Peter Gabriel Takes Fans On an Orchestral ‘Journey’ With ‘New Blood’ Album

You can add Peter Gabriel to the list of artists that still believe in making full albums. Gabriel expressed his support for the supposedly outdated medium in an interview that has just been published as part of the November issue of Classic Rock magazine.

Gabriel says that although he’s aware that these days a lot of people are listening to single tracks instead of entire albums, he still is a big fan of “the journey, where I can put something on at home or in the car and be taken on a trip.” He titled his latest album ‘New Blood’ and describes it as a “journey of moods” -- and it’s one that was very specifically assembled.

Rather than going for a paint-by-numbers orchestral reboot of his well-known hits, he instead looked for the songs in his catalog that had “texture” and “atmosphere,” which meant more stuff along the lines of ‘Intruder’ and ‘The Rhythm of the Heat’ and less of the straight-up and expected hits like ‘Sledgehammer.’

Meanwhile, on a subject that’s a bit more out of this world, Gabriel once upon a time almost went into space during the early days of the Space Shuttle, thanks to some highly placed friends at NASA.

“A friend who worked at NASA asked if I’d be interested," he explains. "I thought, 'well that’s a pretty amazing offer!' It was all being funded by this rich Iranian, but then the Shah was deposed and his money was taken away so the project was canned.”

We recently reviewed ‘New Blood’ and you can read our thoughts on the album right here.