Pictured Above: Peter Gabriel: A man with a smile so powerful, it can break glass!
Leno:..."Let's get to it here...the founding member of
Genesis, and as a solo artist is one of the most innovative performers
of pop music...
[Honorary Solsburians start cheering loudly from audience]
...and last night he just won a Grammy for best short form music video for "Digging In the Dirt"
[the crowd goes wild!]
Please welcome...Peter Gabriel!
[Gabriel, with his bangs in an adorable wave, performs "Digging in the Dirt" onstage.]
[Exits stage, takes seat next to Leno. The crowd still cheering from the performance.]
Leno: Congratulations on the Grammy!
Gabriel: Thank you very much.
Leno: You know...I was watching the video...and besides the music, I can't help but think to myself...those worms on your face...were those actually...?
Gabriel: Well, those were slugs and snails...they had been trained for some time and um, it helps to just sit back and relax and think of them as the lips of a beautiful woman
Leno [laughing]: The lips of a beautiful woman...
Gabriel: Um...but they're a little bit sharp...there's this one little creature that has these things [makes clawing gesture with his hands] that are like teeth, and they suck the skin or whatever it is they're traveling on, and digest what they pull off...so when one of these things get on your eyeball it hurts a bit. [Note from Hill Editor: Why didn't the video director get a closeup of this creature eating Gabe's eyeball? That would've been such a cool visual.]
Leno: You can think of it as a skin cleanser, really.
Gabriel: I'm thinking about opening a spa. A...snail spa.
Leno: Maybe you can get agents and managers and put these things on their faces...
Gabriel [smiling]: Yeah...
Leno: I mean how long would it take, I mean, I realize there's all the other animation and everything, but how long did you physically have to sort of sit?
Gabriel: Some of the animation stuff does take a little while, and there was one shot where I was on the lawn, and grass was growing around me and it took about four hours...you'd think lying back for four hours sounds very easy, but after a while it gets extremely painful because your muscles start seizing up...
Leno: Plus having things sucking your eyeballs...
Gabriel: It's amazing what you have to do to get rich and famous these days.
Leno: You know...it's just a living hell, isn't it? It's just terrible! Now...but you had a pretty straight upbringing, private schools and all that type of thing...
Gabriel: Exactly. Yes...it was rather strict, and uh, music, although now know that [mumble, mumble, mumble] at the time, music was only played by disreputable types and was discouraged, so we had to sneak radios up to the bedroom and hide them away under the pillow and then sneak into the piano room and start writing and then it was the one place music was allowed so we'd bring in our soul records and blues records and just turn them up to 4 and that was only allowed for an hour and a half...
Leno: ...And that was it.
Gabriel: That was it.
Leno [Laughs, get no response from Gabriel, then moves on]: You've always been high-tech when it comes to concerts and things like that...
Gabriel [flattered and amused]: It's very kind of you to say that...
Leno: Well, no, I mean, uh someone said that you were planning some sort of theme park...is that true?
Gabriel: It's been an ambition of mine for quite some time and I'm working with Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno and we're talking to people in Barcelona and France [mumble] and...you have independant records being made and independant films being made and about time we have some independent ideas in theme park business being made.
Leno: That would be amazing...you can have a ride where they put snails on your face...
Gabriel: We could indeed.
Leno: And you're going to perform another song for us?
Gabriel: I am indeed...
[Leno does a plug, then cut to a commercial.]