533 00:42:44,709 --> 00:42:46,768 Peter would take a lot of phone calls 534 00:42:46,844 --> 00:42:52,282 when it got to an intense period of recording where he really needed to deliver. 535 00:42:52,350 --> 00:42:56,582 He was a master at finding moments to delay. 536 00:42:57,288 --> 00:43:01,452 I think I smashed a telephone and threw it in the bushes a few times, 537 00:43:01,525 --> 00:43:03,823 because I didn't allow telephones on the session. 538 00:43:04,829 --> 00:43:06,262 When Peter had been on the phone for a while, 539 00:43:06,330 --> 00:43:08,958 and Danny eventually decided we needed to get back to work. 540 00:43:09,033 --> 00:43:13,265 So, he took the phone out of Peter's hand and smashed it to pieces on the console, 541 00:43:13,337 --> 00:43:16,966 without saying a word, just smashed it to bits, 542 00:43:17,041 --> 00:43:20,204 and carried right on as if nothing had happened. 543 00:43:21,913 --> 00:43:25,679 At a time when the lyrics were going a little slow and I said to Peter, 544 00:43:25,750 --> 00:43:29,345 "Why don't you just go in that cow barn of yours, 545 00:43:29,420 --> 00:43:32,753 and strike up the PA and get on with some lyrics?" So he went in. 546 00:43:32,823 --> 00:43:38,489 And there were these huge spikes laying down there by the sliding door. 547 00:43:38,562 --> 00:43:41,224 I took the spikes and I nailed him in the studio. 548 00:43:41,332 --> 00:43:44,495 Peter had the PA turned up quite loud and he was playing the track, 549 00:43:44,635 --> 00:43:46,626 and so, Dan took up the six-inch nail, 550 00:43:46,704 --> 00:43:50,071 and with a hammer, in time with the music, hammered the door shut. 551 00:43:50,741 --> 00:43:55,735 'Cause he was so frustrated at the speed or lack of speed. 552 00:43:55,813 --> 00:43:59,874 There was one lyric I just couldn't get satisfied 553 00:43:59,951 --> 00:44:01,543 with anything I was generating. 554 00:44:01,819 --> 00:44:04,447 Peter didn't hear him while he was doing that. 555 00:44:04,622 --> 00:44:07,591 So, lunch was called. 556 00:44:07,658 --> 00:44:10,491 Dan and I went up for lunch and I remember saying to Dan, 557 00:44:10,561 --> 00:44:12,256 "Do you think we should let Peter out?" "No, he'll be fine." 558 00:44:12,797 --> 00:44:18,167 Peter's not a violent or aggressive man in any way, shape or form. 559 00:44:18,235 --> 00:44:23,104 And he managed to take the doorframe right out, 560 00:44:23,174 --> 00:44:26,268 to open the door, so he could get out of the room. 561 00:44:26,344 --> 00:44:29,871 Which was quite a feat, it was a big, solid door, 562 00:44:29,947 --> 00:44:36,250 double layers of cinderblocks and concrete. It's quite impressive. 563 00:44:36,654 --> 00:44:41,182 And at the end of lunch, Peter says to Dan, "Can we have a word outside?" 564 00:44:41,258 --> 00:44:43,988 So, they went outside and they exchanged a few words. 565 00:44:44,061 --> 00:44:45,995 And then we went back to work, and that was it. 566 00:44:47,565 --> 00:44:52,059 I almost got fired and not many lyrics were written, 567 00:44:52,136 --> 00:44:58,632 but I think he got the idea that we weren't about to wait around for him. 568 00:44:58,909 --> 00:45:03,403 Just, you know, "Let's get the job done here. Let's hit it with a sledgehammer." 569 00:45:04,982 --> 00:45:07,473 It was really late in the process, it was probably October, November, 570 00:45:07,718 --> 00:45:11,814 and then Peter was like, well, we only had eight songs. 571 00:45:11,889 --> 00:45:14,722 There was another song that was also in play that didn't get finished. 572 00:45:14,825 --> 00:45:17,293 And so, we realised, "Well, we need to come up with another song." 573 00:45:17,361 --> 00:45:20,159 And then Peter came out and said, "Well, let's use Excellent Birds." 574 00:45:20,264 --> 00:45:24,667 It was a sort of last-minute track coming from an alternative direction, 575 00:45:24,735 --> 00:45:30,173 but I thought it could be a nice inclusion. 576 00:45:30,241 --> 00:45:36,305 We came together in the studio to... And that was here in my studio. 577 00:45:37,381 --> 00:45:40,578 And wrote this together, more or less trading lines I think, 578 00:45:40,651 --> 00:45:42,278 is how we did it. "Let's do a song." 579 00:45:42,353 --> 00:45:44,412 I said, "Well, I'm doing a show about natural history." 580 00:45:44,488 --> 00:45:46,251 He said, "What about birds? Let's do something about birds." 581 00:45:46,757 --> 00:45:53,026 We had 48 hours before the deadline to write the song, 582 00:45:53,097 --> 00:45:56,897 including the lyric, record it, do the video. 583 00:45:57,034 --> 00:46:02,836 And there was a point on the second night 584 00:46:02,940 --> 00:46:07,309 where I'm trying to sing the vocal, and I'm on a stool. 585 00:46:07,378 --> 00:46:10,677 And I just stopped. 586 00:46:10,748 --> 00:46:17,119 And then after a while there's this, while the track is playing, snoring coming. 587 00:46:17,822 --> 00:46:22,521 And there's no glass in the studio, but they stopped eventually, 588 00:46:22,593 --> 00:46:28,429 and peered around and I had just fallen asleep mid-take, 589 00:46:28,499 --> 00:46:30,558 trying to do my vocal, 590 00:46:30,634 --> 00:46:35,537 and we looked a little weather-beaten the following day when we did the video. 591 00:46:56,827 --> 00:46:59,887 Peter reached out to Laurie and asked if he could use the track. 592 00:46:59,964 --> 00:47:03,058 And she obviously gave her permission, 593 00:47:03,134 --> 00:47:05,932 and that's when we started actually changing it, 594 00:47:06,003 --> 00:47:08,130 and trying to shape it, so that it would actually fit in 595 00:47:08,205 --> 00:47:09,763 with the rest of the songs on the record. 596 00:47:22,720 --> 00:47:28,920 That's one other thing that I really admire about Peter's music. 597 00:47:28,993 --> 00:47:34,625 It's forward-looking, and the lyrics are forward and open, 598 00:47:34,698 --> 00:47:38,896 and music is 599 00:47:40,604 --> 00:47:42,765 so much often about regret. 600 00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:44,774 I mean, if you didn't... 601 00:47:44,842 --> 00:47:51,543 You wouldn't have much music if you didn't have lots of regrets, I mean... 602 00:47:51,615 --> 00:47:57,178 I think Willie Nelson was the one who said, "90% of us end up with the wrong person, 603 00:47:57,254 --> 00:47:59,722 and that's what makes the jukebox spin." 604 00:48:00,224 --> 00:48:02,692 I don't think it was on the original vinyl version, 605 00:48:02,793 --> 00:48:06,320 we didn't have enough space, 'cause you sort of forget about those days 606 00:48:06,397 --> 00:48:12,825 where 22 or 24 minutes was the maximum you could pack onto a disk 607 00:48:12,903 --> 00:48:17,840 if you wanted to have the bass with any power to it. 608 00:48:18,676 --> 00:48:23,579 'Cause the bigger bass you have the deeper the grooves go. 609 00:48:23,647 --> 00:48:25,979 And so, you need to push 'em up the record, 610 00:48:26,050 --> 00:48:31,750 'cause the circle is getting smaller and smaller, if you imagine with the needle. 611 00:48:31,822 --> 00:48:36,725 So, it's harder and harder to get any bass 612 00:48:36,794 --> 00:48:39,092 as you arrive at the end. 613 00:48:39,496 --> 00:48:43,489 Vinyl, actually, is still my preferred way of listening to music, 614 00:48:43,701 --> 00:48:44,895 because of the warmth, 615 00:48:44,969 --> 00:48:48,735 because of the physical interaction you have with the disc. 616 00:48:49,006 --> 00:48:53,170 And even just the mere art of flipping it over, you're engaged with it. 617 00:48:53,244 --> 00:48:56,975 On CD, when it was recently reissued a few years ago, 618 00:48:57,047 --> 00:49:00,039 he put In Your Eyes at the back of the CD, 619 00:49:00,117 --> 00:49:04,315 where apparently he had originally intended it to go. 620 00:49:04,388 --> 00:49:08,791 But because of the way vinyl was, they made the other choice. 621 00:49:08,859 --> 00:49:11,521 It's a rare instance where the CD's an improvement, 622 00:49:11,595 --> 00:49:13,119 at least in the running order. 623 00:49:13,197 --> 00:49:18,191 Because on the original album, it ended with We Do What We're Told, 624 00:49:18,302 --> 00:49:22,830 and I think by putting it at the end of the CD, 625 00:49:22,906 --> 00:49:27,036 he actually made the album more complete 626 00:49:27,511 --> 00:49:33,279 and gave it that sense of optimism, that there is a future, 627 00:49:33,350 --> 00:49:36,513 that we don't have to just do what we're told, and... 628 00:49:36,587 --> 00:49:39,385 Sometimes you can find your greatest strength in the person next to you. 629 00:49:39,556 --> 00:49:43,014 I still don't like this title business. 630 00:49:43,093 --> 00:49:49,054 And maybe a way around it is just to have one or two letters. 631 00:49:49,133 --> 00:49:51,863 'Cause then it becomes like a piece of graphic. 632 00:49:51,935 --> 00:49:57,168 So, when I was thinking about So, 633 00:49:57,241 --> 00:50:00,176 you know, I thought, "Okay, we'll just make it two letters, 634 00:50:00,244 --> 00:50:03,338 and we choose letters that actually look quite nice in themselves." 635 00:50:03,514 --> 00:50:09,646 He had an idea about having a trilogy of sorts with just a two-letter title. 636 00:50:09,720 --> 00:50:11,415 "So" being one of 'em, "Us." 637 00:50:11,555 --> 00:50:15,924 But maybe it was like a backlash of the complexity of the making 638 00:50:16,026 --> 00:50:18,460 of this record that he wanted a nice, simple title. 639 00:50:18,662 --> 00:50:21,426 The less letters you have, the bigger you can make them. 640 00:50:21,498 --> 00:50:26,128 And so, you're out in the marketplace, you've got bigger billing than anyone else, 641 00:50:26,203 --> 00:50:28,831 'cause you've only got two letters. 642 00:50:28,906 --> 00:50:34,037 So, this was something that I liked and I've kept on doing ever since. 643 00:50:48,959 --> 00:50:51,223 I was fascinated in Africa 644 00:50:51,295 --> 00:50:54,753 that you could have a love song that was a religious song 645 00:50:54,832 --> 00:50:58,700 and a romantic love song at the same time. 646 00:50:58,769 --> 00:51:04,708 So, I was trying to see if I could get that ambiguity in this lyric. 647 00:51:05,008 --> 00:51:07,704 For the track In Your Eyes, 648 00:51:07,811 --> 00:51:11,338 Peter says to me, "Okay, we're gonna do that track, just play what you wanna play." 649 00:51:11,415 --> 00:51:14,350 And in my mind, I said, 650 00:51:14,418 --> 00:51:16,318 "What does that mean? I don't know what I wanna... 651 00:51:16,387 --> 00:51:17,581 I'm just gonna play the track, 652 00:51:17,654 --> 00:51:20,589 but what does that mean, play what you wanna play?" 653 00:51:20,691 --> 00:51:21,680 'Cause I've never been used to that. 654 00:51:21,759 --> 00:51:24,819 I've always been asked to play this or play like someone else. 655 00:51:24,928 --> 00:51:31,595 I was facing him with my drum kit, he's just standing in front of me, 656 00:51:31,668 --> 00:51:33,693 he put the headphones, I had the headphones, 657 00:51:33,771 --> 00:51:37,901 asked to have the track in the headphones and started dancing like an African. 658 00:51:37,975 --> 00:51:40,705 But you know Peter, the way he was at the time, 659 00:51:40,778 --> 00:51:47,513 very English, great face, great smile, trying to dance like African guys. 660 00:51:47,584 --> 00:51:52,180 I thought, "Okay, if that guy, a very English guy, go for it..." 661 00:51:52,256 --> 00:51:54,486 That was the cue for me. 662 00:51:54,558 --> 00:52:00,292 I just let it go. I just played like, "Okay, anything!" And it worked. 663 00:52:00,397 --> 00:52:05,027 And so once again, this project was very big for me musically, 664 00:52:05,102 --> 00:52:06,592 'cause I think he opened up my mind. 665 00:52:07,037 --> 00:52:08,834 There's a talking drum here. 666 00:52:26,023 --> 00:52:28,856 You can't miss with this. Everything he put up sounds great. 667 00:52:33,797 --> 00:52:36,027 We had... 668 00:52:36,099 --> 00:52:39,933 96, I think Kevin would probably be able to confirm this, 669 00:52:40,003 --> 00:52:44,770 I think 96 different versions of In Your Eyes, 670 00:52:44,842 --> 00:52:47,106 all on multi-track. 671 00:52:47,244 --> 00:52:53,308 So, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of different takes to choose from, 672 00:52:53,383 --> 00:52:57,444 which were all organised by a gigantic wall chart, 673 00:52:57,521 --> 00:53:02,083 which we eventually chopped together, bar by bar, just onto two-inch tape, 674 00:53:02,159 --> 00:53:05,720 with Danny and Peter and everybody listening, just going, 675 00:53:05,863 --> 00:53:10,095 "Okay, bar one, take 37. We like that. 676 00:53:10,434 --> 00:53:12,425 "We'll take that one." So, that's where that one would go. 677 00:53:12,503 --> 00:53:16,405 And we literally assembled that song 678 00:53:16,473 --> 00:53:20,307 with three, six, twelve-inch pieces of two inch tape 679 00:53:20,377 --> 00:53:22,470 to actually create the rhythm track. 680 00:53:22,846 --> 00:53:25,474 We could've worked on that song for probably another couple of months. 681 00:53:25,616 --> 00:53:28,483 And Youssou's part had gone on before Peter had done his lyrics. 682 00:53:28,552 --> 00:53:31,043 So, Peter had to weave his performance around Youssou's, 683 00:53:31,221 --> 00:53:35,385 which was a wonderful thing and a great tapestry to sing against, 684 00:53:35,459 --> 00:53:38,519 but it still was a complicated arrangement. 685 00:53:38,662 --> 00:53:43,190 Just the way he delivered on that was so radically different 686 00:53:43,267 --> 00:53:45,963 from anything I think we were expecting. 687 00:53:46,737 --> 00:53:49,171 I think there was a lot of joy in the track for me, 688 00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:52,902 and when Youssou's voice sort of 689 00:53:52,976 --> 00:53:59,939 milks that last bit of the song, it's like an ecstatic moment for me. 690 00:54:00,017 --> 00:54:05,978 In Your Eyes became an absolute anthem live. 691 00:54:06,056 --> 00:54:11,926 It was just the way in which that song was on the record 692 00:54:11,995 --> 00:54:14,486 became a whole other world live. 693 00:54:51,435 --> 00:54:54,029 It did go through a number of changes. 694 00:54:54,104 --> 00:54:57,096 The thing that was consistent was the... 695 00:54:57,174 --> 00:54:59,506 This sort of arpeggiated feature of the chorus, 696 00:54:59,576 --> 00:55:01,737 and there was an African groove underlying it. 697 00:55:09,119 --> 00:55:13,112 When we used to tour with Youssou, it was always a fantastic moment, 698 00:55:13,223 --> 00:55:16,249 you know, like the sun coming out, so... 699 00:55:17,227 --> 00:55:22,665 It was nice to tell a story, paint a picture and then, just have this sort of... 700 00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:24,999 Open ecstasy. 701 00:55:44,454 --> 00:55:47,617 It was really nice to see the energies of the two of them, 702 00:55:47,691 --> 00:55:52,560 how they looked at each other, and I could feel that something magic was happening. 703 00:56:01,571 --> 00:56:06,736 I listen to these tracks now, and I know that these tracks were built by a young man 704 00:56:06,810 --> 00:56:09,574 who did nothing else with his life for a year. 705 00:56:09,646 --> 00:56:15,380 And I can imagine what it's like to live the life of a monk now. 706 00:56:17,587 --> 00:56:22,923 A lot of things came together, I think, that opened it up to a much broader audience 707 00:56:22,993 --> 00:56:24,893 than I would normally get to. 708 00:56:25,062 --> 00:56:31,968 It was the moment that the perfect storm hit, and the man, and the public, and the record, 709 00:56:32,035 --> 00:56:35,835 and the tour and everything came together. 710 00:56:35,939 --> 00:56:42,811 I surrounded myself with wonderful people, but in the end I think it's songs that speak. 711 00:56:43,180 --> 00:56:48,982 "So" changed the landscape of recording for everybody. 712 00:56:49,319 --> 00:56:54,120 I worked with a lot of guys and from that point on it set the standard. 713 00:56:54,191 --> 00:56:59,629 It was such a well produced album of very well crafted songs, 714 00:56:59,730 --> 00:57:03,723 of incredible singing and phenomenal lyrics. 715 00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:06,735 It was the quintessential album. 716 00:57:07,170 --> 00:57:12,130 The right moment with the right people in the right place with the right things to do. 717 00:57:12,209 --> 00:57:15,906 I became fixated on it, let's say, and I... 718 00:57:15,979 --> 00:57:19,642 To this day, it sounds to me like it could've been done yesterday. 719 00:57:20,050 --> 00:57:22,450 He made a classic album 720 00:57:22,519 --> 00:57:28,014 simply by making sure he made the best record he could at the moment. 721 00:57:28,091 --> 00:57:29,991 And that's what classic albums are. 722 00:57:30,127 --> 00:57:36,464 The best album you could make at that moment and with the notion that 723 00:57:36,533 --> 00:57:42,267 you want it to live longer than you do, and he succeeded. 724 00:58:51,634 --> 00:58:54,603 Big Time, I think a few drummers had a go at it, 725 00:58:54,670 --> 00:58:58,731 including Stewart Copeland who I love, and has a great sound, 726 00:58:58,808 --> 00:59:01,368 and I think that's him at the heart of the loop. 727 00:59:01,577 --> 00:59:05,240 Stewart's playing was very exciting, 728 00:59:06,615 --> 00:59:09,140 but it didn't quite match with the groove. 729 00:59:09,218 --> 00:59:11,516 So Dan and I, we listened and we found 730 00:59:11,587 --> 00:59:14,988 parts of his pattern that worked really well with the current groove. 731 00:59:15,057 --> 00:59:18,857 And then we literally, as a demonstration to Peter, we made a mono track 732 00:59:18,928 --> 00:59:20,828 onto a half-inch machine. 733 00:59:20,896 --> 00:59:24,662 And then we literally flew that part in, every four bars into the song 734 00:59:24,734 --> 00:59:27,100 to demonstrate to Peter that it could actually work. 735 00:59:27,169 --> 00:59:28,602 And then Peter said, "I really like that." 736 00:59:28,671 --> 00:59:30,798 "Now, can you go back and get all his drum fills as well?" 737 00:59:30,873 --> 00:59:33,808 So we went back and then added all the drum fills. 738 00:59:33,876 --> 00:59:36,777 And then David came in and added this really great guitar part, 739 00:59:36,846 --> 00:59:39,610 but there was still something that wasn't quite settled 740 00:59:39,682 --> 00:59:43,379 so David Stallbaumer and I took the song into the other room. 741 00:59:43,452 --> 00:59:46,785 And Dan said, "Look, if you can make the bass part really sync with the drums, 742 00:59:46,856 --> 00:59:48,847 then I think this song is going to be huge." 743 00:59:48,924 --> 00:59:50,789 So we spent a day just trying to get... 744 00:59:50,860 --> 00:59:53,260 With a Fairlight sequencer, trying to get the bass part to sync 745 00:59:53,329 --> 00:59:57,390 with this original Linn 9000 drum pattern that Peter had done. 746 00:59:57,466 --> 01:00:01,732 And once we established that, then the song really kind of just fell into shape. 747 01:00:02,037 --> 01:00:04,471 So, a combination of that drum loop 748 01:00:04,540 --> 01:00:07,668 and a pretty intense bass line from Tony 749 01:00:07,977 --> 01:00:10,275 is the heart of that song. 750 01:00:10,846 --> 01:00:14,213 For the song Big Time, of course, in the recording, 751 01:00:14,283 --> 01:00:17,218 I had had Jerry Marotta play drum sticks on the bass strings. 752 01:00:17,286 --> 01:00:20,517 And I just did the fingering of the left hand, that was easy. 753 01:00:20,589 --> 01:00:24,787 When we were on tour, I was constantly practising with a drum stick in my hand, 754 01:00:24,860 --> 01:00:28,227 trying to play this fast part with one hand and one drum stick. 755 01:00:28,297 --> 01:00:31,596 I wasn't really succeeding on that, but I was practising a lot. 756 01:00:31,667 --> 01:00:36,502 And one day at sound check Peter, walking by me and hearing me practise yet again, 757 01:00:37,072 --> 01:00:38,471 kind of thought and then he said, 758 01:00:38,541 --> 01:00:41,305 "Why don't you find a way to put two drumsticks on your fingers?" 759 01:00:41,610 --> 01:00:45,410 So finally, I had these and with these, I was able to play the part from the record, 760 01:00:45,481 --> 01:00:47,642 and that's how Funk Fingers were born. 761 01:01:17,546 --> 01:01:19,070 But it's a funny song, you know. 762 01:01:22,151 --> 01:01:25,211 I don't know if Peter ever did funny songs before, did he? 763 01:01:25,321 --> 01:01:27,619 Life is full of contradictions. 764 01:01:28,958 --> 01:01:32,917 And I think it was quite important for me to have something a little lighter 765 01:01:34,496 --> 01:01:39,661 and sarcastic rather than just all this heartfelt stuff. 766 01:01:39,902 --> 01:01:41,392 But this idea that 767 01:01:43,839 --> 01:01:46,307 everything's just going to keep getting bigger and bigger 768 01:01:46,375 --> 01:01:48,240 and growth will never stop, 769 01:01:49,345 --> 01:01:51,939 and that's where you will find utopia 770 01:01:52,014 --> 01:01:55,381 if you could just surround yourself with so much 771 01:01:57,086 --> 01:01:59,179 outside of yourself, then you will be a happy man, 772 01:01:59,255 --> 01:02:01,314 and he was making a mockery of that stance. 773 01:02:19,141 --> 01:02:20,574 We left out the best line, though. 774 01:02:26,515 --> 01:02:28,415 "Big, big, big, big, 775 01:02:28,484 --> 01:02:31,009 bulge in my big pants." 776 01:02:31,287 --> 01:02:34,256 It was definitely a sexual reference. 777 01:02:37,092 --> 01:02:40,391 And Gail persuaded me that it wasn't going to fly in America. 778 01:02:40,462 --> 01:02:42,987 These were early days, pre hip-hop. 779 01:02:43,198 --> 01:02:48,500 And Peter's manager made him take it out. She said, "You can't do that." 780 01:02:56,894 --> 01:02:59,954 With the Conspiracy of Hope Tour, which was '86, 781 01:03:01,298 --> 01:03:04,358 Amnesty had gone to U2 to try and... 782 01:03:05,436 --> 01:03:10,840 Who hadn't really broken America then. I think it was around the time of Red Rocks. 783 01:03:14,545 --> 01:03:18,311 But they were thinking that U2 were getting some heat going, 784 01:03:18,415 --> 01:03:21,509 and Amnesty wanted to increase their membership 785 01:03:22,019 --> 01:03:23,509 in America particularly. 786 01:03:23,988 --> 01:03:26,479 So Bono hustling me on the phone 787 01:03:26,557 --> 01:03:30,084 and taking about Biko introducing him to Africa, 788 01:03:30,928 --> 01:03:33,158 and saying that I had to be there. 789 01:03:33,297 --> 01:03:35,060 You go to King Crimson gigs, 790 01:03:35,132 --> 01:03:39,330 it was all guys scratching their chins, figuring out time signatures. 791 01:03:39,870 --> 01:03:42,100 I'd go to Moody Blues... Even Moody Blues shows, 792 01:03:42,172 --> 01:03:47,132 you tended to get people who were fairly serious about inter-galactic travel. 793 01:03:47,845 --> 01:03:54,341 And Peter wasn't like that. He's actually a very accessible figure. 794 01:03:54,618 --> 01:03:57,212 You know, I started meeting people 795 01:03:57,288 --> 01:04:00,189 involved in the human rights world for the very first time, 796 01:04:01,091 --> 01:04:03,855 meeting people who'd been tortured and so on 797 01:04:03,928 --> 01:04:08,058 and suddenly this whole area of the world which I'd seen about 798 01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:13,566 from a distance in newspapers or TV reports became very real. 799 01:04:27,384 --> 01:04:30,046 He asked me if I would be up for 800 01:04:30,321 --> 01:04:35,122 doing some touring on this Amnesty tour, and... 801 01:04:35,993 --> 01:04:39,690 Of course, I was thrilled. I mean, I said, "Okay, absolutely." 802 01:04:39,763 --> 01:04:42,254 That took me about two seconds to say yes. 803 01:04:58,949 --> 01:05:03,181 I remember starting the tour and having so much fun. 804 01:05:04,588 --> 01:05:08,217 Both because of the music of Peter's that we were playing, 805 01:05:08,926 --> 01:05:11,417 which I was thrilled to be playing, 806 01:05:11,662 --> 01:05:15,996 and the band that he had put together with Manu Katche and David Rhodes 807 01:05:16,333 --> 01:05:18,460 and Ian Stanley was playing keyboards, 808 01:05:19,803 --> 01:05:23,864 who is the keyboard player and one of the forces behind Tears For Fears. 809 01:05:26,677 --> 01:05:29,305 And so, both with that 810 01:05:29,747 --> 01:05:33,274 and also the whole synergy of touring 811 01:05:33,384 --> 01:05:38,515 with a group of bands like the ones that were on that tour, 812 01:05:38,589 --> 01:05:40,921 with U2 and The Neville Brothers 813 01:05:42,726 --> 01:05:44,819 and all these great people. 814 01:05:45,162 --> 01:05:48,495 I was talking to Joni on the phone, who was my wife at the time, 815 01:05:48,966 --> 01:05:52,333 and just saying, "This is so great. 816 01:05:52,436 --> 01:05:54,700 I can't even describe how much fun I'm having." 817 01:05:54,938 --> 01:05:57,498 And she finally decided, "Okay. 818 01:05:58,275 --> 01:06:01,870 Screw it. I'm gonna come out there and play, too." 819 01:06:01,945 --> 01:06:05,779 So she came out for the New York Giants Stadium show, 820 01:06:06,483 --> 01:06:11,546 and played a set with kind of borrowing musicians, borrowing Manu and myself. 821 01:06:11,622 --> 01:06:14,318 She didn't even have a guitar. She had to borrow a guitar, 822 01:06:14,391 --> 01:06:16,052 and put it in her tuning, 823 01:06:16,994 --> 01:06:21,431 which then of course screwed the guitar player whose guitar it was, 824 01:06:21,498 --> 01:06:25,696 because then, he was out of tune for his set. But that's a whole other story. 825 01:06:25,769 --> 01:06:29,170 But anyhow, it was a fantastic experience, 826 01:06:31,341 --> 01:06:33,536 and I loved being out on the road with those guys. 827 01:06:33,944 --> 01:06:36,276 The thing with Amnesty, it was my first tour abroad. 828 01:06:36,346 --> 01:06:39,679 I'd been just touring for myself in France with French artists, 829 01:06:39,750 --> 01:06:43,345 just, like, you know, in land, so very different. 830 01:06:43,420 --> 01:06:47,914 All of a sudden, once again, suddenly I'm on a huge stage 831 01:06:48,392 --> 01:06:54,627 with amazing artists, huge names around, and there are tons of people in front of me. 832 01:06:54,731 --> 01:06:57,598 So for me, it was my first tour abroad. 833 01:06:58,302 --> 01:07:02,329 I mean, it was my first one and it just is gonna remain to the end of my days 834 01:07:02,406 --> 01:07:05,398 'cause it's just, like, a huge and great 835 01:07:07,044 --> 01:07:08,568 and amazing moment. 836 01:07:08,645 --> 01:07:11,944 It felt particularly, as we say in French, "bon enfant". 837 01:07:12,015 --> 01:07:14,483 I don't know how you translate "bon enfant" in English. 838 01:07:14,952 --> 01:07:18,911 But I think it was a good relation between everyone, not forced. 839 01:07:20,224 --> 01:07:23,751 And a lot of respect. You really could feel the respect. 840 01:07:30,801 --> 01:07:34,202 I ended up getting asked to help with the '88 tour 841 01:07:34,271 --> 01:07:37,798 which was to go around the world, Human Rights Now! Tour, 842 01:07:37,975 --> 01:07:40,569 and I ended up doing Bono's hustling job, 843 01:07:42,379 --> 01:07:47,146 and got Sting and Youssou and eventually Springsteen to come on board. 844 01:07:47,618 --> 01:07:51,782 And I think for all those who took part, it was a life-changing experience. 845 01:07:52,122 --> 01:07:54,386 And then luckily enough, I had the second Amnesty, 846 01:07:54,458 --> 01:07:59,987 which was, for the case, much bigger. We had a DC-10. We all flew together. 847 01:08:00,397 --> 01:08:03,798 And I met a lot of musicians, a lot of new artists. We jammed. 848 01:08:04,168 --> 01:08:06,398 We were going around in a couple of planes, 849 01:08:06,470 --> 01:08:12,431 one full of equipment, and the other full of musicians and crew 850 01:08:13,310 --> 01:08:15,835 and occasionally, governments would get worried about 851 01:08:15,913 --> 01:08:20,680 this Amnesty event stirring up unrest so they'd cancel the show, 852 01:08:22,019 --> 01:08:25,580 and we'd be sitting in the front with Jack Healey and Bill Graham 853 01:08:25,656 --> 01:08:31,788 and a map of the world, trying to work out where we could land this posse. 854 01:08:33,797 --> 01:08:37,255 I mean, it was normally maybe one or two days ahead but, you know, 855 01:08:37,334 --> 01:08:41,031 ridiculous things trying to set up a show with no notice, 856 01:08:42,172 --> 01:08:43,469 but it was very exciting. 857 01:08:43,774 --> 01:08:45,401 People have come, 858 01:08:47,844 --> 01:08:48,936 come to bring change, 859 01:08:50,781 --> 01:08:52,749 to end the human rights abuse, 860 01:08:54,618 --> 01:08:59,317 end the disappearance, torture, execution. 861 01:09:00,657 --> 01:09:05,924 You ended up inevitably talking about whatever human rights issues were going on 862 01:09:06,263 --> 01:09:08,561 over time, and I remember India got very tricky 863 01:09:08,632 --> 01:09:10,827 'cause we were sponsored by The Times of India, 864 01:09:10,901 --> 01:09:16,464 who didn't like some of the stuff we were talking about that was happening in India. 865 01:09:17,241 --> 01:09:21,234 But we were criticising our own countries. It wasn't just 866 01:09:22,246 --> 01:09:26,945 a bunch of wealthy entertainers coming in and lecturing people, 867 01:09:27,017 --> 01:09:29,747 which people get to hate quite reasonably. 868 01:09:32,155 --> 01:09:34,020 We were trying to 869 01:09:36,226 --> 01:09:42,062 allow people to tell their own stories, but using the musicians to get the press there. 870 01:09:42,566 --> 01:09:46,866 My only regret is I never went to Africa for the concert. I should have done. 871 01:09:46,937 --> 01:09:50,532 And Peter said it was phenomenal. They played Ivory Coast. 872 01:09:50,607 --> 01:09:55,601 And at the time, Peter used to throw himself in the audience, and let himself get carried. 873 01:09:55,679 --> 01:09:59,547 And it was all these black guys carrying this white guy around. 874 01:09:59,616 --> 01:10:02,141 There are some visuals still around that are incredible. 875 01:10:33,450 --> 01:10:39,082 I feel that there's a big need right now in the world that we're living in, in 2011, 876 01:10:39,389 --> 01:10:43,826 of artists not just showing up and saying, "Okay, money for Somalia" 877 01:10:43,894 --> 01:10:47,330 and stuff like that, and this is great. We shouldn't stop. We should keep going. 878 01:10:47,397 --> 01:10:50,662 But there's a need for something like Conspiracy of Hope. 879 01:10:50,734 --> 01:10:53,328 This feeling for the new generation of 880 01:10:53,403 --> 01:10:58,204 four or five bands who take it upon their own to actually carry a message of hope. 881 01:10:58,342 --> 01:11:01,311 Because this is what we do. This is what music is about. 882 01:11:01,378 --> 01:11:03,608 It's about giving hope to people. 883 01:11:03,680 --> 01:11:05,773 That's what it should be about anyways. 884 01:11:05,849 --> 01:11:10,013 And that's the message that I got from this Amnesty tour, 885 01:11:10,420 --> 01:11:12,718 is that we're really carrying hope around the world. 886 01:11:15,888 --> 01:11:19,289 The thing about Sledgehammer is that it had that video, 887 01:11:19,358 --> 01:11:23,260 and the video had such a charm, such a sense of humour, 888 01:11:23,329 --> 01:11:26,890 which was something that people didn't realise about him. 889 01:11:27,066 --> 01:11:28,931 He actually is a really funny guy. 890 01:11:29,001 --> 01:11:32,300 You look at some of those old Genesis pictures of him dressed up as a flower. 891 01:11:33,239 --> 01:11:34,331 That shit is funny. 892 01:11:35,541 --> 01:11:37,634 It wasn't just progressive rock. 893 01:11:37,710 --> 01:11:44,377 He was actually quite at ease with the humour of extremism, 894 01:11:44,750 --> 01:11:48,413 of going the distance, of taking something a little bit further. 895 01:11:48,687 --> 01:11:51,087 When you meet him at first, you think he's really quiet, 896 01:11:51,157 --> 01:11:52,624 but he's got a wicked sense of humour 897 01:11:52,691 --> 01:11:55,592 and he can really disarm you with his humour. 898 01:11:57,930 --> 01:12:00,626 So, making the Sledgehammer video was actually in character. 899 01:12:12,611 --> 01:12:15,341 People that know Peter and know him well 900 01:12:16,615 --> 01:12:19,345 know that he's just one of the funniest guys there is. 901 01:12:19,418 --> 01:12:25,721 He's just the jokester, and it's not what the persona is, 902 01:12:27,026 --> 01:12:33,693 but he's a funny, affable guy. He's just a complete man. 903 01:12:33,766 --> 01:12:36,860 I say this all the time, so it's not a strange thing. 904 01:12:38,237 --> 01:12:42,105 It's like, you very rarely in your life get to meet complete human beings, 905 01:12:42,174 --> 01:12:45,473 and Peter's as close to a complete human being as I've ever met. 906 01:13:04,296 --> 01:13:08,027 I was introduced to this wonderful director, Stephen R. Johnson, 907 01:13:08,167 --> 01:13:10,897 and he introduced me to the Quay Brothers, 908 01:13:10,970 --> 01:13:14,098 and I introduced him to Aardman Animations, 909 01:13:14,173 --> 01:13:16,300 all of whom worked together. 910 01:13:16,742 --> 01:13:21,076 We held the meeting in our studio in Bristol, in our little converted garage, 911 01:13:23,215 --> 01:13:27,879 and everything that was said by Stephen Johnson, I think, 912 01:13:27,953 --> 01:13:30,922 was like bang on the money for us as far as we were concerned 913 01:13:30,990 --> 01:13:33,550 because he was into this fantastically handmade look 914 01:13:33,626 --> 01:13:35,526 and that was what we loved to hear. 915 01:13:35,794 --> 01:13:39,753 So we thought, when the Sledgehammer offer came up, that this was a great idea. 916 01:13:39,832 --> 01:13:41,857 It'll be seen internationally, which a lot of our work wasn't. 917 01:13:41,934 --> 01:13:43,697 It was mostly limited to the UK TV. 918 01:13:43,769 --> 01:13:45,737 So doing the music video 919 01:13:46,972 --> 01:13:51,500 was great because at that time in the mid-'80s, 920 01:13:52,211 --> 01:13:56,307 a lot of people were doing them, and we were aware 921 01:13:57,149 --> 01:13:59,447 they were becoming an art form. 922 01:14:01,587 --> 01:14:03,680 Stephen was the visionary behind it. 923 01:14:04,523 --> 01:14:08,220 It was entirely his vision and we were all inspired by it, I think. 924 01:14:08,494 --> 01:14:10,121 It was a pop promo, which we had never done before. 925 01:14:10,196 --> 01:14:12,926 It was Peter Gabriel. It was very visual. 926 01:14:13,432 --> 01:14:14,899 It was kind of right up our street. 927 01:14:14,967 --> 01:14:18,095 It was doing stuff in camera with models and people. 928 01:14:19,405 --> 01:14:21,635 And it was a great opportunity. We immediately said, 929 01:14:21,707 --> 01:14:23,106 "Yes, we"ve got to do this." It was great fun. 930 01:14:23,175 --> 01:14:26,736 He knew what he was doing, and so, by the way, did Peter. 931 01:14:26,812 --> 01:14:28,575 They both knew about animation, 932 01:14:28,647 --> 01:14:30,342 and that was really valuable because if they hadn't, 933 01:14:30,416 --> 01:14:33,010 they would have been appalled and horrified 934 01:14:33,085 --> 01:14:35,918 by the speed of things and the complication of things. 935 01:14:37,823 --> 01:14:40,519 He was very clear and inspirational, 936 01:14:42,127 --> 01:14:45,619 and it was quite surprising to us because he was American 937 01:14:46,865 --> 01:14:51,393 and quite noisy and confident and used to working with a big crew 938 01:14:52,004 --> 01:14:54,734 whereas animation is a rather private occupation. 939 01:14:54,807 --> 01:14:59,801 Especially back then, it tended to be sort of one person with a model on the set. 940 01:15:00,346 --> 01:15:03,281 And he was fairly approximate, in a good way. 941 01:15:03,382 --> 01:15:07,148 I think for that project, you had to be. That wasn't the place for 942 01:15:07,319 --> 01:15:10,482 an exacting, pedantic control-freak. That would have been horrible. 943 01:15:10,556 --> 01:15:13,684 He had a catchphrase. He would say, "Shoot a whole bunch," 944 01:15:13,759 --> 01:15:17,217 meaning just shoot as many frames as you can in the time. 945 01:15:17,296 --> 01:15:19,890 "Just shoot a whole bunch." I like that approximate tone. 946 01:15:19,965 --> 01:15:24,129 And in return, we taught him easy-peasy, which he didn't know. 947 01:15:24,803 --> 01:15:26,293 But people around the studio, 948 01:15:26,372 --> 01:15:29,068 when he asked for something completely unreasonable and impossible, 949 01:15:29,141 --> 01:15:30,938 "Easy-peasy. We can do that." 950 01:15:31,010 --> 01:15:34,207 And so, there was a nice can-do attitude about the place. 951 01:15:36,448 --> 01:15:39,940 It became just a very, very, very busy workshop. 952 01:15:40,019 --> 01:15:42,385 So people were making things like 953 01:15:42,855 --> 01:15:47,053 making the bumper-cars, for example, 954 01:15:47,126 --> 01:15:50,459 or somebody was doing the drawn animation, 955 01:15:50,529 --> 01:15:54,226 the background to the big dipper sequence, 956 01:15:54,900 --> 01:16:01,362 somebody was taking a life cast of Peter to get the cast of his head to turn into ice. 957 01:16:13,252 --> 01:16:18,417 And I guess, from the same mould, we made the big plasticine heads of Peter. 958 01:16:19,158 --> 01:16:21,854 So just everything happening at once. That was the main impression. 959 01:16:21,927 --> 01:16:27,832 But it's what everyone likes best is everyone diving in and doing fragments of jobs. 960 01:16:27,966 --> 01:16:31,766 So, the first day, I think we finished at a reasonable hour, 961 01:16:31,837 --> 01:16:34,328 probably at about 8:00 in the evening. 962 01:16:34,807 --> 01:16:38,538 Every other day after that, we finished probably 10:00 or 11:00 963 01:16:38,610 --> 01:16:40,703 and we'd start at probably 8:30. 964 01:16:40,779 --> 01:16:43,179 And the last day, which started at probably 8:30 on a Saturday, 965 01:16:43,248 --> 01:16:46,547 just ran through to about 4:00 in the morning on Sunday morning. 966 01:16:46,618 --> 01:16:50,281 So we actually conquered the whole thing Monday through to Sunday morning. 967 01:16:50,356 --> 01:16:54,258 Not quite non-stop, we did get some rest, but it was... They were long days. 968 01:16:54,326 --> 01:16:58,057 But I'd say we had about four or five cameras going on it at any one time. 969 01:16:58,130 --> 01:17:00,325 And I think that the whole thing was aired 970 01:17:00,399 --> 01:17:02,890 I imagine on Top of the Pops on that following Thursday. 971 01:17:09,274 --> 01:17:10,764 Sometimes we were playing it back. 972 01:17:10,843 --> 01:17:13,334 There were certain sequences we were doing like four frames a second, 973 01:17:13,412 --> 01:17:14,709 you just play it back very, very slowly. 974 01:17:14,780 --> 01:17:17,749 Or we'd say to you, to Peter Gabriel, 975 01:17:17,816 --> 01:17:20,979 "You're saying "sledge". You're on the "M" of hammer." 976 01:17:21,920 --> 01:17:25,287 And you tell him what mouth shape he needed to make. 977 01:17:25,424 --> 01:17:27,858 In the same way that you'd manipulate a puppet and put the, you know... 978 01:17:27,926 --> 01:17:31,157 Same sort of thing, really, but with a human puppet. 979 01:17:31,997 --> 01:17:36,764 Two weeks of sort of creative work in a very slow and painful process, 980 01:17:37,436 --> 01:17:42,203 filming it old-style animation. So as clouds moved across my face, 981 01:17:42,274 --> 01:17:45,107 they actually had to be painted frame by frame. 982 01:17:51,517 --> 01:17:57,854 And the fish, too, which was great on day one, smelt horrible on day two. 983 01:18:05,664 --> 01:18:11,000 The whole studio had a lovely, rich aroma. It stank really. 984 01:18:11,136 --> 01:18:15,698 And then Nick Park was asked to animate these chickens. 985 01:18:15,941 --> 01:18:17,932 So, they'd already been out of the fridge for quite a while 986 01:18:18,010 --> 01:18:19,534 while they had wire put in them, 987 01:18:19,678 --> 01:18:22,340 and then they were underneath the studio lights 988 01:18:22,414 --> 01:18:26,248 and Nick is to be seen wearing protective clothing, 989 01:18:26,318 --> 01:18:28,946 rubber gloves with a mask and stuff like that 990 01:18:29,021 --> 01:18:32,252 because he was rightly anxious about salmonella. 991 01:18:41,433 --> 01:18:44,596 The tools that we had available then in the mid-'80s 992 01:18:45,237 --> 01:18:48,968 aren't the tools you got available now with digital editing, 993 01:18:49,041 --> 01:18:55,605 chroma key, green screen, blue screen, CGI, compositing software. 994 01:18:57,316 --> 01:19:01,309 You can literally do anything really, really quite quickly and quite slickly. 995 01:19:08,527 --> 01:19:12,429 That's slightly why it's showing its age. It's a bit like watching old silent movies 996 01:19:12,498 --> 01:19:14,329 that have got double exposure and stuff. 997 01:19:14,399 --> 01:19:16,697 They all look a bit shimmery 'cause they're not... 998 01:19:16,802 --> 01:19:20,135 And it's all they could do at the time, but they have a lovely feel to them. 999 01:19:20,272 --> 01:19:22,467 And I also remember 1000 01:19:23,342 --> 01:19:28,211 that at some stage, Stephen decided that Peter should have some backing singers, 1001 01:19:28,280 --> 01:19:32,046 and he went and recruited kind of off the street these women that, 1002 01:19:32,117 --> 01:19:34,711 I don't think they were professional performers at all, 1003 01:19:34,786 --> 01:19:36,845 that became the backing singers. 1004 01:19:36,922 --> 01:19:41,791 And Stephen asked me to animate the backing singers. 1005 01:19:43,228 --> 01:19:46,391 And these women had never done anything like it before. 1006 01:19:46,465 --> 01:19:48,956 So they had to stand behind Peter, 1007 01:19:49,568 --> 01:19:53,026 and what they had to do was kind of move their... It was rather crude. 1008 01:19:53,105 --> 01:19:56,074 They were moving their arms across like this, 1009 01:19:56,141 --> 01:19:59,838 and moving their hips... So hips going against the arms. 1010 01:19:59,912 --> 01:20:02,847 So I'd have to say, "Stand on your left leg." 1011 01:20:03,048 --> 01:20:08,509 "Move your arms across to the right, and hold that," while the frame was taken. 1012 01:20:09,054 --> 01:20:11,454 "Now all take a half step to your right. 1013 01:20:12,190 --> 01:20:15,250 Hips further across to the right, please. Arms further across to the left," 1014 01:20:15,327 --> 01:20:18,922 and take a frame. And they did this with good grace. 1015 01:20:18,997 --> 01:20:20,658 But they got pretty hacked off by the end. 1016 01:20:40,719 --> 01:20:43,210 At a certain stage they end up on chairs. 1017 01:20:43,288 --> 01:20:45,882 That wasn't the original narrative idea, 1018 01:20:45,958 --> 01:20:50,918 but clearly, they were getting so hacked off and bolshy that they were gonna walk out. 1019 01:20:50,996 --> 01:20:53,021 So we had to include chairs 1020 01:20:53,098 --> 01:20:57,262 so then they did their backing singing thing in sliding chairs thereafter. 1021 01:21:07,412 --> 01:21:11,712 Peter being absolutely the focal point of it and the centre of it all 1022 01:21:11,783 --> 01:21:14,946 was so up for it all and was willing to do almost anything 1023 01:21:15,020 --> 01:21:17,716 and we were obviously trying to make his life as comfortable as possible, 1024 01:21:17,789 --> 01:21:21,555 'cause there were some quite awkward and quite uncomfortable wigs we put him in. 1025 01:21:21,627 --> 01:21:23,686 But he was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. 1026 01:21:23,762 --> 01:21:27,664 And certainly, on that last day when we're shooting that big scene at the end 1027 01:21:27,733 --> 01:21:33,069 and he's in a suit made out of, you know, with the kind of Christmas tree lights on, 1028 01:21:33,505 --> 01:21:37,134 dancing around, and you realise it's like 3:00 on Sunday morning 1029 01:21:37,209 --> 01:21:38,335 to get all the stuff in the can. 1030 01:21:38,410 --> 01:21:42,437 He was as energised as anybody, and fantastic actually. 1031 01:21:42,547 --> 01:21:44,640 The funny thing is that after we did Sledgehammer, 1032 01:21:44,716 --> 01:21:48,618 it became immensely fashionable, and then lots of other 1033 01:21:49,488 --> 01:21:52,855 TV ads particularly, they would fake the same effect 1034 01:21:53,358 --> 01:21:56,794 by just shooting video and cutting it in a jerky way. 1035 01:21:57,829 --> 01:21:59,387 It's easy to fake. 1036 01:21:59,865 --> 01:22:02,231 But the joy of Sledgehammer is that it wasn't fake. 1037 01:22:02,300 --> 01:22:05,030 The extraordinary thing was, only a few weeks later, in fact 1038 01:22:05,103 --> 01:22:08,197 must have been just after Easter, 1039 01:22:09,775 --> 01:22:13,609 Peter Lord, and myself, and Rich Goleszowski and Nick Park 1040 01:22:13,679 --> 01:22:17,843 all went off to New York to work on the Pee-wee Herman show for a few months, 1041 01:22:17,916 --> 01:22:22,819 and I remember arriving in Manhattan and walking into Tower Records, 1042 01:22:23,021 --> 01:22:25,785 and suddenly, there it was on the screens in Tower Records. 1043 01:22:25,857 --> 01:22:27,381 I thought, "My God, it's hit!" 1044 01:22:27,459 --> 01:22:32,089 I mean, literally, in a way, it felt like it travelled over with us on the Virgin flight. 1045 01:22:32,164 --> 01:22:34,155 And there it was, on the screens in Manhattan. 1046 01:22:34,232 --> 01:22:36,393 And I tell you, it was a fantastic calling card, when people say, 1047 01:22:36,468 --> 01:22:38,368 "What are you doing here? What have you just done?" 1048 01:22:38,437 --> 01:22:40,598 "Just been shooting the Sledgehammer video." "What? Fantastic!" 1049 01:22:40,672 --> 01:22:42,401 It was an incredible calling card. 1050 01:22:42,607 --> 01:22:47,237 So when we arrived in New York, we were just some shy, retiring Brits. 1051 01:22:47,946 --> 01:22:51,746 And there, socially, it was a great calling card. 1052 01:22:51,950 --> 01:22:53,577 It was a fantastic thing to be able to say we'd done 1053 01:22:53,652 --> 01:22:55,745 'cause everyone knew it and that was wonderful. 1054 01:22:55,821 --> 01:22:57,846 We all thought, "This is a great song. 1055 01:22:57,923 --> 01:23:02,587 It's got a lovely beat, great lyrics, beautifully arranged." 1056 01:23:02,661 --> 01:23:05,721 And you kind of knew this is a quality piece of music. 1057 01:23:06,131 --> 01:23:11,694 And it had that sense like a lot of really good Motown, solid R&B. 1058 01:23:11,803 --> 01:23:13,134 You know this song's gonna have legs. 1059 01:23:13,205 --> 01:23:17,335 It's not just gonna be part of the frivolity of what was the pop music industry, 1060 01:23:17,409 --> 01:23:19,741 be forgotten in a couple of months. 1061 01:23:19,811 --> 01:23:24,475 There was something about it which had a sort of real quality kind of resonance. 1062 01:23:24,549 --> 01:23:26,312 And it's a lovely beat. 1063 01:23:26,384 --> 01:23:28,409 Even when I hear it now, you sort of get up and dance. 1064 01:23:35,152 --> 01:23:39,748 The chemistry with Peter was fantastic. I loved him like a brother and I still do. 1065 01:23:39,824 --> 01:23:43,055 And I think it was a very special time for the both of us. 1066 01:23:43,127 --> 01:23:49,123 Both in his own work and as a producer, he does a wonderful job, I think. 1067 01:23:49,433 --> 01:23:53,164 I particularly like what he did with Dylan, for example, as well. 1068 01:23:55,806 --> 01:23:57,740 He can bring... 1069 01:23:58,576 --> 01:24:02,444 I mean, obviously, he has a particular sound and all the rest, 1070 01:24:02,513 --> 01:24:07,109 which he'll always volunteer on any project he's working on, 1071 01:24:10,788 --> 01:24:13,052 but he's bigger than that. 1072 01:24:13,124 --> 01:24:18,994 He's definitely working to make something special and make it unique to that project. 1073 01:24:24,001 --> 01:24:28,700 He was great in understanding the emotional and the passionate side of things, 1074 01:24:28,772 --> 01:24:31,468 and pushing the writing and arranging. 1075 01:24:31,809 --> 01:24:34,607 Very dramatic track, this In Your Eyes. 1076 01:24:35,279 --> 01:24:37,247 Lot of layering on this. 1077 01:24:37,481 --> 01:24:39,574 Peter did have a liking for 1078 01:24:41,152 --> 01:24:45,885 this kind of a 12-string part that David Rhodes and I invented. 1079 01:24:46,223 --> 01:24:48,157 I think it's a real beauty. 1080 01:24:59,403 --> 01:25:04,136 It was originally called 61 'cause that was the number of the Linn program 1081 01:25:04,208 --> 01:25:07,700 that the groove was written around. And, in fact... 1082 01:25:08,913 --> 01:25:14,010 So, there was an African groove underlying it and then, we had some talking drum in it 1083 01:25:15,886 --> 01:25:18,354 from Youssou's wonderful talking drum player. 1084 01:25:18,422 --> 01:25:20,822 Peter is familiar with all of 1085 01:25:21,692 --> 01:25:26,288 the millions of different African rhythms and genres and sounds. 1086 01:25:26,363 --> 01:25:27,921 What Peter loves... 1087 01:25:27,998 --> 01:25:30,364 He's had a fascination with African music for a long time, 1088 01:25:30,434 --> 01:25:32,925 and I think this was a dream come true for him. 1089 01:25:33,003 --> 01:25:34,834 As I hear it now, I'm... 1090 01:25:39,577 --> 01:25:43,536 And Youssou N'Dour sounding beautiful, you know? One of the great phrasers. 1091 01:25:46,951 --> 01:25:48,976 And Manu Katche. 1092 01:25:58,362 --> 01:26:01,525 This drum beat got mimicked for decades after this. 1093 01:26:07,137 --> 01:26:10,004 That whole album "So" for me was, 1094 01:26:10,774 --> 01:26:15,177 of course, my big breakout abroad, but more than that, musically, 1095 01:26:15,246 --> 01:26:19,012 it was just like I'd just all of a sudden understood a lot of things 1096 01:26:19,083 --> 01:26:23,747 about how the music should be done, and how the music should be played. 1097 01:26:23,887 --> 01:26:25,718 That's just Manu and Peter now. 1098 01:26:36,367 --> 01:26:39,530 Just listening a lot to everyone, experience, of course, 1099 01:26:39,603 --> 01:26:42,231 but they just go with the flow 1100 01:26:43,207 --> 01:26:46,142 of what we're doing at the moment we're doing it. 1101 01:26:46,210 --> 01:26:49,145 They don't have things before in the head saying, 1102 01:26:49,213 --> 01:26:51,010 "Okay, we're gonna do this this way." 1103 01:26:51,081 --> 01:26:53,811 Producer says, "Okay, we're gonna cut this like that." 1104 01:26:53,884 --> 01:26:57,251 But no, everything is open. And once again, 1105 01:26:57,888 --> 01:27:02,086 doing sessions here was not the same ballgame at all. 1106 01:27:02,159 --> 01:27:05,993 It was just like, "You have to do it this way, structure-wise it's that way," 1107 01:27:06,063 --> 01:27:08,793 and we have to cut it in one hour and that's it. 1108 01:27:08,866 --> 01:27:11,232 All of a sudden, in the middle of the country 1109 01:27:11,302 --> 01:27:15,500 with amazing musicians, amazing talents, everything's possible. 1110 01:27:15,773 --> 01:27:17,206 "You wanna do this? Let's try." 1111 01:27:20,077 --> 01:27:21,840 See what else we got here. 1112 01:27:24,281 --> 01:27:25,646 Tony Levin's bass. 1113 01:27:36,393 --> 01:27:40,022 We were very much into the bass playing the role of a drum at the time. 1114 01:27:40,097 --> 01:27:42,691 So, all this sliding around, that's what that's about. 1115 01:27:44,735 --> 01:27:49,138 Dan really knows the recording techniques and knows what he wants, 1116 01:27:49,606 --> 01:27:51,540 as far as bass, and his drums, 1117 01:27:51,608 --> 01:27:54,600 he knows what different techniques are gonna lead to and how they're gonna sound. 1118 01:27:54,678 --> 01:27:57,146 So, he's got the plan and he's there and doing that. 1119 01:27:57,214 --> 01:27:59,114 And then there's Peter 1120 01:27:59,883 --> 01:28:04,616 giving a kind of sideways approach to the thing and coming up with other ideas. 1121 01:28:05,356 --> 01:28:08,723 Through desperation, I've developed a theory which is 1122 01:28:09,259 --> 01:28:11,420 "Peripheral visual stimulation". 1123 01:28:14,398 --> 01:28:16,798 And that's not self abuse, by the way. 1124 01:28:18,702 --> 01:28:20,897 It's actually getting on a train, 1125 01:28:23,807 --> 01:28:25,900 and the way it goes is this... 1126 01:28:25,976 --> 01:28:30,379 That I think when we were running around, beating on our chests in the jungle, 1127 01:28:31,382 --> 01:28:34,476 whenever we were either hunting or being hunted, 1128 01:28:35,819 --> 01:28:39,277 the brain got used to working in overdrive 1129 01:28:40,057 --> 01:28:42,958 because we were either being killed or killing. 1130 01:28:43,394 --> 01:28:46,227 So everything was focused, 1131 01:28:48,899 --> 01:28:53,336 and all parts of the brain were sort of applied, or as many that were available. 1132 01:28:54,671 --> 01:28:58,937 So I think when we have peripheral visual stimulations, 1133 01:29:00,210 --> 01:29:03,611 like things just moving past you at high speed, 1134 01:29:04,715 --> 01:29:07,946 the brain automatically is freed up. 1135 01:29:09,086 --> 01:29:11,611 I've since suggested this to a few other people 1136 01:29:11,989 --> 01:29:15,220 and I think I should be on commission from the train companies, 1137 01:29:15,292 --> 01:29:18,489 because I know a few people who've been out there on the train. 1138 01:29:18,829 --> 01:29:22,526 The idea for WOMAD came on a train, there's lots of lyrics. 1139 01:29:22,966 --> 01:29:27,130 This is an example of some of Peter's ad-libs here that I always love. 1140 01:29:46,890 --> 01:29:51,384 And I would never erase these. I thought they were just little gold nuggets. 1141 01:29:51,695 --> 01:29:53,492 And I'd play them back to Peter and say, 1142 01:29:53,564 --> 01:29:55,555 "What about this? Could you do something like this again?" 1143 01:29:55,632 --> 01:30:01,696 I'm not a natural improviser. I mean, I love, musically, to create stuff, 1144 01:30:03,640 --> 01:30:07,007 but Youssou is a master effortless singer. 1145 01:30:10,581 --> 01:30:13,641 And I love to do it but it's not as effortless for me. 1146 01:30:14,818 --> 01:30:19,221 But I was still coming out with melodies and improvising on the spot. 1147 01:30:20,123 --> 01:30:21,613 And that was a lot of fun to do. 1148 01:30:29,199 --> 01:30:32,100 They're always touching to me, these little details. 1149 01:30:32,436 --> 01:30:35,530 So Youssou had these amazing improvisations. 1150 01:30:40,110 --> 01:30:42,169 So there, I would try and weave in 1151 01:30:45,048 --> 01:30:46,572 around what he was doing. 1152 01:30:51,288 --> 01:30:56,021 This was this Mr Bass Man, '50s type voice 1153 01:30:56,727 --> 01:31:01,630 that I thought would give it a nice colour, a nice anchor. It's quite cartoon-like, 1154 01:31:01,698 --> 01:31:04,792 but I really enjoy it. It makes people smile. 1155 01:31:08,005 --> 01:31:09,529 When I got involved, 1156 01:31:09,606 --> 01:31:13,007 there were two parallel tracks occurring at the same time. 1157 01:31:13,076 --> 01:31:16,637 One was to keep the project moving forward and we're continually recording, 1158 01:31:16,713 --> 01:31:18,340 and at the same time, 1159 01:31:18,415 --> 01:31:22,374 there was a bunch of technical issues that occurred in the beginning of the project 1160 01:31:22,452 --> 01:31:26,980 which basically caused the two tape machines not to stay in sync together. 1161 01:31:27,057 --> 01:31:28,957 So a lot of the performances 1162 01:31:29,026 --> 01:31:32,189 from the original take one versus take six, 1163 01:31:32,529 --> 01:31:36,488 they would start off in sync and then they would start drifting out of sync. 1164 01:31:37,401 --> 01:31:38,834 And for whatever reason, 1165 01:31:38,902 --> 01:31:42,531 a lot of times maybe, some of the later performances were the preferred takes. 1166 01:31:42,606 --> 01:31:45,097 And Peter would want to take the bass part from that performance 1167 01:31:45,175 --> 01:31:48,201 and put it in the first one and they just were not staying in time. 1168 01:31:48,278 --> 01:31:52,078 So we had to come up with a second set of tasks 1169 01:31:52,149 --> 01:31:54,242 that were done in the evening time 1170 01:31:54,318 --> 01:31:57,481 to try and get those performances back onto the original masters. 1171 01:31:57,554 --> 01:32:00,751 So we had two tape machines, two 24 tracks running in parallel. 1172 01:32:00,824 --> 01:32:02,052 So during the daytime, 1173 01:32:02,125 --> 01:32:06,391 we would record new parts or work on the existing arrangements 1174 01:32:06,463 --> 01:32:10,365 and then, late in the evening time after Peter had gone home, Dan and I, 1175 01:32:10,434 --> 01:32:12,231 and then really late, as I, myself, would sit there 1176 01:32:12,302 --> 01:32:14,930 and we had a big whiteboard and I would just have all these tasks 1177 01:32:15,005 --> 01:32:18,600 that I would have to try and execute and try and help the process move along 1178 01:32:18,675 --> 01:32:21,269 because you want to be able to perform 1179 01:32:21,345 --> 01:32:25,076 to the best representation of the song as it currently existed. 1180 01:32:25,148 --> 01:32:28,413 And without a certain part being on that master take, 1181 01:32:28,485 --> 01:32:30,544 it sometimes became harder to imagine. 1182 01:32:30,621 --> 01:32:37,527 There were a lot of very beautiful beginnings and tonalities that I did not want to lose. 1183 01:32:39,896 --> 01:32:41,454 We might not be going after that song 1184 01:32:41,531 --> 01:32:44,022 but just to be reminded that there was something there special 1185 01:32:44,101 --> 01:32:46,729 that might make its way to another song. 1186 01:32:46,803 --> 01:32:51,536 The way that a poet might write an incredible couplet, 1187 01:32:51,608 --> 01:32:55,135 but it's not living in a fixed poem, it's just a good couplet. 1188 01:32:55,746 --> 01:33:00,308 And that couplet can be moved, as Bob Dylan does, he moves his best couplets around. 1189 01:33:00,384 --> 01:33:04,081 So I felt that way about Peter's melodic ideas 1190 01:33:05,522 --> 01:33:08,184 and his riffs and for that matter, my sonics. 1191 01:33:08,258 --> 01:33:13,628 I kept really good notes and made sure that we built a really great house menu 1192 01:33:15,132 --> 01:33:16,531 because records are like, 1193 01:33:16,600 --> 01:33:20,331 let's say you've been cooking, and you got everybody coming over on Saturday night 1194 01:33:20,404 --> 01:33:24,500 and it's that night that you get to bring out your most unique and lovely dishes. 1195 01:33:26,009 --> 01:33:31,003 So I made a point of keeping really good track of these little ingredients 1196 01:33:31,081 --> 01:33:33,447 so they could live there in the end. 1197 01:33:33,984 --> 01:33:38,080 The best thing about Daniel Lanois' presence on 'So' 1198 01:33:38,655 --> 01:33:41,089 is that you don't hear his name 1199 01:33:42,192 --> 01:33:43,682 while you're listening to it. 1200 01:33:43,760 --> 01:33:46,251 It's a great trick of invisibility. 1201 01:33:47,731 --> 01:33:49,858 He did a lot to help realise 1202 01:33:51,702 --> 01:33:56,162 the mix of sort of human and electronic elements on that record. 1203 01:33:56,239 --> 01:34:02,371 There is a lot of programming of that vintage, we're talking mid-'80s, Linn drums. 1204 01:34:03,146 --> 01:34:06,980 That drum sound is actually quite identifiable to that period. 1205 01:34:07,217 --> 01:34:13,122 But it's one of the few records of that period that doesn't still sound like it's just 1986. 1206 01:34:16,122 --> 01:34:20,122 Preuzeto sa www.titlovi.com 112476

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