AT THE ROXY
GABRIEL'S HUMANIZED ART-ROCK

2 October, 1978; Section IV, p.12
by Richard Cromelin.

Like his new album, Peter Gabriel's current show is a consolidation of the direction he established with his debut as a solo artist last year. If his return to the Roxy over the weekend didn't mark a major step forward, no one in the adoring, sellout crowd seemed to mind. Since Gabriel has always advanced at an unhurried pace and since his music bursts with ambition and creativity, one can presume it's a matter of care and deliberation rather than stasis or complacency.

Saturday's first set found Gabriel in peak form, as he instilled a rare humanity and emotional complexity into the "art-rock" format. In person, Gabriel brings an engaging, knitted-brow, whimsicality and a full-bodied urgency to his formidable songs, which can seem a bit dry on record. He's always ready to lighten a dark tone ("Some nights I wake up and I'm afraid of dying," he said before playing the troubled "Indigo," adding, "particularly with a piano that sounds like this"). His oblique but fascinating imagery also ferrets out the demons lurking beneath deceptively innocent surfaces. The result is a triumphantly liberating experience.

Gabriel makes these emotional labyrinths vivid and compelling by countering the innate "aesthetic distance" of the words and music with a strong sense of intimacy. He spent a good portion of the set stomping across the tabletops, crouching face to face with the ringsiders; and once was literally in the listener's lap up in the balcony.

His picturesque band (mostly the same unit that supported him last year) delivers a distinctive brand of music that has the density and structure of "progressive" music and the directness and flavor of basic hard-rock.

The show's pacing yielded a lull here and there, but the finale - building from the folky "Solsbury Hill" into the highly charged "Modern Love" - was an explosive display of rock prowess. If Gabriel could reach that energy level a bit sooner, he'd easily leave his competition in the dust.

Transcribed for The Path by Joe Harden

Joe's story:

Peter Gabriel 1978

Six months after Genesis' 1978 show, I had the good fortune of finally attending a Peter Gabriel concert. Although I had enjoyed the three Genesis shows that I had already seen, I still regretted never having seen Peter with the band. But since that opportunity appeared to be lost forever, I figured seeing him solo would have to settle as the next best thing.

Looking back at Peter's concert, though, I don't feel that it was a case of settling for something less. Peter as a solo artist put on a magnificent show with spectacular music and that same magic that seems to follow everyone associated with Genesis.

The show started with Peter sitting on a stool on the bare stage holding a teddy bear, singing a simple song about how he and his teddy bear "got no hair but we don't care." The simplicity of it created an immediate, intimate connection with the audience, minimizing the emotional distance between us (the devoted fans) and him (the famous rock star). Later in the show, Peter took that connection a giant step further by eliminating the physical distance altogether. During "Waiting for the Big One" the stage suddenly went completely dark while the musicians continued to play sans Peter's vocals. From our seats in the very, very back of the large theater, we were clueless as to what actually was happening up on stage. Several long moments later, my friend's date who was sitting next to me, complained that someone had moved into the empty seats behind us and had propped their feet rudely onto her shoulders. As we turned around to glare at this intruder, a huge spotlight suddenly flashed brightly all around us, clearly illuminating the culprit. It was Peter! He hopped to his feet, microphone in hand, and jumped right back into singing while climbing over the seats into our row. For one brief, unexpected moment, Peter Gabriel stood mere inches from me! Completely caught off guard, I stood there dumbfounded. Then, for lack of anything better to do, I reached out and touched his arm. Peter climbed over the seats in front of us into the next row and continued in this way towards the front of the theater down a path created by the parting of his devoted fans, a sight that reminded me of the parting of the Red Sea. For the rest of the show I was too mesmerized by that close encounter of the Gabriel kind to focus on anything else. I had touched Peter Gabriel.

Joe Harden