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British-born musician, Peter Gabriel, made his mark as the lead singer of the '70s rock band, Genesis, before embarking on a solo career that has encompassed best-selling albums, innovative videos, the establishment of his own music label and recording studios, the creation of the WOMAD Festival of world music, and scores for such films as The Last Temptation of Christ and Rabbit Proof Fence. Gabriel’s latest endeavor is “Down to Earth,” an original song he wrote and performed for WALL•E, the new animated feature from the Disney-Pixar team that’s already responsible for such hit films as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Cars and Ratatouille. WALL•E is a robot love story set in space and the film’s title character -- whose name is short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class -- is the lonely, slightly rusty robot that humans have left behind to clean up a planet that’s been buried under mountains of litter. Gabriel’s quirky song, which plays over the film’s end credits, combines the witty and thoughtful lyrics and richly diverse musical influences that typify his best work. The musician talked to us in London and explained why he hopes WALL•E will be as big a hit as Pixar’s previous films.
First of all, have you seen the other Pixar movies and are you a fan of animation?
Yes to both. I think I’ve seen all of Pixar’s films and many, many times because I have a six-year-old in the house and he can’t get enough of Finding Nemo and Toy Story in particular. He’s also just got into Japanese films like Spirited Away, which is a wonderfully poetic film. For myself, as a kid I was hypnotised by Loony Tunes and Bambi and pretty much anything that Disney put out. I think Bambi was one of the first animated films I saw.
You’ve been associated with film music before, but WALL•E is the first animated film you have worked on. Why’s that?
I do get asked to do quite a lot of stuff but it’s not my full-time job and so I really only get involved with film work when you have a director who really gets music and respects it, and a film that’s interesting in one way or another. When you have all that, it can be a lot of fun, and that was certainly the case here.
And how did your involvement with WALL•E begin?
From knowing [WALL•E director] Andrew Stanton. I went to visit Pixar quite a few years ago when I was working on the idea of an independent theme park. I did what we called a tech tour of America, just trying to talk to people who were doing interesting work, and that led me to Pixar and meeting Andrew. I met him a few more times at concerts and he mentioned WALL•E to me three or four years ago and asked if I’d be interested in contributing something, which ended up as “Down to Earth.”
Did Andrew Stanton give you an idea of what he wanted from the song?
He gave me some references in terms of my own songs. “Secret World” was one of them. He wanted something that had some melody and some muscle and still retained some of the quirkiness of the film, which is what I tried to achieve. I mean, that’s really the job when you write a song like this: you’re trying to help someone else realise their vision, which is sort of the reverse of what I do the rest of the time.
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