Peter Gabriel – Come Talk to Me

It was all over the internet earlier this week that John Cusack came out on stage at Peter Gabriel’s concert at the Hollywood Bowl (the Back to Front tour in honor of the So 25th anniversary tour) to give him a boombox for his performance of “In Your Eyes.”

I didn’t see Peter Gabriel on the So tour, but I saw the Secret World tour a couple of times. I have to say, those shows really fit the definition of spectacular. It was big, lots of musicians, lots of sets, lots of instruments – some of which you couldn’t identify – with things and people popping up out of the stage floor, moving down conveyor belts, I’d never seen anything like it.

I’d seen Peter Gabriel before as part of the Amnesty International tour but that was different. That had been one of those massive affairs that were big in the 80s, held at stadiums that could hold 100,000 people and featured several big name acts. Peter Gabriel was the highlight of that show for me but when Bruce Springsteen is on the bill and the venue is in Philadelphia, the vast majority of people have come for only one reason.

On the Secret World tour, he had the space and time to do whatever he wanted. This video comes from the DVD release of the tour’s stop in Italy and is pretty much the same as the shows I saw. I might just have to rewatch the whole thing.