Africa Calling is special...

Africa Calling organiser Peter Gabriel.

12 April 2012

Peter Gabriel, the star who brought us World Music, talks proudly of his two babies - the Eden Project concert and four-year-old Isaac...

It is unbelievably difficult getting hold of former Genesis frontman Peter Gabriel. He's busy doing a Nelson Mandela concert in Norway with Annie Lennox. Then he's off to goodness knows where to start recording a new album and then, in between times, he's here at his home in Box, near Bath.

It's not just his home, this glorious mill house set down a tiny road - it's also home to his Real World Studio and his organisation Womad (World of Music and Dance). "It's quite difficult to find," his helpful assistant had told me over the telephone. I told her I knew exactly where Box was, for, many years ago, I applied for a job at Womad. There were two jobs going. I got down to the last three.

But, as it turns out, it is almost impossible to get to Box as, on the day I am due to meet Gabriel, the M4 is under such a deluge from torrential rains and storms that it has virtually turned into a river. I creep along until, far later than planned, I arrive at the mill where I find... absolutely no one.

Finally, I stumble into a room and find some cakes and some water and, a bit like Alice, I eat them. In comes a bald, goateed, rotund, happy-looking man. "Hello Lucy!" he says, pumping away at my arm. "I'm Peter Gabriel."

For a man who has a lot on his plate, 55-year-old Peter Gabriel looks remarkably relaxed. He veritably twinkles when he talks about the Africa Calling project. On Saturday, to run at the same time as the Live8 concerts, Gabriel, Midge Ure, Youssou N'Dour and Womad will put on an event at Cornwall's Eden Project to rival - "Ahem, complement," says Gabriel - the main event in London.

Is it, to be honest, a sop to pacify all the people who got cross with Bob Geldof when he announced the Eurocentric line-up at the Hyde Park event? High-profile artists such as Damon Albarn and Senegalese star Baaba Maal questioned the fact that Geldof had not included any African acts in the show. Geldof, in his true abrasive style, said that African acts weren't big enough to draw in the crowds. "It's not Womad," he said.

"Two things happened," says Gabriel. "Before the whole Live8 shit-hit-the fan stuff kicked off, Midge Ure wanted us to include a lot of African elements into his Murrayfield show on 6 July. The second thing was that the Eden Project people asked me if I was interested in doing something and I thought we should think of putting on an exclusively African event.

"I then went to talk about it to Bob and told him I thought it was an owngoal, the non-inclusion of an African element. He argues, very strongly, that his job is to get the message across to the millions of viewers who will watch TV that day. He feels that if they are confronted with any artist they don't know, whether they come from Africa, London or New York, they will switch off."

Does Gabriel agree with that? "No," he says, "but I understand where Bob is coming from. I would say for sure that he's a cantankerous old sod, he has a big ego, but those two facts are what enable him to do amazing things.

"There is something childlike about the basic concept that poverty might be history, that by doing something, some lives might be saved. I would

argue that it doesn't matter how many records get sold or how many balding semi-retired musicians like myself get an audience, even if one life gets saved, it's better than sitting on our fat arses complaining about things."

Anyway, suffice to say that Gabriel has been left with the job of pulling out of the hat a festival big and African enough to satisfy baying media pundits and Geldof all at the same time. It is, of course, a logistical nightmare. Salif Keita was booked to play but, at the last minute, decided he wanted to play in Johannesburg instead. Why isn't he looking more panicked?

"I feel panicked underneath!" he says. "You know, you can tell African bands how long they can play for, but they could all go on for hours playing their best stuff and it feels wrong to be so prescriptive. I want the audience to get some understanding of Africa. My friend, Ayub Ogada, from Kenya, who's playing, says we should let the music do the talking. I think the point of all this is for us to let the African people say what they want to say."

I sense there is an element of competition between the two events. "Oh, no, no, no," says Gabriel, looking amused.

Having formed Genesis with his schoolfriends at Charterhouse, Gabriel started off in world music, in a small way, with Womad, 25 years ago. "I brought people over to the UK to perform gigs. I never made a penny, but I didn't expect to." Now Womad is huge, with annual concerts taking place all over the world.

What would he like to see happen in Africa? " I'd like there to be an international criminal court where people could take the dictators who have thieved all that money and get access to all those funds laying dormant in Swiss bank accounts."

He thinks technology is the way forward. "I'm a mad techno-junkie," he says. He spends an age telling me, in a state of excitement, about how the mobile phone could change the lives of many African people.

Gabriel has two daughters, Anna, 32, and Melanie, 30, by his first wife, Jill Moore. They met when they were teenagers and were married for nearly 20 years but split up when Gabriel embarked on an affair with American actress Roseanna Arquette.

After they split up, six years later, Gabriel went on to romance Sinéad O'Connor. That ended with O'Connor apparently attempting suicide.

He has, in the past, talked at length about his own depression in his forties, when he was coming out of his divorce and how he feared he had lost contact with his daughters.

But three years ago he married Meabh Flynn, a music technician-turned-costume designer who used to work with him in the studio. They have a son, Isaac, who is nearly four, and now Gabriel says he feels happier in his own skin.

"My daughters both live abroad. Essentially, I don't think they'll follow in my footsteps." he says, adding: "They love Isaac." Gabriel says he finds Isaac more tiring, in many ways, than his daughters were. Is this because he is an older dad? "Probably," he says, "but it's also to do with the fact he's a boy. He's always running around and climbing things and picking up sticks and pretending to shoot me."

Gabriel is a very hands-on father, though. "I was very busy when the girls were young. I've had much more time now to get up in the night and then play with him in the day than I did before. It's like having a second adolescence. I'm less concerned about my worldly success and more interested in bringing up Isaac. I really value the time I spend with him."

He admits he found it hard to come to terms with ageing. "There is so much pressure on musicians to look youthful," he says. "I've turned my back on my wilder days. I'm much more relaxed now."

Gabriel misses playing his own music. But, for now, he's had to put his own projects on hold until Saturday is over. "After that, I'm going to have a break and then go back to recording my own stuff," he says.

As I leave I tell him he turned me down for a job. "Not me!" he protests. "My organisation!" It's the same thing, isn't it? "Sometimes," he says, "but I never meant to be the man behind the record deals. I always thought I'd perform."

But not on Saturday? "No," he says, "but I'm happy about that!"

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