![youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vKNLtHONvBs/maxresdefault.jpg)
Sting and Peter Gabriel Trade Hits, Covers During Three-Hour Tour KickoffĤ. Played by Gabriel himself, by the way, because he’s just got it like that.
![youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/6a/3f/f36a3fadbbefe856a9989fca925ec15c.jpg)
A lesser arrangement would’ve resorted to a trumpet, but the song is far too stately for such brassiness, and the flute’s sturdy quiver is a perfect musical representation of the lyric’s anxious confidence.
![youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic youtube peter gabriel in your eyes acoustic](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_JEXxiu1AV8/hqdefault.jpg)
But “Solsbury Hill” keeps it simple: Four notes, a clarion-call sound-off at the beginning of each lyric, incandescent but not obnoxious. The list of iconic flute hooks in rock history is not a particularly long one, and is undoubtedly crowded with applicants from Jethro Tull, one of the few prog bands to match ’70s Genesis for both popularity and pomposity. But if the guitars are undoubtedly the blood pumping through “Solsbury Hill,” it still all stems from the beating heart of the drum thump, steady throughout, keeping the song even-keeled, marching forward and undeniably alive.ģ. Part of the reason the song’s unusual time signature works is because it’s all in the guitars - that gorgeous spider web of an acoustic riff (played by Lou Reed and Alice Cooper guitarist Steve Hunter) circling the song’s perimeter and providing its pristine, immediately recognizable framework. The fact that it’s always noticeable but never distracting is a tremendous accomplishment for Gabriel as a songwriter, and makes “Solsbury” a standout from the very beginning.Ģ. The 7/4 stomp of “Solsbury Hill” is one of its indelible and striking features, that feeling of a beat missing in every measure giving the song a constant sense of struggle - and subsequently, of endurance. Writing a perfect pop song is hard enough, but writing one in an imperfect time signature is damn near impossible.