Wednesday - 5 May 1993

Assistant production manager Alia Dann says, "Peter liked to have a few people allowed to dance inside the security barriers so he could be closer to the audience. One night in Madrid, he sent a message to say that there weren't enough people inside the barrier dancing, so Barrie Knight, John Gray and I went out to get more people. But Barrie made John and I dance to 'Sledgehammer', as well. This grew over the tour into the "Sledgehammer Disco", with as many crew, guests and family joining in as could get there. Then Shankar started throwing his tambourine to Barrie, and Barrie would start tying things to it before throwing it back. Then Shankar started throwing his water over the dancers. We knew when it was coming so we would duck. Throughout this, Peter was on the other stage, so I don't know how long it was before he realised this was happening."

Monday - 5 July 1993

Newark had an extra surprise on this postponed gig when assistant propsmaster Bob Weber was thrown naked onto the stage by his crew mates.

Wednesday - 14 July 1993

"The gig in Calgary took place at the same time as the annual Calgary Stampede, so when the luggage went down the conveyor belt at the end of the show we sent a couple of hay bales down with it," says assistant stage manager David Gray. The conveyor belt became a regular target for practical jokes from then on.

Tuesday - 27 July 1993

"During the concerts, Peter took to thanking different crew departments. The carpentry department responded first by sending rubber chickens and other things through the stage trapdoor, and then started appearing themselves, usually in local sports team strip. At one venue, Shankar suffered the disdain of the audience when the crew sent him up in the hockey strip of the team that had just beaten the local team. In Denver, Colorado, where the Pope was due to visit, the entire carpentry crew appeared through the trapdoor, dressed in Pope's robes," tells Alia Dann, assistant production manager.
"Set carpenter and occasional security man Barrie Knight was the biggest joker in the crew. But one night, on his birthday, the crew sent him up first through the trapdoor on the stage to take a bow. Peter was waiting for him with a cream pie and Shankar chased him around the stage with a can of spray cream," says assistant production manager Alia Dann.

June 13-August 4 1993

"Catering on the tour was mixed. In Europe we had our own caterers who were great, but in America we used local caterers. The veggies had an especially hard time in the States. They would say, 'What's the vegetarian option?' and be told, 'Why, the vegetables, of course.' There was always the same stuff with fried chicken everywhere. The food in Mexico City was fab. The guy was a chef and made brilliant chocolate chip cookies," says assistant production manager Alia Dann.

Wednesday - 4 August 1993

It had become common practice for Peter to introduce some of the crew at the end of each concert and in Miami he was expecting them to rise out of the round stage, as usual. But nothing happened until Vince Foster and Barrie Knight from the crew came running down the walkway in brightly coloured costumes. Vince grabbed the microphone, the sounds of Kool and the Gang's 'Celebration' came over the PA and the screens around the square stage dropped to reveal the entire crew dressed in dresses, bright plastic clothes, Muppet costumes and sportswear. Vince sang while the crew danced and the lighting crew threw balloons and glitter into the crowd. Peter had known nothing about it. Some weeks later in Argentina, a woman at a dinner told Peter and Barrie Knight that she loved all the special effects at the Miami show, especially the carnival at the end.

Saturday - 9 October 1993

Barrie Knight was promoted to security manager for the South American leg of the tour, which meant that he travelled with the band. Throughout the tour, the crew had been determined to catch him out and in Caracas, Venezuela, on the last date of the tour, PG tried. As 'In Your Eyes' was finishing, Peter announced to the crowd, "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, we are especially proud to have with us a real superstar. Will you please welcome the legendary British soul star Barrie Knight!" Barrie didn't bat an eyelid. He just grabbed the microphone and started to sing. "He just went for it and he had a great voice. I think he started singing about three different songs,' says Peter Gabriel.

Thursday - 25 November 1993

"Peter knew that we'd do something on the last gig of the European tour in Paris," says Barrie Knight, carpenter and security manager. "He warned everyone to watch out for us, but before the gig we'd found a seven-foot high Statue of Liberty that had been left in the venue, so we hid it in an office until the evening. Then, when everyone was looking at the stage, we carried it through beneath the stage and hid it. When the luggage came down the conveyor belt at the end of the show, first the drapes bag came through containing Archie Hoey (one of the carpenters) punching and kicking from inside. Then we sent the statue down with Peter's coat draped over its arm."

"Even David Rhodes and Tony Levin stopped playing," added assistant stage manager David Gray. "It was wobbling as it went and we all thought it would fall over, but it didn't."

Misc

During the track, 'Steam', powerful jets of dry ice squirted from either side of the walkway between the stages with Peter standing between them. "We found that if the jets were angled slightly inwards, the static charge in the air would make Peter's hair stand on end. Peter realised what was happening but there was little he could do about it," says assistant stage manager David Gray.

According to assistant production manager Alia Dann, "With everything so dark backstage, different stage managers have different ways of marking the way from the dressing room to the stage. Paul Mauradian used to put down a continuous line of white tape so that Dave Russell (the production manager) could get Peter to the stage. One night, Dave was walking ahead of Peter and noticed he wasn't following. He turned round and found Peter had stopped at a two-foot break in the tape. 'I think you'd better walk me across this bit,' said Peter wryly."

The opening of the show was very dynamic, with Peter rising through the square stage inside a traditional British red telephone box. What few people knew was that quite often he would step into the box to find plastic dog doo placed right by his feet. The crew would do anything to put him off his stride.

"Life on the bus wasn't too bad. Sometimes it would be a bit claustrophobic but I slept really well, either because of the motion of the bus or because I was working 18-hour days, but others could never sleep on the bus. The optimum on a 12-sleeper bus is 10 people. Any more than that is a bit of a crowd. But things were pretty clean, with most of the crew showering three times a day at the venue. There was a period where a 15-sleeper bus had 16 on it and that got pretty bad," says assistant production manager Alia Dann.

"Peter found that his leather-soled slippers would often slip on stage, so for one gig the crew tried "coking" the stage by pouring a light solution of Coca Cola and water onto it and allowing it to dry to a slightly tacky coating. But this was a pain, so John Gray used to scuff the soles of Peter's slippers with his Swiss army knife before each gig.

During 'Shaking The Tree', a video cameraman would film Peter from around the base of the round stage. Every so often during the tour one of the crew would let off a fire extinguisher at his groin through the gauze screen around the stage. The cameraman never knew when it was going to happen and was always looking at the stage. He would end up with a white stain on his trousers and the audience would see the video image go wobbly for a few seconds.

There was a secret tour newsletter published by certain members of the production team. "Us And Them" told wild tales of the happenings on the tour. Most of these are unpublishable and quite a few of them were written in cryptic form to protect the author. When Peter asked why he was never mentioned, he discovered that he had been the "unnamed frontman" who was at the centre of many of the most cryptic stories.

"It was Archie Hoey's job to catch the luggage coming off the end of the conveyor belt," says assistant stage manager John Gray. "But one night we filled the biggest case with fire extinguishers and weights so when he caught it, it almost flattened him."

There were a couple of security breaches during the tour, caused by Peter's decision to allow some of the audience inside the security barriers. But the worst was at one concert where there was a low balcony behind the stage. During 'Solsbury Hill', where the screen at the back of the stage was moved forward, a few of the crew noticed a shadow drop down from the balcony onto the stage behind the screen. It turned out to be a member of the audience who was clearly out of his head and clung so tightly to a pillar that it took several people to remove him. The police took him away and said later that he would probably have been very dangerous if he had got near to Peter.

On another occasion, Barrie Knight, security and carpentry man, noticed someone he didn't recognise walking in front of himself and Peter along the passage under the moving walkway of the stage. He was a member of the audience who had slippied past the crew, so Barrie quickly grabbed him and threw him out into the crowd.