In 2010, Peter Gabriel shared six of his all-time favorite songs and how each one inspired him during his teen years and well into the 1980s. There was Otis Redding’s 1965 cover of Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem, “A Change is Gonna Come.” Gabriel first saw Redding perform in 1967 at the Ram Jam Club in Brixton, London, and was immediately mesmerized by his performance and his interpretation of Cooke’s classic.
“Obviously, that’s a song associated with other people and Sam Cooke and so on, but it’s just the way Otis put the message over,” said Gabriel. “I think he’s a supreme interpreter, and what a heart.”
Gabriel also listed the Billy Roberts-penned “Hey Joe” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1967 and remembered the first time he heard it playing in school. “My ear perked up,” he said, “and I went in and listened to it and just had to find out about who this artist was.”
He also called Randy Newman a “master songwriter” and was always drawn to the composer’s darker 1968 piano ballad, “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”—Broken windows and empty hallways / A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray / Human kindness is overflowing / And I think it’s going to rain today—as well as Joni Mitchell‘s “Blue.”
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“Joni, I think, I’ve been in love with not just because of the writing, but also [because] she was an experimenter,” Gabriel said. “She was pushing the musical boundaries both in the way she wrote harmonies and then exploring arrangements.
By the mid-’80s, Gabriel had already established himself as a solo artist, a decade after parting ways with Genesis, and connected with “The Boy in the Bubble” during this period, the opening track of Paul Simon‘s 1986 album, Graceland.
“That’s one of the most extraordinary lyrics written on a rock song, I think,” said Gabriel. “It’s stunning.”
The Beatles
When it came to the Beatles, it all started at the beginning with Gabriel and the band’s first album. Following the Beatles’ debut hit single “Love Me Do,” the title track from their debut, Please Please Me, which reached No. 1 in the U.K. and was their very first to chart in the U.S. at No. 2, had a lasting effect on Gabriel.
“‘Please, Please Me’ was coming over the radio,” remembered Gabriel. “I would sit in the back of my parents’ car when we were on these long drives down to the coast. And what people forget, I think, is that at the time, it was really rebellious, rough, mischievous, and full of life, and irresistible to any young person.”
Gabriel added, “The Beatles were a huge influence as I was growing up, and continued to be as there was all that revolution around their success.”
Photo: PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images
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