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Though I love her music a lot – Troy... OMFG!, and her multiple collaborations with the likes of Afro Celt Sound System or Jah Wobble and the Invaders Of The Heart... – her death has brought back and refreshed memories of the few occasions when she crossed my concert going path. Minor episodes and no earth shattering stories, but I have always held them in a very soft spot in my heart.
The first night I crossed paths with Sinead was in Dublin, on May 28th, 1993 (#101), when she unexpectedly (to me) appeared on the "round stage" to accompany Peter for Come Talk To Me. Powerful, to say the least.
At the next 2 shows on the Secret World Tour (May 31st and June 1st in London, Earls Court - #102 and #103) it happened again: this time I was ready, if nothing because both nights, before getting up on stage, she stood exactly where I was standing, at the corner of the 'square stage' and the runway that went to the round one, looking nervous, shoeless, and literally vibrating with anticipation. And on the first night I distinctly remember smiling at her and her smiling back.
My god how beautiful she was!
(The picture on the left, by Pete Still Photography, is from one of those two nights)
A couple of months later, on the afternoon of August 7th, the day before PG was due to play there for a "minor" Womad event which went by the name of World In The Park, I was wondering round Bath's Royal Victoria Park. And to my surprise Peter was also hanging around there in the company of Sinead and another guy I didn't know.
I had already met Peter quite a few times, but mostly at soundchecks or at some busy press conference and never in such an amazingly relaxed atmosphere!
It was the most natural thing to strike up a conversation while walking up to a stall where Peter got some beverage for him and Sinead and then we all sat down in the middle of the field for a chat.
I remember discussing things like film scores (why Blood Of Eden was left out of Wim Wender's Until the end of the world film soundtrack cd), cover versions or adaptations of his music (I specifically mentioned seeing a classical chamber orchestra in Milan which played With This Love from Passion, and the Momix show from that album - which I had not seen but was eager to...), the last time he played his "hometown" of Bath («You probably remember that better than I do» Peter joked... and he was actually right!!).
All the while Sinead was there, very quietly enjoying a few joints with the other guy. In hindsight I can only regret not exchanging more than a few initial pleasantries with her and I can understand she was probably bored senseless and totally uninterested in the PG centered chat.
After a while we noticed some sort of commotion in a close but different area of the Park: a balloon had just landed! Peter asked Sinead if she wanted to have a go and try a flight, so I just said my goodbyes and watched them head towards the other field - wether they actually went for that flight or not I have no idea!
Last but not least, at the end of August, that same year, Peter headlined the Womad in St.Austell (AUg. 30th - #105), not playing inside the Coliseum like in 1988, but the main open air stage.
Once again I had no clue about Sinead's presence on stage, but she actually started the show with a wonderful acappella song that you can hear in the clip below. No video, unfortunately, and just a crappy far away picture. But an extraordinary heartfelt rendition of a classic hymn (or so I believe).
As most Peter Gabriel fans know, the song “Family Snapshot” was inspired by two similar but very different episodes in American history.
First, the book “An assassin’s diary”, written by Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace, Governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate in 1972 (1) – though the authenticity of Bremer’s diary is in fact controversial, as there have been claims it was forged and ‘planted’ in his car by someone else after his arrest: a controversy which is reflected in the different tone story Peter himself used to introduce the song on stage in 1980, 1983 and 1987.
Bremer’s original idea was to target Richard Nixon but later decided to go for Wallace instead: he managed to shoot in at close range, getting near him on foot and in the middle of a crowd of supporters (2).
George C. Wallace
In the book, Bremer declares he had nothing against Wallace and his was just an attention seeking gesture, carefully studied and timed to coincide with the US peak time newscasts. In reality, though Bremer was white, it seems that he indeed had a lot against the Alabama Governor and his racist declarations and behavior.
Some of the elements Gabriel nicked from the book include the careful planning and the attention seeking attitude, whilst others, such as the memories of a troubled childhood, probably stemmed from his own fantasy.
Arthur Bremer
Besides the book and so clearly evidenced by the Gabriel’s song, the second and rather obvious reference in terms of lyrics narrative is the John Kennedy assassination in Dallas – a story so convoluted and shrouded in controversy, but also quite well know too, that there’s no reason to go over it again in a simple post such as this.
In 1980 Austrian television filmed Peter performing the song (presumably during a soundcheck) and edited those images with news reports and the uber-famous “Zapruder film”, making for great viewing even if it’s not a proper “videoclip” as commonly intended.
But just a few months before the song appeared on record – in May 1980 on “Peter Gabriel III”, aka “Melt”–, the French-Armenian director Henri Verneuil shot the movie “I… comme Icare” (“I as in Icarus”): this December 1979 production features actor Yves Montand in the leading role of Henri Volney, state attorney and member of the commission that investigates the murder of President Marc Jarry during a ‘cavalcade’ which feels like an almost exact reconstruction of the Dallas footage, except for the fact that all the events happen in a fictional, modernist and unspecified country (most of the scenes were actually shot in the Cergy suburb of Paris). The film, musically scored by Enrico Morricone, follows Volney’s investigation as the presumed killer in the story is found dead, himself killed by an unknown hand immediately after having shot the President.
#2 – we do what we’re told
But wait, there’s more…
With an even more intriguing twist of coincidence, in the second half of the film Volnay looks for clues in the mind of the would be killer (it must be noted that in fact the supposed assassin’s gun did not work in the film, and the whole investigative theory is based – just like Oliver Stone’s in his movie “JFK” a dozen years later – on the fact that the shots were fired by other killers who worked in a strictly ‘militarized’ team), he stumbles upon a scientist conducting experiments on ‘Obedience to authority’.
And that is a rather obvious direct connection to another Peter Gabriel song: though published only 7 years later, “Milgram's 37”, or “We do what we're told” as it was renamed on “So”, was also based on Dr. Stanley Milgram’s notorious experiment in which volunteers were recruited for a supposed experiment on memory: divided in two groups, teachers and learners, the volunteers had to go through an increasingly difficult list of words which the ‘students’ had to memorize and repeat. For every mistake, the teacher had to ‘punish’ the student with an increasingly higher electrical shock, whose highest voltage was enough to kill a person. In reality, the students were all actors who played a part, and the real experiment was to see how far people would go when instructed by authoritarian figures – the doctors in white overalls kept pushing the volunteers/teachers to obey the instructions and proceed with the shocks even through their evident discomfort.
After all of the above, it will come as no surprise that I still remember seeing – and being overwhelmingly impressed by – this film on Italian Tv one afternoon in the mid-Eighties: ever since then I formed a sort of mental mash-up between the film and the songs, and having only recently managed to track a dvd copy of the movie, I finally decided to test the concept.
So, a few notes on the editing and choice of music.
First, I went for the 1983 live renditions of both songs, which to me sound simply astounding.
For “Family Snapshot” I decided on Plays Live: thanks to the CP 80 Yamaha piano raw sound and Jerry Marotta’s powerhouse drumming, in my humble opinion the 1982/1983 version surpasses all others – less refined than 1987 or later, but so much stronger emotionally speaking and tighter than the 1980 one.
Video wise, it was a matter of choosing, cutting and rearranging scenes and sequences from the very beginning of the movie, with just the slightest odd effect here and there.
Since “Milgram's 37” was not officially released in either 1980 or 1983, I chose the Werchter Festival FM broadcast from the 3rd of July that year, not only because the audio quality is extremely good, but also for the simply astounding rendition – with probably something like 40 thousand people ‘obeying’ Peter’s shouts and orders of singing through it all.
In this case speaking of editing would almost be improper as it is virtually non-existent: it was mostly a matter of cutting the original 13 minute sequence to the more manageable 6’ duration of the song.
Verneuil’s movie takes its title from Icarus, whose ambition made him fly too high so that his waxen wings were melted by the sun: at the end of the film, Volnay’s investigation brings him too far up the circles of power in the elusive country, and he pays for this with his life.
I can assure you that my ambition in trying this clips out are far more modest 😊
I simply hope you will enjoy them.
the intruder
(January 2021)
NOTES
(1) Incidentally, the book was also a source of inspiration for Paul Shrader, who wrote the screenplay for the Martin Scorsese directed classic “Taxi Driver”.
(2) For more on the Bremer story and some interesting original footage of his assault on Wallace:
With the sad news of B&W's Society Of Sound demise, even their dedicated website has suddenly disappeared. So I decided to compile a 'visual catalogue' of all releases since the 'music club' started. For convenience, it has been split into 3 separate pages:
