Peter Gabriel
Birdy

LA RECENSIONE

The soundtrack of Alan Parker’s film, "Birdy" would win Gabriel the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Festival in 1985. Gabriel has always managed to triumph through his way of expressing himself without worrying about the views of opposing observers, he has always gone against the current, from his beginnings with Genesis, with very expressive stage costumes, to diving into the crowd to be carried away, to his currently seemingly normal outward aesthetic expression, which instead continues to keep alive a constant and spontaneous inner expression.

A musical genius, a pioneering fighter for human rights, a perfect interpreter of the visionary limit of the human being, inventor and applier of visual technological art that would lead him to win awards for the videos of “So”, he has never sold out for commercial or record company demands; in fact, he created his own. The soundtrack of "Birdy" is a collection of Gabriel's past interpretations, from "Close Up (From Family Snapshot)" to "The Heat (From Rhythm of the Heat)" to "Under Lock and Key (From Wallflower)" to "Powerhouse at the Foot of the Mountain (From San Jacinto)" and then from new compositions that trace the film’s sequences. "Birdy" will never reach the levels of "Passion" or "The Rabbit Proof Fence", but it will be an important skeleton for subsequent works.

The album cover and the ensemble of sounds are very unsettling to interpret and associate with the story of this boy, Birdy, who is in search of his existence unfortunately limited by life’s events, and the music corresponds to this synonym of the search for the wings of freedom that lives in him. The story is initially based on the friendship of two boys, Al and Birdy, a nickname given to him for his extraordinary love for birds, he lives in symbiosis with them to the extent of preferring them to any other interest, friends, fun, and girls etc. Al and Birdy become inseparable friends, they go to Vietnam, survive the horrors of war, are wounded and hospitalized. But Birdy is locked up in a military psychiatric hospital, after undergoing a shock that leads him to isolate himself, without reacting or speaking. The only one who can help him is Al, who constantly undertakes this path to save him. Day and night he stays with him without stopping to talk and recall their past moments together: Birdy’s love for birds, his first flight with a glider, his first "flight" from a roof, when he locked himself up naked in a canary cage and when Brenda, his beloved canary, died and then the baseball games. But as time goes on, it becomes burdensome for Al because his friend does not wake up, until one day he brings baseballs, which Birdy looks at, touches, and begins to cry, there’s an argument with the doctor, a door is left open, they escape to the roof, and Birdy jumps into the void, Al rushes terrified to the railing, but finds Birdy fortunately smiling from a lower terrace: finally he had made it, he had taken the flight he had so long desired and wanted, the flight of the psyche, making others believe he was crazy when he had never been contrary to what everyone had believed since childhood, and thus, in the end, he laughs contentedly at having succeeded. Gabriel's music will follow step by step the apparent madness of Birdy, creating exactly the sense of the flight of the wings of freedom, with perfect translation into sound…