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Many thanks for another great issue and in particular the Peter Gabriel pieces [Take 280]. Graeme Thomson’s comprehensive article on the making of PG 3 took me straight back to 1980. In interviews from the time, Gabriel did mention the Atlantic label A&R guy who came to listen in on the sessions and who actually told him to make it sound “more like The Doobie Brothers”. Now that would have been a totally different album!

I saw Peter live for the first time at Sheffield City Hall in February 1980. The tour was intended to support the release of the album, but of course the label had refused to release it at that point. That didn’t stop him from playing nine tracks from an album nobody had yet heard though, as well as a song that would eventually, six years later. All delivered with real conviction and rapturously received by everyone who was there that night. It was the unexpected success of the single “Games Without Frontiers” that eventually led to the album’s final release some three months after the tour.