The Rhythm of the Heat: Inside Peter Gabriel's WOMAD ’82

I co-founded WOMAD, the World Music Festival launched with Peter Gabriel, taking charge of the business, the WEA International distribution deal, and the festival’s first compilation record.

Peter Gabriel fans, rejoice.

The former Genesis frontman has opened the vaults for Live at WOMAD 1982 — the complete recording of his July 16, 1982 set at the first World of Music, Arts and Dance festival in Shepton Mallet, England.

Gabriel premiered songs from his not-yet-released fourth solo album Peter Gabriel (currently known as Security), alongside “Biko” — his unflinching exposé of the murder of James Biko by the South African apartheid regime, from his third solo album (now called Melt) — and the live-only fan favorite “I Go Swimming.” He was joined by guitarist David Rhodes, bassist John Giblin, synthesist Larry Fast, drummer Jerry Marotta, vocalist Peter Hammill, and the Bristol drum-and-dance group Ekomé.

Released digitally on August 8 via Real World Records, the nine-track album captures the urgency of a night that almost didn’t happen — the culmination of years of battles with record labels and the struggle to launch a festival that would bring the world’s music together on one stage.

I launched the WOMAD Festival with Peter Gabriel and three other gentlemen from Bristol — Thomas Brooman, Martin Elbourne, and Stephen Pritchard. I was the man in charge of putting the business together, securing the Warner–Elektra–Atlantic distribution deal, and executive-producing the first WOMAD album. I’m proud to see that Peter has finally released the music recorded at that festival in 1982.

In many ways, it’s the same spirit driving my work today with the Buena Vista Orchestra, now touring the United States.

The adapted excerpt that follows, drawn from my 2009 book Gods, Gangsters, and Honour, takes you inside the room — when I went head-to-head with Ahmet Ertegun to keep Gabriel’s vision alive.

Ahmet Ertegun was just about the most influential music executive the world had ever seen.

In 1978, I went alone to the headquarters of Atlantic Records to battle with him. Peter was not with me in that meeting — it was my fight. Neither of us was backing down.

The problem Ahmet had with me was simple: I was Peter Gabriel’s representative, and I wasn’t about to let him bury my client’s career.

Gabriel’s third and latest album — a mix of politics and high art — had horrified the label, sent Atlantic’s A&R men diving for cover, and left me exposed and alone. His first two solo albums had sold well below the expectations of Atlantic Records in the US.

Dripping with sarcasm, Ahmet tore into Gabriel while addressing me:

“I’m so grateful that Peter felt he could share his philosophical and intellectual insights into the world around us,” he sneered. “Why, he was even gracious enough to give us some music as well… of a kind. The world will soon appreciate that Peter Gabriel’s unique music and stunning, if unconventional, lyrics represent the future direction of our art form.”

Then he laid into me.

“Let’s forget about business and selling the product, because art sells itself, doesn’t it, Steven? Art is not politics. The US consumer couldn’t give a shit about Steve Biko — if they even knew who he was. Now… why don’t you tell us what you think of this product? We’re all holding our breath. You, after all, are the youth market. You dress and act as if you are.”

My father, the pioneering music lawyer Marty Machat, was watching me coolly, alongside a grinning John David Kolodner — Atlantic’s A&R man — who had already told me bluntly what he thought of Gabriel’s music.

Kolodner hated Gabriel for leaving Genesis, his favorite band, and this was his chance to get even.

Everyone else in the room expected me to kowtow. But they were wrong. I didn’t flinch.

“Ahmet, I think this album is fantastic,” I replied. “I can’t tell you enough how much I enjoyed it. I really do think Peter has set the standard for music as art and not just business. I’m sure this will be seen as a landmark in music, and I know Atlantic should back it all the way.”

Ahmet snorted derisively.

“Steven, I think you should stick to law, because if you think there’s a market here you know nothing about music — let alone art. Your career is going to go nowhere if you keep on insisting on promoting artists and shit like this.

This record is intellectual masturbation of the worst kind. In fact, it’s not even intellectual: it’s a man looking for a cause. I can’t believe Peter thought he could give us this piece of shit and expect us to go out and sell it.

Peter doesn’t need a new record released. He needs a straitjacket.”

We kept our argument going, but neither of us was prepared to give way. Gabriel was, to all intents and purposes, dead to Atlantic.

That would prove to be their loss.

Gabriel’s third solo album, now commonly known as Melt, went on to become his most successful creative release at that time — loved by critics and the alternative market in the US for carrying the spirit of the 1960s instead of the mindless gloss of the ’70s.

Melt topped the charts in the UK and reached twenty-eight in the US. “Games Without Frontiers” became one of his most successful radio tracks, and “Biko” one of the most powerful and influential songs of the 1980s.

Atlantic and Ahmet had sorely misjudged it.

It was art, it was intellectual, and it sold.

But to his credit, Ahmet never denied it.

Later, he told me: “Steven, I made a mistake, and men do make mistakes.”

Most would have denied it. He was a true cut-throat and nobody’s friend — he used you — but the man had style and grace.

Ahmet could get by being high, and I thought that was cool.

My business relationship with Peter began in autumn 1979, when his co-managers, Tony Smith and Gail Colson, asked Machat and Machat — my father and me — to represent him.

Gabriel had left Genesis four years earlier after tensions with his bandmates, but kept Smith to watch over his stake in Genesis and brought in Gail, who had no ties to Phil Collins.

Part of Smith’s move was personal: years earlier my father and uncle had tangled with Tony Stratton-Smith of Charisma Records, and there was no love lost. Smith had inherited Gabriel from Strat, and it suited him to bring us in — a little revenge by proxy.

His first two albums had done reasonably well, but not in the States, and Atlantic was losing interest. The industry was still infatuated with disco and dance, and when Gabriel produced this dense and political third album, they dropped him.

It was short-sighted. Every generation needs an alternative — and Gabriel was that alternative. Phonogram picked up the record in the US; it was a critical success that established him as an artist of worth.

For the next album, he needed a major with the money and respect his work deserved. In the spring of 1980, I met Mo Ostin at Warner Brothers and David Geffen, who had just launched Warner–Geffen and wanted Peter. Ostin, who had made his name with Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sammy Davis Jr., had a knack for mixing business with an easy charm.

He told me one of my favorite Frank Sinatra stories — how, walking alongside Frank and mob boss Sam Giacomo, he was abruptly pulled back by associates warning him, “You shouldn’t be walking alongside Sam. It might not be good for your health.”

I told Geffen that if he wanted Peter, he had to fly to Portugal to see him perform — far from the circus of London and Paris.

That October, Geffen and I flew to Lisbon with his partner, Ed Rosenblatt.

Before the show, local Phonogram staff gave us a tour of what they called their record pressing plant — and, laughing, admitted it doubled as a bootlegging operation. Portugal’s status as a developing country meant labels there could press records at far lower royalty rates, then export them worldwide.

In artist agreements, labels could choose to calculate royalties at the country of manufacture or sale, and they’d always pick the lower. So when I hear labels complain about piracy and downloading, I have to smile — they’ve been ripping off artists forever. Napster just evened the playing field for consumers.

That night, we saw the Gabriel show. After the trip, Mo Ostin gave the green light, and I had my father reassure Gail Colson it was the right deal. She wanted CBS and tried to warn Peter off Geffen by invoking Kolodner from Atlantic, but I’d already secured in writing that Kolodner would have nothing to do with the deal.

That winter, Peter and I had one of the easiest big-contract conversations I’ve ever had. The first part of the deal was worth more than anyone expected, yet Peter didn’t ask about the money — only artistic control.

“Do you really believe this is in my best interest?” he asked. I told him yes, and he signed.

One of our first clashes with Geffen was over Peter’s insistence on no album title for his fourth record — 1982’s Peter Gabriel, which would come to be known as Security.

The label argued that no title meant trouble.

It became a full-on war until I proposed printing the title on the shrink-wrap so it would come off after purchase. Both sides agreed, and Security became the title.

Throughout the ’80s, I got to know Peter, though not deeply.

He was shy, observant, and careful around new people — a thinker.

He avoided paparazzi, preferred to watch rather than engage, and would quietly size you up before deciding what he wanted from a relationship.

He was also a devout vegetarian, and loved to give me grief for eating meat; I’d fire back about plants being living too. My own persona — nosy, relentless, too friendly for some — didn’t exactly draw him out, but it made for a good foil.

In August 1981, Peter called.

He had friends from Bristol who wanted him to head up an international music festival.

I told him I’d been working with international acts — Rita Lee from Brazil, Krisma from Italy — and believed world music was the future.

“Why don’t we play it out and see?” I said.

He invited me to Bath. Being an American, I had to check what a crumpet actually was before the trip.

We met in a quaint tea shop surrounded by middle-aged tourists and cream teas — hardly the setting for launching a global festival, but perfect for dreaming one up.

Peter, Thomas Brooman, Martin Elbourne, Stephen Pritchard, and I discussed their dream. I told them I’d deliver Machat and Machat, secure a record deal, and with their introductions get artists whose masters could go on an album to introduce the concept.

The World of Music, Arts and Dance — WOMAD — was taking shape. It would become a global brand, launching or reviving careers for the Master Drummers of Burundi, the Blind Boys of Alabama, Sheila Chandra, Afro Celt Sound System, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

In return for securing the label deal, the Machats would get 20% of the record proceeds, 20% of WOMAD, and Gabriel and his colleagues could divide the rest.

Gabriel’s management went berserk — they wanted his fourth album out and would have preferred WOMAD remain an idea.

My father didn’t understand it, but I told him I’d be happy putting out world music even if I didn’t make a dime.

I was tired of the corporate bottom line and drawn to the margins, to musicians the white corporate mainstream ignored. That’s where the fire was — not in another shiny piece of product shoved down the same narrow pipeline.

With WOMAD taking shape, I cut a deal with Nesuhi Ertegun to sell world music outside North America on Warner UK for $150,000. I believed this music could break down barriers, but to attract publicity, artists, and finance, Peter became the reluctant public face.

When the festival opened in summer 1982 in Shepton Mallet, I couldn’t have been more proud — but I was in for a shock.

When the Drummers of Burundi arrived, no hotels would admit them. I told the local council they’d sleep in the streets, and they quickly found them a bed and breakfast.

From the moment I arrived on site, I began to wonder what I had got myself into.

There was free valet parking, but since we were paying the valets this began to look somewhat extravagant. It wouldn’t end there. They had printed these beautiful programs, which they were selling for £3. Alas, they cost £4 to produce. Students were being let in for free because someone believed that the government would reimburse the organizers. This didn’t happen.

WOMAD hemorrhaged money.

Genesis rode to the rescue with a reunion concert to raise funds, which their management referred to as “the loony tune affair.”

Image credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty Images

But it was a success.

The October 1982 show at Milton Keynes Bowl was in dreadful weather — it rained and rained and rained — but made enough to recover the losses.

To WOMAD’s credit, especially Thomas Brooman’s, they kept the dream alive without reunion concerts. Martin Elbourne would later move on to become the talent booker at Glastonbury.

My close involvement with Peter was, for the time being, ending. Gail Colson was insecure about my growing closeness to him through WOMAD and didn’t want him building an independent musical empire — she feared becoming surplus to requirements.

She told my father I should leave WOMAD alone and let her oversee the Geffen deal.

My father didn’t care as long as he got the cheque.

I knew she’d be gone eventually, and I always believed Peter and I would work together again.

But if I wanted to work with world music, I had to build my own empire on my own terms.

It was time to move on.

To read Gods, Gangsters, and Honour in full, visit here.