h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, not 1974

His first album was released in 1977, not 1975

Kate Bush started working with Gabriel on his third album, not the second

Peter Gabriel did not single handedly write the first three sides of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - at the very least Tony Banks wrote In The Cage and Phil Collins wrote Lilywhite Lilith.

The soundtrack for The Last Temptation Of Christ is all original material and not based on previously released songs.

The ominous song on So is called We Do What We're Told, not We Do As We're Told

Secret World Live does not contain any previously unreleased material - it' just than some of it had been released in collaboration with other artists and had appeared on their albums.

Any one of these would appear to be an oversight. Taken as a whole, they are very bad research.

Hello Nick,

Thank you for your input, too bad you weren't around when the article was reviewed in Peer Review By the way : this is a copy of my reply to your original posting. Found this one a bit later...


There are some typos in the article but once the article has been accepted I cannot directly alter the page myself any longer. Let me clarify the points you raised :


1. Peter Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, not 1974

This is officially true. The press-release was issued in 1975. However : the sources I have referred to(the official websites, the DVD's, the interviews, the newspaper-articles) clearly state that "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway-tour" was the last involvement of PG in Genesis, this was as I recall 1974.
Genesis have made a favourite pastime of these 'delayed press-releases', they did the same with Phil Collins(left in 1994, was made public in 1995) and with Ray Wilson(took ages after "Calling all stations"), and they have stated that they did this because this way the band and the ex-member both have time to prepare for new projects without being under the scrutiny of the press all the time "because their resident genius has left and what wil you do now boys?". So officially you are right, in reality it was 1974.

2.His first album was released in 1977, not 1975

You are quite right and this was indeed a typo.

3. Kate Bush started working with Gabriel on his third album, not the second

This again is not strictly true. You see : I have tried to be as accurate as possible and the fact is that Kate Bush was definitely involved in the making of PG II. The reason you state that the first album she performed on was the third album is probably that there are no credits mentioning Kate! It is quite well known however, that she was in the studio, did some small stuff(and she was mighty honoured to play with PG I may add ), most of which did not appear on the resulting album. This work did inspire here however to write her(IMHO) best work. Albums like "The Dreaming" for instance.

If you check out the linernotes of "Never for Ever) by Kate you will see she thanks PG "for opening the windows". This was because of her "learning-experiences" in the studio during the recordings of PG II(she bought a Fairlight CMI after she had heard Peter Gabriel use one) and for working on PG III. For the record : this information came from an old interview with Kate Bush.

Again : I did not blindly follow the press-releases. These only give you the official statements that the artists/management WISH to release. Through the years more sources became available, often from the original artists themselves, and I have taken these into account.
I think that if I would not do this I might as well get out a Rock-encyclopedia and copy the lot!


3. Peter Gabriel did not single handedly write the first three sides of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway - at the very least Tony Banks wrote In The Cage and Phil Collins wrote Lilywhite Lilith.

Again : close but not entirely. You must make a distinction between writing the material(chords, lyrics, melody) and the actual perfectioning of the song. I don't think there has ever been ONE Genesis-song that was written and arranged entirely by one person. As a matter of fact : Genesis took great pride in the fact that they were a collaboration of songsmiths and this later on caused the problems that made PG leave the band eventually. Indeed I am quite aware of the fact that the solo in "In the cage" sounds 100 % like my favourite keyboard-players style, ofcourse Tony wrote that. It couldn't have been any different because it was strictly forbidden in those days for a Genesis-member to play an instrument that one of the other members played. You will not find any song on shich Steve Hackett played piano for instance. Only Phil Collings doing some background-vocals and Tony Banks doing some acoustic guitar. Having said that there is the one exception of course : Phil Collins singing the lead-vocals on "For absent friends"

So what I said was that Peter Gabriel wrote the songs on the first three sides. I did NOT say that he also arranged everything. Indeed : he would have been completely unable to write the synth-solo in "In the Cage". He would also probably have had a revolution on his hands if he would have insisted on trying to tell other members exactly what to play!

The fourth side - which as you undoubtedly know was written mostly by PG with the help of Tony Banks, also helped solve some of the problems with the other sides. In effect : PG wrote a heck of a lot of songs, got stuck, Tony Banks et. al. helped him out, after which they went back to some of the PG-songs already recorded and made some changes there because they could use the material and the ideas from side four. It is not a matter of written law that an album is recorded from the first song to the last. As a matter of fact it is the exception to the rule...


4.The soundtrack for The Last Temptation Of Christ is all original material and not based on previously released songs.

I think Jimster already answered that one. Keep in mind though, that I do not disqualify PG in any way if he decides to re-use some of his material. He always manages to do interesting things to his "re-mixes"(not the perfect word for it in this world ruled by completely unnecessary House-remixes I know ).


5. The ominous song on So is called We Do What We're Told, not We Do As We're Told.

You are right, just another typo. This is a 1.300+ word article so...
By the way : if we want to be really really really exact we should call the song "We Do What We're Told Milgram's 37" because that is how it was called on the album-sleeve.

6. Secret World Live does not contain any previously unreleased material - it' just than some of it had been released in collaboration with other artists and had appeared on their albums.

So it is material previously unreleased by Peter Gabriel. To be honest I don't see the fault in this paragraph although it might be slightly confusing.


Any one of these would appear to be an oversight. Taken as a whole, they are very bad research.


Two typos and a difference of opinion ? I think that's pretty good if you take into consideration that this article has been up for ages now.

Anyway : please feel free to provide more input. This article will have to be overhauled in the future anyway as PG is still making music. I will have the time and opportunity to "redo" the article then and update it with all the extra information I can get.

Greetz,

TM.

Oh and by the way : Welcome to h2g2

TM.