9: Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel

You guys sound like robots.

Try hang up and go back in again.

Sound like robotic cats.

Meow.

I'll restart Discord.

Bear with.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far, a podcast...

Can't even say the word.

I maybe should not be drinking before I start recording.

Nah, it makes it better.

Oh.

Hello and welcome to We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far,

a podcast where a Scotsman, an Irishman, and a Bulgarian review

the most terrible, silliest, and weirdest-as-fuck music videos.

Hi, I'm Nelly.

Hi, I'm Dave.

Hi, I'm Neil.

Today we're just not sure if we're still picking from the acid we took earlier,

as we just watched Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer and his shitty swag.

You could have a steam train

If you don't

Lay down your tracks

You could have

An airplane

Flying

If you bring

Your blue sky back

All you do

Is call me

I'll be

Anything you need

Shot and released in 1986

This video won millions of awards, unsurprisingly and fully deservingly.

It was directed by Stephen R. Johnston and produced by Adam Whitaker.

Johnston is known for directing some videos for Talking Heads and Dire Straits,

as well as directing the first season of Pee Wee's Playhouse.

He also led the creation of a short film for Amnesty International.

Unfortunately, he passed away in 2015, but even if Sledgehammer was the only thing he ever directed,

it would still be quite the heritage.

There is a lot to talk about the production and cultural legacy of the video.

It's obvious that everyone on set had great fun working on the project

and put great amounts of energy into the production.

It's still to date, allegedly, the most played video on MTV.

It is, without shadow of a doubt, a video that is too good to be on this podcast,

but hey, here we are.

Even if you don't like it or the song itself, you just can't stop watching.

Think of it as a negative November rain,

as there was certainly a lot of money and people involved,

but every single part has its place and not for a second do you feel like it's a platform for

peter gabriel's ego a negative novemberian or an anti-negative novemberian we went full circle

there's love of money and there's love of artistry but it's not shit and that's good

yes can we all just agree immediately it's a great video we all love it it's three eyes

across the board it's fucking right yeah it's an eye for me yeah hi yeah yeah yeah and i just

wrap this podcast you have done

the great video watching. See you all next week guys.

I've not even watched it and I loved it.

It's the first time I've watched it since I was a kid

watched it or really listened to the song

properly and it's just as good

as I remember with some slightly more

adult themes that I didn't remember at the time.

It's so colourful and so fun

and so much fun that it's entertaining

for adults and children.

It's like the Pixar movie of

music videos. That's a good way to put it.

Full of more sperm.

Right from the get go

we have a shot of a sperm kicking about.

Oh, it's kind of like the creation of man, isn't it?

Because you see like division spitting of cells at some point afterwards.

And I was wondering where they got that footage from,

if they got it from some medical lab or if it's actually Peter Gabriel's sperm.

Just imagine.

You can tell because it's really good at the drums.

I think Neil might be hearing a bit delayed.

Neil say...

One, two, say.

Okay.

Neil say what?

Right.

Oh, wow, that is delayed.

That's a new one.

Dave or Nelly, say bacon.

Bacon?

Three, five, six.

Okay.

Any better?

I don't know.

You tell us.

Well, I mean, I think I'm talking in real time now.

Oh, yeah.

Say bacon.

Bacon?

Yeah, that sounds good.

But, like, when I watched the video for the first time, or, like, remember, as a kid.

Oh, no, have I lost you?

I thought the beginning scene was fish.

So you're bacon.

I was like, what, four or five?

How the fuck would I know what sperm is?

You don't know.

So I thought it was with fish.

And they were swimming around.

And I was always like, oh, look, my fish is.

And I was like, yes.

Yes, that's a lovely fish.

Yes, let's call it fish.

It does swim around.

I don't remember that bit from the start.

I don't think I watched it frequently when I was younger or something like that.

But I'm wondering if maybe it got cut out before nine o'clock or something like that.

I mean, it's possible.

But also we're talking about

Jinji Borgarian TV,

which, you know,

just like fucking just shot everything.

It probably wasn't cut out here either.

I probably just don't remember it.

I was just like,

oh, look at the fish.

I've just got it looping here

and it just went to him

like poking a spot in his head

and him flexing his ears

and stuff like that.

Oh, that's cool.

I like that.

It's kind of like he's a robot

figuring out how to function.

When I watched it,

I was like,

what the fuck?

Did they miss all the references?

And then when they read the lyrics, I was like,

Jesus, how did that pass?

How did they play that on MTV, like daytime TV?

Bumping cars.

Bumping cars.

Open up your fruit cage is my personal favourite.

It's quite graphic.

Yeah, but also you can refer to so many different orifices.

Or just trying this on my phone.

Hi, bacon.

Hi.

Oh, bacon indeed.

Yes, yes.

Bacon, bacon, pig, pig, pig.

I have an unrelated story to this.

When we were teens, my friends decided to do like online radio kind of thing.

The problem is that the guy who was hosting it was like,

I need to know whether there's any issues with the broadcasting.

And whenever there's some issues with broadcasting, he needed to push a button.

I don't remember the name of the actual like function,

but it was something starting with the letter P.

So he was basically like, whenever there's an issue with the actual broadcasting,

Everyone just starts texting me the word penis.

So you can remind myself to do whatever that function was.

So basically, occasionally, he'll just get a line of text of...

A line of text that just say penis, penis, penis.

And that was me at 16, everyone.

It's a good way to alert.

If we ever do a live show, that can be the code word for it's fucked.

It is fucked.

Well, penis is better than bacon.

Wow.

Wow.

Wow, bacon is really delicious.

okay let's talk about the video about sex

okay are you functioning nioh i think so audio wise not in general no one's functioning right now

is your penis working nioh last time i checked it was doing something so i'll take that as a

take that as a maybe um should we go back to our biology lesson for today guys yes yes yes okay

cool because my beer is finishing and that scares me.

I might actually get some booze.

I'm in the mood now. Two things.

Okay, well, I'm going to

grab another one. The recording this week

might actually be full of seagulls because

they're really, really loud today.

Dave, do you ever notice seagulls in

my recordings at all? Not really.

No, but probably because there's seagulls

outside my window, so as far

as I'm concerned, seagulls are just a universal

constant. I miss seagulls.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I miss seagulls.

I've lived around seagulls my whole life.

Like my hometown was by the sea and then Glasgow was full of seagulls.

Near fucking seagulls in fucking Serbiton.

There's a few down near the tip.

The tip.

Is it next to the tip, Scott?

Aye.

Aye.

The recycling center.

Yes, because we're talking about sex, Scott.

We're talking about the tip.

The tip.

Read the room, Scott.

Just the tip.

Just the tip of the sledgehammer.

Yes, literally.

The sledgehammer is his penis.

You could have a big tip of...

Going up and down

All around the bend

You could have a fun

The car

Bumping

There's amusement

Never ends

I wanna be

The sledgehammer

The hammer is my penis.

This is definitely a horny video

but not crude

or feels like a biology lesson

It feels like a Sesame Street episode.

I think if they showed this as like sex education and schools, you'd learn something.

I mean, I don't know how you sex-ed those guys, but I probably learned more from this video than I ever did in the school.

It kind of reminds me like in a really old films, if they didn't want to show a sex scene or whatever,

they would cut to a train going through a tunnel or other such metaphors.

I think that comes from Strangers on the Train.

As a naked gun as well.

They're probably spiffing strangers on a train then, I guess.

Like, even if you just ignore the very clear text about fucking,

it's a fantastically well-made video.

And, like, you wouldn't really expect...

I didn't actually know it was Artman Animations who produced it.

Yeah, I didn't know that until today.

Yeah, it's fucking fantastic, isn't it?

Makes sense now.

Yeah.

Although that's, I believe, one of the first thingy things-ish, I guess.

You kind of look at it going, they're probably the only people who could pull it off, I suppose.

I don't know, was this before or after Walss and Gromit?

That's the important question.

It's before, I believe.

86?

Walss and Gromit was in the early 90s, wasn't it?

89.

89 was the original release date, so it probably would have been late 88, 89.

So this was before Walss and Gromit.

So this movie put them on the map.

Yeah.

I mean, it's possible that they were doing, like, just in terms of people, like, animators.

They were probably doing stuff before that anyway.

But yeah, it's fucking fantastic.

I love it so much.

I think you guys have some experience with stop motion, don't you?

Not claymation, though.

I was going to say, I've had some very, very crude.

I don't like making it.

I just don't have the patience for it.

My mind can't even conceive of how long it would take to do something like that.

Especially with a person, never mind even a bit of clay, you know?

So the thing about stop motion is that you need to have a really, really good storyboard.

And I'm sure that they had like literally every single shot was storyboarded.

which makes everything so much faster.

And I think there was some trivia somewhere

that Peter Gabriel was lying for about, I think, 16 hours

under a glass sheet, which I presume was like one-to-one go.

It's a lot, but also considering how long it takes to make this,

it's actually quite fast in terms of everything.

Did you know I have a story about the chickens?

Like when I was watching it as a kid,

I was really fucking fascinated by it.

Was it strings?

Like, was it, like, wire inside?

Was it animatronic of some sort?

But, like, what was it?

It just felt like fucking magic.

I loved it so much.

I'm still not sure how they made it.

Presumably it's some strings of some sort

or, like, some mechanism.

Probably had, like, wire inside the chickens

so they could, you know, manipulate them.

It's a bit creepy, but I love it.

Claymation shot in a razorhead involving a chicken,

which I think is probably kind of tainted that moment for me.

I have not seen razorhead, actually,

so you might need to elaborate on this.

I'm pretty sure it was a chicken giving birth.

Like a roast chicken.

Giving birth to another chicken.

Maybe another chicken.

Maybe it wasn't giving birth.

It was just like opening up his leg and shitloads of blood coming out and stuff like that.

Which is a lovely image.

Do we not all love David Lynch?

Yeah.

The bit where he sort of forms his ice sculpture.

That's pretty weird.

Then his real head kind of just fades in.

Physical effect of some sort.

It looks physical at first, but I don't know how you'd do that.

Let's have a look.

Maybe they melted the ice head and then went backwards.

Oh, it kind of gives me a lot of vibes of Terminator 2 and the way it was.

Yeah, they definitely melted it.

It actually, it's hollow.

It's not solid.

You can see by the way it melts.

It's sort of, you can see the outside of it rather than, you know, like a big solid ball.

I think that's all in camera.

So they would have done like a plaster cast of his face and then scaled it with the camera frame.

That's why it sort of seamlessly lends into him because it's the exact same side as his head.

But that is sick.

You know, the amount of creativity that the stop motion kind of allows like animators and whatnot to do.

You just can't really do the same thing on a computer.

I think that's why still stop motion films and sort of animated films are still sort of made.

say they have a characteristic that can't really be made you know uh synthetically guys from like

imagine if this video was directed by our our good friend howie just thinking that he would have he

would have tried to do it in some form of horrific cgi mode yeah it would have been like oh i wasn't

that money for nothing like the really really squarish cgi window three cgi that's right

the bit where he literally becomes a man made entirely of clay oh that's really cool yeah it's

a really good model oh well yeah that's a bit that's a bit that's pretty fucking strange now

because he he turns into the clay man his hands turn into sledgehammers and then he hits himself

and like a sort of smaller version of him starts growing at the side of his head it's a metaphor for

masturbation oh no i actually don't know what it is but it's like it could be well oh and a giraffe

because past window

never knows.

That's also a

masturbation metaphor.

Oh my god,

I think it might be

because there's lots

of little sperms

in the wall behind them.

Again,

but the sperms.

Show me round

your fruit cage

Cause I will be

your honeybee

Open up your fruit cage

Where the fruit

every sweet as can be

Mates and peas

I'm not that kind of doctor.

When you see what else was there, like in the 80s and 90s,

some amazing videos, but nothing ever came nearly as close

as how fantastic this video is.

The song for me is like mediocre at best, but that video just makes it.

I actually really enjoy the song.

No, it's fair.

It's cheese, but it's good cheese with incredibly dirty lyrics,

which is nice.

It's dirty lyrics sounds the actual swearing, which is kind of fun.

Like, they can really go over your head.

I don't know if I'm just imagining this at this point,

but the whole video he has a sort of look in his face.

He knows that you know, if that makes sense.

It does.

I just wonder whether it's just his face.

It might just be his face,

or it might be whatever strange things he was doing

to make the stop motion work.

Like, would he have to, like, move his face a certain way?

Probably.

They probably, like, figured out which sound his mouth needs to make.

I know.

Like, did you look fluent when you actually play it?

Yeah.

So he probably, he was, they would all like,

oh, make the sound O with your mouth or whatever.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Our, like, five listeners, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

I did work on a puppet film a few years ago, which was awesome.

I remember the puppeteer, there was one shot where another puppet came in,

so when the crew just had to grab a puppet and do it,

and it was like a sock puppet, and he was talking,

and the puppeteer was just going like,

no, no, you have to make like an O shape,

like you're saying O with your hand.

in the puppet and stuff like that so maybe it translates over kind of i think that they just

did like a straight out stop motion with like taking like taking single shots as opposed to

like say because they can't really just set up the camera to shoot at every like whatever like

10 seconds or whatever because they needed to animate around him i'd imagine that's how it went

speaking of animating around him the hair his hair in the roller coaster scene it's pretty good it's

fucking fantastic yeah it was just like every time when i watch it just makes me happy because it just

feel so natural when it's not it's just a lot of gel yeah it's it's one of those you can totally

see how they did it but it fucking worked and the the chop board roller coaster in the background

is pretty awesome as well i think that's the thing that kind of keeps something make me think about

sesame street to be honest like the chop board and the vegetables the vegetable that's pretty pretty

good as well actually it is yeah but it's pretty much like sesame street straightforward like let's

Learn about the vegetables.

Open up your fruit cage.

He's going to be your honeybee or something like that, if I remember it.

That's very, very sexy.

I do like being stung.

Stung by Peter Gabriel.

Hey, he's still not incredibly ugly.

I actually don't know how he looks like nowadays.

Let's take a second.

Looks like a dad.

Like a young Jesus.

Oh, Jesus, sorry.

I'm going to go ahead and say that he was, like, not ugly.

as a younger person.

All I'm saying is I would.

Bump his bumper cars or whatever.

Ooh.

Is either of you actually fans of

Genesis?

Genesis.

Not so much.

He's, from what I gather,

he's inspired,

he inspired later

Bon Iver stuff.

And that's really good.

Which is kind of just like

a futuristic version of Genesis.

So maybe,

maybe I might like it if I tried it.

I mean,

which is probably what

Peter Gabriel said to people as well.

Like, I don't really like,

I forgot the other guy's name.

The guy who became

the lead singer after he left.

oh yeah I forgot about that

because there was more than one

wasn't there

I'm all for the drummer

that's good

oh yeah no that's why

I'm thinking of Phil Collins

Phil Collins yeah

yeah

I

I don't like

I think his voice is interesting

but I don't actually like

his music much at all

I think the majority

of Genesis that I know

is related to

Phil Collins' era

I think I'm

I'm roughly the same

but like I couldn't name you

I couldn't name you

a song honestly

so

I'll Spotify some

Genesis

subscribe to the podcast tell your friends all five of you yeah better subscribe quick we're

running out of spaces i hope you all have at least one friend everyone needs a friend guys what is

your thought on the parts of the video that are not stop motion because like occasionally you have

shots that are very clearly actual shots oh they're shit they really are yeah yeah no i think about

that it just kind of takes me away from the feeling i think three minutes 50 it just cuts to a shot of

him and a bunch of other people dancing but it's clearly just kind of slowing down a little bit

slowed down and yeah it just kind of take it out for a moment interesting set design it gives me

kind of maybe it's because i used to work in an old folks home but it gives me old folks home vibes

so that kind of throws me off a little bit just from the just from the wallpaper and stuff although

that said when it goes back to him dancing again it looks like they're doing something weird with

the frame rate for a second yeah would you just have made like a full screen a full size puppet of

him to dance instead of you.

That would have been pretty cool.

The clay head was not enough. We need a life-size

Peter Gabriel mannequin.

No, just like, just a Muppet.

Like an actual Muppet.

And like, you can see the

not the strings, like the

things that prop up the hands.

Oh, the sticky things.

Yeah, the sticky things, yes.

Propping up the hands and everything. Can we just point

out that this video took a fucking week

to, like, from beginning to end

and they had an actual title card at the end

with all the people who worked on it

and I fucking stand for this

that's amazing

like yeah give me the name of the runners

like I don't know what they did

but yes please give me the name of those people

they also mattered for that

like five and a half minute production

it's kind of strange that music videos

don't have title cards or whatever you call them

like obviously before IMDB was a thing

you would have absolutely no way of knowing

it's like even today like

you'll occasionally see like the DOP

in the YouTube description or something like that.

But beyond that, you don't have a clue, really.

Yeah, well, we have the same with Vemba Rain.

Not the same, the opposite with Vemba Rain,

where it's a fucking 10-minute long video

and all you know, it's who the director is.

That took, like, so many people building sets

and scouting locations

and the fucking helicopter driver or whatever,

pilot, driver, whatever, pilot, helicopter pilot.

We would never know their names.

But in general, yeah, I would like to see more credits in life.

Everyone should get a bit of credit.

Unless you're a wanker.

I get the habit, get the habit, get the habit

Shut my skin, shut my skin

This is the new stuff, this is the new stuff

I go dancing, I go dance

There's my fucking instrument

Can you pluck like Bungle?

Yeah, I can.

I'm the best pluck of hair.

I used to watch this on repeat when I was a kid.

My parents had a VHS of Peter Gabriel's music videos.

I think there was a release or something back in the late 80s or early 90s,

and they just so happened to have this.

But my parents had a lot of music,

which at the time I wouldn't really have understood,

a lot of really good stuff.

But I think this one, for me and my brother,

really stood out because just the way it looked.

I mean, I don't think I really cared about the music or, you know, the actual singing or whatnot.

It was more about this magical music video, which just, you know, blew our minds at the time.

So I have pretty fond memories listening to this, sitting on my living room floor and just watching it on repeat.

But yeah, I think the whole campy approach to Peter Gabriel's style of music videos is, I don't know,

I kind of feel it's in a league of its own and it's kind of timeless.

I don't think this video that's, what, almost 30, 35 years old, give or take, does not, you know, feel old.

You know, you watch videos or the other videos that we've kind of critiqued.

They just haven't aged.

They look shit.

And they're just terrible.

And I can imagine that whenever they were pitching this video, they were probably like, no, it's going to cost too much money.

Let's go up to a mountain, get a helicopter and just, you know, sing into the chasm.

But I don't know.

I just kind of think this video had a lot going for and it'll probably always come back on people

and they'll always look at it and I don't know, give them some inspiration.

So when I rewatched it now, I kind of remembered how much I loved it back as a kid and I love it now.

How fabulously executed as a short film is and how fantastical it is.

And now as an adult, I can appreciate how it's both innocent and horny and fun and a tiny bit of shocking and a bit scary even.

Honestly, I don't think the song would have been remembered as fondly as it is now

if it wasn't for the mastery of the Iron Man animation and the Brothers Quay.

Everything in this video is just, it's planned to the second.

And I find it hilarious how they've managed to make the images so innocent

when the images are a response to the lyrics that are very, very, very horny.

And yeah, I love this video.

It's by far my favorite video we've reviewed here,

Which is not very difficult because it's like it's going against like fucking T-Rim or whatever.

But it's still like, it's a fucking fantastic video.

And now that they've actually been reminded of it, I will keep on watching it because it's, as Neo said, timeless.

I'm to be a citizen. I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about.

Two beers are really hot.

Shut up. I've been to work. I've had to do it in general public.

That's the equivalent of at least a shot of tequila right there.

a shot of some book some book some butcher a hard alcohol anyway they've gone i thought it was great

when i was a kid that i'm not a kid still amazing and the knowledge that peter gabriel's a randy

bastard has just made it better it's a master class in innuendo the animation is amazing and

the amount of effort that went into making it i've got to take my headphones off to to them for that

effort so

nice

now put your

headphones back

on so you

can actually

listen to us

should we do

best and worst

moments

play-doh man

i think that's

one thing that

really takes me

back to when i

watched this video

like when he

just turned in

to a play-doh

man blew my

mind okay

okay he was

an ice sculpture

and all that

but yeah that

that bitch is

what he was

probably quite

relieved about

that bit as

well because

he didn't have

to be under

the glass table

for two more

hours yeah

yeah probably

what's your least favorite so when i was a kid i had these recurring dreams and anything i watched

sort of ended up in my dream so it's part of the reason why i'm terrified of i don't know if you're

familiar with it like it's stephen king's tommy knockers or it or um close encounters of the third

kind it's anything which is kind of psychologically but looking back now it's not really hard um this

video gave me weird nightmares for quite a while um i don't know why you know it's it's it's totally

innocent and friendly and whatnot but i just sort of think that being caught up in that world would

be pretty terrifying yeah good but terrifying is a yeah yeah i think you said in the the introduction

it is a little bit like a an acid trip you can't get it off because if all that shit was actually

flying around your head stuff like you'd be about freaked out you turn into a fruit salad and then

You end up in a party yourself?

Yeah, that's enough to probably tip you over the edge.

Yeah, but he turned into a fruit salad

because someone opened a fruit cage.

Yes.

I was a lemon, and then I ate myself,

and then I woke up and I was blue, and then...

Oh, that scene when he turns blue,

again, the background is so fucking good.

Yeah.

I just love it so much.

It's totally seamless.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

So, my favorite moment is the dancing chicken.

and all against all the stop motion inclination.

It's all fantastic and I love it.

But the dancing chickens just bothered me so much as a kid.

I just felt like it was magic.

And I can still do.

And the least favorite moment is the end

when he is kind of wearing like a black suit,

like a full body black suit

with like reflective light or reflective spots against him.

I never liked that part.

I still don't like it.

I don't understand it.

It freaks me out.

It doesn't really add up to the same sort of quality.

It's a weird way to end it.

Maybe it was more obvious when they were making it,

but it's really hard to tell what it is now.

Yeah, well, nowadays it just reminds me of the tracking suits.

It's like actors wear whenever they're doing CGI scenes.

But I think it's the case why I probably never watched Paranormal Activity 4

and I'm kind of scared of watching it

because they have those whole things of like...

They have scenes where there's a kid which I think is a ghost.

Kind of like it just dots in the shape of a human that move around.

And now I've got that movie.

I'm never watching it.

But I think it's because of this video.

I think that's the fault.

It kind of looks like someone's turned on a UV light in his bedroom.

And it's revealed a bit too much.

Just spots everywhere.

Wink, wink.

Starts off where it began, doesn't it?

Yeah.

We get the close-up in the white shot.

There we go.

Yeah, my favourite part is the bit where he sings the lyric,

bumper cars bumping.

There's two, like, adorable, like, fucking adorable little cartoon bumper carts.

What do you call it?

Dodgems or whatever.

And they just come on and they ride around in the popcorn and they bash off them.

And then they sing along with a song, which I just thought was fucking delightful.

And then they kind of disappear.

But little do those two adorable little bumper carts know that they are, in fact,

one of Peter Gabriel's sexual innuendos,

which I just find sort of

existentially hilarious, because they'll never

know. They will never know.

The worst part is during

party scene at the end, this David

Cronenberg-esque, like,

pink TV walks out, and

then there's a mouth on the screen, and it

sings along with, like, the background singers,

and it just, yeah, it's just something

weird about that TV. It's freaking me out, and I don't

know why. It's kind of flesh-coloured,

like, flesh that's just been

peeled. Nightmare feel, right?

Yeah, yeah.

It's just like a...

David Koronberg.

Yeah.

Oh, God.

It was him all along.

I know.

We should have known.

Tune in next week.

We're going to do a special episode.

Possible special guest.

It's a song called Bobby, Baby, Baba, whatever you want to call it, by Kelly Kay.

You're in for something special.

That's all I can say.

Say goodbye, everyone, I guess.

Bye.

Bye, everyone.

I'm really sorry, guys.

I really am too busy.

I'm one and two.

I'm sorry.

We're used to doing that under the influence.

What the fuck?