In Your Ears: Covering Peter GabrielOn ‘And I’ll Scratch Yours,’ Singers Cover Peter Gabriel
By LARRY ROHTER
Published: January 3, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/arts/ ... briel.html
The original plan, Peter Gabriel explained, was for two records to be released simultaneously: one of him singing songs that other artists had written, and another consisting of those same performers interpreting songs of his. “Scratch My Back,” with Mr. Gabriel singing and an orchestra backing him, was released in 2010, but “And I’ll Scratch Yours” is only coming out this week. So why the delay?
“To get something high enough on the priority list that it actually gets done is a rare thing,” Mr. Gabriel, 63, said during an interview in New York last month. “So I feel lucky to have gotten away with this in the way I have. It’s very nice that it’s as complete as it’s going to be, and there are more contributors than I expected, because I know what it’s like on the other end.” He added, “As someone who is notoriously slow, it would be inappropriate of me to complain.”
“And I’ll Scratch Yours” consists of 12 songs from Mr. Gabriel’s solo career. He was originally a member of the prog-rock group Genesis, but left in the mid-1970s. The tracks are almost evenly divided between younger artists who grew up hearing his music (Arcade Fire does “Games Without Frontiers,” Bon Iver takes on “Come Talk to Me”) and those from his own generation or earlier (Brian Eno reworks “Mother of Violence,” Paul Simon does “Biko”).
One song notably absent is Mr. Gabriel’s only international No. 1 hit, “Sledgehammer,” which he jocularly described as “my brief encounter with mass media and pop.” He said that he had not placed the song off limits to the artists involved in the project, and that even though “I do rest songs from time to time, and there was a whole two- or three-year period with ‘Sledgehammer’ ” in which he “didn’t feel good about playing it,” that is no longer the case.
“I’m fine with it,” he said. “It’s not, ‘Oh, I’m tired of this.’ I think for me, I began as a drummer, so anything with a good groove, I’m pretty much there anyway.” Still, he added, he does not lament its absence from “And I’ll Scratch Yours,” because leaving it off “allowed some of the other songs to come through.”
“Solsbury Hill,” another of Mr. Gabriel’s signature compositions, did find its way onto the record, in a version by Lou Reed that Mr. Gabriel said registered as a major surprise when he first listened to it. Reed, who died in October, essentially deconstructed the song: He unleashed jagged blasts of electric guitar in place of the familiar acoustic guitar figure, turned the jaunty melody into something resembling a dirge, added a new countermelody at the chorus, changed the time signature and made one significant alteration in the lyrics. “Lou really worked hard on his, but it was probably the most different from the original” of all the songs on the CD, Mr. Gabriel said.
Originally, the plan was for everyone whose material Mr. Gabriel covered on “Scratch My Back” to return the favor on “And I’ll Scratch Yours.” In the end, though, Neil Young and Radiohead dropped out, and were replaced by Joseph Arthur and Feist.
Here are excerpts from separate interviews with four of the artists who appear on the CD, talking about their relationship with Mr. Gabriel’s music and the why and hows of the performance they contributed to “And I’ll Scratch Yours.” David Byrne’s interview was by email, the others were conducted by telephone, and all follow the order in which the artists’ songs appear on the CD.
DAVID BYRNE “I Don’t Remember”
Q. In age, you and Peter Gabriel are near contemporaries. But when you both emerged in the 1970s, you occupied very different musical spaces. Can you recall when you first became aware of his music?A. I’m afraid I wasn’t a big Genesis fan, but I loved his solo records with the confusing titles. They seemed to fit right in to the New Wave (unfortunate genre name) sound that was happening at the time (or maybe some of his songs even prefigured that, I don’t know) — cool sounds and slightly paranoid vibe, very nice.
Some of the other artists involved in this project said they argued with themselves about what song to record. What made you choose “I Don’t Remember”?Because it sounded like a song I might have written. I thought it would be a small step to make it my own.
Mr. Gabriel told me that when he first heard it, “the disco references and dance elements were very cool, I thought, and surprising.” Can you explain how you arrived at the arrangement and the approach?I immediately thought giving it a more dance treatment would both be more “me” and might give that iconic song a twist that would take it somewhere new but still keep the integrity. In the process, I found that singing it partly in falsetto and giving a more wistful treatment to the chorus gave the song a whole new meaning. It made it feel less paranoid and alienated and more melancholy, ecstatic and wistful.
What was your reaction to his orchestral version of Talking Heads’ “Listening Wind”?His choice of “Listening Wind” was unexpected and brave, I thought. Doing that song will have Homeland Security and the N.S.A. [putting him] on their list for sure, if they didn’t already for his work with Amnesty [International].
REGINA SPEKTOR “Blood of Eden”
Q. Mr. Gabriel said you had initially settled on “Family Snapshot,” then changed your mind and considered a couple of other possibilities. What was bothering you?A. It was pretty difficult to get it done, finding a song that I could try to do. I think some things are easier to cover than others, but his music is really his. You only want to cover something if you find your own way into it, and his music was really hard to break into. Then you say: “What’s the point? What am I going to bring to it?”
With its references to Eve and Lady Macbeth, female characters that have historically been seen as villains, “Blood of Eden” would seem to be a tough song for a woman to sing.I never thought of the song like that. It didn’t seem like that masculine a place for me. I definitely don’t see Eve as a villain. Maybe Lady Macbeth, but it’s a typical male point of view to blame it all on her, all the bad women. [Laughs.] To me it was just a beautiful song to sing. He did a sort of very mysterious cover of my “Après Moi,” so I thought I’d choose a song that was also mysterious, mystical.
You mention his distinctive production style. With an Indian violin and an Armenian duduk, “Blood of Eden” is full of the world-music touches that are part of his sonic signature. Your version sticks to standard pop instrumentation.We sort of went all kinds of places before we ended up with this production. At first we tried to do our own version of a world-music-type sound. But without those great players, it didn’t feel right for some reason. So we just started playing until it began to feel like a song, it was very experimental. I have to tell you, though, up until I gave it to Peter, I was quite nervous, I just didn’t know if I had figured it out.
JOSEPH ARTHUR “Shock the Monkey”
Q. Why did you choose as well known a song as “Shock the Monkey”?A. I remember it as being the first 45 I ever bought, when I was 11 or 12, and listening to it over and over again in my room. With that song, he taps into something deep and primal, as he often does. His music is magical that way. It’s a mix of deep intellect with deeply primal stuff. He’s in touch with both those polarities. They exist in his music seamlessly.
You’ve reduced the full band arrangement on the original to all these buzzing guitars. How and why did you do that?I hate to give away the secret, but it’s a Moog guitar, a most magical instrument. It’s got infinite sustain on every string. You can control the level, put it on one string or all the strings. In addition, you can have the natural guitar sound as well. You put it through a bit of reverb and delay and overdrive, and it’s like My Bloody Valentine heaven.
You also really slow down the song’s tempo.When you approach somebody else’s song, especially someone like Peter Gabriel, you’re not going to beat his version. So you can’t go straight into it, you have to find an angle, a take on it, that’s different. That’s more of an instinct. Once you lock into an emotion, you have a sound and a direction. I think the sound of the guitar led me down that path.
RANDY NEWMAN “Big Time”
Q. The two of you probably met for the first time when you collaborated nearly 20 years ago on “That’ll Do” for the movie “Babe.” You wrote, he sang, and the result was an Oscar nomination.A. I think that was the start of things. I always liked his stuff, with Genesis and on his own, but I don’t think we’d met. He was an ideal person to do that song, because I wanted that English Midlands thing, I needed the accent, and I certainly couldn’t sing it.
What was your reaction to his version of “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today” on the first half of the project?It stretches him a bit, and I liked it.
Did you contemplate doing any song other than “Big Time” for this record?No, I liked “Big Time” for me, it’s a really fun song to do. It’s got a guy dreaming about what the big time is, a fairly childish and simplistic view of it, a guy who is pretty ignorant.
Your vocal is really deadpan, mordant even, in contrast to Peter’s rather bubbly take on the character.I didn’t have the goods to go the other way. The guy is not laughing at himself. We’re making fun of him.
