Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel III

Buildings systematically collapse, cracks in the walls tear the plaster from the surface, small men throw themselves into the void, behind the flames incinerating things and thoughts. The city rots in a dark light, it is night everywhere, I am different from myself. Help, I do not recognize these gestures, these inhumane habits like a prison. A television channel broadcasts people dressed as tourists, discussing how polite the Chinese are on the metro. The slow dripping of the faucet gradually fills the silence at home and inspires my solitude.

“..Intruders happy in the dark. Intruder come, intruder come and leave his mark, leave his mark..”

After the first two solo works produced by the imposing Bob Ezrin and Robert Fripp, which still concealed an artist in embryo, Peter Gabriel decided to record his third self-titled work at a mobile studio in Bath, where he lives. In late summer '79, the sessions for “Peter Gabriel III” begin, six months that include a long and complex autumnal mixing phase. The record is ready and cooked as early as January 1980, but creative turbulence with the Atlantic label obtusely delays its release. Clever executives of the historic major, in fact, consider the former Genesis member's new work a certain “commercial suicide.” God bless them, and Syd Nathan.

In February, the 45 rpm “Games Without Frontiers” (Kate Bush on backing vocals) is released, and the charts of the time will thank him immediately; while in June of eighty, the eagerly awaited and unseen Gabrielian chapter #3 is ready to be displayed in store windows (sending the folks at Atlantic kindly to cultivate cucumbers and zucchinis, the record label in the States is now Geffen). The disturbing cover of “Peter Gabriel III” (“Melt” in some markets) literally dissolves the author's past and builds an identity closer to his true artistic face: the result is a remarkable work for instinct, creative urgency, and exploration of virgin musical languages. A mutant sound, that drips and nullifies the image we know into something unknown. The symbolic melted rubber mask of the brave Gabriel on the cover (designed by American designer Les Crims with the special graphic technique Charismagraph), daring and innovating in the decade to come. Emancipating to ride a creature hungry for new wave and electronic stings, of Steve Reich's minimal music and brief glimpses of what will be the world music to come (which the Real World of Archangel Peter will contribute to generously spreading at the end of the eighties).

“..A foreign body, and a foreign mind. Never welcome, in the land of the blind. You may look like we do. Talk like we do. But you know how it is..You're not one of us..”