A Solsbury Report
It starts out with a rather dry sounding host giving a brief bio of Gabriel's career up the recording of Security. You know this is an older show when the host calls synthesisers "new technology".
Cut to Gabriel singing in a darkened studio, dramatically performing "Rhythm of the Heat"...when it gets to the climax, ("the rhythm has my soul!") and the drums have at it, it shows a strange montage (strange in that it doesn't quite fit the drama of the music) of picutres of Gabriel from childhood, to him in Genesis, to his early solo career.
Next part shows some scenes of Gabriel frollickling in a park with his (then) wife Jill and his two kids, Anna and Melanie. As we see Gabriel and family swinging around on tree swing, Gabriel's voice over talks about that he left Genesis in part to spend some more time with his family.
Another montage later, the host brings up the song Biko. After showing several clips of the funeral of Steven Biko, Gabriel talks about how he noticed that most pop music songs have the same type of drum rhythm, whereas when he wrote the song "Biko" he was able to get a completely different rhythm after listening to traditional African songs.
We see Gabriel jamming to some African drummers playing outside his small studio, and later Gabriel talks about some recordings he taped from various African songs. What's interesting to note (aside from noting that his interest in World Music has not waned a bit since this show was taped) he refers to using these African rhythms as "stealing". "I stole this rhythm from this..." as he plays a traditional Africa song on a casette. Don't know whether to lecture him for being incorrect (technically, you can't "steal" another culture's art form) or to commend him for being honest.
Next we see him entering his home studio. Gabriel and the narrartor is making it sound like this technology is soooo state of the art and is incredibly intimitating (and by 1981, it was!) but still, it still all looks so outdated by our current standards. Gabriel points to his drum machine which has a bunch of clunky knobs and looks less sophisticated than the VCR we just watched this tape on.
This segues into where Gabriel is working on a song, and Gabriel plays this disturbing yet familiar sounding ethiopian pipe music. Then we hear Gabriel performing a song which, is only vaguely recognizable at first, but it turns out to be a "working" version of "San Jacinto."
Gabriel then starts playing an upbeat track on his synth which a subtitle shows that it has the working title of "Hands". Sounds absolutely nothing like "Lay Your Hands on Me", but once he starts singing, it's clear that it's actually "I Have the Touch".
Next Gabriel and producer David Lord are out trying to "collect" various sounds to use on the Fairlight. Gabriel tries to get a sound by smashing a tv set, but, can't seem to work up enough energy to actually break the glass tv screen with a steel pipe. Frankly, he smashes tv sets like a girl. (Word of advice to Gabriel: next time try playing a Phil Collins music video on the tv first, then use a sledgehammer.) Fortunately, he finally breaks the damn thing and we see him trying to use the sound on his Fairlight. He explains how all the sounds he collects are stored on floppy disks (which are about a square foot! Even 5 inch floppies look small in comparison.) Then he plays a loop of one of these Fairlight effects and he starts singing, which has a working title of "Jung In Africa" (Ooh...three guesses which song that turns out to be:)
Then drummer Jerry Marotta shows up, and he explains how he puts emotion into the drumming that Gabriel's drum machine can't provide. "We split the work 50/50. We both work very hard," Marotta says of himself and the drum machine.
Next, we see Tony Levin, who looks rather odd without the mustache. "This is the stick. It's called the stick and I play it as a bass because I'm the bass player in the band," Tony says, making it hard to believe that this is the same guy who now writes the articulate and witty Road Diary pages. "As you can see it's got a lot of strings. I don't even know how many," Levin deadpans. Is this the same Tony Levin we all know? Usually a prerequiste to being the World's Greatest Bass Player is knowing how many strings you got on your instrument. However, Tony starts to play and in doing so he redeems himself quite nicely.
Then we show Gabriel playing "San Jacinto" once again. As he's talking about the piece, he pronouces "San Jacinto" in the most unusual way we've ever heard "sahn sin toe"(?!) but has he's playing, we can hear the song coming together to sound more like it does on Security.
Cut to producer David Lord, who makes the most obvious statement ever made: "Peter's a slow worker." Gabriel talks about how Lord tries to push him to makes decisions about his music to speed up the recordng process (where is Lord nowadays?) Then we see Gabriel and the boys take a break from recording. Gabriel and Levin play, of all things, croquet, while Marotta, embarassed by such a wimpy sport, drives off on his motorcycle. And thus ends the first half of the South Bank show.
Second half kicks off with Gabriel and company playing "I Have the Touch", and Gabriel is using some sort of electronic device to modify his voice. We don't know what it is but when using it, it looks like he's trying to eat an AM radio. Then we are introduced to electronic music wizard Larry Fast. The technology seems to have advanced in the second half of the show, as now we're looking at equipment that's at least as complex and the Solsburian headquarter's CD clock radio.
We then go through a montage of how a simple sound (Gabriel blowing into a tube at a scrapyard to get a "coke bottle" type noise) evolved to the haunting electronic hollow sound used on "San Jacinto" ("We will walk on the land...") Gabriel then adds his vocals, we see him standing in the studio singing before cutting to Gabriel explaining the story behind the song.
Next we see Gabriel in the studio recording vocals for "I Have the Touch." At first, he looks bored (he literally has his hands in his pockets as he's singing) but then he starts getting into the beat and puts in a good performance.
The first WOMAD festival is shown and while it shows Gabriel giving autographs and then performing some of his new songs, nothing is mentioned of the fact that the first WOMAD didn't turn out as planned (see this essay on the Welch bio for more details). We see Gabriel put in a stunning performance of "Rhythm of the Heat" with Gabriel acting like a man possessed.
The show seems to end quite abruptly when the narrartor/host deadpans that the album was released, hit high on the UK charts, and then quickly dropped off completely. Gabriel makes a few final comments, and that's the end. The host shows clips from upcoming South Bank shows (the Steven Speilberg feature looks interesting.)
In short...
Good: we get to see Gabriel in the recording process, and also see him what life was like before Real World Studios. The technology is adequately explained, and we get to see the "everyday" side of PG.
Bad: Ended rather abruptly and on a blase note. Also, it only focuses on three songs "Rhythm of the Heat", "San Jacinto", and "I Have the Touch". It would've been nice to see some "Shock the Monkey" in there, since it was so different from anything he had recorded at that point.
This is something that most Gabriel fans should try to get to see if they get the chance.