Classic Rock Report: Peter Gabriel Still Isn't Into Punk

Peter Gabriel, the former front man of Genesis turned solo artist...is best known for outrageously different. Almost weird. But don't get caught calling him a particle of the Punk Rock era of music. Cut and dry. Gabriel says the movement was a lie. Joe Strummer from the Clash and the Sex Pistols came from the same vein of history. But Genesis nor Gabriel were open to changing their image to fit into the hot sound of the month club. Which led Critics and fans to instantly label them the opposition. Three decades later Gabriel has chosen to clean the slate. Claiming He and Genesis weren't privileged elite snotty nosed rich kids but just as blue collar as anybody else. Punk has a story. The accusation has been based on being raw. Taken from the hearts and souls of the working-class. Punk was bloated with overly self-serious rock stars. It's Peter Gabriel that's outing the reality by saying, "It wasn’t always so cut and dry." He isn't shy to explain how his years with Genesis were about the band and its members with a middle-class upbringing. They weren't part of a privileged elite. “To this day, we’ve never outgrown the snotty rich-kid thing,” Punk's always been about blue-collar folks and Peter claims to have come from the same background. “It used to piss me off seeing all these ‘people’s hero’ musicians – like Joe Strummer – who’d come from a similar background to mine but were keeping it quiet,” Gabriel pointed out. “In Genesis, we were always very straight about where we came from, and we were middle-class, not aristocratic.” Gabriel says, “I saw the Sex Pistols, quite by chance, at the 100 Club,” he said. “There were only about 40 people in the audience, not the hundreds that have claimed to be there. There was a vibe, for sure, but I preferred the Clash musically. But we were the declared opposition, what punk was there to destroy.” As for what the oddly shaped weirdly written out songwriter and performer is doing these days? “I’d love to have a songwriters’ event where you had the Sherman Brothers playing their songs for ‘Mary Poppins’ and ‘The Jungle Book’ next to Trent Reznor and Dr. Dre – and everyone talking about how they put songs together. That’s what fascinates me – how you arrive at a song and the processes you go through. Everything else is bulls—.”