The Living Years (14 page)

The intro was Tony’s, who had come up with it while we were waiting to play a gig in Cleethorpes. We were in a gym with a lovely big echo when Tony picked up a guitar and suddenly there it was.

‘God! Tony, that’s fantastic!’

‘What? What did I do?’

Half the art of writing is to know what’s good. Coming up with the stuff is one thing, but recognizing it is another. Tony is the same on keyboards. I can walk into the room and he will play for a couple of minutes. I’ll hear some amazing chords and get excited that this could be the setting for a new song, yet he has no real idea what he just played. It was probably because Tony doesn’t normally write on guitar that he found the chords in the first place. It was just three notes and not a shape that a guitarist would ever play. (I never did feel territorial about Tony playing the guitar in the way that Tony felt territorial about his keyboards. I thought it made for quite a nice image on stage: three acoustic guitars together.)

Foxtrot
felt an easy album to write, as though we’d found our way a bit. We wrote the majority of it in the basement of the Una Billings School of Dance in Shepherd’s Bush (Phil’s mum ran the Barbara Speake Stage School in Acton and had connections). One song, ‘Watcher of the Skies’, had been written while we were in Italy a few months before. We were playing the Palasport in Reggio nell’Emilia near Parma, a huge, crap, echoey place, when in the middle of the sound check Tony played the opening two chords on his mellotron. They sounded incredible although, once again, I’m not sure he knew just how good they were. The lyrics were then written by Tony and I together, sitting on the roof of our hotel in Naples while we imagined the world had ended. Quite odd, given that it was a pleasant, sunny day.

Pete always understood how to make words flow. Sometimes he’d try to cram in too many, as he did on ‘The Battle of Epping Forest’, but his words always sang well. Tony and I, not being singers, didn’t have the same understanding. ‘Watchers’ was a prime example of the fact that you can write great lyrics that read well but are hard to sing: ‘Watcher of the skies, watcher of all / His is a world alone, no world of his own . . .’

Our music was always so quirky and unusual sounding that it needed equally quirky lyrics. Tony and I were very much into sci-fi and we’d all studied Latin and mythology at school, influences that bubbled into our words. But it’s also true that we hadn’t got the confidence to write something as simple as ‘I love you babe’ at this point. It was such a direct emotion, not something that you could say if you’d been to public school and had learned to hide your feelings. It wouldn’t be until much later on that I felt I could write a love song.

* * *

In July 1972 we took a day off writing the album for Tony’s wedding to Margaret in Farnham. We then generously allowed him another day off for a honeymoon driving to Dartmoor and back.

When Margaret married Tony, her life became the band. She was a home person, but if the road was home, that was fine with her. She always came everywhere with Tony and I don’t think he would have lasted otherwise. We’ve dragged Tony round the world complaining for the last forty years and he’s loved it all, but if he hadn’t been in a band and married to Margaret I often think he wouldn’t have travelled so much.

Steve had also met his future first wife, Ellen, a few months before at the Zoom Club in Germany. We’d played a gig and flown back to England the next day, by which time Steve had inherited Ellen, and Phil had inherited a girl called Kiki. Kiki was definitely one for the bands – great fun, a lot of makeup, a lot of hair – whereas Ellen had a dark, German side. Given that the idea was that you finished a tour and got away clean, it always seemed a bit ironic to me that both Steve and Phil came back encumbered as a result of the very last night.

By now Angie had broken up with John Alexander. Even when they were going out together, I would take her for dinner. John had asked me to look after Angie when he was in Norfolk. Yet I still didn’t feel it was the right moment to tell her how I felt. We were friends, and I hated the thought that I could lose her friendship if it all went wrong.

She was at Lucy Clayton’s in Knightsbridge. While her friends jumped into their boyfriends’ sports cars, I would arrive in the transit van. Angie had quite a rebellious streak and rather enjoyed clambering in and driving off with the band to a gig in Hastings. In many ways we were quite similar. She had gone to boarding school, and like me, hadn’t particularly enjoyed it and resented the discipline. She did, however, manage not to be kicked out and became Head of House, at which point she banned fagging. That’s just how she was.

When she finished college, she started modelling in London, but was soon persuaded to go to Paris and Milan for work. This meant that she only needed a part-time base in London and, as I often left my flat to drive to a gig at 2 p.m. and didn’t arrive back until the next morning, I offered her my bed. The only snag was that there was only one of us in it at any one time.

At the time I was living in Earls Court, which I couldn’t afford. I’d therefore moved into the smallest bedroom at the back of the flat and let out the front bedroom, which had big bay windows on to Redcliffe Gardens. Gay Tom, as we all called him, wore very high silver platform shoes, mauve trousers and big hair, and always had some dodgy bloke in tow. He was also Australian.

Sadly Gay Tom couldn’t really afford Earls Court either, so he had to share the room with a soundman called Bruce who worked for Clair Brothers audio systems and was not into gay people. Like Angie and me, Bruce and Tom were ships in the night most of the time. When they weren’t, Bruce would be kicked out to sleep on the sofa while Tom had his way with whomever he’d brought back from the gay club.

Gay Tom still never had any money, though. Eventually it got so bad we agreed he could pay me his rent in cocaine.

* * *

In May 1972 Pete appeared on stage at the Great Western Festival in Lincoln with a reverse Mohican: he’d shaved a strip down the centre of his head and was also wearing white facepaint, eyeliner and a jewelled collar.

You had to admit, it was a look.

Festivals were often places where we died a death. It would be hard to create an atmosphere and our moody songs never did well on a sunny summer afternoon. Nevertheless, they were exciting to play. I was nearly beside myself when, after we’d played Reading in August, the guy making the announcements had come on at the end and hurried us off: ‘That was Genesis: I’m afraid they’ve got to leave promptly because of touring commitments.’ At the time I hadn’t yet understood that, if you were in the middle of a bill at a festival, you didn’t do an encore: you had a slot and kept to it. ‘No, no, we’ve got time! Really – we’ve got time!’

At festivals, Pete was left with an even bigger responsibility on stage. Our songs were often story-driven, but no one could hear the words because the PAs were never very good, so as the band’s representative he had to make the connection with the crowd and get across the sense of the songs. Also, he was still the only one of us standing up.

We must have seemed very intense and studious but it was never a conscious decision to stay sitting down: we just weren’t natural stage people and by sitting down could hide behind Pete and the music. I’d wanted to be a songwriter, that was always my plan. I’ve never been one of those guys who yearns to be on stage. I loved playing live, but it was more about the playing – the feeling when it clicks – than the crowd reaction.

When Pete unexpectedly appeared wearing Jill’s red Ossie Clark dress and a fox’s head to play the National Stadium in Dublin in October, it was shocking. We couldn’t stare too much because we were so busy trying to play our own instruments, but we were dumbstruck that Pete had chosen a small, scruffy, unfriendly Irish boxing venue to give that look its debut appearance. It was about as provocative as you could get.

We had no idea of what Pete was going to do in advance – he knew if he’d run it by us we would have stopped him. After that, it was almost as though we all agreed to ignore Pete’s stage look. He’d appear before a show in full makeup and pretend everything was normal, and we’d do the same: ‘Hey up, Pete.’

The funny thing was that, outside the band, Pete could talk to anyone about anything. He’d always be referencing world affairs or human rights or social inequalities – even then he had a strong sense of justice. His ability to communicate was a skill and he could turn it on or turn it off when he wanted. If he walked into a room of people he didn’t know, he’d go up to the nearest one and say, ‘Hello, I’m Peter Gabriel: what are you up to?’ He would get physically tired but he never seemed to get mentally tired. He was always writing stuff down and he could always be engaged to discuss things. With the band, however, the old, argumentative schoolboy dynamic made us all sensitive to each other and so Pete, knowing that there’d be a row, simply decided to keep silent and bypass it.

I confess we did grumble slightly after the Dublin gig. But the next week we were on the cover of
Melody Maker
and our fee doubled overnight so any resentment went away.

In December 1972 Genesis played a Christmas show at the Avery Fisher Hall (now the Philharmonic Hall) in New York, organized by Strat at a cost of £10,000. What we didn’t know was that this was our money – the realization that we’d have to pay it all back only came afterwards. At the time we were too busy loving America.

Manhattan was somewhere that we’d lived through the pictures: the big skyscrapers; the long avenues; the taxis; the noise; the bustle; the steam rising off the streets from the subway and pipework. Being there was all my film fantasies come true. It didn’t matter that the hotel we were staying in, the Gorham off 57th Street, was a complete dive. The rooms were incredibly scruffy but even that seemed exciting. English scruffy was just scruffy; New York scruffy was cool.

Everything had a feeling of Hollywood, including the moment when, on the first night, the telephone in my room rang. It was reception calling to warn us that a man with a gun was wandering around the building somewhere. I’d been in my room for less than ten minutes and could barely contain my excitement. Just imagine – an Englishman in New York and an actual gunman on the loose! So it was a bit disappointing when, after the police had arrived in a blaze of sirens, the armed man went off peacefully following a minor kerfuffle in the corridor.

I doubt New York would have missed us that much if we had gone down in a hail of bullets. Our first ever American gig, which had been in Boston the day before, had been a complete disaster. It was so amateur. We were playing in a cafeteria at Brandeis University at lunchtime – people had been wandering in with their sandwiches. We hadn’t realized that Tony’s organ wouldn’t work because of the difference in the power supply. We were only saved by the fact that Brandeis specialized in science and engineering: one of the university technicians managed to build a Heath Robinson transformer that just about did the job. By then the gig was doomed anyway: we limped through as best we could and then left everybody to enjoy their lunch in peace.

Our New York debut was nearly as bad. The Rickenbacker bass I was playing had a horrendous buzz on it: I couldn’t hear a note all night. No one else could, either, and I was convinced we’d blown it. There was a lift up from the side of the stage to the dressing room and after the show I got in and flung my bass on the floor in a fit of dramatic swearing and cursing. But then, almost the next moment, Strat swept into the dressing room completely ecstatic. ‘Dear boy, they loved it! It was fantastic! You’ve conquered New York!’

Charlie Watts always said, ‘If it’s crap on stage, it’s fine out front.’ I’ve learned the truth of that over the years. And, sure enough, a review appeared in the
New York Times
the next day:

Genesis is a quintet that blends perversely fashionable theatrics with complex, often ingenious arrangements . . . The visual focus is Peter Gabriel, the lead singer, who center-parts his hair to the crown of his head, changes costumes frequently (from clinging pants suits to dresses and back again) and is clearly working hard to project androgynous demonism. He succeeds, especially when helped by fireflash and smoke bombs set off on the beat at the climax of the act. Mr Gabriel sings well enough, but musically Genesis is most notable for its hammering, heavy ostinatos and luxurious organ playing. Occasionally things get mired in pretension, or lose their rhythmic grip. But the climax worked, and climaxes are what rock is all about.

The gig had been followed by an after-show party at the Tavern on the Green and by the time I’d calmed down and was crossing Central Park in a chauffeur-driven limo, chatting to journalists, I was feeling rather important. It was my first gig in New York, my first after-show party . . . only one thing seemed to be missing.

It turned out her name was Carol.

Carol wasn’t my first groupie, although my first groupie hadn’t actually been a groupie. She’d been a hooker who had been staying at the same hotel as us in Naples earlier in the year. The city was crumbling and beautiful and romantic, this girl was petite and dark haired and, all things considered, I was well placed to enjoy my night.

As for Carol, I didn’t choose her, she chose me. In fact, she had a long history of intimate relations with UK bands, which she proceeded to list by name over the time I knew her.

In America, English-accented acts were definitely top of the list for groupies, although I always thought it was more than just the novelty of hearing us speak: they liked our look, too. American guys had the long hair but the effect was a bit too studied. We looked like we didn’t care because (apart from Pete) we didn’t. If you were in an English band, your music was your calling card. I figured that, for the groupie, the prospect of being put up in a hotel for three days added to the appeal, too.

When we arrived in America for our first tour, everything was so new and different. I just couldn’t get enough of it. We arrived in LA, hired Mustangs, put the roof down with Crosby, Stills and Nash blaring from the radio. I was twenty years old and life couldn’t get better.