The Creator: Inside the Collaborative World and Visionary Mind of Peter Gabriel
by Nevin Martell; Photos by Arnold Newman & Stephen
Lovell-Davis | 12.29.2008
To be a musician; that’s one thing.
To be a visionary—well, that’s quite another.
Peter Gabriel is a quintessential visionary because his notable works transcend his numerous contributions to music. Since the late ’60s, he has continually reinvented himself by embracing sonic evolution through worldwide collaboration, the art of the music video, the power of social action and the creative expansion afforded by emerging technologies. He’s one of the few people on the planet who can get Bono, Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela on the phone, and unlike other celebrity musicians who merely lend their image to a new project, Gabriel is an active brainstormer, overseer and executor of his myriad endeavors. The 58-year-old Englishman enjoys experimentation, creation and innovation in large doses, thriving on them the same way Hunter S. Thompson flourished on a steady diet of illicit substances. Combining the mesmerizing showmanship of Houdini, the unbounded imagination of Walt Disney, and Asimov’s futurism, Gabriel is incessantly trying to make things happen—all sorts of things, with all sorts of people, in all sorts of places. And he was doing it years before Al Gore invented the Internet, before cellular technol
