It started with Genesis: Peter Gabriel becomes 75 – music pioneer without fear of AI

Peter Gabriel is concerned about the future of his job. The rapid development of artificial intelligence has lifted the influential musician – in the sense of the word. “I’m probably just as much afraid of AI as everyone else,” said Gabriel, who is 75 years old today, in an interview with Yahoo a few years ago. “But instead of just talking about it, I prefer to jump directly into the cold water.”

For several years now, the Tech company Reverberation co -founded by Gabriel has been researching how the human spirit, technology, music and art can come together – also with the help of artificial intelligence. “This will have a much greater influence than the industrial revolution or the atomic bomb,” Gabriel is convinced. “If we don’t start thinking ahead, it will be too late at some point – because the whole thing is damn fast.”

Music pioneer since the 1960s

Peter Gabriel has been a music pioneer for decades. Initially, the Briton, born in Chobham/Surrey in 1950, revolutionized rock music as a front man of Genesis – and the concert experience. In 1967 he founded the band together with Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford, Anthony Phillips and Chris Stewart. In the early 1970s, the British group with Phil Collins on drums developed into one of the leading progressive rock groups.

Gabriel’s theatrical and avant -garde stage appearances and his penchant for unusual costumes characterize the image of the band. Sometimes he wears a huge flower on his head, sometimes bat wings or his “Slipperman” costume – a grotesque, shapely suit with bulky excesses and a deformed mask with a hanging mouth. The “Slipperman” is a figure from the album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”, which, alongside “Selling England by the Pound”, is one of the early masterpieces of Genesis.

Start of the solo career with “Solsbury Hill”

Gabriel leaves the band in 1975 in an endeavor to even more artistic freedom. Two years later, he released his first solo album, which is simply called “Peter Gabriel” and contains one of his best known and most successful songs with “Solsbury Hill”. The song in the 7/4 time unusual for pop music indirectly deals with its exit at Genesis. So he sings: “I was feeling part of the scenery, I Walked Right Out of the Machinery” (I felt part of the backdrop, so I left the machine).

Gabriel’s solo career reached her commercial highlight in 1986 with the album “So”, which contained hits such as “Sledhammer”, “Red Rain” and “In Your Eyes”. “Sledhammer” is particularly famous for the innovative stop-motion music video, which is overwhelmed with numerous prices and is now a classic in itself. “I made my face available for a few days, and they made art out of it,” joked Gabriel, who also composed several soundtracks, in an interview with MTV.

World music and social commitment

In Gabriel’s music there are always elements of world music, for which he has been enthusiastic for a long time. He launched the Womad Festival (World of Music, Arts and Dance), which brought artists from different cultures and took place for the first time in 1982. The label Real World Records he founded is intended to give talented world music artists a platform. Through his promotion of African, Asian and Latin American sounds in the western music market, Gabriel has contributed to making world music popular.

In addition to – and in – his music, the eight -time Grammy winner is committed to international understanding and human rights. His song “Biko” (1980) was one of the first western songs to address the fate of South African activist Steve Biko. He supports Amnesty International and founded the Witness organization in 1992, which is committed to documenting human rights violations.

Spectacular concerts and long breaks

His concerts are spectacle for the senses and still impress with elaborate productions, light shows, unusual stage sets and theatrics. Most recently, he was on a big world tour with his new album “I/O” – the first in 21 years – and received excellent reviews for both.

As usual with him, he experimented on “I/O”, which received two Grammys, with new sound worlds and technologies. For the British magazine “Mojo”, Gabriel called a surprising reason for the fact that he had not published a new music for two decades. “I think you can over -saturate, and then they are bored with you,” he said. “One of the reasons that I can still live on my music is that I regularly take longer breaks.”