Peter Gabriel published A Hard Lessonthe oldest song among those that will become part of the album o\i which will be released later this year. For now, the Bright-Side Mix created by Mark “Spike” Stent, will be released with the next new moon Dark-Side Mix.
Written by the artist and produced with Mike Elizondo, «it started taking shape in the late 80s and early 90s, when I was in Senegal. I was falling in love with the music I listened to there. I loved the tension created by the use of polyrhythms, particularly the three and four beats, and the song took off from there.”
Gabriel calls the song “eccentric, strange and long”. It lasts 6 minutes and 42 seconds. «It's a journey. It's about trying to find a place, your place in the world. Among other things, I had fun playing with references to old R&B and folk music. It's one of those songs that risked ending up in the “almost” category in a couple of old projects and had to wait 30 or 40 years before taking shape.”
«Sometimes things take time: most people work much faster, but I have no problem accepting my way of proceeding. Some ideas mature and evolve spontaneously, others simply remain locked in a drawer until the time comes to see the light.”
The piece has such a long history that, according to Gabriel, the number of people who contributed to it at various stages exceeds that of all the contributors to the rest of the album combined.
«I liked so many of the ideas that were added over the years that in a certain sense the piece was “assembled”, a bit like a puzzle. Tony Berg, who was my A&R in the 90s, added some guitar parts and David Rhodes contributed a lot of stuff over time. Richard Evans also tried to make a more industrial version and some small elements of that version remained.”
«I experimented with a harpsichord sample on the synthesizer, which created the folk character of the chorus, and then I asked Richard to enrich it with acoustic instruments including the mandolin, which in my opinion gives a better flavor to the central section and the choruses. Mike Elizondo co-produced this version and had an important role in the making of the song. He also added a full-bodied bass, while Abe Rounds, with whom he collaborates, inserted some splendid fluid rhythms.”
Every song by o\i is accompanied by a visual part. In the case of A Hard Lesson it is an image taken from a video work by Francis Alÿs, a Belgian artist who has lived in Mexico City since the 1980s. The image of the man with the sheep is taken from Patriotic Cuentoscreated in collaboration with Rafael Ortega. It refers to a protest by public employees that took place in August 1968, the so-called Sheep March. They were summoned by the government to participate in a demonstration in response to a student protest in Constitution Square. The civil servants showed up at that forced demonstration of support for the government, but protested by saying that they had been brought there like sheep, imitating its cry.
In Patriotic Cuentos Alÿs walks around the flagpole in Constitution Square accompanied by the tolling of the cathedral bell. «I was immediately struck by the image with the pole, the man and the sheep. I couldn't rationally say why it attracted me, but it seemed to me to speak to the idea of 'place' and therefore it seemed to work very well for the song.”
«You see Francis Alÿs walking in that same square in Mexico City, initially followed by a sheep; others then join and continue to circle. It's an eccentric, strange image, I love it. I think it's a remarkable film, I hope you can discover his other works too.”
