Song · Peter Gabriel
“I Have The Touch” by Peter Gabriel
From the album Peter Gabriel (1982)
“I Have The Touch” by Peter Gabriel appears on 10 radio countdowns from 3 stations between 1982 and 2005. It was first released in 1982 on the album Peter Gabriel. Its best result is #105 on the KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1982. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #149 alternative song of 1982 and #4,097 alternative song of all time.
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"I Have the Touch" comes off Peter Gabriel's fourth self-titled album, from 1982, and it went by "Hands" while it was being recorded. It's built on a drum machine pattern, Gabriel programming the Linn LM-1 himself, with Jerry Marotta adding acoustic drums drenched in gated reverb and Larry Fast playing a Prophet-5 among a thicket of synthesizers. Tony Levin is on Chapman Stick, and David Rhodes got some of his guitar sounds by tapping B chords at the twelfth fret. Gabriel produced with David Lord, who also engineered.
The result is twitchy, anxious and oddly danceable, and film-makers keep coming back to it: The Chocolate War in 1988, a 1996 remix in Phenomenon, and Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet, in 2025.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Alternative & Modern Rock
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1982 | 105 | KROQ Los Angeles, CA | KROQ Top 106.7 Songs of 1982 | 107 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | 1839 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2000 Songs of All-Time (December 1999) | 2000 |
| 2000 | 1840 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2001 Songs of All-Time (December 2000) | 2001 |
| 2001 | 1842 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (December 2001) | 2002 |
| 2002 | 1828 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2003 Songs of All-Time (December 2002) | 2003 |
| 2002 | 1703 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2002 Songs of All-Time (July 2002) | 2002 |
| 2003 | 1804 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2004 Songs of All-Time (December 2003) | 2004 |
| 2003 | 1563 | Fred (XM 44) | Fred XM Top 2044 Songs of All-Time (July 2003) | 2044 |
| 2004 | 1804 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2005 Songs of All-Time (December 2004) | 2005 |
| 2005 | 1800 | CD101 | CD101 Top 2006 Songs of All-Time (December 2005) | 1994 |
Also listed as: I Have the Touch.
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