Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel's first solo album came less than two years after his departure from Genesis. (Trainspotters, take note: His first post-Genesis release was a cover of The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" on the soundtrack for the 1976 film All This And World War II.) Gabriel teamed up with producer Bob Ezrin, then best known for his work with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed, to record the album in Toronto. Here, Gabriel sought to distance himself from his previous band and work; and apart from his distinct voice, the album indeed offers little of his past. Instead, Peter Gabriel is a contemporary (for the time, that is) rock record-though the results are mixed: While there's little excuse for the barbershop quartet of "Excuse Me" or the straight-up blues of "Waiting for the Big One," tracks like "Modern Love" and "Down the Dolce Vita" are good enough mainstream rock. "Moribund the Burgermeister" is perhaps the one throwback to Genesis. Gabriel's voice is in great form and he's expressing a lot of ideas, but here they tend to be stitched together Franken-style. Ultimately, the overwrought production is the biggest letdown. Yet in juxtaposing an intimate vocal against a dense arrangement of sound, "Humdrum" does give a glimpse of where Gabriel's solo work would go, while the haunting melody of "Here Comes the Flood" would be revisited a few years later on Robert Fripp's solo record, Exposure. However, the album does contain one instant classic: "Solsbury Hill." Gabriel's ode to his former band, it's a song where all points—production, instrumentation, composition and voice—connect. As a single, it reached No. 13 in the UK, while the album rose to No. 7 in the UK and No. 38 in the US. The cover featured the first in a series of iconic images of Gabriel that were used in lieu of titles. The "car" featured on the cover is a Lancia Flavia that was owned by Hipgnosis boss Storm Thorgerson.