I've talked to a lot of artists - painters, writers, musicians - many of whom have had great ideas on trains. The only explanation I have is all that stuff is coming at you while you're relaxed, so somehow it kicks you into hyperspace in terms of brain function.
— Peter Gabriel
Sometimes a creative environment affects what happens within it.
It took me three albums to get the confidence and to find out what I could do that made me different from other people. And the first record, really, was a process of trying.
Happy music that is genuinely joyful is probably the hardest music to write. I think miserable stuff is more natural to the human condition and maybe more cathartic.
Snowden's revelations shocked the world and made it very clear why we need to have some way to look over those who look over us. With increasing terrorist attacks, security is critical, but not without any accountability or oversight.
The American record company Geffen got so fed up with me that they said they weren't going to release my fourth record unless I gave it some title. So it was called 'Security' in America, and it had no title everywhere else in the world.
If we grab technology and adapt it and make it work for us, it will work in one way, whereas if we just leave it, it will stay in the hands of big corporations and governments, who have other agendas.
Art suggests stuff that is traded like money, that is kept in galleries and that belongs to the elite, whereas experience is something that everybody has in the course of living.
I didn't leave the band to go solo so much as to stop feeling like a production item.
I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.
I think that you get the mood of a song stronger if you get it right that way. On the other hand, you put some songs out live and they don't catch flight. They just flop. It is hard to tell until they are out there.
As many an architect will tell you, human behavior changes according to the environment.
When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in 18 months or two years ahead. I just did not enjoy that.
I'm often guilty of overcooking and too much arrangement and throwing too much at it. But I think as I get older, I'm learning better when to be empty and when to be full.
There's a Slow Food movement. I think I'm part of the Slow Music movement.
As we become so visible in the digital world and leave an endless trail of data behind us, exactly who has our data and what they do with it becomes increasingly important.
I'm trying to enlarge what I do with my voice, not through technique but just through the sounds. I think we all make noises, and particularly when we get involved or emotional about something, the colors and the tones of those noises change.
A record for us that sells 50,000 is a good record, and 100,000 is a serious hit.
What intrigues me is that you get a good bunch of musicians together, and interesting things will happen.
I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment - to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off.
The industry does have some influence on who gets other awards. With the Mercury Prize, they don't. Jon comes from the business, but his heart is still very much in the music. Currently, we have about 12 major names that have said they want to be a part of MUDDA.
I think one of the things about writing in the studio is that the song hasn't matured, if you like, so quite often the vocals are early attempts. Whereas once you've taken it out on the road a bit, you learn more about a song.
Studios always seem to be in basements without natural light and with black everything.
I really wanted the first record to be different from what I'd done with Genesis, so we were trying to do things in different styles.
As you get older, some top notes drop off and bottom notes appear, which I quite like. You listen to Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash, and you see the advantage of the lower end.
I was very happy to learn Oliver Stone had decided to make a film about Edward Snowden and believe this is a powerful and inspiring film.
In some ways, I'm just a visual person.
I think the rhythm is like the spine of the piece. If you change that, then the body that forms around it is changed as well.
Italian food is my favorite food. It's the most sophisticated eating system.
You have independent films and independent music, but you don't have independent theme parks - I think, in a way, Burning Man is as close, probably, as you get.
I'm a bit cynical that it ever will be addressed properly. I think it is healthy to get some sort of copyright protection. But some of it has gone on forever.
One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.
