Joni Mitchell’s then husband Larry Klein also plays some lovely fretless on ‘Mercy Street’. Check out his ‘drumstick bass’ (later marketed as Funk Fingers!) on ‘Big Time’. Musically, Gabriel very much leaned on tried-and-tested collaborators such as Rhodes and Tony Levin – it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing bass on So. ‘It is the most upset I’ve seen him at the studio,’ guitarist David Rhodes remarked. Lanois once even nailed him into a back room to force him to come up with some lyrics – Gabriel was not amused, at least not for a few hours. Working at home was intended to save money on big studio fees and also speed up the creative process, but lyric-writing was still a big problem and a lack of words necessitated two missed release deadlines for So: 31st July 1985 and 14th December 1985.
So was mainly recorded at Gabriel’s home studio, Ashcombe House near Bath. Lanois helped him whittle them down to 12, and then six months of pre-production began, focusing on song structures and arrangements.
Gabriel came up with 20 new songs by early 1985. Gabriel later credited Lanois and his then wife Jill for steering him back towards more positive thoughts, and much more ‘up’ music and lyrics.
He mixed and released an excellent live album and looked for solace in film soundtrack work, producing two fairly inconsequential tracks: ‘ Walk Through The Fire‘ from ‘Against All Odds’ and ‘ Out Out‘ from ‘Gremlins’.įar more substantial was his soundtrack for Alan Parker’s ‘Birdy’, but, most importantly, it was the project that introduced him to So co-producer Daniel Lanois. In interviews, Gabriel has described the ’83/’84’ period as a dark time in his life.
0 kommentar(er)
