Without Frontiers by Daryl Easlea

Author:Daryl Easlea [easlea, daryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85712-860-7
Publisher: Music Sales Limited
Published: 2013-05-04T16:00:00+00:00

For Dave Gregory, his contributions to ‘I Don’t Remember’ and ‘Family Snapshot’ were the sum of his involvement on the album. He was asked if he could return for a further day’s work on a track that Gabriel had in development. At this point XTC were finally achieving the commercial breakthrough they had waited two albums to achieve. The lead single from Drums And Wires, ‘Making Plans For Nigel’ was climbing the UK singles chart and his group had an opportunity to take part in Top Of The Pops, then the crown prince of UK mainstream television music shows. “I couldn’t believe it,” Gregory recalls. “A year previously I had been delivering parcels around Bristol, and now I had to make a decision to perform on Top Of The Pops or record again with Peter Gabriel.” Gregory played on Top Of the Pops and it ushered in a three-year period where XTC became the UK’s leading art-rock band. He was deeply disappointed when he realised working with Gabriel would have given him the opportunity to work with another of his heroes, Todd Rundgren. That was rectified in spectacular fashion when he produced XTC’s Skylarking in 1985. Gabriel and Gregory’s paths were to cross again. Gabriel came to XTC’s pre-Christmas Swindon concert in 1979, and years later the two met again at Real World studios, although Gregory ruefully admitted that Gabriel “probably didn’t remember who I was”.

“Melt runs the gamut of all emotion,” Dave Gregory concludes. “It begins with a burglary and ends with an anthem, with all human points in between.” It is commonly seen by many as his best and most sustained work. “I was knocked out by the third album,” Gabriel’s future producer David Lord said. “It was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever heard soundwise: a knockout.”

Gabriel took part in one of his most infamous interviews with NME writer Paul Morley, who in the style of the paper at the time, played up every tic and inconsistency of Gabriel’s persona. Ruminating on middle class repression, he wondered if Gabriel felt that life was complicated, and wondered if he hid behind his music. Illustrated by severely lit pictures of him, it attempted to suggest that Gabriel was in some way damaged. “I think it’s very important … in this business … to function … with dignity … and I don’t always think that I’m clean and honest, but I like to think I’m trying,” Gabriel said.

Gabriel had previewed some of the material from the album over five dates between May and August 1979, including performances at both Glastonbury and Reading Festivals. He returned on August 24, 1979 to Friars in Aylesbury, with Phil Collins as his drummer; the first time the pair had played there together since 1973. “Phil was going through one of his long beard phases,” David Stopps remembers. “He joined Peter playing bongos which he wore around his neck. That was in 1979; he’d obviously developed his stagecraft and songwriting and everything else and then he took off in a very big way.

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