Former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel becomes dad for fourth time aged 58
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 9:33 AM on 11th July 2008

After battling depression for years, he said fatherhood gave him a new lease of life.
Now singer Peter Gabriel is to be a father for the fourth time at the age of 58.
It is the second son for the former Genesis singer and keyboard player and his 37-year-old Irish wife Maebh Flynn, following the birth of Isaac six years ago.
He also has two adult daughters from his previous marriage to Jill Moore whom he married when he was 20.

Anna, now 33 is a documentary film-maker while Melanie, 31, works as a music producer.
In June of last year, just three months before his current wife became pregnant with his new son Luc, which means ‘light’, the singer, who plunged into depression after the collapse of his first marriage in 1989, said becoming a father again had handed him a ‘second adolescence’.
The delighted singer made the announcement of the new birth of his website saying the couple were now ‘proud parents of a second son’.
The message added: ‘Luc was born on Saturday, 5th July a bouncing 7Ib 2oz. Big brother Isaac reports that mother, father and baby brother are all doing well.
‘They request that any congratulatory flowers people may contemplate sending be left to grow in the ground for all to enjoy.’
Gabriel married Miss Flynn, a music technician-turned-filmaker, four years ago.
Having initially struggled with the demands of being a father earlier in his career, he says he is now prepared for sleepless nights at a time when most would be thinking of a peaceful retirement.
Last year he revealed how Isaac’s birth had finally helped his struggle with the blues following several years of therapy, which he also claims was fuelled by guilt over being a ‘weekend father’ to his daughters. Some would say much of his music as a solo artists reflects that.
‘I was very busy when the girls were young. I’ve had much more time now to get up in the night and then play with Isaac in the day than I did before. It’s like having a second adolescence,’ he said. ‘I’m less concerned about my worldly success and more interested in bringing up Isaac.’
He added: ‘I absolutely love being a dad. I hope I give up more time to it. I know what my priorities should be. I think I know now what a joy it is and how fleeting it is because they’ve left home before you can blink.’
The arrival follows a growing list of aging stars who have embarked on fatherhood late in the day.
In 2004 television host Des O’Connor became a father for the fifth time aged 72. Last year veteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby had a daughter at the age of 62 with opera singer Jessica Ray, 33.
Actor Sir David Jason’s daughter Sophie Mae was born when he was 61 while singer Rod Stewart had his seventh child in 2005 at the age of 60, more than forty years after the birth of his first.
In 1999 at the age of 56, Mick Jagger also became a father for the seventh time after an affair with Brazilian model Luciana Morad.
Fellow rock star Rick Parfitt recently fathered twins at 59 while in April this year, game-show host Les Dennis became a father at 53 when his fiance Claire Nicholson gave birth to Eleanor Grace.
A spokesman for the Peter Gabriel said he would now be taking a break from his music in favour of fatherly duties.
‘Peter is working in a new album, but naturally he’ll be taking some time off now. He loves performing live but he’s decided to cut back on work for the time being.’

http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1034232/Former-Genesis-frontman-Peter-Gabriel-dad-fourth-time-aged-58.html

Britain’s best world music festival takes place this month – and we’ve got 50 pairs of tickets to give away. Sound good? Then tackle our quiz…
Saturday, 5 July 2008

It’s one of the great music events of the year – and you could be there if you can answer these 15 questions. Email your entry to competitions@independent.co.uk by Wednesday night – the winners will be chosen at random from the best responses.

Each pair of VIP tickets, worth £250, will give you access to the festival on 25-27 July – and allow you to mingle with the stars in the backstage bar. Two children, aged 13 or under, can accompany each adult for free.
Even if you don’t win, you can get a 15 per cent discount at www.independent.co.uk/womad.

And 25 names will be drawn out of a hat and given a pair of tickets to a private event hosted by Womad’s founder Peter Gabriel, including a tour of his Real World Studios, plus an exclusive concert by new sensations Dengue Fever.
1) What does Womad stand for?
2) What is the connection between Genesis and Womad?
3) Toumani Diabaté is one of the stars of this year’s Womad. What instrument does he play?
4) Where is Tony Allen from?
5) And which Blur song mentions Tony Allen?
6) Name the reggae star who went from The Equals to Electric Avenue?
7) How many seconds were there on Youssou N’Dour’s biggest hit (with Neneh Cherry)?
8 ) Another band playing Womad this year is Dengue Fever. Where is their lead singer originally from?
9) Which song by The Clash was a global hit when sung in Arabic by Rachid Taha?
10) What instrument does Bassekou Kouyate play?
11) Who met at Bamako’s Institute for the Young Blind and were originally known as The Blind Couple of Mali?
12) She comes from County Clare, is known as the “Queen of the Squeezebox” and has played with Sinéad O’Connor and members of U2. Who is she?
13) Which BBC DJ discovered the early albums of Ali Farke Touré in a bargain bin, helping to launch his global career?
14) Sa DingDing has been compared to Björk, plays the zheng and won a World Music Award this year. Which country is she from?
15) Which Brazilian singer and actor played Knockout Ned in City of God and performed several songs by David Bowie in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou?
Terms & Conditions: Holders of Weekend tickets are only permitted to enter the campsite and festival arena after 8am on Friday 25 July. There is a £25 charge for all campervans using the campsite. Two children aged 13 and under can come free with an adult ticket holder. Entries must be received by midnight Thursday 10 July 2008. Winners will be picked at random and notified by telephone or email on 11 July. The Editor’s decision is final. We do not offer refunds on the basis of inclement weather. Lost tickets and wristbands will not be replaced. Line-up is subject to change. Only one entry per household. See www.independent.co.uk/legal for standard Independent terms and conditions. No purchase necessary

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/win-vip-womad-tickets-860503.html

Peter Gabriel brings world together through music
‘Big Blue Ball,’ which he began in 1991 and due today, features songs in English, Arabic, Congolese, Hungarian, Swahili and Madagascar languages.
By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 24, 2008

OK, so cut Peter Gabriel some slack for taking too long to finish an album: “Big Blue Ball,” a long-simmering world music project he launched back in 1991, is finally surfacing today.

In the intervening 17 years, he’s released four other collections of his music, launched an innovative U.K.-based music download website (www.We7 .com), continued nurturing WOMAD, the world music and dance festival he initiated in 1982 and started a lifestyle-driven site (thefilter.com).

He also assembled The Elders, a group of about a dozen veteran world leaders, including former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with the aim of bringing their collective experience to bear on the planet’s social and political problems.

Meanwhile, “Big Blue Ball” sat. And sat. And sat. But in truth only partly because of Gabriel’s many other interests and commitments. In some respects, it’s taken nearly two decades for Gabriel and his collaborators to get a lasso around this large-scale effort.

Over the course of four years, Gabriel threw open the doors of his Real World recording studios for a week at a time, 24 hours a day. That way, musicians he’d invited from around the world to participate in WOMAD would have a forum to collaborate during the course of that event on new sounds and new ideas, unencumbered by geographical, musical or budgetary limitations.

Creative, collaborative

“Big Blue Ball” features collaborations between Gabriel and U.S. roots-gospel group the Holmes Brothers (on the album’s first single, “Burn You Up, Burn You Down”), Irish singer Iarla O Lionaird and Papa Wemba’s Congolese band and Japanese percussionist Joji Hirota with Sinead O’Connor. About half the songs are sung in English, others are in Arabic, Congolese, Hungarian, Swahili and Madagascar languages.

It’s eclectic, but there’s a rhythmic pulse to most of the tracks that underscores the many-cultures, one-world idea behind the project.

“We knew we only had this collection of people for a limited time, some of them for just two or three days,” Gabriel said from his Real World headquarters in Box Wiltshire in the countryside west of London. “So we decided to spend all time recording and performing and waste none of the time sorting it out. With the many, many tapes, which we were still using in those days, it was a bit of a nightmare.”

Engineer Richard Chappell, who worked on virtually all the sessions, recalled that “in the first year, nobody quite knew what to do. In the second year, people started to get more excited about what was happening, and by the third time people had really figured it out. We’d have up to 20 different recording sessions going on in various places at the same time. If it wasn’t raining, there’d be people set up outside with portable studios.”

Gabriel gave the task of sorting through mountains of raw material to Stephen Hague, who has produced albums by Pet Shop Boys, Robbie Williams and others, Chappell and mixing engineer Tchad Blake.

“There were a lot of wonderful performances,” Hague said in a separate interview, “but a lot of them were really unformed . . . My background is more in contemporary pop music, and I’m a real structuralist. My goal was to try to get these things to read from beginning to end, and in the end, I think the album reflects that.”

Gabriel and his main “Big Blue Ball” partner, Karl Wallinger of World Party, were more interested in songs than an free-form international jam session.

“Jamming can be fantastic for those people who are participating in it, but it’s not always great for the audience,” Gabriel said. “So Karl and I mostly stayed in the upstairs room and tried to steer people more toward actual songwriting.”

New facet

Recently he’s said he thinks of “Big Blue Ball” as a fine wine, released only after it had been aged properly. Not only that, but it also represents something larger for a performer whose career has been defined by a commitment to exploding conventions, either through his epic prog-rock excursions as the original lead singer of Genesis, through his genre-bending solo albums of the ’70s and ’80s and through his groundbreaking music videos in the early days of MTV.

Whereas some musicians strive for hit singles, still others for philosophical or political statements in themed albums, Gabriel is ever on the lookout for ways to change the fundamental shape of what music can and should be.

“I always thought the digital revolution would actually change the content of music, the way same way the piano roll or the 45 rpm single did,” he said. “But it’s been very slow to come. I really feel there should be a cultural renaissance that digital technology could advance. So even though this project is 15 years old, I think it’s still a precursor to a day when people all over the world can work together to generate new ideas.”

“Now, not only can we make records very cheaply, but the costs of distribution have been virtually eliminated,” Gabriel continued. “And I’ve always thought that should result in all sorts of things should and could happen, like collaborations left, right and center. We should begin to see more artists like Damon Albarn and Jack White, who can be part of two or three projects simultaneously rather than being locked into one identity.”

And how did this forward-thinking musician choose to introduce this project to the world? The first version of “Big Blue Ball” was released in vinyl LP form two weeks ago, ahead of the CD and download editions available today.

“I actually like the fact that young kids today are getting heavily into vinyl again,” Gabriel said. “It’s always had a very warm sound, so even though I’m a huge digital fan, there’s still something to be said for analog — in the same way that there’s still something to a bunch of musicians sitting around in the same room playing together, as opposed to recording alone in their bedrooms.”

randy.lewis@latimes.com

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/africa/la-et-gabriel24-2008jun24,0,6682531.story

Peter Gabriel’s ‘Big Blue’ Musical Mashup

Weekend Edition Sunday, June 22, 2008 – In 1986, English musician Peter Gabriel opened the doors to his legendary Real World Studios in Wiltshire, England. Over the years, musicians from Bonnie Raitt and Deep Purple to Robert Plant and Nigel Kennedy have recorded at the former grain mill, surrounded by sheep farms 100 miles west of London.
But Real World has always been more than just a place for heavy hitters to lay down tracks and dash off rock mixes. Its mission has also been to provide a state-of-the-art space for musicians from around the world to meet and mingle, try out new sounds and bounce ideas off each other. The so-called “recording weeks” of the early ’90s were examples of just that — some 75 artists from 20 countries came to play.
“I think we were trying to get a number of records done, as well,” Gabriel says. “But I think the exciting thing for a lot of us was that there were musicians from all over the world — songwriters, poets, all thrown together — and all sorts of connections happened.”
In those heady days of musical experimentation, artists recorded in all nooks and crannies of the complex, and so many tapes piled up that they started to run out of room to store them. Almost two decades later, the tapes from the recording weeks are finally sorted. On Tuesday, the album Big Blue Ball comes out on Real World Records.
Many points of the globe are represented on Big Blue Ball. There’s Congolese singer Papa Wemba, Sinead O’Connor from Ireland, the Holmes Brothers’ American gospel, string players from Egypt, percussion from Japan and flute playing from China. Peter Gabriel acted as curator and sings on several tracks. He and co-producers Stephen Hague and Karl Wallinger spoke with Liane Hansen about the project.
“It was just like a musical health farm, really,” Wallinger says. “There wasn’t any considerations other than the sounds you heard in the room, which were always pretty extraordinary and played by people who had been mastering their instrument in whatever way for however many years. I think the collective musical years that had gone down amongst everybody there would have been well into the thousands.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91747508