I: Introduction

Daryl Hall‘s first solo album, Sacred Songs, was recorded in 1977, but delayed release until 1980, for reasons I’ll go into soon enough. Peter Gabriel‘s second solo album, nicknamed “Scratch” because of the album’s front cover photo, came out in 1978. Robert Fripp‘s first solo album, Exposure, was released in 1979. As producer of all three albums, Fripp regarded them as a kind of trilogy, hence my analysis of all three together; indeed, I see a thematic continuity in them, as well as the fact that the three albums share some songs.

Fripp’s production and musical contributions to these three albums were part of his gradual reentry into the musical world in the late 1970s. He broke up the old King Crimson in 1974 because, apart from spiritual aspirations of his that I’ll get into later, he’d grown to hate the music business, which had been cheating band members of royalties (i.e., EG Records), and that progressive rock had run its course, leaving King Crimson no more room to evolve as a band. Fripp refused to let the band turn into another stadium rock “dinosaur,” or to compromise his musical vision, so he’d decided that “King Crimson is completely over. Forever and ever.”

In the interim, he’d worked as a “small intelligent mobile unit,” playing guitar over his Frippertronics guitar loops. When punk rock and new wave came along, he welcomed them as a pleasant contrast to the progressive rock monster he’d felt responsible for creating.

He found the three-to-four-minute pop song format to be an intriguing challenge for expressing musical ideas in a concise way, as opposed to the drawn-out, overblown long songs of prog rock. He’d still want to incorporate his avant-garde musical experimentation in these otherwise short pop songs, but he was more than willing to reconcile prog with pop, unlike his “dinosaur rock” contemporaries.

As a result, he produced and/or added guitar lines to albums by David Bowie, Talking Heads, Blondie, Daryl Hall, and Peter Gabriel…these latter two leading me to my discussion of this “trilogy” of solo albums.

Now, in this attempt at a reconciliation of prog and pop, there was also an inevitable clash between the two genres, which became especially apparent with Hall’s and Fripp’s solo albums. Sacred Songs wasn’t released until three years after its recording because Hall’s record company, RCA, feared the more avant-garde leanings of at least a few of the album’s tracks would alienate his fans and thus hurt sales. The same was true of Exposure, on which Hall was originally to sing on a number of the tracks, when only two were used on the album, stemming from the same fears. Fripp’s dislike of the music business would endure, because capitalism poisons everything.

As for Peter Gabriel’s second solo album, he had a somewhat different struggle. Having left Genesis in 1975 after the tour for The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, because of burnout and a wish to spend some much-needed quality time with his family, Gabriel was struggling, during the making of this solo album and its predecessor, to find a new identity as distinct from that of his role as singer/flautist/percussionist/’actor’ for Genesis. He felt that he’d finally found that new identity by the creation of his third solo album.

In terms of commercial success as a fledgling solo artist, Gabriel was slow to attain it. He had a minor hit with “Solsbury Hill,” from the first album, but the “Scratch” album didn’t yield any hits. His third album yielded “Games Without Frontiers,” which went to #4 in the UK. His fourth solo album yielded “Shock the Monkey,” his first US top 40 single. His next album, So, made him a mainstream star with “Sledgehammer,” reaching #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

So as of his second solo album, Gabriel was struggling both as an individual artist and with the music business, in his own way, just as Fripp and Hall were in their way. In all of these struggles, we can find recurring themes in the lyrics of all three solo albums, as I’ll try to demonstrate. How does one find one’s own voice while dealing with pressure to generate profits for record companies?

II: Sacred Songs

Here is a link to all of the lyrics on the album.

While Hall was working with guitarist/singer/songwriter John Oates as a duo playing “blue-eyed soul” from the early 1970s, Hall also met Fripp (in 1974). Though Hall and Oates would have a number of hit singles in the 1970s, including “She’s Gone,” as well as a slew of hits in the 1980s, by the late ’70s, Hall was feeling artistically limited and wanted to branch out into other areas of musical expression.

He remembered the instant rapport he’d felt upon meeting Fripp, and their discussion of wanting to work together one day. So when Hall was writing songs for this, his first solo album in 1977, he reconnected with Fripp and had him produce Sacred Songs, while Fripp also contributed some musical ideas, most of which would be his Frippertronics tape loops of sustained, harmonized guitar leads. Such an avant-garde departure from Hall’s usual radio-friendly blue-eyed soul felt like just the needed antidote to his artistic malaise.

Of course, RCA begged to differ. The record company didn’t want the fans of their big star to think he’d gotten “weird,” so the project was shelved. Angry about the decision, Hall and Fripp passed out tapes of their songs to music journalists and DJs. Enough interest in the album was generated to get it released, finally, in 1980.

It’s not all that easy to see what RCA was so worried about, though. Most of the music on this album is still pop/R&B-oriented, with the added Frippertronics blending and harmonizing well with it. Strictly speaking, there are only two “weird” tracks on the album: “Urban Landscape,” which is all dark, eerie Frippertronics, and “NYCNY,” with some of Fripp’s trademark dissonant guitar arpeggios and a few time changes. The rest is hardly distinguishable from standard Hall and Oates (e.g., “Johnny Gore and the C Eaters,” from War Babies, has odd time signatures, so even that sort of thing isn’t all that much of a departure for Hall), so RCA’s shelving of the project shows just how fascistic capitalism can be in stifling artistic creativity.

“Sacred Songs”

Take the title track of the album, for example. In C major, it’s got some bluesy piano playing and soulful singing by Hall. As far as anything even remotely “prog-oriented” is concerned, the song is mostly in 4/4 time, with a time change to 6/8 for a number of bars whenever Hall sings “one and the same.”

As for the lyric, the same applies to those of most of the tracks on the album: on the surface, they involve a relationship between a man and woman, Hall typically the man. Such a relationship, however, is only a surface meaning for the song lyrics. For just as the Song of Songs is, superficially, a series of sensuous love poems, but have also been allegorized as representing the love of Christ (the groom) for His Church (the bride) or the love of God (the groom) for the ancient Hebrews (the bride), so can Sacred Songs be allegorized as the love of Hall for his music (as well as representing his own spiritual aspirations, which I’ll get into later). Now, just as some women may sometimes tease or frustrate her man in a relationship, or just as the Church or the ancient Hebrews may have gone astray from God, so may Hall’s music frustrate him in how it’s all too often required to conform to the “blue-eyed soul” norm.

He has an intellectual and spiritual side, so he likes to read and write, but she would have him “put the book down tonight,” that is, to drop the intellectual and mystical pretensions and just write a simple R&B song, as usual. He doesn’t”t want her “to be a song heroine,” or another cliché love interest in another R&B ballad, as with “She’s Gone.” When he wants to branch out and go in new musical directions or explore esotericism, “it’s not that easy just to stick [her] in,” or to put another female love interest in a song meant to be more intellectual.

Now is “not the night” to be repeating the R&B clichés, for if he did repeat them, he’d “have to face [her] again and again,” that is, keep writing the same kind of song over and over. He’d “like to stick [her] in,” though, because in his conflicted state, part of him still likes to write R&B songs.

For him, all of these songs, whether R&B or of a more experimental or mystical nature, are “sacred” because he loves all of his music, as God loves His Church and the ancient Hebrews. “They’re not easily won” because Hall sometimes wants to experiment, though RCA won’t let him. “The thoughts are sacred,” because he’s trying to say something more profound here (rather than just ‘I love ya, baby’), “though the sound is profane”–the music mostly has his usual R&B sound. Still, for him, even though some of the music is R&B and some is experimental, “they’re one and the same,” because he loves all his music equally: there’s a mystical, dialectical unity in his opposing musical styles. He just wants the freedom to play both kinds of music when he feels like it.

The next verse sounds, on the surface, as though he’s singing about sex with his woman (“I start out hard and I end up thin”), the same way the Song of Songs has outright erotic passages describing the bride’s beautiful body (how odd for the Bible!). But again, the eroticism of this second verse of Hall’s can be allegorized, for his apparent impotence in bed is really his frustration at starting out with some experimental music, yet ending up with just more of the usual R&B. She wastes her time in getting him to stick with R&B, “but occasionally score[s],” succeeding in getting that R&B. She “can’t tell from what went down before,” that is, she doesn’t recognize his experimental side. He’d “like to stick it in,” but not always in the R&B style that she likes; ‘sticking it in’ also reflects his usual physical desires, as opposed to his spiritual aspirations.

His sacred songs are “not easily won,” as I described above, “because there’s nothing sacred anymore.” It’s 1977, and with the advent of punk rock and new wave supplanting prog, the sacred old musical experimentation has been discarded as passé, in favour of simpler, shorter songs. Also, with “nothing sacred anymore,” he feels a spiritual vacuum he needs to fill with a study of esotericism. All that Hall figures he can get away with musically are those few switches from 4/4 time to a bit of 6/8, and 4/4 time leads us to the topic of the next song.

“Something In 4/4 Time”

This again is a straightforward pop song that is in 4/4 time…mostly, except for an instrumental passage in 3/4 that comes after the bridge, and fittingly, it features Fripp with his Frippertronics, though such experimentation still fits in with the rest of the song just fine.

As for the lyric, it’s again in the form of Hall talking to his woman, and just as in the title track, he can be seen as the one who wants to branch out and experiment, while she represents the conservative who wants to keep his music simple and commercial. He says, “it’s all a matter of money,” that is, the music business is preoccupied with making profits and producing popular, radio-friendly music that lots of people will buy.

It’s also “just a matter of time” before he goes crazy having to conform with the music trends. She doesn’t care about that, her personifying the music, but he says, “baby, it’s your life on the line,” for the music will die if he can’t be free to write it as he wishes to.

She’s selling herself, for she represents music as a money-maker. She loves her life as it is, “and [her] life is [her] act”: as a conformist to the musical trends, she lives her live as all about conforming to be what the larger audience wants, to make a profit for his record company.

This is why she’s “gotta have something in 2/4 time,” or “in 4/4 time”: it’s got to be “something that always rhymes.” It has to be songs that are simple and accessible, so a maximum number of people will buy the records and make a profit for the capitalist record business.

In the second verse, he seems to be singing about himself and artists like him, saying “you” in the general sense of one, any person. He dreams and dreams of being artistically free to make any kind of music he wants, but he’s “robbed of sleep” because he knows his record label will never grant him that freedom. He “grabs what [he] can and all [he] can keep” of every little bit of experimentation he can get away with, however small those bits are. Then he asks her if she thinks she won’t get hurt in the process of conforming to the trends; for as his music personified, she is him. They’re “one and the same,” as he sings in the title track.

The rest of the song just repeats the previous words. The Frippertronics section musically represents that little bit of experimentation Hall hopes to get away with in an otherwise straightforward pop song. Of course, he didn’t get away with it, because RCA didn’t want to release the album.

When Sacred Songs finally was released in 1980, it sold reasonably well, though it yielded no hit singles. Hall and Oates would, however, release a string of hit songs in the 1980s, so his record company could set their minds at ease.

“Babs and Babs”

The man and woman fittingly have the same name, for they are Hall and his woman (his music); they are “one and the same.” “Babs” seems to be a variation on “babe,” or “baby,” since the two are lovers who would naturally call each other something like that. The musician loves his music, and she loves her creator.

The song is another straightforward R&B one, with a jaunty, bouncing rhythm.

The lovers are lying in bed together, holding each other. He asks her what she’s thinking about, and she says, “Nothing.” She never thinks, because she leaves it up to him. He does the thinking because he’s the songwriter crafting the songs, and also because he wants to do more intellectual things with his music. She doesn’t think or say anything, because she, as his creation, his songs, just wants to be simple, popular, money-making music.

He looks through the window and sees the moon. This sight represents him dreaming of creating higher art, or aspiring to a more spiritual state. She, however, looks out and sees only “the clouds drifting by, voices crying and sighing and dying.” She sees his dreams as resulting in no money-making success, and so a return to financial struggle and sadness…so she says nothing, because as music strictly for money, she has nothing meaningful to say.

He tells her he’s seen the moon out there, for it’s his dream of creating more meaningful music, and of becoming more enlightened; but she tells him that those dreams don’t move her. She doesn’t want him to make a fool out of her by writing experimental songs. She says nothing.

He reassures her that he’ll take good care of her. He hates her lack of feeling: all of his work as a singer/songwriter, having already come up with a number of hits, would be enough to sustain them financially, so he should be able to try different things without thinning out his wallet too much; all the same, she doesn’t care about his aspirations, spiritual or musical.

She doesn’t want him condescending her, for she feels she’s just fine as she is–simple pop and R&B music personified, nothing fancy. She knows what’s happening: the reality of the music business in the late 1970s was that people didn’t want prog-oriented rock anymore. If he goes down that path, he’ll “die alone, when [his] dreams all fade away,” and he realizes no one will buy his experimental music.

Halfway into the song, we hear it interrupted by a brief moment of Frippertronics; then we come to the final verse. This represents his brief moment of experimentation, the moon in the sky and the clouds, sandwiched in between the pop verses, then repeated after the last verse and merged with the pop instrumental background.

Neither Bab wants to compromise with each other, for they can never agree on which kind of music is the right kind for him to write. He and his popular music (her) will have to be “like the night and the day”: opposites, but complementing each other, “the best of friends” rather than lovers. He’ll continue to write the pop and R&B hits, but he won’t like it very much.

So “we leave them with the moon in the sky,” his unfulfilled dreams, “with the clouds drifting by,” and with all of that sadness, “she said nothing,” because what can you say when all there is to say in conformist commercial pop is a slew of clichés?

“Urban Landscape”

Also to appear on Side Two of Exposure, this track is all Frippertronics, a Robert Fripp composition included on Sacred Songs, yet one that Hall had no hand in making. “Babs and Babs” segues right into this track seamlessly.

It’s all just sustained layers of guitar lines, each one note for a tape loop. There is no harmonic progression or other instrumentation, just a tonal stasis that hovers ambiguously, giving off an eerie feeling.

By “urban landscape,” it’s safe to assume that Fripp is referring to that of New York City, the subject of the next track, “NYCNY.” After all, he lived there in the late 1970s, in Hell’s Kitchen specifically. It was in this area that he produced Sacred Songs, Peter Gabriel’s second solo album, and Exposure.

Hell’s Kitchen was known at the time for being a bastion of poor and working-class Irish-Americans, though gentrification since the early 1980s resulted in a rapid rise in rents. So the dark, eerie quality of “Urban Landscape” can be heard as representing the harsh realities of living as a poor person in all-too-capitalist New York City.

“NYCNY”

Indeed, New York City has always been one of the nerve centres of global capitalism (as even this right-wing market fundamentalist writer opines, in spite of the state involvement in the city’s economy that he complains about). Since a major issue of Sacred Songs, Peter Gabriel’s second solo album, and Exposure is the struggle between finding one’s individual artistic voice and satisfying the music business demand to sell records (as well as how the three albums were produced in New York City), then we can see how “NYCNY” is an expression of that struggle.

In Hall’s lyric, he addresses the city in the second person, similarly to how he often addresses the female love interests in the other songs on this album, women personifying his music-as-commercialized-money-making, yet also as something he, in his conflicted state about it, still loves. As he sings in the chorus, “New York, love me,” as if begging for his woman’s love. The city is “so good, so good,” yet it drives him so crazy that its “vibrations knock [his] screws loose.” The city is sexy and seductive (as another song, one by Paul Hyde, once rather dully personified all of the US), yet it’s as dangerous as a femme fatale.

With the music written by Fripp, “NYCNY” opens with Fripp playing dissonant guitar arpeggios in 3/4 (similar to the ones he played in the middle section of “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One”). Then he goes into a riff in 4/4 with ascending chromatic single-tone guitar lines. The chorus has aggressive power chords in 3/4, and the song ends with one of Fripp’s signature screaming guitar phrases (similar to those heard in the middle section of “Sailor’s Tale” and the middle section of “LTIA, Pt.1” just after the part with the dissonant arpeggios mentioned above), part of this ending section being in 11/8 time.

Hall sings, “So, what do you want?”, asking the city what it wants of him, as any man in an argument with his woman might do. The City that Never Sleeps–as embodying capitalism and, for him, demands that he keep producing the hits when he yearns for more artistic freedom–is driving him nuts. He feels as frustrated as any man might feel when having “the girlfriend experience.”

It feels like “déjà vu” when he returns to New York City, for he’s experienced all of its sexiness, trials, and tribulations before. “Everything about [NYC] is still the same, everything about [NYC] is so alive,” that is, as exciting as always, yet also dangerous. If he stays there too long, the city “start[s] to kick [his] ass,” that is, its demand that he make marketable music feels oppressive; but if he’s gone for too long, he’ll “lose [his] lease,” as if he were a tenant there having left the place for a long time without paying rent or reporting maintenance issues, so his landlord terminates his lease. It all reflects how capitalist New York City is a living hell.

He has to “keep [his] head up” in such an aggressive, dog-eat-dog kind of city. He asks, “NY, why me?” or why does he have to suffer like this, and he asks if he is New York City. In other words, if New York City is like a nagging, frustrating girlfriend (as we saw in “Babs and Babs,” and in the title track) who in turn personifies the commercialized music he is being forced to write, to the exclusion of any other kind, are he and NYC “one and the same,” of the same nature as of the same name–Babs and Babs? Is Hall the same as the commercialized music he writes (symbolized by the city and personified by the girlfriend), or can he carve out a new and different identity for himself?

He tries to run away from that sameness, but “it’s no use.” “Tongue in cheek so [he] can’t speak,” that is, his commercial pop is like a joke, and he can’t speak his mind or express himself as a sincere artist with a different kind of music, so he’s going crazy (“knock [his] screws loose”).

We hear the chorus in 3/4 again, with the power chords, then there’s a transition with more Frippertronics. His music is “written in the air,” or he composes the music of his lofty dreams of something more substantial artistically; but his music is also “written on return,” or thrown together immediately upon returning to NYC, something to satisfy the market’s need for profits. Two opposing kinds of music, yet they’re “one and the same,” because he loves all of his music as a parent would love all of his or her children.

NYC has the brightest of city lights to dazzle you like “nowhere else.” It’s a seductive, sexy city that gives him “fever dreams” where the frustration of his aspirations makes him hot with rage and madness, and “nothing else.”

In between refrains of other verses, he sings, “It ain’t love, it ain’t art, it’s pressure.” Having to conform his musical expression to the exclusive production of pop and R&B hits is so frustrating that it feels like neither love nor art, but just a lot of pressure to maintain his stardom. It’s all “pain in the heart that moves [him].” Because of this, the city loses him.

The song ends with the tense power chords, and with more of Fripp’s screaming guitar phrases. Then the 3/4 changes to 11/8, and the song ends abruptly, with the record needle coming to the end of Side One.

“The Farther Away I Am”

The song starts with Frippertronics, guitar lines starting with the notes of an A minor chord. Hall adds electric piano, including minor sevenths and major ninths to the harmony. It’s a sad and plaintive tune. The tonality starts to become ambiguous, sounding either like A minor with ninths, or C major with major sixths and major sevenths.

Hall sings about not wanting to lose someone: is this the personification of his musical freedom, a “cloud passing under,” like “the clouds drifting by” that female Babs saw and scorned? Is it the personification of the divine that he fears losing? The farther away he is from his musical freedom, and from spiritual enlightenment, the more worried he is.

“Why Was It So Easy”

This track is an R&B ballad. We can hear Fripp’s sustained guitar leads over Hall’s electric piano. Again, with enough conventional songs like this on Sacred Songs, it’s hard to understand what the record company capitalists in RCA were so worried about.

Again, Hall is singing about a woman, one he’s had a sexual encounter with “in [her] hotel room,” but the lyric can easily be allegorized as part of his love/hate relationship with his commercial pop music…hence, its musical form as an R&B ballad. It can also represent a spiritual tug-of-war between enlightenment and indulgence in physical pleasure.

She’s a beautiful, famous model he sees “in a magazine,” and “the light from [her] star is glowing,” just like the fame and popularity of all those Hall and Oates hit songs. “[Her] face seems older now,” because making the same kind of music for so many years is getting old for him. The face is “more knowing” because it knows what kind of music sells and what kind doesn’t. He “prefer[s] a woman to a teenage queen,” though, because he wants his music to mature beyond the superficiality of popularity.

“The wine and the confusion” of enjoying the thrill of success as a pop star leaves Hall confused as to what he really wants as an artist. The night he spends with her “seems like an illusion,” because the pleasure of success is ultimately unsatisfactory. There’s also the thrill of sensual pleasure with a woman, felt as “an illusion,” like that of maya, distracting him from his spiritual aspirations.

Apparently, the model is a German blonde; her beauty is a “disguise” hiding how she’s luring him into an artistically repressive world of commercialism and music for money’s sake. He “never really knew who [he] was talking to,” because he didn’t realize that pop success would end up an artistic prison for him. Pop success is “such a mystery” for most aspiring musicians, but it was “so easy for [him] to be with [her],” because churning out R&B on an assembly line, as it were, is much easier than finding the freedom to err from the commercial path, even if only occasionally. There’s also the “mystery” of enlightenment, as opposed to how it’s “so easy” just to indulged in pleasure.

In the third verse, Hall sings of how his relationship with her is going sour, just as he is growing tired of playing pop and R&B to the exclusion of anything else. “Too much time has come between them,” and he hears her “sad words.” She doesn’t “hold [him] inside [her],” but “it couldn’t go any other way.” The night of their thrilling sexual encounter in her hotel room, or the initial thrill of his pop success, “is so far behind [them]” now, and “the words are changed and so is the time.”

There’s a repeat of the chorus, but with “German eyes” replaced with “Oh, those eyes.” He ad libs for about a minute, and the song fades out.

“Don’t Leave Me Alone With Her”

This song has a straightforward rock riff, and Fripp does some of his fast cross-picking during one instrumental passage after most of the verses have been sung by Hall. After that, he sings the first verse again and does some vocal ad libs while playing the piano in the background. The song fades out at about four minutes into it, then it fades back in with more ad libbing and another guitar solo: I’d say the more conventional playing style of this second solo means it’s not by Fripp, but by Caleb Quaye, who’d played with Elton John. The song fades out for good at about six and a half minutes.

As for the lyric, it’s again about a girl, but it can be allegorized just as the others were. There are different “levels” at which music can be made: the commercial pop level, and the higher prog, or experimental, level; it’s only a question of “choosing [one’s] priorities.” There are also different ‘stages” where one learns of “changing our perception.”

Now, “that girl…messes [his] security” whenever he sees her, so he doesn’t want to be left “alone with her.” She can represent, as I’ve said before, the usual commercial R&B and pop music he feels constrained to write, and so being alone with her feels like being in a musical prison.

There is, however, that other angle to the lyrical content of Sacred Songs, one that would justify its title even more; I’ve so far only briefly referred to it, but now it’s time I talked about it more at length. This is an interpretation that mustn’t be ignored, so better late than never that I properly elaborate on it.

Hall developed an interest in mysticism and the occult, especially Aleister Crowley, back in the mid-1970s, around the same time that Fripp, too, became interested in such matters–in his case, the work of John G. Bennett and the guru Gurdjieff; indeed, this interest of Fripp’s was part of the reason he broke up King Crimson in 1974.

So talk of “levels” and “choosing [one’s] priorities,” as well as “stages” and “changing our perception” can also refer to how a mystical, occult understanding of the world can lead to different levels and stages, choosing different priorities, and changing perceptions. As for not wanting to be alone with the girl, she can again represent sensual temptations that distract the mystic from attaining his goal of enlightenment.

So by extension, Hall’s wishes in all of these “sacred songs” can be allegorized dually as, on the one hand, to be musically free to experiment, and on the other, to attain spiritual edification. Similarly, the woman in all of these “sacred songs” can be heard to personify, on the one hand, his being constrained to writing only radio-friendly songs, and on the other, his being imprisoned in the temptations of the flesh.

These two interpretations don’t contradict each other; they parallel each other. It should be easy to see how wanting to be artistically free is comparable to being spiritually free, and it should be easy to see how temptations of money and stardom make an artist feel trapped, just as temptations of sex make an aspiring mystic feel trapped.

Back to this song in particular. The woman “always calls [him] when [he’s] still at home,” and “she always calls before [he] get[s] away.” The lure to keep him trapped artistically and spiritually never relents. This is how she “messes [his] securities.” “She wants five minutes of what’s taken [him] a lifetime”: writing the kinds of songs that are no longer than five minutes–the longest a pop song can generally get away with being–will dominate his whole life.

“Don’t Leave Me Alone With Her” manages to be almost six and a half minutes long…thanks to that fade back in and the continued jamming of the band. Though just a rock song, that fade-in would have been disregarded if played on the radio. Sacred Songs, the front cover of which shows Hall doing a hand gesture as if he were Jesus or a saint–sold well on release, thanks to his name and the word of mouth that he and Fripp generated as I mentioned above, but the album didn’t yield a hit single. Such a lack shouldn’t have mattered, though.

“Survive”

This is another straightforward pop song, on which we can hear one of Fripp’s distinctive guitar leads at the beginning; it’s the same guitar tone you hear in his solo on King Crimson’s “Book of Saturday.” The chorus has a progression so radio-friendly that I’m sure it would even appeal to the locals where I live, a progression that is so common as to be predictable in, it would seem, at least 80% of their pop songs: major tonic, descending to leading tone, relative minor, dominant, subdominant, mediant, supertonic, and dominant again; it’s comparable in many ways to the recurring progression in Pachelbel’s Canon, if with the fitting chord substitutions.

In the lyric, Hall sings of a woman “who was so beautiful,” yet again who could easily personify the commercialized pop music that so quickly has become a cliché…or, in the parallel, alternative interpretation, she personifies the pleasures one craves, those that die out and leave the pain of attachment to what’s been lost.

He used to love the pop music he wrote, knowing it could “make [his] life a little brighter.” In the chorus, with the descending progression I described above, he thought the pleasure of writing those songs (and being with beauties “in a hotel room”) “were built to last,” but it all fell apart so fast, because of the reality of impermanence, and how his wish to try new musical ideas would be frustrated by the likes of RCA.

His music, and his physical life, were “born in freedom,” but they came “to be a slave to [her] inhibition” from his wish to experiment, or to explore mysticism and esoteric ideas. She’d be “inventing excuses” to keep him chained to the churning out of commercial music, and chained to pursuing physical pleasures.

“A soul that ain’t tied too tight,” like his searching soul that seeks musical freedom and mysticism, is one that’s “liable to scatter all over the night,” as he sings to that descending progression, with Fripp’s sustained guitar leads hovering in the background.

In the bridge, he sings of the impermanence of life, its endless changes: “Seasons change, and some people get old and die,” just like his will to keep writing just commercial music; “great cities are built up and torn down”–again, the cycles of birth, life, and death, a reality the mystics are mindful of, and a reality Hall knows as a songwriter whose interest in writing R&B comes and goes.

But he sees she’s still alive: how could she survive in this ever-changing world? Because the music business demands that he stick to writing songs in conformity with radio-friendly musical formulas, and because desire and attachment crave the sameness of sensual pleasure. Sin survives and stays alive, in spite of the reality of the decaying world.

He only wants “time to stop” writing the hits so he can explore other musical avenues; he also wants to stop time to experience the timelessness of the mystical experience. He’d also like to escape the hell of other people and of our dependence on their judgements: he’d like “people not to be people,” that obnoxious thing they are that judge him and demand that he be like them.

“Without Tears”

This, the final track of the album, is a ballad with Hall singing at the piano, backed with Frippertronics. As its title suggests, the song was inspired by Crowley’s Magick Without Tears, a book of eighty letters to students of magick offering insights into it and Thelema–Crowley’s religious and ethical system.

A foundational concept in Thelema is what Crowley called True Will, which is essentially one’s “calling” or “purpose” in life, as distinguished from the mere ordinary wants and desires of the ego. This is what Crowley meant when he said such things as “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law,” and “Love is the law, love under will.” The pure, True Will is in perfect harmony with the divine Will; they are one and the same, as Lon Milo DeQuette once said.

So it can be argued that when Hall is trying to be musically free, he is following his True Will, so both interpretations I’ve given of the lyrics of Sacred Songs, as about the quest for artistic freedom and that of spiritual enlightenment, his true calling and purpose in life, are parallel interpretations, one and the same. The True Will is to be identified with that of the Holy Guardian Angel, a daimon unique to each individual.

It is with this dual understanding that we can come to know the meaning of Hall’s “sacred songs.”

“Too much time is wasted on the world,” Hall sings. The world is personified by the “girl,” who in turn represents the ego’s ordinary wants and desires, including stardom, money, sex, and hit songs to satisfy the record company executives. She is “indifferent or cold” to his aspirations, both artistic and spiritual.

“Too much power is wasted on the wrong words,” those words that could misinterpret Crowley’s dictum, “do what thou wilt” as mere indulgence in pleasure, for example, or the lyrics of accessible pop songs meant only to sell. Hall has learned “to pour [his] heart out without tears…Earth magic,” the magick of Crowley, the calling to make true music from Hall’s heart.

Fripp has also learned, through his own explorations of mysticism in Bennett and Gurdjieff, to make true music from his heart, without the tears of enduring the pitfalls of the music business, hence the inclusion of Frippertronics on this track, which sound like a serene flowing of ocean waves.

Hall has been “looking for the lines” to write better song lyrics that express his True Will, yet he finds himself “never knowing that stream…that’s always flowing,” like the ocean waves of the Frippertronics. The spring “spirals up and down, then reverse direction,” because his spiritual and artistic aspirations keep getting frustrated by the money-obsessed ways of the world.

“Too many secrets have been told this way,” the wrong way, driven by desire and so “given away.” Hall takes refuge, however, in his “Earth magic,” which is “without tears.” Mystical secrets should never be vulgarized or commercialized, and so that’s why this well-made album, sans hit singles, is nonetheless full of sacred songs.

III: Peter Gabriel–Scratch

Gabriel’s second solo album was also a search to find his true musical calling in life. Here is a link to all of the lyrics for the album.

Robert Fripp wasn’t the only musician from King Crimson to contribute to Scratch: Tony Levin, who’d later join Crimson in the 1980s incarnation and after, played bass, the Stick, and did back-up vocals on the album. Indeed, Levin is perhaps best-known for being associated with Crimson and Gabriel, though he’s always been one of the most in-demand session and touring musicians around, having played with many acts. He was even John McLaughlin‘s first choice for bassist for Mahavishnu Orchestra, Levin having missed the opportunity after a misheard phone message from his mother.

“On the Air”

Part of Gabriel’s carving of a new musical identity for himself, as distinct from the one he had when fronting Genesis, was his creation of a new persona, Mozo, whose story would be told in installments from album to album over a period of many years. This was to contrast with Rael, whose story is told in full on just one Genesis album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Where Rael was derived from the last four letters of Gabriel‘s surname, Mozo was derived from Moses, from the Torah. Just as Moses was a messenger of God, so would Mozo be a messenger of Gabriel (the angel of music?), his messages told by radio, “on the air.” So, where Rael represented Gabriel as a member of Genesis, Mozo represents him as a fledgling solo artist. As Mozo, Gabriel is starting all over again, starting from…well, scratch.

Even though he had a minor hit with “Solsbury Hill,” he was still groping to find his identity, as I mentioned above, and as it turned out, this second solo album failed to yield any charting singles, which would have made his record company unhappy. What’s more, Gabriel was ultimately unhappy with how this album turned out, feeling dissatisfied with Fripp’s production, in particular, his recording of the synthesizers, and there were other creative differences between the two.

So it’s with this background that we can begin to understand how Gabriel-as-Mozo is “putting the aerial up, so [he] can go out on the air,” his equipment having been “built in the belly of junk…made from the trash…with his own fair hands.” He’s “at the shack and [he’s] sure no one else is there,” because as a fledgling solo artist with only one minor hit, he’s trying to build up a fan base with his ‘scraps,’ as it were.

Putting his radio messages “out on the air” is of course Gabriel trying to get more radio airplay for his solo songs. Like Mozo, he feels himself to be in the world, but not of the world. As Gabriel once commented about the character, “Through his short-wave radio, [Mozo] becomes whoever he wants, but in real life, on the street, he’s totally ignored.” This must have been how Gabriel felt as he was starting out with his solo career. Having left Genesis, he’d come right down from his perch of prog rock greatness. “Everyone [he] meet[s] on the street acts as if [he] wasn’t there.”

“They’re all going to know who [he is],” though, and this is prophetic, for Gabriel’s later solo albums (including some Mozo moments) will yield charting singles for him, culminating in So‘s “Sledgehammer,” as we all know.

But for now, he’s “leaving the car down leafy lane,” the judge of the city where he must fight to survive as an artist, being a hero of that jungle, “turning out Tarzan for [his] jungle Jane”–his wife at the time, Jill Moore, presumably. Now, “it’s not easy making real friends” when you’re a fledgling solo artist with only one charting single, especially when this second album won’t yield any.

He’s “half alive on empty white noise.” He’s “got power,” he’s “proud to be loud,” and he “want[s] everybody to know that Mozo is here.” It may be difficult for Gabriel to achieve success and a new identity as a solo artist, but he’ll keep on trying.

The song starts with a straightforward rock riff in E, driven by the guitar with a synth hovering in the background. The verses have a chord progression twice of B, A, E major/G♯, E, and D (power chords, except as indicated); then, there are chords in E, D♯, D♮, and C♯ minor, the second time ending with a C♮and a switch from 4/4 to 6/4 time. The chorus has two bars of 7/4 before returning to 4/4 as Gabriel sings, “on the air” repeatedly.

“D.I.Y.”

This song clearly seems to be Gabriel’s statement that he wants to be free of being in the shadow of Genesis–it’s his Declaration of Independence. He wants to ‘do it himself’ from now on. Now, that said, I must address his denial of that specific interpretation, as stated in an interview for International Musician and Recording World; but rather, that the song is mainly about self-determination in general. Maybe so, but my interpretation still has some validity, for his own act of self-determination involved leaving Genesis.

He won’t have other people telling him what he will do, neither his former bandmates in Genesis, nor the record company executives…or even producer Robert Fripp, for that matter. Nor will he have others tell him what to believe, just as Fripp and Hall, in their mystical explorations, won’t have others do (i.e., the Church or synagogue of conventional organized religion), either. Gabriel has to find his own musical and spiritual path.

It’s a dangerous world on your own as a solo artist just trying to find your footing, so you must “be on your guard, better hostile and hard, don’t risk affection.” You may be “looking for the resurrection,” or a rebirth of Gabriel-as-Rael in Genesis (i.e., him returning to the band after realizing he’s failed as a solo artist), but that isn’t going to happen, of course. Instead, he’s singing “D.I.Y.”

The song has an acoustic guitar riff in D major, with a recurring ascending chromatic line starting on D, though as the song progresses, it ends on different notes at the top. Gabriel sings “D.I.Y.” in 5/4 time in the chorus. The first two lines of the verses are in A, with it changing to B minor in the third line. The time signatures in the verses tend to change from 3/4 to 5/4 or 4/4, depending on where you are in the verse.

In the second verse, Gabriel sings about people who want to be what they aren’t, and who are never happy with that they have. They’re “like a dummy with a new ventriloquist”: why can’t they say their own words, instead of other people’s ? Why can’t they just be themselves, as he’s trying to be? People need to follow his example, which is no one’s example, and “D.I.Y.”

“When things get so big,” as they did for him in Genesis, “[he doesn’t] trust them at all,” so he quit the band and embarked on a solo career. “You want some control, you’ve got to keep it small,” as he did by going solo. Fripp would do the same thing by ending King Crimson and being a “small, mobile, intelligent, independent unit.”

“Mother of Violence”

This song is in E minor, and according to this link to the chords for it, it’s in 6/8 time, but I hear 4/4 time in triplets. It was cowritten with his wife of the time, Jill Gabriel.

“Mother of Violence” has been interpreted as being about family relationships, and the emotional effect they have on you. The title itself, if taken literally, suggests parental abuse.

In a larger sense, though, ‘family relationships’ can be seen in turn as a metaphor for the individual’s relationship with a group of people, any people–society in general, organized religion, the band one has been in, the musician and his record company, etc. We’ve already explored Hall’s relationship with John Oates, with RCA, and with those who represent or oppose religion and spirituality, personified by a female love interest. I’ve also discussed Fripp’s relationship with his bandmates in King Crimson and his battles with EG Records. Now we can see “Mother of Violence” as representing Gabriel’s relationship with Genesis, his record company, and his need for independence.

So, his singing about his mother and any difficulties he may have had with her could be taken as literal autobiography on one level, yet also as a metaphor for those professional issues he was having as a singer.

The song begins, after a recording of insects, with an acoustic guitar finger-picking of arpeggios and with piano; then he comes in singing. His mother is “walking the street with her naked feet,” yet strangely, she’s also “snapping her heels” and “clicking her toes” as if wearing high-heel shoes. The paradoxes continue as she’s “so full of rhythm” and “everyone knows just where she goes,” but Gabriel “can’t find the beat.”

“Fear [is] the mother of violence.” This would be Gabriel’s fears upon having quit Genesis, like an estranged son cutting off all contact with his abusive family, and daring to face the world alone. She is “making [him] tense to watch the way she breed,” the way she bears children, raises and thus controls them. Fear begets violence in the way Yoda warned little Anakin about, recall, for “self-defence is all you need.”

“It’s getting hard to breathe” and “to believe in anything at all” when you’re trapped in the company of people who won’t let you grow or believe in your own individual potential. His mother may be walking barefoot in the street, but he is “kicking the cloud with his moccasin shoes” in defiance at her rule over his life. It’s a hegemony of other people that can be extended to the media and the commodities we buy for our comfort, such as “TV dinner, TV news.” These things have a way of controlling our opinions and preferences, making us like and agree with whatever the powers-that-be want us to like and agree with.

In such manipulation and control over us, we yet again see how “fear [is] the mother of violence,” for the media teaches us who to fear and hate, thus manufacturing consent for war. Note in this connection how Gabriel was already growing more and more conscious of issues related to social justice and human rights. He’d given us a brief taste of that in Genesis with “Get ‘Em Out by Friday,” an indictment of capitalism and landlords, as I discussed in my analysis of Foxtrot. He would also discuss the future danger of rising sea levels in “Here Comes the Flood” (though as an allegory for other ideas that I’ll get into later) from his first solo album and again on Exposure (see below); and on his third solo album, he’d sing of the horrors of war (“Games Without Frontiers”) and of the apartheid oppression of black South Africans (“Biko”).

“The only way you know [the mother of violence] is there is the subtle flavour in the air,” for this is what makes it so “hard to breathe,” and it gets him “kicking the cloud” up there where that subtle flavour is. Up in the air, in the sky, is also where God is understood to be, that parental authority figure who is getting harder and harder to believe in. He, like the mother of violence, tends to make us all believe only in fear, pushing us to support all these horrible wars against imagined enemies, thus stifling the growth of social justice.

“A Wonderful Day in a One-Way World”

This is a jaunty song in A major; its superficial cheerfulness might make one think of Muzak, which is fitting, given the song’s story taking place in a supermarket.

After some nonsense vocalizing, Gabriel sings of driving his car to a supermarket where he’ll find nothing but problems: no place to park–a bad omen; the store is all deserted; he’s “stranded [t]here with [his] empty basket,” and he has no one to ask for help. When he’s about to leave, a “strange voice shouts, ‘Don’t let that good man out.'”

In other words, the cheerful music is completely ironic, for Gabriel is trapped in the hell of capitalism and consumerism. During the chorus, he sings, “Have a wonderful day in our one-way world.” There’s a way in the infernal supermarket, but no way out: there ought to be a sign over the entrance saying, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”

While most of the song is in 4/4, the chorus has alternating bars of 4/4 and 2/4 in its first four lines, these adding up to six quarter-note beats. Added to this is how the verse of the chorus is made up of six lines. So many sixes is suggestive of 666.

“Get along with mankind” sounds like an ironic way of saying, “Hell is other people.” Indeed, Gabriel is alone there, without help or friendly company, yet paradoxically, any others there seem only to be present to prevent his escape.

The sense of alienation in a capitalist world is heightened when Gabriel, in the next verse, “summon[s his] charm” in all irony and calls “an old man on the floor” a “scumbag.” The old man says he’s “been selling off eternal youth”; in other words, we see an example of how capitalism tries to monetize and commodify happiness. The people to whom he was peddling his fountain of youth “all got afraid, because” his old age is “the living proof” that his product doesn’t work.

The old man fancies himself a genius, like Einstein, when it’s obvious he’s a fraud, like so many billionaires today who are dubiously considered great talents, when really they’re just men with far too much money. Gabriel rightly thinks the old man has “got a nerve” to self-aggrandize so much; then he freely admits he’s no better, since he himself only serves money. After all, in the first verse, he fancies himself one of the “supermen” for whom others have “no respect.”

Indeed, we are all trapped in the hell of capitalism because “time is money, and money [we] serve.” And recall that it is this very servitude to money, with no exit from the hell of capitalism, that is what has forced Daryl Hall to stick to commercialized pop, pressured Gabriel to follow up “Solsbury Hill” with more hits, and as we will see later, forced Fripp to replace Hall’s vocals on most of the tracks on Exposure with other singers, since Hall’s manager, Tommy Mottola, didn’t want Hall to be associated with ‘weird’ music.

“White Shadow”

This last track on Side One, in stark contrast to the fake good humour of its predecessor, is musically rather sombre in tone, yet lyrically, it seems to have the same themes with the preceding track: capitalism, servitude to money, and the loneliness of alienation that comes from worshipping the Almighty Dollar.

The verses of the song have a chord progression of A♯ major, B major, C♯ major, and D♯ major. The chorus has a chord progression of B major, C♯ major, D♯ minor, and C♯ major again, then there’s a repeat of these first three chords. The song ends with a guitar solo by Fripp, using his signature sustained leads.

The sad tone of the song is established with lyrical imagery of “dust,” “chrome windows turned to rust,” “the spirit died,” “low on fuel,” “empty spaces,” “weighed down,” “the cry of a hound,” and “the haze.” “The green-backed words ‘In God we trust'” indicate how Americans worship the god of money, brainwashed by their media to believe that capitalism is ‘freedom,’ as opposed to the tyranny of those ‘dirty rotten commies.’ Their dead spirit is “all wrapped to go, like Kentucky Fried” Chicken, because it too has been commodified, bought, sold, and consumed.

The shadow is white because “it’s hard to tell black from white,” and “light can be deceptive with her rays.” Just as the previous song had a deceptively happy mood to disguise its hell, so does the darkness here seem bright, a white shadow of light, that ‘freedom’ in capitalism. To illustrate with an example, Hall may like being a star, but he doesn’t like being only a pop and R&B singer.

“Indigo”

This song started out as one performed without a lyric on Gabriel’s first solo tour in 1977: he’d introduce it as “A Song Without Words,” and in early renditions of the song, he’d sing syllables through a harmonizer, a type of vocal processing unit. By September of that year, he was performing the song with a lyric, and Tony Levin–who plays double bass on the recorded track and arranged its recorder parts (played by George Marge)–had called it the best song Gabriel ever wrote.

A melancholy tune starting with piano backing Gabriel’s vocals, “Indigo” is about a “straight domestic situation of a father dying in a house,” as Gabriel described it in an interview for New Musical Express, and added that “it’s like the feeling of taking a breath and stepping outside, whether it’s like in 2001 where they step out of the spaceship or just out of your front door or – in this case – out of breath.”^[ Looked at in this way, “Indigo” could thus be linked with the album’s general theme of his having left Genesis…”taking a breath and stepping outside”…the old Genesis frontman dying–“out of breath” because no longer singing for them, and stepping out of the spaceship, as in 2001, to go it alone on a new solo career.

He said that in writing the song, he was influenced by “Ol’ Man River,” a song about black people working hard on the Mississippi “while the white folk play”; perhaps he was thinking about the strain he felt during his last moments working with Genesis, so going solo, while being a kind of death for him, was also going outside for a breath of fresh air.

He sings, “It’s too late, this model’s out of date”: an old man feels his withering body falling apart and he’s dying, so it’s too late to save him. Metaphorically, “it’s too late” for Gabriel to save his life as the singer for Genesis, and his role in that band is “out of date.” He’s “got every spare part,” that is, the old man’s body is fully intact, or Gabriel is still a fully capable performer; “but there ain’t much heart inside here,” that is, the old man’s lost his will to live, and Gabriel’s heart just isn’t in singing for Genesis anymore.

“Not like the start,” when the man was young and healthy, or when Gabriel was fresh and full of ideas for Genesis, enthusiastically creative, for he knew how to survive back then. He “always tried to keep [his] troubles deep inside, where [he could] hide them,” back when he could cope with them; but “now, [he’s] open wide,” for the old man’s stepped outside the house, or Gabriel’s left Genesis, for that breath of fresh air, his new solo career.

When the old man dies, “again [he’ll] see [his] friends,” those who died before him, and he’ll join them again in heaven; or, when Gabriel quits Genesis, again he’ll see his family. “They’ll give [him] a life,” that is, they’ll lift his spirits and make him happy again. He’s “got nothing to fear from a showdown–[he’ll] go down quiet,” enjoying the peace of leaving the hell of life…or the stress of Genesis, where “the kids downstairs [i.e., the other four members of the band, are] making a hell of a din.”

Of course, we all know that “the wages of sin” is death (Romans 6:23), and the old man is “all alone” and about to receive those wages, as Gabriel the singer of Genesis is now alone, having gone solo, and thus receiving them, too.

Indigo is a kind of blue, a color that suggests sadness and coldness, the coldness of “the chilly winds.” His “time is running low” as he, the old man, is nearing death and about to “cross the dark, dark river” Styx, to go to Hades.

He’s “giving up the fight” to stay alive, whether as the dying old man or as the singer of Genesis. He’s now “a stranger again in [his] own land,” like Moses (Mozo) in the land of Midian (Exodus 2:22), though Gabriel feels like a stranger–as a solo artist having left Genesis–but in his own land, the world of music. He’s “going away,” dying like the old man, or dying as the singer of Genesis, needing comfort from his “darling” wife and his family.

“Animal Magic”

This song is much more upbeat, with a jangly piano part and a punchy beat.

The lyric revolves around two sets of metaphors–those of doing a magic act, and of war. These metaphors, which also include the animal imagery of a rabbit and a lamb, can once again be interpreted as being about his leaving Genesis to find his own voice as a solo singer. He’s doing the magic of music, and fighting a war, as it were, to assert his individual identity.

He feels betrayed by those who “let all [his and Genesis’s] secrets out. His “cover was completely blown,” but he’s “been watching the war films,” and he’s “got a few ideas of [his] own,” that is, ideas of how to go on as a solo artist, and now “the call for recruits [to get musicians to play his solo projects] was shown.”

He’ll “be joining the professionals,” seasoned session musicians like Levin and prog veterans like Fripp, for Gabriel “wants to be a man,” like all those boys who join the army and fight in wars in the hope of proving their manhood. And “with all that animal magic” of making music in the recording studio and onstage, he’ll “wave [his] wand” and we can “watch the rabbit disappear.” He’ll “learn to fight” for his musical independence.

His critics, he imagines, “still laugh at [him] for being as timid as a lamb,” the one that lay down on Broadway, recall, when he was just castrated Rael, as opposed to the Moses/Mozo he is now, “a stranger again in [his] own land,” putting music “on the air” and in his social isolation trying to get “exposure” (more on that soon enough) and recognition from music fans. He may still look like Rael, but “it’s no longer what [he is].”

Him going “to Northern Ireland” is clearly a reference to the Troubles that had already been going on there for about a decade–the country’s fight for independence from the UK, and something I dealt with in this film analysis. Thus inspired, Gabriel “came home with a new kind of charge,” and he wants to fight for his own independence. He’s “learned to hunt in the night” and learned “about camouflage.”

In his fight for that musical independence, “there’s no way [his critics will] get by [him] with the slightest sleight of hand.” He may be struggling now, but he’ll succeed in the end.

For now, he just needs more…

“Exposure”

This track is, of course, a collaboration with Fripp. It can also be heard on Fripp’s solo album, as we’ll be exploring below. The only major difference between Gabriel’s and Fripp’s versions is who does the vocal; the case of the latter, Terre Roche sings (and screams) “Exposure!” over and over again.

On this version, Gabriel sings the word repeatedly over a drum beat from Jerry Marotta, Levin’s bass, Sid McGinnis’s rhythm guitar chord of an F minor 11th (i.e., with a suspended B♭), and, most importantly, Fripp’s fluid, wavelike Frippertronics. Unlike on Fripp’s version, though, Gabriel adds the words “Space is what I need; it’s what I feed on,” and “Out in the open.”

This track is considered to be linked to Gabriel’s Mozo story, so we can interpret his meaning as a desire to get exposure and recognition as a solo artist, out of the shadow of Genesis. He needs and feeds on the space, out in the open, where he’ll be noticed as an individual musician.

“Flotsam and Jetsam”

This is another melancholy song, one with Levin’s Stick and another of his recorder arrangements played by George Marge. Gabriel sings over a piano.

He seems to be singing about his wife, Jill, and some problems in their relationship (calling her “darling,” and singing, “Oh, my love”). As with Hall and the love interest in his lyrics on Sacred Songs, though, Gabriel’s marriage to Jill here can be allegorized as his relationship with his music, his yearning to find a new identity.

“Doing nothing, stuck in the mud” after having left Genesis, Gabriel is trying to work out who he is as Mozo. He’s “just pumping the blood,” that is, just existing; his heart’s beating, but he’s without a purpose. “The water level’s getting low,” that is, his prospects–for establishing a new identity as a solo artist–aren’t yielding him much. “Something ugly’s going to show” if his luck doesn’t change soon.

“If only [he] could touch [her],” or his new, fully realized musical ideas. It might be alarming, for going out there alone involves so much risk in the music business; but of course, he means well. “Words have failed” in his relationship with Jill, because he hasn’t yet written the songs that will establish a new Peter Gabriel, so it’s like failed communication with his wife.

There’s the flotsam and jetsam of floating things jettisoned from the boat of his work with Genesis, all of which is useless to him now. “Nothing here is what it seems”: the successes of the Genesis years aren’t the good they seemed to be; nor is his ‘liberation’ from the band resulting, so far, in the successful solo career he hoped for.

“Christ, you show it” may be more than just swearing: Gabriel here could be comparing his own pain to that of Christ’s, a pain that both Gabriel and Jill know all too well.

“Perspective”

This is a more uptempo rock song, with sax (by Tim Cappello) and piano behind the rhythm guitar riff. We can hear Fripp’s guitar leads in the background during the bridge.

Gabriel “need[s] perspective ’cause [he’s] facing the wall” that’s blocking him from attaining his full musical potential…”’cause [he’s] not that tall,” or able yet to attain it and see beyond the wall. He’s “heard the trumpet call,” telling him to move beyond Genesis and find his new musical voice, but he needs to “know where things fall,” or how to find it, because he doesn’t trust his eyes to tell him where to look.

It’s “party time for the newly-wed,” since he’s been celebrating his ‘marriage’ to a new musical career, but the “colours ran as the images bled,” since he’s realized how hard it is to go solo. The “priest [is] crying [because] he’s got fire in his head” from contemplating how hard it will be for Gabriel, who doesn’t trust his eyes.

In the chorus, Gaia is the goddess of the earth. As a goddess, Gaia can be seen as a kind of Muse for Gabriel, inspiring his music. Yet as the Earth, if she even is that (“if that’s [her] name”), she’s been treated “like dirt,” or treated as if she were really the dirt of the Earth, or she’s been treated awfully–the environment’s being harmed (recall “Here Comes the Flood” in its literal meaning). After all, “the wind heals the fire, and blows the ash away” after the forest wildfires caused by global warming. Now, since she could also be his Muse, she is like the female love interest allegorized as the music he’s making (as was the case with Hall); and so, harm of the environment represents how he’s let her music suffer by not yet finding his own individual voice, and by letting his music be limited by capitalism’s demand that he produce hit singles.

Most of the song is in 4/4, but during the chorus about “Gaia,” we twice have two bars of 4/4 and one of 7/4.

So, he needs perspective, “sitting in a long, long hall…staring at the white, white wall.” Note that the roots of Genesis can be traced back to a band formed in the mid-1960s called Garden Wall, with Gabriel and later Genesis keyboardist Tony Banks and drummer Chris Stewart. Recall in this connection Gabriel’s “facing the wall” from the first verse. In the bridge, he’ll sing of “sitting in a garden full of chemical plant.” In all of these ways, we can link this song to his early years as a singer, and how he feels trapped in that old role, a wall stopping him from reaching his full potential.

Anyway, he’s “waiting for the phone to call,” to give him new musical opportunities. He “see[s] through red, red skies…to carry merchandise,” that is, he can see how capitalism is harming the environment and polluting the sky, and capitalism rules over his musical career. He can see this ugly reality, but he still doesn’t trust his eyes, for he “[doesn’t] like surprise.”

After a repeat of the “Gaia” chorus, we come to the bridge. Back in Genesis, he “used to be an industrial giant” with a band that had a growing audience, that old Garden Wall “full of chemical plant” that was harming his musical environment, his Gaia/Muse, by not letting him grow musically. He’s “trying very hard to get [her] off [his] mind,” to stop repeating the old toxic nonsense and produce a new Peter Gabriel. But instead, he was “acting like any man, taking [Gaia] for everything [he] can, just the same as all” of the rest of “blind” humanity.

The song ends with him ad-libbing.

“Home Sweet Home”

This is another melancholy ballad, about a man, Bill, who marries a woman, Josephine; but their marriage goes sour because of financial problems and social isolation. She kills herself and their child, Sam, by jumping out of a window. Bill then takes the insurance money and gambles with it, hitting the jackpot and getting “a country house with an antique carved oak door.”

Oh, sure, it’s “home sweet home,” unlike his family’s former humble abode, an apartment on the eleventh floor; but there’s no Josephine or Sam for him to enjoy the country house with.

We can see in this song how capitalism, with its need to focus on making as much money as possible, results in poverty and alienation. Even when we have lots of money, we’re still all too often left lonely.

This lyric also can be linked with Gabriel’s experiences first with Genesis, then his going solo. “Josephine,” on one level, could be Jill Gabriel, with himself as Bill. On another level, Bill, Josephine, and Sam could be Genesis, or the original trio of Garden Wall. The marriage is the formation of both bands, and their “home sweet home” is their growing success.

When things went sour for Genesis, Gabriel left and went solo, meaning the band was dead to him (i.e., the deaths of Josephine and their child). He had some success with “Solsbury Hill” (winning at “the casino” and buying the country house), but he still feels alone, for he hasn’t yet found his individual musical voice in the all too capitalist music industry.

IV: Exposure

The original name of Robert Fripp’s first solo album was supposed to be The Last Great New York Heartthrob. As we know, this album was, as were the other two analyzed here, made in New York City, where Fripp had absorbed the punk rock and new wave ideas of the city’s music scene at the time. So here we have an architect of prog rock, unhappy with the Frankenstein monster he’d helped create, making him break up King Crimson, just as Gabriel had left Genesis. Fripp was now reconciling himself with he simpler, more concise musical style that had replaced prog by the late 1970s. And he, like Hall and Gabriel, was trying to establish a new musical identity for himself.

Here is a link to all the lyrics and spoken word on the album.

“Preface”

The album begins with Brian Eno telling us of how he wishes to play “some of the new things [he’s] been doing, which [he] think[s] could be commercial.” Back from when I was a teen and owned the album on vinyl in the 1980s, I’d always thought that this was Fripp speaking, introducing the music of the album. I suppose Eno is speaking on behalf of Fripp here, with the idea that the music “could be commercial” as a kind of prog rock joke, for of course, hardly any of the music on Exposure sounds commercial in the slightest, except maybe for “North Star” (see below).

In any case, right after Eno says “commercial,” we hear a chorus of voices singing all the notes of several octaves’ length of an ascending C major scale, then those of two increasingly dissonant harmonies, again, huge clusters of notes. The last thing any of this sounds like is “commercial.”

Next, we hear Peter Gabriel talking while having accidentally touched a few keys at the lower register of a piano. Then, after he says “three…four…” we hear a telephone ring, a door creaking open, the sound of footsteps going over to answer the phone, and…

“You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette”

This song begins with Fripp playing a distorted A power chord in a repeated, fast rhythm, like the energy of punk rock. The one-chord riff is doubled in loudness with an additional track heard in the other channel of the stereo, and with a descending discrete glissando on the piano keys, Daryl Hall begins singing the song, this one being, with “North Star,” the only ones we end up hearing him sing on all of Exposure.

The song is a 12-bar blues riff in A, and it’s one of those rare songs for which Fripp actually wrote a lyric. It’s apparently about his relationship with his then-girlfriend, Joanna Walton, whose lyrics make up most of the rest of those on this album. In other words, Fripp is expressing his frustrations with her.

On another level, though, his frustrations with her can be seen as allegorical of such things as his relationship with the music business. In this way, we can see how Exposure parallels well with Sacred Songs.

Fripp, as we know, ended King Crimson in 1974 in part to escape the pitfalls of the music industry, and in part to pursue spiritual edification through his two mentors in the International Academy for Continuous Education (IACE) in Sherborne, Gloucestershire. He would later inch his way back into the music world and thus need to establish a new identity for himself outside of King Crimson. In these ways, we can also see how Exposure parallels Gabriel’s experience with his second solo album. Hence, these three albums make up an apt trilogy.

Hall sings as spokesman for Fripp, as Eno did (in my interpretation) for him in the “Preface.” Joanna makes Fripp “nervous”…as does (in my allegory) the music business, with its increasing demands that he and other artists make more “commercial” music. This is an industry where “it must be real bad karma for this to be [his] dharma with [them].” Again, since Hall was having similar struggles, it made perfect sense to have him sing Fripp’s lyric.

Fripp is on fire like “a cigarette,” burning from the pain that comes from desire–on the literal level, from his physical relationship with Joanna–and allegorically from the desire to make music in an industry that was increasingly restricting the freedom to go prog, as well as its other frustrations. Then, of course, there’s the desire to end desire through the spiritual edification Fripp hoped to get from the IACE, whose challenging disciplines and “therapeutic antics…really made [him] frantic with with [her, too, and the music business, as well].” He spoke of a need for a year to readapt to the regular world and music business after his intense ten-month experience with the IACE.

The “strategic interaction” he has with her and the music business requires a subtlety that stresses him out. The “fraction,” or divide between him on the one side, and her and the music business on the other, can be reduced no more—certainly, his frustration with them cannot be reduced. There’s “terminal inaction,” for neither side is able to make any progress towards a solution; as a result, each side is “a bitter hostile faction.” Fripp is so at one with being “anxious” that he’s “franxious”; this could also be a portmanteau of frantic and anxious. Transactions, and the diseases they are for the artist, are all that pleases the music business.

Whoever is demanding Fripp’s attention, be it Joanna, record company executives, or “the sage,” he or she is not going to get it. It would seem most likely to be the last of these three, since in his not-yet-attained spiritual discipline, he didn’t catch what “the sage” meant or saw. In any case, his “only consolation” is the music he enjoys, not making profits for the music business, or even Joanna, for that matter.

Next, the music switches from the fast-tempo, punkish 1950s rhythm-and-blues to a moment of Frippertronics, over which we hear the voice of Shivapuri Baba, a Hindu mystic from the early 1900s whose thick accent is hard for the English listener to understand, hence, perhaps, Fripp’s question of what the sage meant or saw. The sage advises us to think of God alone, to dismiss every distracting thought from our minds, and then we’ll see Him.

Fripp is burning up so much, he’s “about to ignite” from the fire of his samsara passion. This passion comes primarily from Joanna, who–as with the love interest of Hall’s lyrics on Sacred Songs–can also personify the pressure that his music conform to profitable music trends (hence the choice of punkish, 1950s-style rhythm and blues, as a parody of an old cliché, for this song?). She says she loves him, but his “feelings [are] shut down,” and he’s wanting “rejuvenation from [his] male emancipation,” that is, from women.

There’s a repeat of the lyrical content of the chorus (“strategic interaction,” etc.), an ad lib from Hall, and the song fades out with banging on the Fifties-style piano.

“Breathless”

This instrumental to a great extent may make one think of those heavy, guitar-based ones Fripp wrote for King Crimson during the John Wetton years (“Fracture” and “Red” in particular, with their use of distorted guitar and the playing of parallel major thirds as part of the main riff).

It opens with Fripp’s distorted guitar playing an F♯ power chord in alternating 5/8 and 7/8. Narada Michael Walden does some flashy drum licks, then we come into the main riff in 7/4, which has those parallel major thirds as described above.

That this instrumental reminds us of King Crimson, as do a number of other occasions on the album, makes us wonder if Fripp was hypocritically breaking his rule that one play in a King Crimson style only in King Crimson, and never bring another musical style into King Crimson; or if this is a case of Fripp, like Gabriel vis-à-vis Genesis, struggling to emancipate himself from his old band and trying, with some apparent difficulty, to establish a new, separate, individual musical identity? Is this why the instrumental is called “Breathless”? Is Fripp trying…and failing…to breathe, whereas elsewhere on Exposure, when he is managing to play in a different style, we hear breathing?

There’s a repeat of the sections with the riffs, the power chords in alternating 5/8 and 7/8, and the parallel thirds in 7/4, then the middle section is introduced with Fripp playing single tones in 11/8, subdivided 3+3+3+2. These are notes of an F♯ and two F♯s an octave higher, then an F♯ and two F♮s an octave higher, an F♯ and two Es an octave higher, and an F♯ and a D an octave higher. This is heard three times.

Now we hear the bass and drums playing a pattern of two bars of 11/8 (subdivided 4+4+3) and one of 7/4, while the lead melody does a polymetre of 9/4 (3+3+3) in relation to the bass and drum pattern. These are repeated several times, with modulations from F♯ to other, higher keys.

Then there’s a return to the 5/8 and 7/8 riff, then the 7/4 riff, and the instrumental ends.

“Disengage”

This song opens with droning Frippertronics and the voice of Edith Fripp (Robert’s mother), speaking not quite audibly or intelligibly. Soon, the opening riff kicks in, a heavy, dark one with arpeggios in 9/8, then a repeated strummed chord of G7♯9, in a bar of 4/4 and one of 2/4. This is all heard twice, then the arpeggios again, and we go into the first verse.

Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator sings this one, with a lyric by Joanna Walton. There is another version of this song, with a different lyric that’s sung by Hall.

After two lines of Hammill’s singing, the key switches to E♭ for two more lines, then it goes back to G for a screamed chorus of “Disengage!”, with that G7♯9 chord again, which is played in 4/4 and 2/4; then it goes up to A♭with the parallel chord, in the same alternating time signatures, then up to B♭, then up to C before returning to G for the next verse, which repeats the entire cycle.

Hammill sings about a “strict” and domineering, intimidating woman, “Mrs. Marion,” who frightens Joanna. Mrs. Marion and “her servant…speak to [Joanna’s] sister and [her] parents.” The two must be telling Joanna’s family something awful about her; she must be a child at the time, and I suspect Mrs. Marion is her teacher, informing her family of something naughty she’s done, which will get her in trouble…hence, she’s “trying hard not to shake.”

She wishes she could “disengage,” and be released, freed from the torment and punishment she’s about to receive.

Mrs. Marion “decodes [Joanna’s] secrets and [her] fragments,” leaving none of her sins unknown to her family, who surely feel ashamed of whatever she did. She’d “create any betrayal for their sake,” that is, do whatever it would take to save herself from punishment, even betraying her family to appease Mrs. Marion and her servant. Joanna, still trembling, is asked to wait in the hallway, separated from the decisions being made about her and thus excluded from participating in them. She screams her begging to “disengage.”

That Hall was originally meant to sing this song, among a number of others on Exposure that Fripp had to use other singers for, is instructive in how we can allegorize the meaning of Walton’s lyric. Though assuredly she had her own, personal meaning for what she wrote, that doesn’t mean we, the listeners, cannot find an allegorical interpretation that fits in with the overall themes of Fripp’s trilogy of albums he produced, contributed music to, and felt artistically frustrated with when hindered from making them the way he wanted to.

Hall’s management restricted his involvement with Exposure for the same reason they delayed the release of Sacred Songs: they didn’t want their big pop star associated with ‘weird’ music for fear of alienating his fans, and thus lessening their profits from lowered album sales. The management is like Mrs. Marion, who is “strict with her servant,” anyone else working for said management, forcing Hall to sit outside in the hall while they discuss the future of his career without him being involved in the decision-making. He’s shaking in a rage over it, wanting to “disengage” from the music business and its loyalty to the dictates of capital.

Her parents and sister can thus represent Hall’s fans, against whom he’s worked for the sake of being allowed to make music more freely, with the permission of the likes of RCA–he’d “make any betrayal for their sake.” She, representing Hall, is “muttering words to [Mrs. Marion] for convenience” in the hopes of achieving that freedom, but she has “to head for the door,” since Hall is being excluded from the decisions being made about his musical career.

“Mrs. Marion screams over [her] shoulder,” making those unwanted decisions, and Joanna’s/Hall’s “walking out’s just another metaphor” for being excluded. Fripp, empathizing with Hall’s plight and equally frustrated at the thwarting of his own musical expression, makes his signature screaming guitar phrases to end the song.

“North Star”

This is the other song on Exposure to have Hall’s vocals, and it’s a good thing, too, for he does some of the best singing I’ve ever heard him do anywhere.

The musical style of the song is fitting for his vocal talents, too, for it lends itself well to his more usual “blue-eyed soul” sound, with a backing guitar part that might remind us of what would come out two years after Exposure, namely, “Matte Kudasai,” from the 1981 King Crimson album, Discipline. Indeed, the link between “North Star” and “Matte Kudasai” can be heard as part of the “Drive to 1981.”

The main chords used for the verses are an F♯ minor seventh and an E major, strummed to a mellow, laid-back beat in a shuffle rhythm.

When Fripp had his ten-month stay with the IACE in Sherborne House, in intensive, austere study of Gurdjieff’s Fourth Way principles as taught by his disciple, JG Bennett, Fripp described the experience as a spiritual awakening to make “the top of [his] head blow off.” It changed his life, leaving his worldview permanently altered.

Gurdjieff taught that humanity is generally in a state of “waking sleep,” and thus in need of a spiritual awakening to discover their true selves, transforming man into “what he ought to be.” So Fripp’s experience of these teachings put him on a path comparable to Hall’s and Gabriel’s, one to discover who he really is as a person and as a musician; recall Hall’s similar interest in esotericism and mysticism.

Having Hall sing “North Star” therefore is perfectly fitting, since Walton’s lyric, about being “with love, how sweet, how filled, now time,…time’s still,…how clear,” can express the relationship one has with the “North Star” as symbolizing the spiritual enlightenment and awakening Fripp experienced during his stay with the IACE.

“We stare” at the North Star, admiring its beauty and enjoying the enlightenment it represents. “How far” away it is, yet “how clear” and “how near,” too. We “touch” it and feel “how warm” the love is. It’s “within you, with you, with love.” So enlightenment is a far away thing, and yet paradoxically, it’s also very close to us…if we’re awake to it.

Such an idea is comparable to the Hindu idea of Brahman and Atman, that latter being a manifestation of the former–“how near.” (Recall in this connection how JG Bennett made contact with the Shivapuri Baba, the Hindu sage living in Nepal, and so he was influenced by Hindu ideas.) Yet, at the same time, it requires great discipline to relinquish the ego and all of its selfish desires in order to attain the unifying of Atman with Brahman.

The paradox of salvation by grace, on the one hand, and by works on the other, exists in religious traditions around the world. Spiritual liberation is said to be “within you, with you, with love,” yet you have to work to attain it. Fripp would have understood this paradoxical experience when he felt the grace make “the top of [his] head blow off,” yet also appreciated the importance of a disciplined mind doing the hard work of attaining that spiritual awakening.

So the paradox is understood when Hall sings, “I stand in the hallway; she stands in the hall,” she being a personification of the North Star and of enlightenment. “Hallway” and “hall” are contrasted here, as if farther away from each other, yet they’re the same place–“how far…how near.” (Of course, “hall” being the singer’s surname also means she is “within [him], with [him].”) He stands “at the doorway,” and “she stands at the door” (John 10:9)–again, the same idea: they’re treated as different, far off, yet as the same, “how near.”

He leans “in the window”; “she leans on the wind.” This pun on wind and window again suggests a paradoxical closeness and separation, while “wind” can be a reference to the ruach, or Spirit of God; in other words, it’s his relationship with spirituality and mysticism, near and far away.

He “wait[s] for beginnings; she waits for the end.” He’s at the beginning of his spiritual quest, while she’s at its end goal, waiting for him to get there. The relationship can be represented as two lovers, as with Hall and the love interest in Sacred Songs, being him and his music, or him and the spirit he wants to be at one with–Atman and Brahman, or the bride and groom of the Song of Songs.

“Chicago”

This song is essentially a blues riff in E minor, though not exactly of the 12-bar format, since a move to the subdominant A minor happens twice with returns to the tonic E before going to the dominant B major. In the background, we hear bluesy piano, a thumping bass-line, and some melancholy Frippertronics. Peter Hammill is singing, while another version features him with Terre Roche, and of course there’s one with Hall singing.

On the surface, it’s a song about a man trying to court a woman, him clumsily trying to put on the charm, smiling “like Chicago,” as lyricist Joanna Walton claimed Fripp did when courting her. (Fittingly, the music apes an urban Chicago blues style.) On an allegorical level, though, the “simplest romance” can be heard as the relationship between the spiritual aspirant and ‘God.’

So Fripp, the spiritual aspirant in Sherborne House, smiles like Chicago, and Joanna is the ruach that “laughs like the breeze” at his clumsy attempts at charm and at attaining a spiritual awakening, with his “minor mysteries” being so trivial compared to her divine, great mysteries. As a result, he “collide[s] with her softness,” not just as a man crashing against a woman’s soft body, but also his sinful nature hitting against her divinity. His “echoes of her movements” are thus “delicate obscenities” in how a sinner tries, and fails, to be a saint like the Hindu Shivapuri Baba.

Recall that Chicago is known as the “Windy City,” not just literally from the weather (i.e., the cold winds coming from Lake Michigan), but also from its windbag politicians from the 19th century, who boasted about the city and were “full of wind” and “hot air.” So the boastful wind could represent how Fripp tried to make himself seem desirable to Joanna; yet her laughing “like the breeze” makes her also like Chicago, making the two love-birds one.

His attempt at wooing her is “a one-quarter rain dance,” his feeble attempt to invoke rain, or get her love, allegorized as an attempt to get divine aid–“half of it’s prayer,” partially spiritual aspiration, partially the “simplest romance.” “She’s the gentlest pretender,” the gentle, loving divinity at play with her maya of illusion, while he in his awkwardness is “a clown on a spree.” So this clumsy courtship can also be allegorized as akin to the bride and groom relationship in the Song of Songs, of her eternity being in love with the awkward productions of time.

“NY3”

This track was, again, originally one with Hall singing, and called “New York, New York, New York,” but as already explained, Hall’s management wouldn’t allow Fripp to use the vocal track, so he instead took fragments of a bitter, nasty argument he’d recorded of a girl and her parents, neighbours of his at the time, presumably in Hell’s Kitchen.

In both versions, we get a sense of the alienation one must feel living in New York City, one of the nerve centres of global capitalism, as I mentioned above. In Hall’s version, he opens by singing, “She wanted to scream in the forest, but she was afraid no one would hear; instead, she screamed on the corner…New York, New York, New York.” Well, in Fripp’s version, the girl screams something else to her mom and dad, who are furious with her.

In their argument, we learn that the girl has been knocked up by some boy who her mother refers to as being…who knows?…white, black, or Hispanic–though her mother uses racial slurs for the latter two instead. She regards her daughter as so promiscuous that she has no idea who the father of the unborn baby is. She’ll have to get an abortion, though her father is dead against the idea.

The music is fittingly tense, with more of Fripp’s trademark, dissonant arpeggios played against odd and irregular time signatures, punctuated by Narada Michael Walden’s virtuosic drumming in the background. The main riff is in alternating bars of 4/4 and 5/4, that latter of these including a syncopated rhythm; it also features the dominant 7th#9 chord again.

“Mary”

Terre Roche sings this lyric by Joanna Walton, with Fripp’s guitar playing gentle chords in the background. Again, another version had a vocal by Hall, but Fripp had to replace it with Terre’s. One verse is sung twice, with melodic variations.

The song is a gentle ballad about the singer wishing to show love and compassion to a lonely girl. It, too, can be allegorized as the divine wishing to unite with the individual soul, to end the latter’s separation from the former and the rest of the world, a union of Brahman and Atman. This all ties in with Fripp’s and Hall’s spiritual aspirations in the mid to late 1970s.

The compassionate one would “embrace her forever, and to have her find some peace, she who was so lonely,” to help her attain eternal moksha, nirvana, salvation in heaven. The loneliness the girl felt “came with volumes of feeling [the singer has] never known, except perhaps for Mary,” always the singer’s “sister.” Mary could be seen as Mary Magdalene, or a ‘sinner’ like her, weeping in repentance and given love, to the shock of self-righteous moralists witnessing the forgiveness. As for being the singer’s sister, this means the close relationship between saint and sinner, Brahman and Atman, eternity and the productions of time, or the groom and bride of the Song of Songs.

“Exposure”

Side Two of the LP begins with the title track, Fripp’s version of the song on Side Two of Peter Gabriel’s “Scratch” album. A version of this was done with Hall singing again, and Fripp had to replace Hall with Terre Roche, her doing a particularly intense vocal performance including screaming. Here’s a video of the song.

I’ll go more into the musical structure of the track this time. It’s in E minor, with the same backing track as Gabriel’s version, that is, with the Frippertronics, the bass and drums, and the rhythm guitar part. The bass is playing in 5/4. We hear in Fripp’s version a chant of “X…P…O…S…U…R…E,” in 3/4. There’s a slight tapping of D on piano keys.

In this version, we also hear a recorded quote of Bennett saying, “It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering.” Perhaps that is what Terre’s screaming is meant to suggest.

The Frippertronics include a motif with notes of the subtonic D sliding up to the tonic E, then up to G, A, B, and a high D. These are layered through the tape loops: first the D and E, then the G and A, then the B and high D. Other Frippertronics loops are added, too, of course.

Is she screaming because Fripp considers exposure to the music industry, and its pitfalls, to be a frightening thing? We all know of his dread of the music business, of how the capitalist profit motive poisons art, so my interpretation is a distinct possibility, if only unconsciously felt by Fripp when recording the track.

“Häaden Two”

This track, to be perfectly frank, is a total mystery to me as to whatever it’s supposed to mean, if anything at all…and that goes…double…for its title, so I won’t even bother to interpret it. In any case, the track seems to be a Dadaist cutting and pasting of random, unrelated elements, except for the “incredibly dismal, pathetic chord sequence.”

It opens with what everyone describes as Frippertronics, with notes of B and E♭, the latter sometimes changing to E♮, other times to D. I think to this day that it’s an organ, though the unanimity of the internet insists that it’s Frippertronics, so I guess I’ll have to leave it at that. In any case, this opening is also used as the beginning for King Crimson’s song, “Neurotica,” heard on the 1982 album Beat, starting Side Two of the LP.

This version of the opening also includes a recording of Bennett saying, “If you know you have an unpleasant nature, and dislike people, this is no obstacle to work.” The quote is repeated at the end of the track. I suspect that, given Fripp’s reputation as a dictator among fellow King Crimson musicians, he has used Bennett’s words as a guide to his professional life.

Next, we hear groupings of Fripp’s atonal guitar arpeggios, mostly in five, with the stress on the first and fourth beats, except for the third iteration, which is four beats, and the last iteration, which has the stress on the first and third beats of the quintet of notes. At the end of each of these guitar groupings is another recording, the first of which is an unidentified woman speaking.

After the second grouping, we hear a backwards recording of Graham Chapman saying, “One thing is for sure: a sheep is not a creature of the air.” After the third grouping of arpeggios, we hear what sounds like a man on the TV or radio talking about “a new governor of racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud, income tax evasion.” After the next grouping, it’s apparently Eno talking about the “chord sequence” (I always thought that was Fripp’s voice). And after the last grouping, it’s a repeat of the Bennett recording.

“Urban Landscape”

As I’ve already discussed this one in my analysis of Sacred Songs, please scroll back up there for it.

“I May Not Have Enough of Me But I’ve Had Enough of You”

As I mentioned above in Sacred Songs, this track was originally called “NYCNY,” with Hall singing; but here, Fripp had to replace the vocal track with singing by Hammill and Terre Roche again, using a new lyric by Joanna Walton. Since the music is the same as in “NYCNY” (except this time, without the 11/8 ending), I won’t be analyzing the music again.

As for the lyric, it’s all just nonsensical variations on “that is the way it is,” meant to make us find the notion itself nonsensical. In other words, ‘No, that’s not just the way it is: you have no logical basis for accepting the current reality as it is; we can change things if we try. I always used to interpret the meaning of the lyric as just politicians’ mumbo-jumbo.

Given how this track and “Urban Landscape,” are on Sacred Songs, and I interpreted them both as about New York City being one of the nerve centres of global capitalism (“NY3″/”New York, New York, New York,” too), we can interpret Walton’s lyric as being of a similar meaning. In other words, Thatcher’s notion of TINA is bs: yes, there is an alternative to capitalism–socialism. Those right-wing politicians just don’t want to try it.

“I may not have enough of me,” that is, I don’t have enough to take care of my basic material needs (I’m too poor), “but I’ve had enough of you,” capitalism. See the current protests in Europe (as of the publication of this article) and other parts of the world to see what I mean.

“First Inaugural Address to the IACE Sherborne House”

This is just about five seconds of what sounds like, first, a needle coming off of a record, then what sounds like a bit of white noise. Apparently, Fripp condensed a recording of a forty-minute speech by Bennett into this brief sound bite.

Since we know that Fripp’s reading of the second inaugural address made “the top of [his] head [blow] off, because [he] knew this was exactly what [he] had to do” (i.e., this was the powerful, personal epiphany he had, causing ego death for him and prompting him to break up King Crimson), perhaps what we hear here is a sound representation of Fripp’s head ‘blowing off.’

“Water Music I”

This track, like “Water Music II,” is all Frippertronics, Fripp’s layered tape loops of sustained guitar leads all sounding fittingly wave-like and watery. We soon hear, over the Frippertronics, a recording of Bennett predicting global cooling, a supposed new ice age coming, with the north all frozen, and many cities flooded due to rising sea levels. It was predicted to occur forty years from Bennett’s speaking, if not sooner.

This prediction, of course, has been discredited, with the diametric opposite happening instead. Ironically, though, the prediction of rising sea levels from global warming is true, which leads to…

“Here Comes the Flood”

This song originally appeared on Peter Gabriel’s first solo album (“Car”), its very last track. Unhappy with this version, which he felt to have been overproduced, he did a new, stripped-down version of it for Exposure, with just his vocal, piano, Frippertronics, and a synthesizer played by Eno. This version is truer to Gabriel’s original intentions for it.

The lyric, to a great extent, is actually about a metaphorical flood of the collective thoughts of all of humanity shared through telepathy, though the prediction of rising sea levels is nonetheless prescient. I imagine that, for Fripp, the prediction is also metaphorical for what he saw–from his spiritual awakening with Bennett–as a seismic shift in how music would be made, a transition from the “dinosaur” prog rock of the early 1970s to a more localized, self-sufficient way of making music, completed as of 1981.

The imagery in the lyric is certainly dark, almost apocalyptic, since many–Gabriel imagined–would never accept the shift to collective consciousness: “When the night shows…all the strange things…early warnings. Stranded starfish have no place to hide…the tall cliffs…were getting older…jaded underworld…waves of steel hurled metal at the sky…the nails sunk in the cloud…we’ll say goodbye to flesh and blood…any still alive…[will] be those who gave their island to survive…dreamers, you’re running dry.”

If Gabriel is imaging that the new telepathy and “flood” of collective thought will ultimately unite humanity in a state of peace and harmony, then according to his lyric, there’ll first be a temporary hell we’ll go through in making the change from our former, insular, alienated selves, since many won’t want the change, as I mentioned above. This shift in consciousness ties in with Fripp’s experience of ego death that made “the top of [his] head [blow] off.” So this painful purgatory would ultimately lead to a telepathic heaven.

Certainly there’s a lot of hell flooding over in Gabriel’s lyric “When the flood calls, you have no home, you have no walls” (i.e., you’ll lose your sense of privacy because all thought will be public). “Don’t be afraid to cry at what you see,” that is, don’t be afraid to show your true emotions and vulnerability in this new social openness, for “the actor’s gone, there’s only you and me.” There will be no more phony acting in society: we’ll all be real with each other. The melancholy nature of the music emphasizes the sense of horror at the changes to be going on around us, traumatic for those who can’t accept them. The rejecters of the “flood” should “drink up,” though, for they’re “running dry.”

Part of what Fripp hates in the music business is its capitalistic nature, of course, exploiting musicians to make profits and stifling their artistic integrity. Capitalism has also led to climate change and rising sea levels. Finally, the telepathic shared communication can be a cure to capitalistic alienation, which in turn leads to…

“Water Music II”

This track, as I said of “Water Music I,” is all Frippertronics, but it’s longer and without a recording of Bennett warning of an apocalyptic ice age. Instead, it’s all peaceful, serene, and of pure beauty. It has the same undulating quality, but we’ve passed the traumatic feeling of those who wanted to keep their egos and stay insular, isolated, and separated from the rest of humanity. This here is Gabriel’s “flood” of a collective consciousness, a telepathic heaven following the hell of resisting a dying ego.

This is nirvana, the infinite ocean of Brahman when Atman is united with it. This is the ego death that blew the top of Fripp’s head off, that seismic shift in consciousness that replaces the old “dinosaur” rock with a new music of small, mobile, intelligent and independent units, free from the slavery of the capitalistic big record companies.

“Postscript”

What does Eno mean when he says, “the whole story is completely untrue, a big hoax”? Does he mean global cooling? How “commercial” the music on Exposure could be?

Or is prog rock the “big hoax”? Is the entire music industry “a big hoax”? Is the album Exposure the “hoax,” the sense of gloom and doom so much of it seems to convey? Has Fripp just been fooling around the whole time, making a Dadaist provocation, like “Häaden Two”?

Perhaps it’s all of these things at once.

The album ends with a hanging up of the phone (from the “Preface”), footsteps walking away, and a door closing, thus bookending the entire album.

V: Conclusion

Sacred Songs, Scratch, and Exposure all represent attempts by Hall, Gabriel, and Fripp to liberate themselves from the gigantic musical monstrosities of Hall and Oates, Genesis, and King Crimson, as well as from the attempts by the capitalistic music business to pigeonhole each of the three musicians into particular genres for the sake of maximizing profits.

The three albums also represent, each in its own way, spiritual aspirations and a search for a new musical identity. Hall sought that spirituality through such esotericists as Aleister Crowley; Gabriel imagined a “flood” of collective consciousness to unite all souls together and rid us of the selfish ego; and Fripp used the teachings of Gurdjieff and Bennett to achieve his own spiritual awakening.

In all of these ways, Sacred Songs, Peter Gabriel (Scratch), and Exposure indeed make up a fitting trilogy of albums, even if they didn’t end up sounding the way Fripp had originally intended them to.