Name: Fan Request: Peter Gabriel "Sobbing & Masturbating" | Letterman
Uploaded: 2023-04-07T15:29:44.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Fan Request: Peter Gabriel "Sobbing & Masturbating" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Fan Request: Peter Gabriel "Sobbing & Masturbating" | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-07. Transcript available.

Our next guest is a six-time Grammy Award winner and a Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame inductee as a
founding member of the band Genesis. His new CD features orchestral
arrangements of some of his
greatest known songs. It's entitled, New Blood. Ladies and gentlemen, here's
Peter Gabriel. You
haven't been here for 10 years. For God's sakes, what have you been doing in
the last 10 years?
I've been making babies, making some music. Good for you. How many children do
you have?
Well, I have two wonderful daughters from round one and two little boys from
round two.
Wow. How many rounds was the fight? Never mind. And how old are the new girls?
The new boys, three and ten. What is that like? I mean, that's got to keep you,
I mean,
you're exhausted, right? I'm exhausted. Yeah, daddy does the night shift quite
often,
so we're in toilet training. Yeah. And the kids. And what about, what about
your early
upbringing as compared to theirs? Like when you were, did you have a happy
childhood yourself?
Yeah, no, it was pretty good, but, you know, I was sent to the school that my
father and his
father were sent to. Private school sort of thing? Private school. So that was
a little like
Tom Brown school days at the time. And what does that mean? Is it difficult? It
was a disciplinary
of Stern? Yeah. Rule by fear. And, you know,
I got there on the first night and I was used to rooms with curtains. There
were no curtains. And you'd
see the headlights sweeping across the ceiling. And there was just a sound of
sobbing and masturbating.
And I think, I think one of the courses was, uh, sobbing and masturbating
simultaneously.
Yeah. Reminds me of my honeymoon. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. But, um, so, but, but
it was a pivotal in your musical
career, that experience at that school, wasn't it? Well, yes, I found a few
other lost souls that would make noises and, uh,
and we became a group. What was the name of the first group? Genesis. That's
what you called the first group? Yeah.
So, we were just trying to be songwriters, really. Right. Um, and then the
music that came later. Yeah. Um, and, and now that you have,
uh, achieved this, uh, worldly success, you've turned your attention to, uh,
other
things such as, uh, helping with human rights violations around the world. And
to me, not knowing
much about it, what I hear and do know about it is appalling that it exists at,
at such a large, uh, scale.
Yeah. No, it's, um, particularly with this, uh, uh, declaration of human rights
that all these
countries signed onto, but very few of them, uh, including our own, uh,
practice. And so, uh, I didn't
know anything about it, but after I wrote the song Biko, I got invited out to
these amnesty tours and started
meeting people who've been tortured, uh, watched their families being killed
and, and they think
you can be useful. So, uh, it's hard to walk away from it. Isn't it, uh,
staggering to you that in
this day and age, this sort of brutality, mindless brutality still exists,
seems to be thriving
actually in certain parts of the world. Yeah. Uh, but at the same time, you
know, I think all the Arab
awakening that's happening is, is incredibly hopeful. And we now have mobile
phones everywhere. It was this
wonderful African girl. So she was asked what's going to change the world. And
she just
pulled out her mobile phone and, uh, and you're seeing video everywhere. And so
when people have
had the courage in the past, you know, they've maybe gone off like a little
firework and then
darkness and obscurity has returned. But now you can connect all these little
acts of courage and
video them, get those videos out, get campaigns. It's amazing. The population
has truly now become
nearly one organism because of this electronic device. Yeah. And, uh, I think
that's very exciting
because I think, you know, a lot of the bad stuff is allowed to happen because
of national sovereignty.
Shadows, darkness. People think they're not going to be caught. They would,
they can get away with it.
Exactly. Now they get seen. What, uh, uh, changing the, the subject, uh, again,
do you see Phil Collins at all? Uh, I haven't seen him much yet. I tried to
hook up with him when he
came to London last time, but he's, he's had a tough time, I think. And a lot
of drummers, uh,
get neck and back injuries after a while. And he's, he's suffered a bit with
that. Yeah.
Are these, are these you? Uh, these are me. Yeah. You know, see, it was, it was
actually
a great relief to see Adam Sandler in a dress because I knew I wasn't, I wasn't
the only one.
You're wearing a dress and what appears to be a wolf head. Yeah. Well, you know,
it was an,
an album covered. That was a character called the slipper man. It was complete
with inflatable
testicles. And we had a sort of a inflatable phallus that would unfold. All
right. Ladies
and gentlemen of the jury, I'm, I'm going to clear the room. Uh, we're going to
take a 10 minute recess
and talk this over.