Here's the thing about Genesis's INVISIBLE TOUCH: you can hate the album, hate that '80s production (and heck I hate "In Too Deep" too), but the tour for it? It was *amazing*. I can't imagine being in an arena and hearing this. I'd have been flattened: https://www.dropbox.com/s/etykccrvmdpb0zg/d1t7%20Domino.mp3?dl=0

I periodically joke on Twitter (usually late at night, sometimes whiskey is involved) about how I have a live version of "Throwing It All Away" that will wreck y'all. But the thing is, it's not actually a joke. It's real. And it's devastatingly perfect: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nj5jvu41n96i8hu/Throwing%20It%20All%20Away%20%28live%20October%2015th%2C%201986%29.mp3?dl=0

Don't f***ing tell me that Phil Collins can't sing, buddy. This was him at the peak of his vocal abilities. He shot his voice out on this tour, sadly, and everything afterwards has been them tuning downwards to accommodate his reduced range. In 1986 he still had it all, though.

The thing about the INVISIBLE TOUCH tour is that while they were now massive 10x-platinum pop stars, they never abandoned their past. Got a spare 20 minutes? Hear Phil & the gang absolutely demolish "In The Cage" and the finale of "Supper's Ready." https://www.dropbox.com/s/wewu6jugysjj40g/In%20The%20Cage-Cinema%20Show-Slippermen-...in%20that%20quiet%20earth-Supper%27s%20Ready%20%28live%20October%2015th%2C%201986%29.mp3?dl=0

I yield to absolutely no man on the planet in my love for Peter Gabriel (except probably Peter Gabriel himself). But this, the last time Genesis ever attempted the "Apocalypse In 9/8" conclusion of "Supper's Ready," is the best it has ever been sung. Period. This is it, the one.

Speaking of Peter Gabriel, let's talk a little bit about his solo career. Does anybody mind if I talk about Peter Gabriel's solo career tonight? Oh, you do? Well too bad, unfollow now. I already did a long tweetstorm about this long in the past but let's recount some highlights.

Pete's departure from Genesis was...awkward. But, in the best well-mannered British sense, Genesis and Gabriel made it work, did it with a minimum of rancor, and never ceased being friends. You can hear that at the end of "Los Endos."

Listen to Phil singing in the background there at the end as they reprise "Squonk": "there's an angel standing in the sun...free to get back home." Happy trails, Pete: we'll carry on, go be free. And then Pete repaid the favor on his first single:

"Solsbury Hill" has been appropriated for a hundred movie trailers, but its original meaning was Gabriel talking about why he had to leave, but how it wasn't about selfishness or bad feelings. He mirrors "Los Endos" intentionally: "grab your things I've come to take you home."

"Today I don't leave a replacement" sings Gabriel, because by 1977 he knew he would never have to. Phil stepped into the breach and the fans wanted to embrace him. Now it was time to follow his own weird muse. And oh the places he would go with it.

One day I pray we'll do a PG ep of @Political_Beats. Until that day, I command you to go buy and listen to one of the albums that defined both postpunk (from an old fart, relatively!) and the '80s sound despite being wildly uncommercial: PETER GABRIEL 3.

That drum sound? That's Phil Collins, working with Steve Lillywhite as producer, creating That Drum Sound you will hear on damn near every Eighties smash hit for the next five years. Gated reverb. But "Intruder" is the furthest thing on the planet from pop music. It's terrifying.

Phil was no dummy, by the way: he immediately brought that sound to both Genesis and his first (1981) solo album, most prominently on a little ditty you might have heard of called "In The Air Tonight." He had every right to! He literally helped invent it!

I can't emphasize enough how perfect, and how utterly harrowing, PETER GABRIEL 3 is. One of my top 20 albums of all time. "No Self Control" is, on the LP, a relatively minor track. In any other artist's discography, it's their greatest achievement:

When Gabriel submitted this LP to Atlantic (his US label), Ahmet Ertegun literally contacted him to ask if he had mental problems. So he said 'screw you' and went to Geffen instead. But no getting around it: it explores the darkest depths.

"Family Snapshot" is a song that affected me so much upon my first hearing of it that I don't want to ruin it for you. You have no idea where's it's going until holy-shit-it-goes-there. Gabriel explores a simple question: why do ppl do what they do? Listen to it all the way.

Gabriel, as true artists often are, was a visionary. He saw the future of technological connectivity on "And Through The Wire" and he even brought in Paul Weller of The Jam to play guitar. We talk in pictures, not in words, overloaded by everything we say.

"And through the wire, we push our tailor-made speeches.

We get so strange across the border."

He predicted the path that social media would take us on IN NINETEEN HUNDRED AND EIGHTY.

There are no weak songs on PETER GABRIEL 3. And we're not talking about mere adequacy, I'm telling you that every single thing here is a life-alteringly powerful track. He wrote a song about insanity and asylums, but lets you figure it out:

And of course the funny thing is that Phil Collins, who was playing for him on this LP (for free! just out of friendship) took that ball and ran with it to create HIS single greatest solo song ever. You probably didn't even realize it was about asylums:

Guess who sings the backing vocals on "Take Me Home"? Yup, Peter Gabriel. Repaying a favor? Or recognizing that game respect game? Either way, it's one of those lovely musical symmetries that being a Genesis fan affords you. Thank God these folks didn't end up hating each other.

As I said, there's nothing weak on PETER GABRIEL 3. It's an album about insanity, obsession, racism, hatred, sexual violence, oh and also apartheid. As my friend said to me after I recommended it to him: "a great way to get your roommate out of the dorm."

And PETER GABRIEL 3 ends with one of the greatest political songs of all time. "Apartheid" is a foggy memory for you millenials nowadays. In 1980 it was a very real thing. Here is a song that never even approaches cliche:

"Biko" is a song that should stagger any person with a sensitive appreciation of *art* to this day. It is both agonizingly direct, yet miraculously free of any sort of patronization. The lyrics, great as they are, almost yield to the visceral power of Gabriel's howls at the end.

And then, that final drumbeat from Phil. Like a gunshot. Hope, despair, the end, a potential new beginning...what is it? Ambiguity. The best art lets you guess and doesn't jam a funnel down your throat to feed you the answer. This is a song that asked you to give your own answer.

Of course, six years later on from that, Peter Gabriel would be trading blows with his ex-bandmates Genesis on both the Billboard U.S. singles and album charts and writing the song that was my first wedding dance w/Mrsoteric:

If you're a Gen X'er, you know "In Your Eyes" from SO (which was a massive smash hit) or even more likely from SAY ANYTHING. For me, it was one of those songs Mrsoteric & I had to haggle over...I feared it was too cliche, then I realized that nobody remembers anything anymore.

We reached a fantastic meet-in-the-middle compromise: we walked down the aisle to "God Only Knows," we danced to "In Your Eyes."

Here's the funny thing: nothing in "In Your Eyes" is impossible to predict from PETER GABRIEL 3. His evolution post-Genesis is so natural.

Did you ever do that really lame nerdy '90s/'00s thing? Where you gave a girl you were infatuated with a (*gasp*) MIX TAPE? (Well, okay, at this point a mix CD.) I sure did. And this was disc 1, track 1, on what I handed to Mrsoteric when I first met her:

Amazingly, she ended up marrying me despite having many more handsome suitors. But if you want a reason why I will love Peter Gabriel as a solo artist forever, it's not just PG3 or PASSION. It's "Come Talk To Me." The most humane song I think I can name. I did not come to steal.

I get that Twitter is a 'hot' medium, and that I often (as many of us do here) trade in hyperbole 'in the moment' because it feels so ephemeral. So realize this: Peter Gabriel's "Come Talk To Me" is one of the most truly *compassionate* songs you will ever hear. In your life.

Darkness creeps in like a thief and offers no relief
Why are you shaking like a leaf?
Come on, come talk to me
Oh please talk to me
Won't you please talk to me
We can unlock this misery if you'd only talk to me
I did not come to steal
This all seems so unreal

Whatever fear invents? I swear it makes no sense.

This is Pete singing both to his daughter (the one who was left for dead by UK doctors during the LAMB LIES DOWN era, but thrived), AND his wife. It's quite possibly the most mature song, emotionally, I know of in the rock canon.

Alright, goodnight, and here's Peter Gabriel absolutely crushing David Bowie's "Heroes" (see our @Political_Beats "covers" episode for more!) as a fare-you-well.