Peter Gabriel (3rd Album)

Very good vinyl and  cover (minor shelf wear).

Peter Gabriel is the third album by English rock musician Peter Gabriel, released in May 1980. The album has been acclaimed as Gabriel's artistic breakthrough as a solo artist and for establishing him as one of rock's most ambitious, innovative musicians.^[13] Gabriel also explored more overtly political material with two of his most famous singles, the anti-war song "Games Without Frontiers" (which became a number four hit and remains his joint highest charting single in the UK) and the anti-apartheid protest song "Biko", which remembered the murdered activist Steve Biko. The album was remastered, along with most of Gabriel's catalogue, in 2002.

This album is often referred to as Melt owing to its cover photograph by Hipgnosis.^[14]

Gabriel's ex-Genesis bandmate Phil Collins, who succeeded Gabriel as Genesis' lead vocalist, plays drums on several of the album's tracks. In particular, Collins played drums on "Intruder", which has been cited as the first use of Collins' "gated drum" sound. This effect, as created by Steve Lillywhite, Collins and Hugh Padgham,^[15] was featured on Collins' and Genesis's recordings throughout the 1980s. The distinctive sound was identified via experiments by Lillywhite, Collins and Padgham, in response to Gabriel's request that Collins and Jerry Marotta not use cymbals on the album's sessions. The sound was significant enough and influential enough that it has been claimed by Gabriel, Padgham, Collins, and Lillywhite. The drum sound on this album has been noted by Public Image Ltd as influencing the sound on their album Flowers of Romance,^[16] whose engineer, Nick Launay, was in turn employed by Collins to assist him with his first solo album, Face Value.^[16] Paul Weller, who was recording with his band The Jam in a nearby studio, was asked to contribute guitar to "And Through The Wire". Gabriel believed Weller's intense guitar style was ideal for the track.

The album, produced by Gabriel and Lillywhite, was Gabriel's first and only release for Mercury Records in the United States, after being rejected by Atlantic Records, who handled U.S. distribution for Gabriel's first two solo albums and his last two albums with Genesis. Upon hearing mixes of the album's session tapes in early 1980, Atlantic A&R executive John Kalodner deemed the album not commercial enough for release, and recommended that Atlantic drop Gabriel from their artist roster. By the time the album was released by Mercury several months later, Kalodner, now working for the newly formed Geffen Records label and having realised his mistake, arranged for Geffen to pursue Gabriel as one of their first artist signings.^[17] Geffen (at the time distributed by Atlantic sister label Warner Bros. Records) re-issued the album in 1983 after Mercury's distribution rights to the album lapsed, and had marketed it in the United States until 2010, when Gabriel's back catalogue was reissued independently by Real World Records. (Coincidentally, Mercury is now sister label to Geffen after Mercury's parent PolyGram merged with Geffen's parent Universal Music Group in 1999.)