Summary: One of pop music's most eclectic, shape-shifting artists is about to be inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. Again. Peter Gabriel's art-rock pioneering band Genesis was added to the Hall in 2010. But he left that group long before its Phil Collins-fronted assault on stadiums in the 1980s. "Peter Gabriel exploded out of Genesis and decided to try every idea he ever had," says Jon Pareles, The New York Times pop music critic. The year is 1977. Popular appetite for the progressive rock sound that Gabriel helped define with Genesis is waning. Gabriel's first self-titled record (of four) is released just shy of the punk explosion. So you might expect that an artist, recently set free from a band with a out-of-favor sound, would latch on to that popular sea change. And, as Pareles knows well, you would be wrong. "You gotta love a guy who starts his solo career with a song called 'Moribund The Burgermeister' -- it's about some kind of plague affecting some medieval town. This is not your big commercial move." Gabriel's defiance of commercial expectations will, ironically, be honored by The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame this week when he joins just a few other musicians who have been inducted to The Hall on multiple occasions. In a lengthy conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer, Pareles -- who's documented Gabriel's career for four decades -- talks about Gabriel's most creatively fertile period, the gap between Genesis and So, with notes on Gabriel's many extracurricular interests in interspecies communication, record label innovation, political activism, and more. Peter Gabriel's off-beat approach to pop music began in the Genesis days -- the exotic costumes, oblique lyrics, and lavishly theatrical presentations. But the British singer, flautist, and keyboardist's solo iconoclasm became more and more about the inclusion of sounds and ideas from outside the traditional pop music format. In the early 1980s, Gabriel founded Real World Records, dedicated to the recording and distribution of music from the far corners of the non-Western world. He also held the first World Of Music And Dance (WOMAD) Festival which continues to this day. Gabriel's many sonic ideas reached their apogee on his 1986 masterpiece So, which featured a raft of huge, MTV-ready hits like "Sledgehammer," "Big Time," "In Your Eyes," and his duet with Kate Bush, "Don't Give Up." The record cemented Gabriel's status as a first-rate solo artist and performer. In the years since So, Gabriel has continued to innovate and act as an international ambassador for music that is not yet part of "pop" culture. Well into his fifth decade of making music, his next move is still anyone's guess. Watch video for "Sledgehammer" from Peter Gabriel's 1986 masterpiece So; it is still regarded as a watershed moment in music video history:
