However it wasn’t apparent to everyone 36 years ago that the singer’s stars were aligning. Melt is arguably the jewel in Gabriel’s crown and represents the start of his “imperial period” (to borrow Neil Tennant’s phrase to describe an artist’s creative and commercial potential hitting a peak in unison), which would carry on until after the release of his fifth album, So, in 1986.
Games Without Frontiers, the lead single from Peter Gabriel Three (aka Melt), ties with Sledgehammer as his biggest UK hit it reached No 4 on release in 1980. The tracks that really shine the most though are the radio-friendly post-glam cuts that owe a debt to Roxy Music and David Bowie, particularly DIY, a crisp new-wave stomper. The presence of Robert Fripp – nearly always something to celebrate – added colour and verve to the LP, not the least on Exposure, the track he co-authored and to which he liberally applied his Frippertronics. The singer’s interest in applying inventive studio production techniques and lyrics about esoteric or unusual matters to a mainstream popular music format was starting to pay dividends. There is a lot to recommend about Peter Gabriel Two (aka Scratch) which came out in 1978. Peter Gabriel – 10 of the best on YouTube 2. It was, by far, the standout track from his debut album, Peter Gabriel One (aka Car). Against the stirring but simple riff, Gabriel sang of a spiritual awakening/epiphany/supernatural event which caused him to cut connections to the past and stake everything on a fresh roll of the dice. His first single, Solsbury Hill – released in 1977 – may have kickstarted his solo career but both musically and lyrically this was a line being drawn under his time in Genesis. Like a distance-learning degree in esoteric, international and underground culture both modern and ancient, this would all, sooner or later, influence the second stage of his musical career. During his sabbatical from recording music, he combined caring for a child and tending to his legumes with immersing himself in the study of world religion, art and philosophy, not to mention African, Asian and South American music, as well as becoming an early devotee of punk and post-punk.
This meant that Gabriel had actually quit to spend more time with his family – but with none of the usual euphemistic implication that this phrase often carries when applied to public figures. While he really had been spending a lot of time tending to cabbages in the garden of his Cotswolds cottage, his daughter Anna-Marie had just been born breech and developed a serious infection.
One of the reasons he gave for quitting was odd as well – he claimed he wanted to spend more time in his vegetable patch. Given the financial hole he was in, and the success of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, 1974 was an odd year for Peter Gabriel to hand in his notice as frontman of Genesis.
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