Songs I wish I'd written: #8
“Here Comes the Flood”
by Peter Gabriel
When I was in my first band, it was 1987. I was fifteen years old, and the first song I learned was “Abacab” by Genesis.
What I knew then of Peter Gabriel was that he put out a record called So the previous year, spawning hits like “Sledgehammer,” “Big Time,” and “In Your Eyes” (which would become hugely popular when it was used years later in the movie Say Anything). I didn’t know Gabriel’s history with Genesis, and I certainly didn’t know his first four solo records (the first of which came out when I was five). It wasn’t until well after college that I accumulated all of Gabriel’s solo works.
Because I experienced his discography in reverse, I first heard “Here Comes the Flood” off of 1990’s Shaking The Tree. I forgot about it for years until I realized it was first released on Gabriel’s debut solo record from 1977. But to me the 1990 version is the best version.
In the 1990 version, Gabriel’s voice sounds heavier, wearier. The song’s instrumentation is only piano – his always exquisite sounding pianos – and some slight background synthesizer (or organ? I can’t tell, only piano is listed). The piano voicings are wide and rich, and they provide only harmonic structure and motion. The vocal melody is the focal point of the song, and it kind of wanders atop the piano like a lazy, reflective Paul Simon. The song needs nothing else, and this is why I think it’s superior to the previous releases (the original 1977 recording and the one from 1979 with Robert Fripp): it’s a perfectly framed moment in time that the listener gets to stretch out in. What a good way to spend four and a half minutes.
While the song was written with a specific idea in mind, one of the things I love about the lyrics is how they describe instantaneous change. I’ve always heard this song to be about transitioning from life to death, and how your life becomes a dreamworld; and how working together to pursue the dreamers’ dreams is the only way to make this life better.
I’m projecting a lot onto this song, I know. I think. I’m OK with that.
lyrics
When the night shows
The signals grow on radios
All the strange things
They come and go as early warnings
Stranded starfish have no place to hide
Still waiting for the swollen Easter tide
There’s no point in direction
We cannot even choose a side
I took the old track
The hollow shoulder across the waters
On the tall cliffs
They were getting older, sons and daughters
The jaded underworld was riding high
Waves of steel hurled metal at the sky
And as the nail sunk in the cloud
The rain was warm and soaked the crowd
Lord, here comes the flood
We will say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent, in any still alive
It’ll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you’re running dry
When the flood calls
You have no home, you have no walls
In the thunder crash
You're a thousand minds within a flash
Don't be afraid to cry at what you see
The actors gone, there’s only you and me
And if we break before the dawn
They’ll use up what we used to be
Lord, here comes the flood
We will say goodbye to flesh and blood
If again the seas are silent, in any still alive
It’ll be those who gave their island to survive
Drink up, dreamers, you’re running dry