HOUR // Peter Gabriel présente "New Blood Live in London 3D" à Montréal (12 septembre 2011)
The legendary Peter Gabriel was in Montreal this afternoon to present an advance screening of New Blood Live in London and hold a press conference.
The concert film, which was shot last March during two concerts at London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo during which the former Genesis frontman was accompanied by a 46 piece orchestra, will be shown again in select Cineplex theaters (including Montreal’s Cinéma Banque Scotia and Cinéma StarCité) on October 12 and 17, before being released on DVD and Blu-ray on October 25.
The New Blood CD will be released on October 11.
PETER GABRIEL ON…
3D as a gadget: “It’s just a gadget in the same way that your eyes are just gadgets. But they connect to the brain and they allow you to process images, and you have two of them. So I think it’s a device, it’s a tool [that] allows you into this world which I think is closer to real life.”
The challenges of making a 3D movie: “Blue Leach, who directed it [and] did a fantastic job I think, he had most of the problems. A thing we tried that I think I would have loved to have a little more time with, I put on a camera rig myself, just a few shots that we used from that… I think if I’d had my own monitor and just a little more time, I would have learned how to use it better. But I thought it was quite interesting, and the other thing I liked is when the camera’s able to move through the musicians, cause obviously you don’t get to do that when you’re sitting in the audience. And again, had we known how that was gonna work, I think we would have tried to engineer more of that.”
Making music with a full orchestra: “This grew out of the covers project which is called Scratch My Back. It was a song exchange: you do one of my songs, I do one of yours, that was the original idea. We’ve only got half the number of songs back again, but… Then it was a question of how to arrange the songs and I thought at first about all hand-made instruments, I wanted to do something that was different and fresh for me. And then actually, as I began thinking about that, I thought, ‘If I use traditional instruments, it’s gonna be, you know, more range of expression and great players to draw from.’ And I’d never really done an orchestral project… We always try to make some rules to help the process cause I think if you really wanna castrate an artist, tell them they can do anything they want; they haven’t got a clue what to do. If you tell them, ‘You can’t do this, you definitely can’t do that, and you absolutely must’nt do this,’ then they start thinking creatively. And so I try to do that to myself. In this case, we said, ‘no guitars, no drum kit’ – we use classical percussion – and we’ll try and make some things really, really empty, sparse, and other sections so very full. So, with that in mind, we sat down with John [Metcalfe], this amazing arranger I’ve been working with on this, and we talked about our influences, things that might have reference to this project, for instance Bernard Herrmann, who did all the wonderful Hitchcock work, with a track like Intruder [...] So we wanted to be bold. I specifically avoided some of the more popular songs, we went for things that would be an interesting journey from start to finish. I think that some of the classical projects can sound like rock-lite, and we were trying to avoid that.”
How he can navigate various genres of music while not losing his fans: “I think the best policy is to follow your passion – Joseph Campbell used to say, ‘Follow your bliss’ – and then you try and find find a way to sell it afterwards! Because I think that way, if things don’t work out, you still had a great time and an interesting journey, so that’s sort of been the way I approached things. And I know with this project, some people who like Sledgehammer and Solsbury Hill don’t like the orchestra; some do. But then I’ve also come across people who really disliked everything I’ve ever done, but they like this! So I think you have a chance, if you do something different, you lose some and if you’re lucky, you win some.”
What he likes best about the film: “I see plenty of myself so I prefer so I prefer to watch the others! The thing that I got most excited with was an idea to take the drums sections of Rhythm of the Heat and I thought, maybe what we could do is try and take the parts of drums and put them on orchestral instruments, and that’s what I asked John to do. I think that’s my favorite moment in this and in the concert.”
His relationship with Montreal: “Well, it’s always been very kind to me, Montreal, so I appreciate that. And it seems it is a home from home.”
How he sees himself: “I think, um… A man who went for an interesting life.”
His greatest achievement: “There’s this dream [I had] to make an organization of former statesmen and women which is called The Elders (theelders.org). Sir Richard Branson and I were determined to get Mandela to found that, and he was at first reluctant, but then agreed. The fact that that’s in existence is amazing to me, so I think that’s probably well up there.”
REVIEW
Up until now, save for 2008′s U2 3D and maybe a few others, 3D concert films have been reserved to teen idols à la Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, Justin Bieber and the Glee cast. Enter Peter Gabriel, who couldn’t be farther removed from that, especially the way we find him here, singing in front of a 46 piece orchestra conducted by Ben Foster and focusing in great part on lesser-known art rock numbers such as Intruder (off 1980′s Melt), San Jacinto and The Rhythm of the Heat (off 1982′s Security), Blood of Eden (off 1992′s Us), as well as Darkness and Signal to Noise (off 2002′s underrated album Up ).
Also included are a few tracks from Gabriel’s 2010 covers album Scratch My Back (Regina Spektor’s Après moi, Lou Reed’s The Power of the Heart, The Magnetic Fields’ The Book of Love) and some favorites from his own repertoire like Biko, Digging in the Dirt, Mercy Street and Red Rain, culminating with the timeless Solsbury Hill and, during the encore, the very moving one-two punch of In Your Eyes and Don’t Give Up.
Visually, Blue Leach’ film is not the most dynamic thing in the world, relying mostly on Peter Gabriel holding our attention with his powerful voice and presence, which he does. White-haired and dressed in black, often bathed in red light, the singer is surrounded by the orchestra, through which the camera swiftly moves. There are also some interesting mise en scène tricks, notably involving LED screens. The use of 3D is immersive enough, if not particularly impressive.










