Peter Gabriel responded to a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday (May 30), marking the 44th anniversary of his self-titled third solo album by giving fans some glimpses insight into the struggle he encountered while making the LP.
“The album is filled with sounds that were ‘strange’ at the time,” he wrote. “I remember when I met Ahmet Ertegun [founder of Atlantic Records] And the first time he heard that record, which Atlantic later dropped, he asked if I had been hospitalized and clearly thought I was some kind of pop artist. become some strange dystopia.”
“Ultimately Polygram got a hit in America and it did pretty well, with some success for ‘Games Without Frontiers,’ but at the time, I remember the A&R people were trying to encourage I sound like the Doobie Brothers,” Gabriel added.
He then gave his followers some behind-the-scenes insight into what’s going on between the artists and the record company A&R staff responsible for guiding the artists’ careers. doctor.
“One of the main jobs of a record company’s A&R Department is to try to make records that they’re going to sell. So they look at what’s selling at the moment and they try to convince everyone All their artists sound like that. At the same time, to be fair, I worked with some really good A&R people who came up with some really good music and had a lot of ideas. interesting contribution, but I was very lucky to have come of age in a time, in the years after the Sixties, when artists were allowed to make their own mistakes, do what they needed to do, You can listen to your record company, but you don’t have to.
‘The album at that time was full of ‘strange’ sounds. I remember when I met Ahmet Ertegun [founder of Atlantic Records] and he heard that record for the first time, then Atlantic left, he asked if I had been hospitalized and obviously thought I was out of it… pic.twitter.com/zSprCmE8wf
– Peter Gabriel (@itspetergabriel) May 30, 2024
Perhaps to the dismay of record company executives, Gabriel named his first four solo albums – released in 1977, 1978, 1980 and 1982, simply. Peter Gabriel, letting the public assign numbers to them or give them nicknames based on their cover art. Thus, his 1977 debut solo album was called “Car”, his 1978 album was called “Scratch”, his 1980 effort was called “Melt”, while his 1982 album was called “Security”.
As Gabriel noted in his post, “Games Without Frontiers” was a success, becoming a number 4 hit in the UK. The song, which featured Kate Bush on backing vocals, also reached the top 10 in Canada, but in the US the single stalled at number 48.
The album also includes “Biko”, a song written in honor of Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist who died after being beaten by security forces while in police custody.
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