Peter Gabriel: There were a number of things. I think things — you know, I’m quite fond of them all to this day. But you know, band politics is just classic. So it got to the point where to get something done, you’d have to persuade — Tony Banks and I, we were often best friends/worst enemies. I would sometimes try to persuade him that what I wanted was his idea. And he was always very protective of the keyboard. He didn’t want anyone else getting near his keyboard, whereas I wanted to express myself and play with that.
But then I think it was a decisive thing when my first daughter, Anna, was born and they didn’t think she would survive. There was a whole number of things. My wife, Jill, wasn’t allowed to see her then, and she was in an incubator. It was the most traumatic experience of my life at that point. And the band were very unappreciative. Phil had a child then, but on the whole, we were trying to get The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway recorded at that time, and that was in far West Wales, and the drive was pretty hellish, getting there and back. There was no question in my mind that family comes first. So I think things got soured at that point.
And then I had an invitation from William Friedkin, who had just done The Exorcist and The French Connection at the time. I had considered a place in film school. I always loved film. He was trying to get a sort of new team of young people to come and do something different in Hollywood. He didn’t want me for the music. He wanted me for ideas.