Location: Graz / Stadthalle / Austria
Date: Sunday, 23.11.2014
This time around, Graz’s Stadthalle played host to Peter Gabriel, one of the most colorful musical artists and vocal icons of all time. The hugely charismatic Gabriel earned cult status as a member of the legendary progressive rock (and later pop rock) band Genesis, where he already wowed crowds as a first-rate stage entertainer. Later, with his solo career, he helped shape and move a whole string of milestones in the history of popular music, and with hits like “Solsbury Hill”, “Biko”, “Sledgehammer”, “Big Time”, “Don’t Give Up”, “Digging In The Dirt” and “Steam”, to name just a few, he collected plenty of awards and worldwide fame.
Mr. Gabriel has been out on the long ‘Back To Front’ tour since 2012, celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of his fifth studio album “So” (1986), backed by a band that includes three musicians who played on the most successful record of Peter’s rich solo career. On this ‘extended’ tour, Peter’s band was made up of musical masters of the caliber of legendary bassist Tony Levin (King Crimson), the only member of Peter’s band who has played with him from the very beginning, guitar virtuoso David Rhodes and drumming grandmaster Manu Katche. Seasoned keyboardist David Sancious, meanwhile, was part of the touring crew that presented the “So” album right after it came out.
The quintet of seasoned ‘old cats’ was joined by two young musicians and superb backing vocalists, Jennie Abrahamson and cellist Linnea Olsson, who stepped in before the tour started to replace the ailing Ane Brun. Peter generously gave the two of them the role of a sort of supporting act, and Jennie and Linnea made the most of it, playing three songs with incredible fire, of which the closing “Phoenix” was the most convincing. In their short solo set, built on authentic Celtic melodies (at times reminding us a bit of Enya, too), the pair impressed in more ways than one, especially when they harmoniously traded off on lead vocals, proving that Mr. Gabriel hasn’t lost his knack for picking excellent vocal ‘sidekicks’ over the years.
After a delightful opening warm-up, with a cloud of Celtic melancholy wrapped around the whole hall, it was time for the big arrival of the evening’s main star, who had actually shown up on stage before the two singers’ set. Uncle Gabriel humorously compared his show, in very good German, to a restaurant menu, and split it into three parts: an opening acoustic section as the starter, an electric-flavored section as the main course, and an uninterrupted, full run-through of the album “So” for dessert. Peter then sat down at the piano and, with Jennie and Linnea joining him as backing vocalists, opened the show with a brand-new song, “What Lies Ahead”. Even though Peter has changed quite a bit in looks since he started his solo journey in 1976, the decades haven’t dented his singing in the slightest, as his voice is wonderfully well preserved. Understandably, in his later years he often steers clear of overusing some of the high notes and more often lets his backing singers take them.
His charismatic stage presence also remains intact to this day. In fact, it has even ‘matured like fine wine’ over the years, which he proved in Graz with super energetic, at times even dance-like moves, constant strolls around the stage and fervent attempts to rouse the overly reserved, mostly Austrian crowd. Peter’s shows have been considered something special and unpredictable ever since the Genesis days, so it has become something of a tradition throughout his solo career that every new tour comes with a fascinating staging surprise or several smaller ones. This time, Peter’s stage featured giant, movable lighting rigs in the form of long pillars, whose shape recalled a cross between fitness machines and concentration camp watchtowers. These odd contraptions were operated and steered during the show by a group of mysterious, masked men who gave the impression of having just stepped out of some dystopian-society movie or Orwell’s ‘1984’, even though they were really just stage technicians. Their gloomy and at times menacing presence, together with the moving lights, fit perfectly with the socially critical lyrics and humanistic streak of certain Gabriel evergreens, which came alive that evening with their original magic.
After a gentle, melancholic opening stretch nicely rounded out by the classic “Come Talk To Me”, the mood slowly began to heat up, as Peter’s old musical comrades gradually started to walk onto the stage. Tony Levin appeared first with his trademark Chapman Stick, and the evergreens “Shock The Monkey” and “Family Snapshot” slowly began to shed their acoustic skin for an electrified one, while by the time of “Digging In The Dirt” the whole crew was already present, meaning guitarist Rhodes, drummer Katche and keyboardist Sancious too. During “The Family And The Fishing Net” some more electronic sounds took over, the kind typical of some of Peter’s newer work. The dark “No Self Control” also came off very well, with Peter deliberately dodging the menacing lighting towers as they swooped down and rose up, while “Solsbury Hill”, the song about his split from Genesis, was without a doubt the high point of the first half of the show, as the longest applause of the evening made clear.
After the newer ballad “Why Don’t You Show Yourself”, it was time for the evening’s long-awaited ‘dessert’, a complete run through the album “So”. It was hard to miss how much all the musicians on stage were enjoying themselves during each song, completely giving in to the magical atmosphere. Peter’s crew of instrumental grandmasters opened the live version of “So” with the unforgettable opening standard “Red Rain”, which bathed the whole hall in shades of red while drops of red rain splashed across the giant stage projection in the background. Interestingly, Gabriel’s band played the “So” tracks in the order of the album’s 2002 reissue, where the evergreen “In Your Eyes” comes at the very end rather than in the original running order.
One of the highlights of the night was definitely the big hit “Sledgehammer”, which earned Peter plenty of awards and is the most-played music video in MTV history. The mood in the hall hit absolute boiling point when the unforgettable ballad “Don’t Give Up” came up, which Peter performed on the original version as a duet with the legendary singer Kate Bush. She obviously wasn’t there that evening, but Jennie Abrahamson stepped in for her in a fascinating way, perfectly complementing Peter’s moving vocal performance.
After “That Voice Again” came an excellent, deeply felt version of the ‘still-life’ evergreen “Mercy Street”, with Peter lying on the stage while he sang as cameras filmed him from above. The short ‘lull’ was soon over, as the atmosphere in the hall exploded again during the bombastic hit “Big Time”, where Mr. Gabriel once more threw himself superbly into the role of a small-town yuppie who has just arrived in the big city. During “We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)”, a sharp critique of the unethical American psychological experiment, the dark mood returned, fed by the menacing and stoic figures of the masked stage techs. They set up the giant spotlights so that they looked like watchtowers from some concentration camp. During the uplifting “This Is The Picture (Excellent Birds)”, Jennie Abrahamson did a great job standing in for Laurie Anderson’s original contribution and, together with Peter, once again delivered a fantastic vocal duet. Peter’s band wrapped up the full “So” with the ever-emotional “In Your Eyes”, which was originally dedicated to Peter’s former partner Rosanna Arquette but later took on a completely different, much deeper meaning, as he himself stressed before playing it.
After a short break, Peter’s gang returned to the stage and rewarded us with a dazzling version of the dark, electronically spiced classic “The Tower That Ate People”, during which the stage spectacle hit its peak: a giant ring suddenly dropped from the ceiling, and a tower-shaped sheet inflated out of it, so that Mr. Gabriel, standing beneath the elongated structure, seemed to simply get ‘eaten’ by the tower. For the farewell came a deeply felt performance of the peace anthem “Biko”, which Peter, unable to shake off his big-time humanitarian streak, dedicated in a short address to the 43 Mexican students who were recently abducted by police, on the orders of a corrupt local mayor, and handed over to the mafia. The latter dealt with them in an utterly brutal way, with fatalities. With that pacifist requiem, an evening of countless concert highlights came to a close, especially when it comes to the musical performance and stage choreography.
Peter Gabriel’s show in Graz was in every respect one of this year’s concert highlights, especially for those of us who were seeing him live for the first time that evening and got to witness up close his incredible stage charisma and musical timelessness. It’s very hard to single out individual musicians, since every one of them, Peter included on piano and keyboards, shone as instrumentalists and proved to be a perfectly in-sync team. The great stage motivator, backed by superb sound, really managed to squeeze the maximum out of them, but unfortunately he couldn’t pull off the same with the overly stiff crowd, which didn’t join in enough on the choruses or cheer the band on during the livelier moments, even if they didn’t skimp on long applause between songs. Of course, that didn’t play any major role, so catching one of the fathers of progressive rock was the cherry on top of this year’s concert outings.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. What Lies Ahead
2. Come Talk to Me
3. Shock the Monkey
4. Family Snapshot
5. Digging in the Dirt
6. Secret World
7. The Family and the Fishing Net
8. No Self Control
9. Solsbury Hill
10. Why Don’t You Show Yourself
11. Red Rain
12. Sledgehammer
13. Don’t Give Up
14. That Voice Again
15. Mercy Street
16. Big Time
17. We Do What We’re Told (Milgram’s 37)
18. This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)
19. In Your Eyes
—encore—
20. The Tower That Ate People
21. Biko
