Back to Front Tour


Back to Front was a concert tour by Peter Gabriel, a retrospective performance based on every song from his 1986 multi-platinum album So played in sequence. The backing band included musicians that Gabriel toured with in 1986–87 in support of the album's initial release.
Each night of the tour was recorded and released both separately and as part of a box set entitled Back to Front: Encore Series. The releases were limited editions and available exclusively from Gabriel's official website.
On 23 June 2014, Real World Records and Eagle Rock Entertainment released the live album and film Back to Front: Live in London, recorded at the O2 concerts.

Background

In 2012, Gabriel released a 25th anniversary box set of So. To coincide with this release, Gabriel decided to assemble his band from the album's accompanying tour, with David Rhodes on guitar, Tony Levin on bass, Manu Katché on drums, and David Sancious on keyboards. Youssou N'Dour, who had opened for Gabriel for his 1986-1987 tour, was unavailable to participate on the Back to Front tour as he was serving as Minister of Culture and Tourism in Senegal at the time. Gabriel was initially reluctant to play So in its entirety, but reconsidered after he witnessed Brian Wilson perform Pet Sounds from start to finish.
During the tour, Gabriel also played some new original songs, including "O But" and "What Lies Ahead". Gabriel explained that he wanted to divide the tour into three different sections. The first part of the show was an acoustic set that began with an unfinished song with the houselights on. "O But" opened the set, which was later retitled "Daddy Long Legs". The song featured Levin on upright bass and piano playing from Gabriel, who sang his vocals in gibberish. "O But" and "Daddy Long Legs" were later reworked into "Playing for Time", which appeared on Gabriel's I/O album in 2023.
The second portion of the set, which Gabriel called "the main course", included more electronic and experimental songs and the final portion of the set was the entirety of So with the running order that he originally intended. Gabriel explained that he placed "In Your Eyes" as the final song of the main set because he originally intended for it to be the last track on So. He was unable to do so for the 1986 release of So because the vinyl format was unable to accommodate the song's lower frequencies in the bassline.
John Cusack appeared at the 6 October 2012 concert in Los Angeles, recreating a scene from Say Anything....

Production

Ben Findlay served as the front of house audio engineer for The Back of Front Tour, having previously worked with Gabriel at Real World Studios. The sound system used on the tour was a 96-input Avid Profile D-Show console, with the device's native EQ features being used on the drums. Findlay grouped these drum channels together, which he saved as a snapshot to correspond with each song. A Bricasti M1 was the primary outboard gear reverb effect used on the vocals and a Quantec Yardstick was relied on for long reverb decays. With the exception of Sancious, who used floor monitors developed by Firehouse Productions, all of the members used Sennheiser 2000 IEM systems. During later legs of the tour, including the European leg, a Solid State Logic live console was used instead, which was the company's first console made for live performances. The device possessed 64-bit internal processing and 96 kHz sample rate, which Findley felt was sufficient in preventing the issue of oversampling.
Some of the sounds used on the tour were accessed from floppy discs. Gabriel encountered some difficulties in locating DAT players and some of the old floppy discs were not longer functioning. For the illumination, Gabriel referred back to an idea he had 25 years earlier about manually operating lights on a boom intended for a camera. He reused this idea for the Back to Front Tour with a couple of overhead lights, but discarded the proscenium arch that had been present on his 1986-1987 tour.

Reception

Dave McKenna of The Washington Post described the 14 October 2012 concert in Fairfax as "great". He highlighted the "goofy line routines" performed by Gabriel, Tony Levin, and David Rhodes on "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" and said that Gabriel "choked up" when introducing "Biko".

Personnel

Musicians

Tour crew

Set list

Acoustic :
  1. "Daddy Long Legs"
  2. "Come Talk to Me"
  3. "Shock the Monkey"
  4. "Family Snapshot"
Electric:
  1. "Digging in the Dirt"
  2. "Secret World"
  3. "The Family and the Fishing Net" or "Darkness"
  4. "No Self Control"
  5. "Games Without Frontiers"
  6. "Solsbury Hill"
  7. "Washing of the Water" or "Humdrum", "Why Don't You Show Yourself"
So:
  1. "Red Rain"
  2. "Sledgehammer"
  3. "Don't Give Up"
  4. "That Voice Again"
  5. "Mercy Street"
  6. "Big Time"
  7. "We Do What We're Told (Milgram's 37)"
  8. "This Is the Picture (Excellent Birds)"
  9. "In Your Eyes"
Encore:
  1. "Here Comes the Flood"
  2. "The Tower That Ate People"
  3. "Biko"

Tour dates

DateCityCountryVenueAttendanceRevenue
28 September 2013HerningDenmarkJyske Bank Arena6,500—
30 September 2013AmsterdamNetherlandsZiggo Dome——
1 October 2013BrusselsBelgiumForest National8,000—
3 October 2013ViennaAustriaWiener Stadthalle10,000—
5 October 2013BelgradeSerbiaKombank Arena——
7 October 2013MilanItalyMediolanum Forum11,000—
8 October 2013GenevaSwitzerlandGeneva Arena8,000—
10 October 2013PragueCzech RepublicO2 Arena12,000—
11 October 2013LeipzigGermanyArena Leipzig10,000—
13 October 2013StuttgartGermanySchleyerhalle12,000—
15 October 2013ParisFrancePalais Omnisports de Bercy16,000—
16 October 2013DüsseldorfGermanyISS Dome10,000—
18 October 2013HamburgGermanyO2 World Hamburg12,035 / 12,730$876,611
19 October 2013BerlinGermanyO2 World Berlin13,468 / 13,468$1,060,450
21 October 2013LondonEnglandThe O2 Arena22,584 / 27,739$1,762,780
22 October 2013LondonEnglandThe O2 Arena22,584 / 27,739$1,762,780
24 October 2013GlasgowScotlandSSE Hydro——
25 October 2013ManchesterEnglandPhones 4u Arena14,057 / 15,105$913,023

DateCityCountryVenueAttendanceRevenue
29 April 2014FrankfurtGermanyFesthalle Frankfurt11,000—
30 April 2014MunichGermanyOlympiahalle11,000—
2 May 2014CologneGermanyLanxess Arena15,000—
3 May 2014HanoverGermanyTUI Arena12,500—
5 May 2014BratislavaSlovakiaSlovnaft Arena——
6 May 2014BudapestHungaryBudapest Sports Arena——
8 May 2014BucharestRomaniaRomexpo Pavilionul Central——
12 May 2014ŁódźPolandAtlas Arena13,000—
13 May 2014OstravaCzech RepublicČEZ Aréna——
16 May 2014VilniusLithuaniaSiemens Arena——
17 May 2014RigaLatviaArena Riga——
20 May 2014HelsinkiFinlandHartwall Arena——
22 May 2014StockholmSwedenEricsson Globe10,950—
23 May 2014OsloNorwayOslo Spektrum7,000—
25 May 2014BerlinGermanyWaldbühne20,000—
12 November 2014BrusselsBelgiumPalais 129,000—
13 November 2014StrasbourgFranceZénith de Strasbourg8,000—
15 November 2014NantesFranceZénith de Nantes Métropole8,000—
16 November 2014ToulouseFranceZénith de Toulouse8,000—
18 November 2014ZürichSwitzerlandHallenstadion7,212 / 13,000$597,346
20 November 2014TurinItalyPala Alpitour——
21 November 2014BolognaItalyUnipol Arena——
23 November 2014GrazAustriaStadthalle Graz4,000—
24 November 2014SalzburgAustriaSalzburgarena——
28 November 2014BirminghamEnglandLG Arena——
30 November 2014SheffieldEnglandMotorpoint Arena Sheffield——
1 December 2014CardiffWalesMotorpoint Arena Cardiff——
3 December 2014LondonEnglandSSE Wembley Arena——
4 December 2014NewcastleEnglandMetro Radio Arena--
7 December 2014LiverpoolEnglandEcho Arena Liverpool——
8 December 2014AberdeenScotlandAECC Arena4,600—
10 December 2014DublinIreland3Arena——

; Cancellations and rescheduled shows