Story by Andrea W, Esquire, Hey Jealousy List Chairperson
Written by Mac Cat, Director of Coffee, Failed Former Journalism Major
Originally, Andrea and her mom were supposed to meet U2. They had bid on a similar auction to meet U2 in Europe, but after dealing with the disappointment when that deal fell through, they promised themselves they would "make it up" somehow. Then the auction for PG came up on eBay. As Andrea was a long time die-hard PG fan for fourteen years, her mother and herself decided they would "go for it" and try to win this auction. After sweating bullets during an intense eleventh hour bidding spree, she got the call from eBay: She had won! Andrea and her mother had earned the right to VIP WOMAD passes and five minutes one-on-one with Peter Gabriel.
Andrea was ecstatic for several days, but then a certain reality hit: What does one say to their all-time idol when one only has five minutes? Especially if that idol is prone to staring off into space saying "Um...." for fifteen minutes, and this particular moment was at a cost at $1000 a minute. There was a brief panic before Andrea asked the Solsburians for counsel and the Committee came through with some advice and an reassuring thought: Gabriel is a man who has no concept of time. Mark our words, you will get more than five minutes with the man. Then Andrea reasoned even if that wasn't the case, it'll still be a damn fine five minutes.
Set
at ease, Andrea made plans. She asked fellow fans for questions,
and printed them out. Then on 9am on Saturday, Andrea and her
mom flew from Virginia to Seattle.. Upon arriving around 2:50pm,
they checked into the hotel and made their way to the WOMAD festival.
Once there, they met Kris, a WOMAD promoter and they received
their VIP passes, and then they headed for the VIP lounge. While
the lounge itself wasn't that exciting (the only real bonus was
that there was food and drinks available), there was some action
in the form of an outrageous rumor that Gabriel was supposed to
be playing with the Oyster Band on Saturday. Despite the rumor
not being true, it didn't prevent many people from swarming the
main stage and the VIP tent looking for a glimpse of Gabriel.
After the Saturday performances, Kris the promoter invited Andrea and her mom backstage to the "after party", where she got to meet the Neville Brothers and members of AfroCelt. "They were great and we had a great time," Andrea said of the party. Afterwards they went back to the hotel and got ready for the next day. While they were aware that Gabriel was staying at the same hotel they were, they didn't know that Gabriel was at WOMAD super-early for a sound check, thus surprising WOMAD campers and early attendees with a full rehearsal performance, before Peter headed back to his hotel.
Then around noon, while walking around at the hotel, Andrea ran into Gabriel...literally. "This particular hotel was a maze," Andrea noted. And while wandering around near the hotel's tennis shop, she almost crashed into Gabriel who was walking around with his daughter, Melanie. As the moment was a bit awkward, there was only a quick exchange of essentially, "Hi" to Gabriel, before he left the shop, and, "See you at Womad" to Melanie before Andrea and her mom headed off to WOMAD.
They met up with Kris and Annie Parsons, Gabriel's personal assistant(1) to try to organize the timing of the "meet". Originally it was to be 3pm, but then Andrea was told that the meet would have to be moved back to 3:30pm. To make a long story short, Andrea and her mom wound up staying in the backstage/VIP area, chatting with WOMAD attendees and Anne and Kris, until sometime after five. That's when Gabriel finally showed up at the VIP tent, got a cup of hot tea, and came over to where Andrea and her mom where standing. Anne started to introduce them, and Gabriel immediately started shaking Mom's hand, apparently thinking that she was the actual eBay winner. "I'm Andrea," Andrea said, after which he began shaking her hand and said, "Sorry I'm late..."
"Really? You? Late? I'm surprised," Andrea said with a sarcastic smile(2). Gabriel just returned a wry smile, chuckled and said, "I get distracted."
They went to a picnic table and after settling in, Andrea's
mom said to Gabriel, "This is why I did this," referring
to how she went through the trouble to go in 
with
her daughter to win this "one on one". She explained
how Andrea had introduced her to Gabriel's music and that she
was proud of her daughter for being active with Amnesty International
and animal rights groups. Andrea was a bit embarrassed that her
mom was rattling off her curriculum vitae to Peter Gabriel,
but she saw that Peter kept looking over at her and smiling with
a "proud parent" look, a look he would later use when
he introduced Melanie to the audience at Womad (when it was Melanie's
turn to look a bit embarrassed)(3).
When Mom finished, Andrea started asking Gabriel about Up, to which he gave a similar answer to the one he gave recently on Rock 101: He's working on it, but it would be more like Autumn '02 and he wanted to finish the soundtrack to Rabbit-Proof Fence first. Then Gabriel spent a few minutes describing the story to the Rabbit-Proof Fence to which Andrea asked, "Is the soundtrack going to be more like Ovo or Passion or Birdy?" Gabriel answered that it would be something between Passion and Birdy.
Andrea then asked about the song "Nocturnals". Peter said that he wrote it as a soundtrack song because he was a friend the director, and "For a while it called 'The Postman' and before that it was called...something else."
About ten minutes (!) into the meeting, Andrea mentioned animal rights groups, and Gabriel said that he's working with apes. "You want to go see it?" Gabriel said excitedly. Andrea just said, "Yeah, sure," and much to her surprise, Gabriel bolted off to get his laptop computer leaving Andrea, her mom, Kris and Annie in an awkward moment. At one point, Kris wondered if the meeting was over. Eventually, Gabriel came back with his Titanium PowerBook(4) computer. He turned it on, and while it was loading, Gabriel said, "Here, let me autograph some stuff for you!" He signed a copy of Xplora 1, and then he signed her VIP pass. Andrea relates, as Gabriel wrote her name..."The 'A' was all out of control...he said, 'I'm sorry, I messed up your name!' and I said, 'Don't worry...I know who it's for.'"
Andrea chose that time to bring up the Solsbury Hill website. "Are you aware of the website Solsbury Hill?" After thinking for a moment, he said, "Yeah...I've seen it before." After Andrea explained that she is a regular visitor to the Hill, she asked Gabriel to autograph something directed to the Solsbury Hill site. As he began to write the autograph, Andrea couldn't resist saying in reference to this typo (5) found by many on the Real World website, "You know how to spell it, don't you?" "What? Hill?" Gabriel said, in complete seriousness. Fortunately for the Solsburians, he didn't take offense and wrote up the first Gabriellian autograph directed at a website. (Yay!)
Once the footage on the PowerBook was ready to roll, Gabriel got out his old earphones, plugged them in and checked the audio on the film before placing the earphones in Andrea's ears, allowing her to listen to Gabriel's footage of him working with the apes in the laboratory. "It was amazing. You can really see the human/ape link. The music was tonal, and they had good rhythm." One of the clips showed Gabriel and a few other musicians in one room, and an ape in the other room, separated by a plexiglass wall. After the ape and Gabriel jammed together for a moments, the ape stopped, went up to the plexiglass, and started crying...the lab technician calmed the ape down, explaining that the ape wanted so badly to be in the other room with Gabriel!(6)
After
Andrea was finished with the movie, he had her mom watch it as
well, allowing Andrea and Gabriel to talk one-on-one some more.
Andrea asked if he planned on releasing some of the enormous catalog
of material he had built up just with Up alone. As Andrea
remembered, "Gabriel said that he didn't want to overload
the fans with too much music. I said, 'I don't think you're in
danger of that.'"(7)
This earned Andrea another wry expression from Gabriel.
During the entire meeting time, Gabriel's "people" kept running up and hinting that Gabriel really needed to go to rehearsal, but Gabriel managed to hold them off for about twenty-five minutes while he met with Andrea and her mom. But it was getting late, so they wrapped it up by having several pictures taken(8). Finally, Gabriel left for rehearsal.
However, there was still Gabriel's performance to attend to, and Andrea and her mom made their way to the main stage. They had trouble finding a spot to watch the show, but at one point, Gabriel made sure they got a great view about five feet away from the stage, enabling her to take some really good pictures. After Gabriel's set, they stayed to watch AfroCelt.
After the show, Andrea was able to make her way to the production trailer backstage, where she ran into Gabriel one last time. She asked him to autograph a couple of things for some fans she met during WOMAD. After chatting a bit, Andrea said, "It was a real pleasure to meet you." Gabriel responded by pulling her in and giving her a big hug. A real hug. And then he gave Mom a hug too, and said, "Maybe I'll see you again in the hotel shop." Sadly, they didn't see Gabriel again after that, but at this point, Andrea was on a serious "Gabriel high" and felt that the experience was well more than worth the price.
Andrea said, "I was always in awe of him for 15 years, and yet when I finally saw him, he put me at ease. He has a very big heart and is kind to everyone. He's a passionate and very compassionate person." Andrea also wanted to thank Kris the promoter, who went beyond all expectations and went out of her way to see that Andrea and her mom had a great time.
Footnotes and Afterthoughts as written by the Solsbury Committee
(1) Anne Parsons has been Gabriel's personal assistant at least since 1986. We Here at the Hill think she deserves a some form of special recognition for trying to organize the unorganizable and for putting up with Gabriel for so long:) [back]
(2) Andrea is a woman after our own sarcastic Solsburian hearts. [back]
(3) Wanting to embarrass one's children must be some freakish "parent" thing that we don't understand. Ooh, did we mention that Moxie turned on the stereo today? Isn't she so smart? And she's so cute! [Moxie rolls eyes] [back]
(4) One of the things we wanted Andrea to find out was, "What sort of laptop does Gabriel own? We suspect it's a TiBook, but we want to be certain." Andrea was able to easily answer that question for us. Cool! Good job, Andrea! [back]
(5) When this sacrilegious typo appeared on Radio Real World, we were swamped with e-mails asking us why we didn't make some comment on the Hill. We decided for various reasons that we didn't want to tee off the hard-working Real Worlders by making snippy remarks at their expense. Which is a shame because we came up with a really good zinger. If you really want to know what the zinger is, write us with a request and we'll tell you:) [back]
(6) We can totally identify with that ape. Actually, most Gabriel fans could identify with that ape...[back]
(7) Did we already mention that Andrea is a woman after our own sarcastic Solsburian hearts? [back]
(8) Andrea told us that at one point during the photo session, she was trying to get her mother into the picture, saying, "Come on! Let's take a family snapshot!" This earned her yet another "look" from Gabriel... [back]
One last thing: We would like to thank Anna MC and Kari Pacer for helping with the editing with this document, and we'd also like to thank Andrea for telling us the full story and getting us that schweet autograph!
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