Peter Gabriel

In 1967, seventeen and one of maybe three white faces in the room, Gabriel talked his way into Brixton's Ram Jam Club to see Otis Redding. He has told the story in nearly identical words across four decades: "It was like the sun coming out," he said in 2018. "This amazing voice, band, generosity... what hits us hard when we're 17 stays with us for life." Nearly twenty years later, chasing that same soul heat on "Sledgehammer," Gabriel brought in Wayne Jackson, the Stax trumpeter who'd cut horn charts behind Redding on Otis Blue — a literal session-room link back to the club night that never left him.

listen: upstream & heresource: Academy of Achievement — Peter Gabriel interview, 2018 (Otis Redding and Youssou N'Dour testimony) ↗share

1966

Try a Little TendernessOtis Redding

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1986

SledgehammerPeter Gabriel

listen forCue Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness": horns idle behind him through two patient verses, then detonate into stabbing hits as his voice cracks and climbs to a shout. "Sledgehammer" borrows the shape whole — a slow-build verse breaking into a brass fanfare arranged by that same Stax trumpeter two decades after he punched up Redding's records. Listen for how both vocalists stop singing pretty exactly when the horns arrive, handing control of the song over to that push.

Gabriel and his Charterhouse songwriting partner, keyboardist Tony Banks, chased another band around English clubs with the same devotion they gave Redding: The Nice, Keith Emerson's classical-crossover trio before he formed Emerson, Lake & Palmer. "If you saw The Nice they were exciting both musically and in terms of showmanship," Gabriel said in 2004 — the same theatrical pull that once had Jimi Hendrix asking about joining. He named the debt outright: writing Genesis's early set-closer "The Knife," he said, "was very much inspired by [Banks's] and my enthusiasm for The Nice."

listen: upstream & heresource: Louder / Classic Rock — Peter Gabriel ↗share

1968

America (Second Amendment)The Nice

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1980

Family SnapshotPeter Gabriel

listen forNo recording carries that specific debt forward on its own — "The Knife" belongs to Genesis, not Gabriel's solo catalogue — but the theatrical instinct The Nice sharpened in him does. Their "America" lurches from a mannered classical quote into a slamming, sped-up climax, all sudden gear-changes and showmanship. Gabriel's solo "Family Snapshot" works the same trick alone: a hushed, coiled verse detonating into a full-band chorus, the drama built entirely from the jump between quiet and loud.

Asked how a song as strange as "In Your Eyes" came together, Gabriel didn't credit a chord change. "I was in love with a lot of African music around that time," he said, describing an idea that fascinated him: a love song ambiguous enough to be addressed to a woman or to God, collapsing a divide his own culture kept separate. "And then I was working with Youssou N'Dour, who does this amazing singing," he told the Academy of Achievement. "There's this sort of angelic voice at the end." That closing passage is N'Dour's own voice, not a borrowed idea of one.

listen: upstream & heresource: Academy of Achievement — Peter Gabriel interview, 2018 (Otis Redding and Youssou N'Dour testimony) ↗share

1984

ImmigrésYoussou N'Dour

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1986

In Your EyesPeter Gabriel

listen forPlay "Immigrés," the 1984 mbalax record — driving West African dance music built on tama talking-drum patterns — that first carried N'Dour's name abroad, then go straight to the last ninety seconds of "In Your Eyes." Gabriel's voice drops out entirely; what closes the song is N'Dour singing, unaccompanied, in his native Wolof rather than English. Listen for how the track doesn't resolve on a chorus but on that untranslated, wordless-feeling plea — devotion left open exactly the way Gabriel said he wanted it.