PETER GABRIEL
So
It was Hammer time — “Sledgehammer,” that is — for former Genesis man Peter Gabriel in 1986. Guitarist David Rhodes takes us back to the So sessions
BY ANDREW DALY
PETER GABRIEL’S TIME with Genesis in the Seventies — not to mention his early-Eighties musings as a solo artist — had granted him a reputation as a musical maverick who merged modern prog with all sorts of weird sounds, leading to such cult favorites as “Biko” and “Shock the Monkey.” The latter of those songs, which dropped in 1982, was the closest Gabriel had come to large-scale chart success as a solo artist. But that was about to change with 1986’s So, the record that gave us decade-defining hits in “Sledgehammer,” “In Your Eyes” and “Big Time.”