and December came
and went due to Gabriel’s
obsessiveness over the
tracklisting, tensions began to
rise. Gabriel’s procrastination
in particular led to heated
exchanges with Lanois, who was
used to working more quickly
and frustrated when things
ground to a halt, on one
occasion smashing the telephone
to stop Peter using it, on another
nailing the studio door closed
until he had completed writing
his lyrics.Sledgehammer, with everything thrown
into the mix, including percussion from
Stewart Copeland and vocals from PP
Arnold. Lyrically, the song satirises the
emerging materialistic and consumerist
yuppie culture and the shallowness of
celebrities and the showbiz world. The
third UK single from the album it peaked at
No.13. It fared better in the US where it
reached No.8, supported by heavy MTV
rotation of its innovative video.
(^8) WE DO WHAT WE’RE TOLD
(MILGRAM’S 37)
Originally recorded for Gabriel’s third
album (aka Melt), We Do What We’re Told
was a dreamy track inspired by
American social psychologist Stanley
Milgram’s obedience experiments which
took two groups of people, installed
them in dominant and submissive roles
and examined how that infl uenced
their behaviour.
(^9) THIS IS THE PICTURE
(EXCELLENT BIRDS)
Completed just 48 hours before the fi nal
deadline for the album, Gabriel came up
with the idea of reworking Excellent Birds,
a track he’d recorded with Laurie
Anderson in 1984 and performed on TV
Special Good Morning Mr Orwell. An
appeasement for some fans who worried
he’d deviated too far from his avant-garde
leanings, the off-kilter song became This Is
The Picture, which also featured a guest
spot from Chic’s Nile Rodgers. Due to lack
of available space, This Is The Picture was
omitted from the vinyl version of the album,
only available as a bonus track on the CD
and cassette versions of So.
Over the ensuing weeks (which
turned into months), an elite roster
of guest musicians was recruited
to work on tracks including Kate
Bush, French percussionist Manu
Katché, Senegalese singer
Youssou N’Dour, trumpeter
Wayne Jackson (who had been
playing with Otis Redding when
Gabriel saw him in concert in
1967) and bassist Tony Levin –
all experts within their fi eld who
brought the required authenticity
to their respective songs,
something which was especially
important to Peter, who felt a
responsibility in highlighting the
sounds he had discovered on his
travels – particularly those from
Africa, South America and
Spain, which were embroidered
throughout So’s tracklist.
“For anyof us musicians who
get ideas from other cultures, we
get accused of cultural
imperialism,” Gabriel explained
in a 1986 interview with Spin.
“I think it’s important to digest it
a little rather than imitate it.
If there’s a lack of balance,
people like me have a
responsibility to provide it. At the
1982 World of Music, Arts And
Dance [WOMAD] Festival that
I organised, it was exciting to
have Burundi drummers playing
with Echo & The Bunnymen,
Indian dancers with The English
Beat, Chinese opera with Simple
Minds and myself – a real
mixture. Some of the rock’n’roll
cynics at the time said there was
no way that audiences would
take this, we’d get booed, but
nothing of the sort occurred.”
At the beginning of recording
the album, Lanois expected to be
at Ashcombe House for a
maximum of six weeks. “The truth
is, we fi nished So almost a year
to the day and that is the shortest
time Peter had ever spent on an
album,” he explained ruefully. As
the projected deadlines of July
© Getty Images
So received glowing
reviews from music
critics, who praised
its songwriting
craft, as well as its
fusion of genres