The Sky’s On The Ground
In an interview conducted before the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, renowned keyboardist David Sancious opens up about touring with Peter Gabriel, his new solo album and tells Prog why it’s so important to stand up for the truth.
Words: Sid Smith Images: Craig McCord
They say if you want to understand the world from another person’s perspective you should walk a mile in their shoes. For David Sancious, a simple walk in Los Angeles graphically demonstrated that despite the thousands of miles marched by the civil rights movement in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond, very little had changed in terms of the discrimination experienced by the average black American.
“It’s all really gone backward. Trump has to be removed from that office. The longer he’s there, the worse it will get. Whatever you thought this person was going to do for you, it’s wrong.”
He recalls being stopped by two LAPD cops for being “black while walking”, an incident that happened in the wake of the Rodney King beating by police officers. “I was on the original So tour with Peter Gabriel. We had a few hours to spare so we decided to take a walk on the Santa Monica pier and these two officers pulled me over and put me in the position. One minute I was out walking with my then-girlfriend and suddenly I’m up against a car with my hands up and my girlfriend is standing there looking at me, like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ What I haven’t mentioned is that my girlfriend was white. She also happened to be a professional photographer. She backed up a little bit on the grass and like a war photographer on one knee, started filming, rapid-fire, the whole situation. I called out the badge number of the officer, I said, ‘Write this - the officer’s name and badge number - down.’ They must’ve just been a couple of bored racist cops and, ‘Oh, let’s do one last thing on our way home before we knock off, let’s just mess with this black guy and just embarrass him’, or whatever.”