“You know who I am,” he said, The speaker was an angel…
Sketchy details of this story first broke at the end of last month, but
The 12-track album will contain orchestral versions of songs dear to Peter and it has to be said he’s made some brave choices of songs to cover.
Here’s the tracklisting for Scratch My Back, with the original artists in brackets…
‘Heroes’ (David Bowie)
The Boy In The Bubble (Paul Simon)
Mirrorball (Elbow)
Flume (Bon Iver)
Listening Wind (Talking Heads)
The Power Of The Heart (Lou Reed)
My Body Is A Cage (Arcade Fire)
The Book Of Love (The Magnetic Fields)
I Think It?s Going To Rain Today (Randy Newman)
Apres Moi (Regina Spektor)
Philadelphia (Neil Young)
Street Spirit (Radiohead).
The suggestion is that the album will be followed up by a collection of Gabriel-penned songs covered by other artists, presumably entitled I’ll Scratch Yours. Work is already well underway on this album too, with Gabriel working with arranger John Metcalfe and producer Bob Ezrin at Air Studios in London.
The first public airing of anything from the Scratch My Back project came in the summer when Gabriel performed Paul Simon‘s The Boy In The Bubble with string accompaniment at this year’s WOMAD Charlton Park festival.
However, it seems the spark for the whole project may go back as far as 2005 when he provided a lovely orchestral cover of The Magnetic Fields song, The Book Of Love, for the Shall We Dance soundtrack. I’m not sure if the same version appears on Scratch My Back or if it has been re-recorded.
You may remember that the Shall We Dance soundtrack also included Mya‘s take on David Bowie’s Let’s Dance.