Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel has earned a worldwide reputation for
his innovative work as a musician, writer and video maker. When at school, he
CO-founded the band Genesis which he left in 1975. His albums, live performances
and videos since then have won him a succession of awards. In 1980, he collected
together a group of people to found WOMAD (World of Music, Arts & Dance). In
a series of international festivals, each year WOMAD brings together traditional
and modern music, arts and dance from every corner of the globe. Peter is
currently an advisor on the board of WOMAD. Shortly afterwards, Peter
established Real World Studios in Wiltshire, designed as an ideal environment
for performance. It also became the base for Real World Records, a label which
is dedicated to recording and promoting a wide range of artists from all over
the world.
Peter has released 10 solo albums and in 1986 he won his first
Grammy with his seventh album, \'So.\' The videos from this project established
him as a leader in video production and included \'Sledgehammer\' which has won
the most music video awards ever, including a No. 1 position in Rolling Stone\'s
top 100 videos of all time. Peter has been involved in a broad spectrum of human
rights and environmental issues. His song, \'Biko,\' was the first pop song
which talked about the effects of apartheid, and in 1988 and 1990 he was
involved in the Nelson Mandela concerts at Wembley. In 1988 he also worked with
Amnesty International to set up the \"Human Rights Now\" tour, visiting many
countries with Sting, Bruce Springsteen,Tracey Chapman and Youssou N\'Dour.
Following this, he initiated the \"Witness\" programme, which was launched
in 1992 in conjunction with the Reebok Foundation in the USA. The organization
aims to arm human rights activists from around the world with handheld video
cameras and other tools of mass communication. To date, they have supplied
hundreds of cameras to over fifty countries, and have also set up a biweekly
Witness web broadcast via Macintosh\'s Quicktime Channel. In 1989, he visited
the USSR to help launch Greenpeace and also contributed to the \'One World, One
Voice\' album -- a collaborative project which featured artists from all over
the world.
In 1989, Peter composed the soundtrack for Martin Scorcese\'s
epic film \"The Last Temptation of Christ\" which was the basis for one of his
most experimental and innovative albums,\"Passion.\" The album, which involved
an extraordinary selection of musicians and vocalists, integrated many very
different styles of music. A powerful concept, it provided the inspiration
behind the BBC\'s specialist radio programme, \'Mixing It.\'
Then 1991 saw
him open Real World\'s doors to a host of international artists and producers
for a unique recording project in association with WOMAD and Real World Records.
Known as \"Recording Week,\" the aim was to make the most active and creative
use of the studio\'s many facilities. The collaboration of musicians from
different cultures produced some of the most daring and exciting work. For the
release of his tenth solo album,\"Us,\" in 1992, Peter commissioned 11 visual
artists to interpret each of the 11 songs on the album. These works of art were
featured at the British Contemporary Art Exhibition in 1993 and also at a
special exhibition in Japan. \'Us\' earned him four Grammy nominations and two
MTV awards in the USA, plus awards from BRIT and Q in the UK. The album\'s
fourth single, \'Kiss That Frog,\' was the starting point for the creation of
the world\'s first music and motion ride, entitled \"The Mindblender.\"
Developed in association with Mega in the USA, \"The Mindblender\" proved to be
a popular mix of ride-motion, film and music.
April 1993 was the start of
the \"Secret World Tour,\" Produced by Peter and pioneering Canadian
director/designer Robert Lepage the show blended Lepage\'s visionary style of
theater with Peter\'s personal songs focused on relationships. It was seen by
over a million fans in five continents and toured for 18 months. In November
1993, the show was filmed and recorded in Modena, Italy, by Francois Girard and
in August 1994, Peter Gabriel\'s \"Secret World Live\" the double live album and
video, was released
Also in 1993, Peter set up Real World Multimedia and
brought together a team of experts dedicated to developing, producing and
publishing innovative CD-ROMs and pushing new technology to its limits. RWMM
launched a series of multimedia titles, which went on to win many awards across
the world, including the coveted Milia d\'Or, two BAFTAS, the 1994 BIMA Award,
the Sparky from the Interactive Media Festival and four awards at the Digital
Media Awards. Among these titles were \"Ceremony of Innocence\" and Peter\'s
CD-ROM\'s \"XPLORA 1\" and \"EVE.\"
In 1996 Radio Real World became the
official web site focusing on Real World, WOMAD and Peter. At the end of 1997
Gabriel was invited by Mark Fisher to help create a show for the central space
of the London Millennium Dome, 1998 was spent brainstorming ideas on the
narrative and visual concept. In 1999, whilst continuing to be involved with the
show\'s development, Gabriel composed the music. The show was opened on January
1st 2000. An album of this music, entitled OVO, will be released on Real
World/Virgin Records on June 12th.
Van Morrison
Van Morrison has
never fit comfortably in the rock mainstream, and he hasn\'t had a Top 40 hit in
more than twenty-five years, but he remains one of the most significant and
influential artists in pop-music history. A jazz- and R&B-loving Irish
mystic with an indescribably soulful voice, he sounds like the love child of
Dylan Thomas and Billie Holiday--and everyone from Springsteen to Costello to
Bono to head Counting Crow Adam Duritz sounds at least a bit like him.
Born
in Belfast in 1945, Morrison dates his first musical memory back to his third
year, when he experienced spiritual ecstasy while listening to gospel singer
Mahalia Jackson on the family gramophone. For the remainder of his youth, music
mollified his natural shyness, as he listened to his father\'s records of
Leadbelly and Hank Williams and taught himself guitar. Soon thereafter, he
formed the Sputniks, the first of many teen combos. Morrison was so committed to
music that after he was refused entry into a band of older boys because they
already had enough guitar players, he taught himself the saxophone. When he
returned three weeks later and demonstrated his new skill, they signed him up.
Morrison eventually landed in Them, a rhythm-and-blues outfit whose intense
sound quickly made them a local phenomenon. They cut several singles in the
mid-sixties, including a cover of Joe Williams\' \"Baby Please Don\'t Go\" and
Morrison\'s own \"Here Comes the Night,\" both of which made the British Top 10.
The group embarked on a semi-successful U.S. tour, and Morrison\'s roiling
\"Gloria\" became an inspiration for American garage bands. But after two
albums, Morrison was already disillusioned with the music industry; he disbanded
Them and returned to Belfast.
Record producer Bert Berns, who had worked
with Morrison before, heard of his disenchantment and sent him a plane ticket to
New York, encouraging him to record some solo singles. Morrison accepted and
recorded his first solo hit, \"Brown-Eyed Girl.\" But Morrison and Berns soon
had a falling-out, and Berns, in an attempt to capitalize on the success of
\"Brown-Eyed Girl,\" released the eight-song album \"Blowin\' Your Mind\" of
Morrison session recordings, packaged with psychedelic cover art. Morrison was
outraged, not only because the album was released without his knowledge, but
because he considered the songs unfinished. (He also despised the cover art\'s
implication that he was part of the free love and drugs trend.) To appease his
star, Berns suggested they cut a proper album--\"The Best of Van Morrison.\"
Morrison hated the album, saying it was really a \"Worst of . . . \" collection.
(You can judge for yourself: the complete sessions are now available on the
collection \"Bang Masters.\")
Morrison got out of his contract with Berns
and signed with Warner Brothers. In 1968, he went into the studio with some
seasoned jazz musicians and recorded Astral Weeks in just a few days. The
album\'s surreal, jazzy, and spontaneous feel combined with Morrison\'s achingly
soulful vocals to establish him as one of the most creative artists of his era,
and it is often named on critics\' all-time top-ten lists. It was also
considered the essential album for acid-heads, though Morrison denies ever
having done L.S.D. (\"I didn\'t need drugs to have experiences,\" Morrison said.
\"I had always had experiences without drugs, and so anything like that would
impair them. Alcohol would impair them. It produces a false ecstasy.\")
\"Astral Weeks\" was the first of a handful of albums that proved
Morrison\'s brilliance and versatility: \"Moondance\" (1970) and \"His Band and
Street Choir\" (1971) brought in R&B horns and female background vocalists,
showing off Morrison\'s chops as a blue-eyed soul man, while \"Tupelo Honey\"
(1971) and \"St. Dominic\'s Preview\" (1972) added more Irish, folk, and country
elements to the mix. Meanwhile, on a personal level, Morrison\'s life was
steadying--he married Janet Planet, a hippie he met in San Francisco, and
settled down in Woodstock, New York, and Marin County, California. Morrison
thought of Planet as a spiritual redeemer, and was thrilled by their rural
domestic bliss. But she saw things differently. She was much more sociable than
Morrison, and yearned to get out of the rustic isolation he treasured. Their
marriage crumbled after five years. (Their daughter, Shana, has followed in her
father\'s footsteps, touring with his band and recording duets with him on
recent albums.)
The years following his divorce from Planet sent Morrison on
a spiritual and philosophical odyssey, and his art suffered the consequences.
\"Hard Nose the Highway\" (1973) was a critical and commercial flop that
contained none of the spark of his best work, while 1974\'s moody, introspective
\"Veedon Fleece\" failed to find an audience despite some breathtaking moments.
Following these relative failures, he took three years off, and returned in 1977
with a tentative album whose title, \"A Period of Transition,\" seemed to
confirm his general state of confusion. He began to regain his footing with
\"Wavelength\" (1978), but it was on 1979\'s \"Into the Music\" that he made a
full-fledged comeback. A deeply spiritual and soulful album, it was released the
same year as Bob Dylan\'s born-again diatribe \"Slow Train Coming,\" but
preached a far more forgiving and openhearted gospel.
Spirituality has
continued to play an important part in Morrison\'s music throughout the eighties
and nineties. His religious explorations have included Scientology (which helped
inspire 1983\'s \"Inarticulate Speech of the Heart\"), and he has described
himself as a \"Christian mystic\" (check out 1989\'s \"Avalon Sunset\"). His
best work, though, has continued to fuse the ethereal and the earthly,
especially on 1986\'s \"No Guru, No Method, No Teacher,\" and 1990\'s
\"Enlightenment.\" He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in
1993, and in 1995 he turned fifty, but Morrison shows no signs of slowing down:
in March of 1997 he released \"The Healing Game,\" his best work since
\"Enlightenment,\" and his fifteenth new album in as many years.
Don
Henley
\"Inside Job\" is the Warner Bros. Records debut of Don Henley
and his first new release since 1989’s multi-platinum \"The End Of The
Innocence.\" Written and produced by Henley, in collaboration with Stan Lynch
(formerly of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers), \"Inside Job\" features 13 new
songs, including the single “Taking You Home,” and comprises, according to the
artist, “a diary of sorts - a chronicle of the past eleven years.”
While the
Texas-born singer and songwriter may have been absent from the recording studio
during the past decade (a greatest hits album, \"Actual Miles\" was released on
the Geffen label in 1995), he was not resting on his laurels. When asked why it
has been so long between albums for him, Henley answers, “After a couple of
decades of being a public figure, a person grows tired of his own face, his own
voice. If this malaise is allowed to continue unchecked, it can deteriorate into
something that my pals and I call ‘Death By Show Business.’ This doesn’t refer
to literal death - although that is sometimes the case - but more to a loss of
enthusiasm and a withering of creativity - a sort of atrophy of the spirit. One
day you wake up and you’re wearing the pathetic clown suit. Although I always
tried to lead a varied life that included charitable work, I had reached a point
where I wanted to do something proactive - something that wasn’t completely ‘me’
oriented.” So, in the decade of the ’90s - which Henley describes as “Mr. Toad’s
Wild Ride” - he took a few detours.
In 1990, between touring stints in
support of \"The End Of The Innocence\" album, Henley managed to found \"The
Walden Woods Project,\" which has gone on to become one of the most successful
preservation/education endeavors in America. Henley’s \"Thoreau Institute,\" a
later addition to the Walden Woods Project, is known and respected throughout
the world as a facility that combines the best of history with state-of-the-art,
cyber-learning techniques. In 1991, Henley, in addition to organizing benefit
concerts, compiled and co-edited, with writer Dave Marsh, a book of
environmental essays, the proceeds of which went to support the fledgling Walden
Woods Project.
In 1992, he toured to promote the book and did more benefit
concerts. In 1993, Henley brought his musical and environmental concerns
together when he spearheaded \"Common Thread: The Songs Of The Eagles,\" an
all-star, country music tribute that generated over 3 million dollars for the
Walden Woods Project and went on to be named 1994’s “Album of the Year” by the
Country Music Association.
In January of ‘94, Henley’s Los Angeles home,
which he painstakingly designed and built, was destroyed by the now infamous
Northridge earthquake. About a month later, he attended a summit meeting in
Aspen, Colorado with Eagles partners Glenn Frey, Joe Walsh and manager Irving
Azoff, where it was decided that The Eagles would reunite for an album and a
tour. Preparations for the tour commenced in March and The Eagles MTV concert
was filmed in late April. Having no livable domicile in California, Henley
encamped in a Los Angeles hotel and made arrangements for those belongings that
were not destroyed in the quake to either be put in storage or shipped back to
Texas. He had decided, for various reasons, to move to his native turf and did
so in the late spring.
In June of 1994, when The Eagles tour alighted in San
Francisco, Henley became engaged to his longtime girlfriend, Sharon Summerall,
of Dallas. They were wed in May of 1995, shortly after the tour was completed.
Setting up a home in Dallas was followed by the birth of a daughter and, two
years later, a son. The two-year construction of Samain Sound, his own personal
recording facility, began in February 1997. With all these things going on, the
real question is how Don Henley found the time and energy to create an album
like \"Inside Job.\"
“We started pre-production in the fall of 1997,”
explains Henley, whose creative team included the above-mentioned Stan Lynch,
engineer Rob Jacobs, assistant engineer and computer technician Stuart Brawley,
with special studio guests Stevie Wonder, Randy Newman, Glenn Frey, Jai Winding,
the Heartbreaker’s Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell, along with guitarists Jimmie
Vaughn, Dean Parks, Frank Simes and many others.
“My approach is to let the
material evolve; to try to achieve a balance of tempos, textures, subject
matter, emotions, etc. I had a good, long gestation period and, after a while,
these things start kicking around in your gut and they have to come out. I just
do it and hope that it’s more focused, more mature than it was before. It’s a
bit like sending your kid off to school and hoping that he’s understood and
accepted to some degree. Since today’s musical climate seems to fluctuate
between bubble gum and unintelligible ranting, I would like to think that
there’s a place out there for my stuff.”
Recorded at various studios in Los
Angeles (plus Henley’s own), and including material cut in Dallas in the summer
of 1998, \"Inside Job\" is distinguished musically by what Henley calls, “some
stylistic stretching.”
“While I’m primarily concerned with lyrics and
melodies, I was after something specific with the sound of this album,” he
remarks. “I wanted to take advantage of all the technological advances in the
state of the art, but at the same time integrate those advances with the sound
of natural instruments and voices. Some of the equipment in my studio is the
newest available and then some is vintage, such as certain microphones, limiters
and the console itself, which is an old API model 515 that I nabbed about twenty
years ago when the owners of the Record Plant in Sausalito decided to remodel. I
had it completely rebuilt and it’s a beauty. I only wish it could talk. Anyway,
it was fun to combine the new technology with the old and the result, I think,
is sonically interesting. We recorded in both the analog and digital formats,
depending on what was being recorded and what kind of texture we were looking
for at the moment.”
\"Inside Job\", in short, is of the same lineage as each
of its predecessors, while simultaneously finding the artist at significant new
crossroads, personally and professionally. “When I moved back to Texas,” he
explains, “I discovered something remarkable about my hometown and its environs.
I have found documentation which shows that legendary blues guitarist T-Bone
Walker and renowned ragtime composer Scott Joplin were both born on the
outskirts of Linden, Texas, the little community where I was raised. I don’t
think that any of the townsfolk were even remotely aware of this until recently.
Growing up, we always thought that nothing ever happened around there, but
evidently that isn’t true. Oh, some local guy did invent the windsock, but
that’s been more or less lost to history. I’m anxious to do more research on
both Walker and Joplin when I can find the time.”
More remarkable things
were yet to happen in that sleepy, little town than the young Henley could have
imagined. Because of its geographical and cultural location, all sorts of music
wafted through that particular corner of East Texas. The Louisiana Hayride, a
legendary radio program akin to Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, broadcast live
musical performances across 28 states from powerhouse station KWKH in
Shreveport, Louisiana throughout the 1950s. In 1954, this program was the first
radio broadcast performance of the young Elvis Presley. Henley’s father tuned in
religiously and he and his young son would listen intently to the likes of Red
Foley, Kitty Wells, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams, Slim Whitman, Faron Young and
Patsy Cline. There were the summer vacations in the Ozarks where Don was exposed
to bluegrass music and, of course, there was always the Western Swing of groups
like Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys which drifted east from Dallas and Fort
Worth. There was a rich variety of blues and gospel music from both the black
and white communities with veins running deep in the East Texas soil. Henley has
often recounted the story of the African-American baptisms he witnessed as a
young boy while hiding in the weeds beside a pond which was located in the woods
near his home. “They would wade out into that muddy water with their arms
stretched toward the sky. I remember the women being all dressed in white. The
singing was unforgettable. At first, the whole thing was a little frightening,
but the longer I watched the more I started to get into it. Underneath the
fervor, there was a sincerity and openness about it - an expression of faith and
longing like I had never heard before. That experience stays with me, not
necessarily in terms of its religious connotations, but in terms of its
humanity.”
In his teens, Henley listened far into the night to powerful
station WNOE in New Orleans, which broadcast the exotic sounds of that city
northward, out across the still, Texas countryside. Southeastward from Tennessee
came the deep, resonant voice of the famous \"John R\" (John Richborg), a white
deejay who sounded black. His historic radio program was broadcast from WLAC in
Nashville, a 50,000 watt, clear channel station that beamed its way, during the
’50s and ’60s, across a wide swath of America’s heartland - and at night, when
atmospheric conditions were just right - into Henley’s little world. Also within
range was KOMA in Oklahoma City and, last but not least, the legendary Wolfman
Jack, whose nocturnal howls reached all the way from the Texas-Mexico border -
some 600 miles - to Henley’s tiny, transistor radio as he pressed it against his
ear under the bedcovers until the wee hours of the morning. For a while, Elvis
led the parade which included Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats
Domino, Bobby Freeman, Chuck Willis, Bobby Blue Bland, etc. Then, in the early
’60s came The Beatles and Henley’s life was changed forever.
In high school,
he formed his first band, The Four Speeds, with friends Richard Bowden and Jerry
Surratt. This band eventually morphed into Shiloh which included Jim Ed Norman
(currently President of Warner/Reprise Nashville), who Henley had met at the
University of North Texas.
The group relocated to Los Angeles in 1970 where
they recorded an album for the independent Amos Records, whose roster also
included a young guitarist/songwriter by the name of Glenn Frey (who was half of
a duo with John David Souther). Henley and Frey became friends, striking up a
creative partnership during their tenure with Linda Ronstadt, with whom they
toured and recorded.
In the fall of 1971, they formed The Eagles, a group
that pioneered and personified a uniquely American musical style blending
country, folk, R&B, rock and pop sensibilities. The Eagles would go on to
become one of the most creatively and commercially successful bands of all time,
selling over 100 million albums worldwide. In the course of their decade-long
career, the group won four Grammy awards, topped the album charts five times and
became one of the top concert draws of the era. They were the first band in
history to rack up domestic unit sales of over 10 million for two separate
albums -Hotel California (15 million and counting) and Eagles - Their Greatest
Hits 1971-1975 (which, at 26 million copies, surpasses Michael Jackson’s
Thriller as the best selling album of all time in the U.S.).
The facts and
figures of Henley’s subsequent solo career are also impressive. In 1982, his
much anticipated debut album, \"I Can’t Stand Still,\" featuring the hit single
“Dirty Laundry,” established a creative direction that would make him one of the
most relevant, and resonant, musical voices of our time - with a gift for melody
and lyric in the service of passionate conviction and incisive, socio-political
observation. 1984’s \"Building The Perfect Beast\" yielded four more hit
singles: “The Boys Of Summer,” “All She Wants To Do Is Dance,” “Sunset Grill”
and “Not Enough Love In The World.” That year, Henley garnered Grammy
nominations for Record, Song and Producer of the Year and won the award for Best
Rock Vocal (Male) for “The Boys Of Summer.”
The artist’s notable track
record continued unabated with 1989’s \"The End Of The Innocence,\" which
yielded three more Henley hits: “The Heart Of The Matter,” “The Last Worthless
Evening” and the title track, which brought with it another Best Rock Vocal
Grammy. At last count, \"The End Of The Innocence\" had racked up sales of over
six million in the U.S. alone.
Henley’s career as a musician and an activist
continues to roll on. To date, The Walden Woods Project has raised over 22
million dollars - most of which has gone toward the purchase of environmentally
sensitive and historically significant acres in the Walden Pond environs. The
Thoreau Institute, an archive and research facility continues to expand its
educational programs. In November of 1999, Thoreau’s voice came to life again
almost 150 years after his death with the publication of Wild Fruits, a “new”
work published by W.W. Norton & Company. Bradley Dean, Ph.D., leading
Thoreau scholar and Media Center Director at the Thoreau Institute, succeeded
where many others had failed in painstakingly transcribing Thoreau’s almost
illegible handwriting from his final manuscripts. Dean, after four-and-a-half
years of diligent effort, has given the world an important book that Thoreau was
not able to complete and publish in his lifetime. He has also given Henley
credit for making it possible.
Other causes to which Henley has lent his
name and talents: the passage of clean water legislation in California; the
preservation of wildlife habitat and open space in Los Angeles’ Santa Monica
Mountains; the establishment of a wetland science research institute and
numerous environmental education programs, both in the public school system and
in colleges and universities in his native East Texas. He has also participated
in numerous other fundraising efforts including Farm Aid, The Race to Erase MS,
The Rhythm and Blues Foundation and The Rainforest Foundation, to name a few.
“Inside Job is my view of the world from this particular time and place,”
concludes Henley. “My marriage and the birth of my children have had a profound
effect. Despite all the sham and selfishness, life is still good. Children
constantly rekindle hope and appreciation - and they have excellent bullsh*t
detectors. It’s a wonderful thing.”