Being a Peter Gabriel fan requires a certain amount of patience. His first three solo albums after departing Genesis were all self-titled, leaving them to be distinguished by their respective cover images (Car, Scratch, Melt). His fourth, 1982’s Security, carried that title only in the U.S. after he acquiesced to label pressures. While that quartet of albums arrived within a year or two of each other, his next, the multi-platinum So, came four years later. Us appeared in 1992, with Up delivered a decade after that. (Noticing his preference for two-word titles?)
In March, Gabriel issued Scratch My Back, his eighth studio album and his first non-soundtrack release in eight years. Of course, as it goes with Gabriel, the story is a bit more complicated. Scratch My Back is a covers LP, and a conceptual one at that. Always the idiosyncratic innovator, the now 60-year-old Gabriel says in the liner notes that, “Rather than make a traditional covers record, I thought it would be much more fun to create a new type of project in which artists communicated with each other and swapped a song for a song, i.e. you do one of mine and I’ll do one of yours, hence the title.”
After sifting through a stack of songs beginning in September 2008, Gabriel ultimately selected these for Scratch My Back: “Heroes” (David Bowie), “The Boy In The Bubble” (Paul Simon), “Mirrorball” (Elbow), “Flume” (Bon Iver), “Listening Wind” (Talking Heads), “The Power Of The Heart” (Lou Reed), “My Body Is A Cage” (The Arcade Fire), “The Book Of Love” (The Magnetic Field), “I Think It’s Going To Rain Today” (Randy Newman), “Apres Moi” (Regina Spektor), “Philadelphia” (Neil Young), “Street Spirit” (Radiohead). Rather than using guitars and drums for his interpretations, Gabriel opted for simple, orchestral arrangements.
He’d hoped to have the companion record, I’ll Scratch Yours, completed for simultaneous release with Scratch My Back, but schedules of the songwriters involved didn’t allow for it. Instead, Gabriel is looking to the lunar calendar, releasing a double-A side singles following every full moon this year. So far, Stephin Merritt (The Magnetic Fields’ frontman) has covered Gabriel’s “Not One Of Us,” Paul Simon has done “Biko,” and Bon Iver has returned the favor with “Come Talk To Me.” The first and third have been pressed as limited-edition 7″ singles, among the many exclusive releases available on Record Store Day this Saturday.
One of the standout covers on Scratch My Back is Gabriel’s take on Neil Young’s “Philadelphia,” written for the 1993 Jonathan Demme drama starring Tom Hanks. You might recall that Gabriel had a song of his own on the soundtrack, “Lovetown,” so the connection to this cover would seem a personal one. Calling “Philadelphia” an “extraordinary piece of writing,” and with a new orchestral arrangement that calls to mind a little Rodgers and Hammerstein, Gabriel makes Young’s already emotional song all the more elegiac. Hear here:
Purchase Peter Gabriel – “Philadelphia” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.
