Peter's "Monkey Theatre"
Sex sets free creative energy which causes the brain to grow, claims
musician Peter Gabriel. With his "Growing Up" tour, which is the most
sumptuous indoor production in the history of pop music, he has just
proved that his synapses are swinging
PLAYBOY
Why do you live in England instead of leading a jet set life in the Carribean?
PG
The jet set life bores me very quickly. I like to go out into the
world for a while and then bring it back with me. I love to spend time
with my little son and my wife in our hotel on Sardinia, but I need
to be able to get my hands onto English mud.
PLAYBOY
So there is a little bit of jet side on the Costa Smeralda?
PG
No, the hotel is somewhere near Azzachena. There are only Italian
families there who have been living there for a long time.
PLAYBOY
Why did you buy a hotel on Sardinia?
PG
My wife Meabh and me went there for holidays and to make love. We even
got married there last year.
PLAYBOY
Is the hotel open for guests?
PG
Yes it is, but don't expect me tending the bar. The love of life and
the vitality of the Italians are a kind of antidote to Britishness.
PLAYBOY
How British are you?
PG
I am shy, reserved and introverted. I have, however, worked hard at
being more open to people. I have met people all over the worlds and
made music or love with them, which is an effective mode of
encounter.
PLAYBOY
What do you believe in?
PG
I believe in the variety of life and in the good things in people.
PLAYBOY
What about your enthusiasm for technology? You are generally
considered a champion of new information technology such as the
internet.
PG
I think sex plays an important role there. Without sex, many new
technologies such as the Polaroid camera or the video recorder would
never have been developed. The porn industry discovered the tools and
was crucial in spreading them. Later even the church began using these
media as tools.
PLAYBOY
Is sex something that drives you on?
PG
Of course! I think it's the essential drive for musicians. Your
chances to have sexual encounters rise when you're on stage.
PLAYBOY
Is that the only link between sex and music?
PG
There have always been strong links. As a musician, you can choose.
Either you negate them or you bare them. I like to play with those
links because they connect two things that are fun. Many sexual
references in music come from soul and jazz. Take the term jazz
itself. To jazz means to booboo, and funk is the scent of the female
genitalia.
PLAYBOY
Considering that, was it easy to let your daughter Melanie sing in
your band?
PG
She has got her own healthy relation to sex, but I was taken aback
when I went to see an exhibition of my daughter Anna. She is a video
artist and she uses lots of pornographic elements.
PLAYBOY
The man who wrote 'Steam' and 'Sledgehammer' was shocked?
PG
Well, as a dad you don't really imagine your baby handling porn
images. I am exaggerating, of course, because Anna is 28 years old
now. There is a strong relationship between creativity and art because
art is like making a baby. When you booboo you create new life, and
creative energy leads to new objects of art. The creative energy comes
from sex.
PLAYBOY
So the title of you current album "UP" is more than wishful thinking?
PG
Haven't you noticed the Viagra sponsoring notice on the cover?
PLAYBOY
Does your age bother you?
PG
Now that I'm beyond 50, I feel better than when I was 40. Suddenly I
begin with teenage liberation rituals, I play the air guitar and I'd
shake my hair if I had any left.
PLAYBOY
Have you seriously begun to play the guitar?
PG
I have, but I am a lousy guitatist. I generate sounds that I
manipulate afterwards on my computer. There is a theory that you get
a Shakespeare text if you give a typewriter to a monkey and leave
them along for long enough. It's the same with me and the guitar.
PLAYBOY
How is your life at 53 different from your life at 40?
PG
My libido is at a different level. It hasn't gone, but when you're
young you look around and immediately spot a couple of women you'd
like to penetrate. You know, the old game: Would I, or would I not? At
53, I see women more as human beings and less as objects.
PLAYBOY
Does that frighten you?
PG
No, what frightens me more is the fact that the number of spermiums
men produce has decreased to half of what was average twenty years
ago.
PLAYBOY
Is that the reason why there are spermiums in the 'Sledgehammer'
video?
PG
That was rather my little childish joy of having semen on 'Top of the
pops' and the other oh-so-clean music channels.
PLAYBOY
Is there a difference between stage and bed?
PG
I used to live out my fantasies on stage.
PLAYBOY
Frustrating for your first wife Jill?
PG
Like many artists, I preferred the music to solving our marriage
problems. These days I do not work on the weekend and decline to play
gigs or go on tour because I want to be with my wife and our son.
PLAYBOY
After several affairs with celebrities such as Rosanna Arquette,
Sinead O'Connor and several models you have been living with your
former sound engineer Meabh Flynn. Did the celebrity effect hamper a
closer relationship with the famous ladies?
PG
It is easier to develop links to a woman who does not have a media
profile. Often other celebrities are the only people you hang out
with. You automatically cling to the female celebrity who finds you
attractive.
PLAYBOY
What makes a woman attractive?
PG
Curves, inside and out. Female forms, a curved body, the uterus. My
fascination with everything round went so far that I had a bath built
into our bedroom that is shaped like a bee-hive.
PLAYBOY
Doesn't the youth of your wife attract you, too?
PG
I've been with all age groups. I think there are natural instincts
that lead men to breeders and women to nest builders. The desire to
have sex is more and more about the wish to procreate the older you
get.
PLAYBOY
What's it like to become a dad at 52?
PG
Great. When you've raised two girls you're proud of, you don't panic
about being a bad father for the third baby.
PLAYBOY
You own a 16-million-Euro creative village in the English town of Box,
you are involved in online music services, lead a world music label
and have taken up making music with bonobo monkeys. Do you lead a
normal life?
PG
It feels normal. My life does not exclude reality.
PLAYBOY
What have you learnt about primates since you are making music with
them?
PG
I wanted to find out whether they have musical intelligence. Even
though the monkey had never played a keyboard before and just
watched me playing it, they accompanied me on the E-Pianos provided.
What was surprising was that they played logical chord sequences and
harmonies that indicate artistic intelligence. When I look at the
charts, I don't see a lot of artistic intelligence anymore, I'm
afraid. It is shocking how trivial pop culture has become.
PLAYBOY
How could the trivialisation be stopped?
PG
The older I become, the more important I think the instruction in the
arts is. It has been shown that certain parts of an artist's brain
are developed ten times better than they are in non-artists. Art
makes for more intelligence.
PLAYBOY
With your videos for 'Steam' and 'Sledgehammer' you managed to turn a
shallow medium into an art form. Have those times passed?
PG
Innovation and excellence do not fit into the usual tv schemes. People
applaud a lot of junk, and pop culture is reduced to the lowest common
denominator. Pop music has lost its ability to change society. The
internet may take its place because it's a completely democratic
medium. Everybody can take part in its development. It's not the net
that shapes society, but society shaping the net. Exciting.
PLAYBOY
Is it true that you kayak into your studio?
PG
Occasionally I kayak. But I ought to do that more ever because it's
getting more difficult to keep my body in shape. Unfortunately,
Italian food doesn't help. The cooks in my studio actually call me
'Eater Gabriel'.
