petergabriel.com

what great stories! i do prefer Starbuck's and Soil's ideas for the title. regardless, i love that cover. SO he does look a bit too acceptable. SO it shows what a beautiful face he has. SO it exudes the emotional, human, and sexual nature of the music. I LOVE IT.

Now, I don't know if this is true or not but I remember reading that the album title came about due to a conversation Gabriel had with his then wife. I'm not sure who said what to whom (because I read this back in 1986 when the album came out) On being questioned on whether they were having an affair, the respondent answered: "So"

Interesting thread. PG may have gotten tired of getting asked about the title. I remember him telling American interviewers ca 1986 that the word so "has a nice shape but little meaning." As to PG not liking the album cover, I'm surprised and yet not suprised. I think it's his most naked cover (lack of makeup, special effects, disotrtions, whatever.) I guess even very beautiful people get sick of looking at their own faces. I'm ugly, so I wouldn't know, but I'm sure sick of seeing my face! I'm glad he doesn't look like the So album cover anymore. He looks a lot more comfortble in his own skin.

Vroom, that is indeed interesting. Apropos PG and wife. I wonder if their friends sometimes call them Meahb & Gabe, that would be funny. :-]

If we're talking about SO then it would be Jill and Gabe.

I had the good fortune to speak with Robert Lepage for a long period of time a few months back. He said that he always felt that SO had something to do with the album being more of a SOLO effort, as if this was Peter making a conscious statement that this was HIS music and HIS effort and he wanted to claim more ownership of it. I don't think Robert meant this in a 'peter is being selfish' kind of way, but rather In a way that suggests that Peter was VERY proud of what he'd created.

Yes Jen, I know Vroom was talking about Jill. But I was talking about Meabh. Sorry for having been so off-topic though. And I mean really really off-topic.

Interesting tstevens, but how does Lepage know that? Oh right you only said he had the feeling. Peter can be proud of his other albums too though. Weren't the other albums HIS effort too??

Yeah, very interesting comment by Lepage. Perhaps we'll never know why So got its distictive monkier. Perhaps several cases of beer went into the naming session and even PG, Lanois and the crew can't remember, either!

I find this lovely,from "Mojo" april 2010- Question of Mojo (about his solo albums) : "Why discontinue the self-titled series? Why no Peter Gabriel 5 ?" Peter: "Probably because it was so long between albums I forgot what the previous concept was" he laughs. "I could put a nice shine on it but it may have been as simple as that. I thought, I'll start another series and make every album two letters. I figured out early on that if you have few letters,you can have them quite large as a graphic rather than just text,whether on CD's,posters,anything." "I'd never wanted the acceptable photo on the front, and Gail (Colson), who was managing me at the time,was pushing hard. I thought,I've never done this before so I'll give it a go. To this day people exect me to look like that album cover and are disappointed at the blurred reality " (laughs). Peter Gabriel. For Rraven: i posted this also in this thread,you are right Peter is fantastic,his irony is great! . . . .and irony is a quality of highly intelligent people. . .

I remember reading that the record company was tired of the self titled 'Peter Gabriel' with no other distinctions between them.