Peter Gabriel – The Making of PG4 (Security)
Besides being a musical genius, former frontman of Genesis and all round world music champion, Peter Gabriel was also one of the first to fully exploit the Fairlight CMI in a successful way. It’s almost as if the machine was designed for someone of his ability, a natural disposition to find music in everything. It probably helped that Peter’s cousin was the UK distributor of CMI’s through his company SyCo Systems.
Anyway, I, and many others, have posted clips found on YouTube of segments of a South Bank Show (A UK arts TV programme most popular in the 1980s) showing Peter using the Fairlight and acquiring found sounds in a rubbish tip. I’ve seen the full show, but never in decent quality. Until now. A friend of mine, and fellow PG fan, Matt Watson, managed to unearth the full show in as good a quality as you can expect for a thirty year old show.
The full 50 minute show documents the making of the album, Peter’s 4th eponymously titled solo offering that came to be known as either PG4 or “Security”. In it we see not only some nice Fairlight action, including some brief glimpses of Larry Fast‘s very rare black CMI, but also the musical stylings of such luminaries as Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta and David Rhodes, as well as Mr Fast and Mr Gabriel. It’s a fantastic insight into Peter’s composition and recording process and is incredibly interesting.
Enjoy! 🙂
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