Peter Gabriel

If you wanted to succinctly sum up the singer, songwriter, human rights campaigner, artist and technologist that is Peter Gabriel, the required word might well be “showman”.
After all, when the former Genesis frontman played the SECC 20 years ago he was delivered onstage via conveyer belt, from a phone box which had risen out of the ground. At the show’s climax he packed his entire band into a suitcase before departing the venue via UFO. On previous visits to the city he’s cycled onto the stage, played the monkey on a massive climbing frame, and even appeared as a flower (“a flower?)
This time the expanse / expense is more modest but no less thrilling. Perhaps sensing a danger of being upstaged by the new Clydeside megalith that is the Hydro, he instead takes the newly-opened venue and runs with what is its most obvious feature – its unique use of light.

Not that you’d know it from Gabriel’s entrance – almost stumbling onstage in the rather dim house lights, he apologises for opener ‘Obut’ being “half finished”. However, true to his recent rich vein of form, this new piece, accompanied only by piano and “the legend that is (bassist) Tony Levin”, could easily sit alongside anything from his vast back catalogue.
The show is to be served up in three “courses” – this first, with the house lights up, is the appetiser before we will finally arrive at the ‘main’ – his classic 5th album So, played in its entirety – and as his band file on for a semi-acoustic version of ‘Shock The Monkey’ we can see that onstage is the original recording’s lineup – well, without guests such as Laurie Anderson and Youssou N Dour.
The ‘starter course’ is fairly substantial – served up to us is ‘Talk to Me’ (without 1993’s phone box prop) and another new piece ‘Words With Gods’, taken from a new Mexican film soundtrack.

The thing is, like bringing out the Ferrero Rocher before the dinner gong is sounded, it may be that our host is spoiling us. Despite its hit singles – ok, we’re talking ‘Sledgehammer’ here – So isn’t his greatest work (that accolade would go to ‘Peter Gabriel’). Therefore, he’s rather set up for a fall when he opts to play ‘Family Snapshot’ early on – the epic take of a motorcade assassination explodes into light and life halfway in as we reach the second, electronic segment of the evening’s proceedings. Showtime has truly arrived. Banks of video screens sear the retinae, while massive alien angle-poise lamps rotate, swoop and spotlight the crowd while dual video screens project mind-boggling visual including live and processed video from a battery of cameras around the performance area.
The run-through of the back catalogue continues, delving back as far as 1977 and debut solo hit ‘Solsbury Hill’, which sees Gabriel, Levin and guitarist David Rhodes skip around the stage like men half their age.

“Part 3” intones our host. The largely monochrome setup takes on a more colourful hue – ‘Red Rain’ unsurprisingly bathes the entire auditorium in iridescent light, although ‘We Do What We’re Told’ is given a sinister, shadowy tone.
Rather than play So ‘straight’ there are concessions to the new millennium – sadly the reggae-ish coda at the end of ‘Don’t Give Up’ rather spoils a magnificent performance with Jennie Abrahamson taking on the Kate Bush role, making it the song her own (a very 21st century trait) while Gabriel skulks off carrying a familiar-looking suitcase. ‘Sledgehammer’ sees him act out the classic video, punching himself in the face while ‘Mercy Street’ sees the singer crawl over the stage, shot close up and personal and projected onto the twin screens – that one perhaps less for the Hydro crowd and more for the inevitable Xmas DVD release.

Such is the pitfall of playing an album in track order that ‘In Your Eyes’ – er, is this the cassette version of So with ‘This Is The Picture’ at the end? – anyway, it doesn’t offer the finish that a gig of this magnitude requires, so an encore is inevitable. ‘The Tower That Ate People’ takes on a menacing tone with the jumpsuited and masked crew – given fulsome and deserved thanks at the end – lurking in the gloom like a nightmarish cross between 1984 and Guantanamo. This sets up a closing ‘Biko’ and with a thousand cameraphones aloft, the singer aptly proclaims that technology will eventually set us free. As the chant of “Yihla Moja” rings round the massive arena, “showman” seems an inadequate term to describe one of music’s most genuine visionaries.