“Karl Bartos told me that when Kraftwerk were making Electric Café they went into the Power Station where Gabriel was doing overdubs on So and Sledgehammer was put on,” Kraftwerk biographer David Buckley said. “They were knocked back by how fantastic it sounded. They felt their record was puny sonically by comparison, even though it’s a completely different genre of music.”
An evocative ballad, Don’t Give Up was partially inspired by the startlingly evocative Dorothea Lange pictures of Americans during the Great Depression. Written as a duet, Gabriel initially envisioned Dolly Parton to sing with him. Instead he turned to his great friend, Kate Bush, who was then enjoying huge commercial success in the wake of Hounds Of Love, to add the impassioned female vocal part. Over the gentle swell of Richard Tee’s gospel-influenced piano part, the song was a masterpiece of understatement that was in step with the straightened times lurking beneath the shiny veneer of the era.
Don’t Give Up is arguably Gabriel’s most powerful statement. In 1981, Margaret Thatcher’s Employment Secretary Norman Tebbit infamously used an analogy about his father being out of work in the 30s, and instead of rioting, he got on his bike and looked for work. This became interpreted popularly as telling the unemployed to ‘get on their bike’ to find a job. Gabriel’s tale of a dispirited man at the end of his tether looking for work touched a raw nerve with millions of listeners in the UK and, latterly, the world. The song, with Gabriel’s despair in the verses and Bush’s words of hope in the chorus, has gone on to be arguably Gabriel’s most loved composition.
After such high drama, That Voice Again is a beautiful, Byrds-like pop song that often gets overlooked amid the album’s plentiful highlights. Originally entitled First Stone, it sounds almost as if Gabriel had taped one of the therapy sessions that he had been going through. Musically, it’s relatively simplistic, with Rhodes playing jangling Rickenbacker over the rhythm section of drummer Manu Katché and bassist Tony Levin.
Mercy Street was another standout. Gabriel had been reading the work of American poet Anne Sexton after having become interested in her work through the book To Bedlam And Part Way Back. Sexton had committed suicide at the age of 45 in 1974, leaving a slender yet highly confessional body of work, and the gentle, lilting rhythm of Gabriel’s song supports lyrics that allude to this. Percussion for the track was recorded by Gabriel in Rio de Janeiro by seasoned player Djalma Correa. With its deeply reflective tone and affecting vocal, Mercy Street became one of Gabriel’s most popular numbers and a staple of his live set.
Incredible 10 Read re: Incredible Artistry re: Timeless Masterpiece
🕹🕳🎵♾🎶🩹🕯